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We need a new definition of success—one that harmonizes meaning and money.
Imagine diving into your workday with renewed energy, leaving behind the exhaustion or dread of a monotonous grind.
Traditional beliefs about success and the root cause of burnout are the same:
Prove yourself.
Work harder.
Take care of the business, and it will take care of you.
We’re recycling the mindset and practices that keep us stuck. Our souls need a jumpstart into The Age of Humanity.
Tune in for a new way of working that honors our nervous system and the bottom line, using knowledge of the brain, the Bible, and business. We’ll discuss timeless truths that amplify growth, ignite change, and reshape the world of work. No corporate speak or business BS. Let’s get to the heart of a rewarding career and profitable growth.
We speak human about business.
What’s in it for You?
Value, Relevance, and Impact (VRI): No, it's not a new tech gadget—it's your ticket to making your work genuinely matter to you and your company.
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I'm your host, Rebecca Fleetwood Hesson, your thrive guide leading you into the new Age of Humanity. I’ve navigated the highs and lows of business and life, from achieving over $40 million in sales, teaching thousands of people around the world about leadership, trust, execution, and productivity to facing burnout, divorce, raising a couple of great humans (one with ADHD), and navigating the uncertainty of starting a business.
I’m committed to igniting change in the world by jumpstarting business into profitable growth with the timeless truths of our humanity.
Sound crazy? It’s only crazy until it works.
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Want insight and advice on your real career and business challenges? Connect with me on social media or email me at rebecca@wethrive.live. Your story could spark our next conversation.
[00:00:00] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Welcome back to Business Is Human. I’m your host, Rebecca Fleetwood Hession, and we’re here to bring you episodes that blend meaningful work with profitable success. Here to steward what I call the Age of Humanity. I believe if we transform the way we work, we can transform the way that we live. As always, my friendly request, if you like what you hear, hit subscribe so you don’t miss any episode and leave a review to tell the other humans that they might like it too. Always looking to help you and connect with others. All right, let’s get into it, shall we? First up in our Stand Tall in Your Story series is Kate Sackers. And Kate is the Director of Marketing and Communications for Ryan Fire Protection. And you’ll quickly understand why we chose her to open the show and hear her story about turning pain into power.
[00:01:08] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: And after you listen to Kate’s story, which I’m going to play for you next, I’m going to break down the neuroscience behind what Kate was doing sometimes knowingly, sometimes subconsciously, and what we can glean from that in any kind of post-traumatic situation. Neuroscience has a term for it, of course, as they always do. It’s called post-traumatic growth. And I want to break it down from that perspective and also what happens in our beliefs and our identity and all the things. But first, I just want you to listen and enjoy Kate’s story and see what it brings up for you.
[00:02:00] Kate Sackers: Hey there. So you’re going to notice tonight that we all come out to walk out songs. And isn’t that kind of like everybody’s dream? Whether you’re 15 or 50, it’s like, man, if I ever had a walkout song, I picked Pink Floyd. And before you go casting any judgments, I do not do drugs, at least not the hard ones. And I’m just kidding. Drugs aren’t my thing. But Pink Floyd was our thing, my dad and mine. Not so fun fact. Did you know that when you’re on hospice, the last thing to go before you die is your hearing. There may be some of you in this room that already knew that not so fun fact. And if you do, I’m sorry. But the truth is, whether you’ve survived it or loved someone through it, none of us will leave this world unaffected by cancer. I know that I won’t.
[00:02:53] Kate Sackers: I lost my dad to it in 2022, and he was the best. He and I had the most unique connection. We could tell a story and draw an audience, run a poker table of strangers in Las Vegas, own any dance floor we stepped out onto, and basically talk our way into or out of anything that we wanted. We were the best kind of duo and everybody saw it. So when he died, I didn’t just lose a parent. I lost my best friend. Cholangiocarcinoma. That is an 18 letter word for do not pass go, do not collect $200. It is rare. It is aggressive. And most of the time, by the time you find out you have it, you don’t stand a chance against it. And I hate to spoil the end of this particular story, but we did not stand a chance against it, which leads me to his diagnosis day.
[00:03:52] Kate Sackers: On October 14th, I made the hardest promise that I would ever keep. My family and I found ourselves in a small oncology room getting the results read of a biopsy result. And the doctor was explaining that if you compared my dad’s routine cancer scan in April to his cancer scan in October, that there is not a doctor on the planet that would believe that that was the same body. In less than six months, a silent, undetectable cancer took over his entire body. I looked over at him. He was shifting around in his wheelchair for one, because it was excruciating for him to sit upright at this point. And two, I knew my dad and he was about to lose his shit on this doctor. So before he could lose said shit on this doctor, I stood up, grabbed the handles of the wheelchair. I apologized to the oncologist and I told my family that I was taking him to get some air.
[00:04:49] Kate Sackers: So walking fast down that hospital hallway, I saw a little patch of sun at the end, so I just beelined it there. It ended up coming from an empty chemotherapy room. So I rolled him in, parked him in front of the sunlight, and we sat there and we let the sun warm our face for just a little bit. He broke the silence with, “Thanks for getting me out of there.” “I don’t know what this thing is, but I don’t think we can beat it. “And I looked back at him and I said,” No, dad, I don’t think we can. “And that’s when he said this, “ Pumpkin, if I’m really sick and this gets bad, I need you to promise me that you are going to be in charge of pain. I don’t want to suffer. If I’m sick, pumpkin, you’re in charge of pain.
[00:05:36] Kate Sackers: “I said,” I got you, dad. I’ll be in charge of pain. “A couple minutes later, my family found us in the chemo room and my mom recommended that she and my sister-in-law take my dad down to the car to get him settled while my brother and I checked out. So the little lady behind the window slides the glass open and she says,” Have you chosen a home hospice company? “And I thought,” Wow, home hospice. Okay, that seems fast, but sure. “So my brother and I chose a home hospice company and then we left. We got in the elevator, we were alone, but before I could step out, my brother swings his arm in front of me and he says,” Kate, wait. Before we get out to the parking lot, I have to tell you something. When you took dad out to get some air, Dr. Sloan told us that dad doesn’t have months or years to live.
[00:06:23] Kate Sackers: Dad has days, maybe weeks. “Now those are big words for a little brother to say to his older sister.
[00:06:32] Kate Sackers: “I don’t know what happened. I think I blacked out because no less than 10 minutes ago, I just promised my dad that I was going to keep him out of pain.” So we walked out to the parking lot, we got in the car, shut the door, and for that whole car ride home, my dad was the only person in the car that didn’t know how quickly we would be saying goodbye. My childhood home was turned into a hospital within two days, and my family and I battled cancer alongside my dad for two weeks on home hospice and home hospice. It sounds comfortable and it is to an extent, but what most people don’t know about home hospice is that you get a nurse’s care for one hour a day and the rest of those 23 hours are on the family. And depending how intense your medical situation can be, those 23 hours can be absolutely devastating.
[00:07:24] Kate Sackers: I remember one particular morning, I was standing over my dad’s resting body and I was explaining to the hospice nurse what a terrible night we had. He was up all night screaming in pain, calling out our names, trying to stand up, falling. It was awful. And she said, “We can do something. We can increase his morphine, but I have to warn you that when we increase the pain meds, this is going to expedite the entire process. He’s going to go into a sleep-like state. He’ll become non-responsive and he’ll likely pass within a couple days.” Something came over me. “Do it. “I promised no suffering.
[00:08:08] Kate Sackers: So she taught me what needed to happen. She said that over the next three hours, we were going to triple his pain meds and those pain meds needed to be administered every 30 minutes and she can stay for the first hour and teach us how to do it, but then she has to move on to the next family. And so someone’s going to have to take over for those last two hours to complete the process. Something came over me again. “Teach me, I’ll do it. “ He knew it was going to be me. “I’m in charge of pain.” So she sat there with me for the first hour, taught me what to do. And for those last two hours, I sat bedside with my dad, I held his hand, and I kept my promise. Two days later, he died on October 26th, surrounded by family, love, and music.
[00:09:02] Kate Sackers: And let me tell you, the dark side of the moon album hits a lot harder on hospice than it does on drugs or so I hear.
[00:09:10] Kate Sackers: But then he was gone and the rest of the world just continues moving on. But there I was holding this promise. “Pumpkin, you’re in charge of pain. “That’s when I realized something. That promise didn’t die with my dad. It just changed hands. What began as a directive for his care turned into his directive for the care of myself. Pumpkin, you’re in charge of pain. And if I was in charge of my pain now, pain was going to be power. So no matter how hard it was to get up every single day and try to live in a world that didn’t have my dad in it, I got up, I looked myself in the mirror and I said,” Pumpkin, you’re in charge of pain. “So here’s what I did first. I lost 130 pounds. That’s a whole human. Okay. No, but here’s the kicker. I did it naturally because when you have hereditary cholangiocarcinoma pumping through your family, you get put on the no flyless for the old GLP-1s.
[00:10:13] Kate Sackers: So homegirl did this the old-fashioned way. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. That sucked. Zero out of five star rating do I recommend a calorie deficit for three years? But I did it. And when your body catches up, your mind catches up. When your mind catches up, you start realizing you got a little self-worth. So then you start looking around at the other stuff and you’re like, what else needs to be addressed? So the next thing that I needed to look at was my career.
[00:10:42] Kate Sackers: I gave 10 years to a toxic organization with blind loyalty and got brave enough to look for a new home. I found that at Ryan Fire Protection, the best company in the world. I know my dad actually led me there, but that is a story for another day. But then you start looking at other stuff. What else is holding me back? And this is a story now that I did not plan on telling, but here we are. That was my relationship with alcohol. Truth time. I am your stereotypical party girl. Truly, in college, if you wanted to go out and get blackout drunk, I’m the girl you’re calling. You might die. We might go to jail, but you’re going to have a good time doing it. You should see me bong a beer. It has been described as majestic. And I have carried that torch with honor well into adulthood.
[00:11:42] Kate Sackers: But here’s the thing. I started blacking out more often. My bad nights came with riskier decisions. Anxiety stuck around, regret stuck around a lot longer, and the truth became harder to ignore. Drinking in moderation for me was a delusion. A normal person that wants to go out and have a good night’s like, “Yeah, it’s six drinks. Time to go home. I’m drunk.” You give this girl six drinks, hold onto your butts because I’m already wondering where the next six drinks coming from and where are six drinks coming from. You see, it starts off real cute, but then it usually ends up with me hurting or worrying people that I love. So in September of 2025, I went to my first AA meeting. Now, thank you.
[00:12:36] Kate Sackers: I am not your stereotypical alcoholic. I don’t drink to mask emotions. I don’t have an addiction problem. I don’t hide vodka in my underwear drawer. I drink to get drunk and be the life of the party, just like my dad was, honestly. And I’ve been carrying my new sobriety pretty quietly. And when I say quietly, I mean I’ve been flat out lying about it. Truly. If you’re going to go out with me, if we’re going to go to a bar, we’re going to go to a brunch, I’m showing up 30 minutes before you do. I’m going to talk to the bartender. I’m going to talk to the servers and I’m going to tell them to secretly serve me mocktails all night so that the people that I’m with don’t know that I’m not drinking. I will walk around a party with a full cup. I’ll lie about what’s in it.
[00:13:20] Kate Sackers: Last month, I rode a mechanical bull, dead ass sober. And for the most part at a party, I am still the most outgoing person there because that is who I am naturally. And it’s great because everybody just assumes that I’m intoxicated. But then at the end of the night, I get in my car, I drive home and everybody’s like, “Huh.” Well, Kate’s a real bag of fun. She’s got a drinking and driving problem, but she wild. It’s fine. But truly, it’s like I would rather have this entire room believe that I got behind a wheel of a car, blackout drunk and drove home than tell any of you that I was sober at a party and had fun. That’s insane. I am hiding sobriety like an alcoholic hides drinking. It’s nuts. So tonight, for the first time ever, I am saying this out loud. I am sober now.
[00:14:16] Kate Sackers: I do not drink anymore and I am finally okay with it. I have been given all of these gifts, a lot of them from my dad that don’t require the enhancement of alcohol. The other day I was in the car with my mom and she was telling me how proud of me that she was like good moms do. And I said, “God, I just wish that dad could see all this stuff that I’m doing.” And she said, “Oh, honey, we rarely get it all. If he was still here, you may not have done any of this. “ Maybe in him dying, that was his ultimate sacrifice for you to start living. And that’s when I realized that the greatest and final gift that my dad ever gave me was grief because if you can harness grief and you can turn your pain into power, you can be unstoppable.
[00:15:14] Kate Sackers: And so tonight, dad, this is for you in true Pink Floyd manner. I wish you were here, but I will see you on the dark side of the moon. Cheers.
[00:15:29] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Before we dig into Kate’s story, I want you to just take a moment and ask yourself, what did that bring up for you? The reason we share our stories is we’re looking for ways that we can connect with one another, learn from one another. And so I’m guessing that there’s something happened in your body as you listen to that story. And those are clues about your nervous system, about your belief system, and those are the things that we’re going to dig into with each of these stories that we share from the Stand Tall event. So let’s dig into what neuroscience says about Kate’s talk. First of all, she made a promise that rewired her brain. When she stood in the chemo room and said, “I got you, dad. I’ll be in charge of pain.” She wasn’t just making a vow and a promise. She was creating what neuroscience calls a declarative memory anchor.
[00:16:35] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: It’s a moment that has such emotional intensity that the brain encodes it into her body with precision. Boom, that is a stored memory that is always going to be right there at the surface, driving her beliefs and her patterns deep into the science, the hippocampus and the amygdala, work together in high emotion events, situations and just burn that experience into your long-term memory. It’s why she can tell you what the room looked like that day. She can tell you everything that happened. And so then that anchor, that memory becomes a directive, becomes something that now subconsciously is running her decisions because it’s now become a belief. She’s in charge of pain. And so she took that directive and turned it to herself in the way that she can use that pain for great purpose. That’s literally how the brain creates behavior change. Now, the thing that we want to take away from that as business people is it takes more than a strategy to get people to change their behavior.
[00:18:00] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: It takes emotions, it takes feelings, it takes a safe environment that someone feels like, okay, this is a place where I’m willing to take a risk to change my behavior. And so when you are sharing anything with your team, your customers, make sure you don’t just have the facts and the data and some model that you’ve created, but there needs to be feelings behind it if you want them to anchor it and remember it. Who’s this for? Why does it matter? How are we going to create change for people? That’s what our nervous system is looking for. Am I safe and can I help in some way? The second thing that she did that’s extraordinary with this grief is most people, a lot of people’s nervous system gets stuck in grief. It treats the loss like an attack. And the brain, which is our nervous system is constantly scanning for, am I safe, scanning for danger?
[00:19:06] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: And if you treat the loss like a predator, something that’s attacking you, then it never fully goes away. And then you chronically are in a state of activation where you have anxiety and hypervigilance, or you just numb out. You just emotionally can’t feel anything anymore because feeling things feel like they’re dangerous. Richard Tedeschi, Lawrence Calhoun found that a significant portion of people who experience profound loss emerge with heightened clarity of purpose, stronger relationships, and a deeper capacity for meaning making. That’s what Kate did, all of those things. She transformed her body, she left a toxic career, and she confronted her relationship with alcohol, not in spite of losing her dad, because of it. And her mom’s words of maybe him dying, that was his ultimate sacrifice for you to start living. It’s so, so beautiful. And when you talk to Kate and she talks about her dad, there is just a sense of love and safety and connection that cannot be denied.
[00:20:22] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: It is just absolutely beautiful. And so her dad had always created this sense of safety for her, and it’s also exactly what he left her with as his parting ways. So grief when we process it, rather than suppress it, can actually unlock the prefrontal cortex’s capacity for greater long-range thinking, decisions based more strongly on our values, things we care about, so that we can make decisions that catapult our life in beautiful ways. Another thing from her talk is this 130 pounds of weight loss did not happen based on willpower. Kate actually said, “When your body catches up, your mind catches up.” And I don’t know if she knows how profound those words actually are, but neuroscience would just be applauding in every way possible because the vagus nerve, the highway that connects the body and the brain and runs the show for us, when you change the body’s state, you change the mind state.
[00:21:31] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: They’re connected. And so taking care of her body, exercise, calorie deficit, eating healthy, exercise in particular really does grow the neuro connections in your brain and improves your mood, improves your relationships, it strengthens your prefrontal cortex, therefore makes you smarter, helps you make better decisions. And so that three years of a calorie deficit for Kate was making her pretty dang smart and strong and courageous, which we clearly saw illustrated on the stage that night. And then the insight that she had about alcohol is so profound. And what’s interesting is Kate described her relationship with alcohol so connected to her identity. She was hiding that she wasn’t drinking because being the life of the party is and was her identity. And she had connected alcohol to that thinking, “Well, if I’m not drinking, are people still going to see me as the life of the party?
[00:22:43] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Am I still going to be able to participate in that way?” And when she said, “I’m hiding sobriety like an alcoholic hides drinking,” we all were just cracking up about that because we were with her, the only ones that knew about her decision prior to the stage that night were the nine of us as a part of this experience. And what really was happening is by hiding this, she was keeping herself socially safe because when we anticipate social rejection, it actually causes physical pain. And so she didn’t want to experience the pain of social rejection, so she was willing to hide the change, even though it was a good change because she wasn’t sure how people would respond to it. But by standing on a stage in front of 400 people publicly announcing this, she flipped the switch on her rewiring and deeply encoded that as a high emotion experience long-term.
[00:23:55] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: So that encodes her social identity to, “I’m sober now.” And it’s one of the hardest things that our human brain can do. And Kate just has this instinct of how to do these things that are actually really supported by neuroscience, which brings me to my next point, which is the instinct that she feels, even though she didn’t at the time know the science behind it, is her spiritual nature. We are spiritual beings living a physical experience, and her sensing ability is spiritual, and she has a really strong spiritual sensing ability, which also doesn’t have a lot to do with being a Bible scholar because that’s not her story, but the sensing, the ability to sense that guidance, that divine guidance, that’s Kate’s. That’s a superpower of Kate’s. But connecting to the spiritual aspect of sensing, one of the things that she did that illustrates this, I’ve seen her do it in a number of occasions, is when she sensed that her dad was getting really uncomfortable when they were talking in the doctor’s office and she just got up, pushed his wheelchair out, and she went to the sunlight.
[00:25:24] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: She found a place that was warm, that was sun, that was nature, and that just instinctive sensing that she had is beautiful, and we all have that. The question is, are we listening to it or have we created the kind of life that is so busy and so distracted, we no longer feel the senses in our body because we’re too much in our brains. But what’s really happening in our lives is our sensing system, our spiritual system, the way our nervous system was designed, that’s the truth. That’s the guiding system that we want to pay better attention to because our nervous system is adaptive to the environments that we’re in. And so when we adapt so much to the cortisol and the busyness of our lives, we shut out some of the greatness of our sensing system and we need to bring that back so that we are being guided by things that are aligned with the truth.
[00:26:34] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: So what she did is in nervous system sciences, it’s called co-regulation. She noticed that her dad was upset and she said, “I need to remove him from this environment that’s upsetting.” And she naturally went to the light of the sun and the warmth there, her and her dad could co-regulate. And again, if you know Kate and her story with her dad, the love there was greater than just a regular father-daughter relationship. I don’t know how to explain it, but it was special. And so she knew that she could help her dad get calm if they could just get out of that situation. And that’s what we’re designed to do. She just instinctively knew how to do it. Again, she didn’t have the language for it at the time. She does know, but her nervous system knew exactly what to do. When your nervous system has been designed and built on love like Kate’s was, it does come much more naturally and not all of us got the benefit of that kind of father-daughter or father-son relationship, but we can cultivate it for ourselves.
[00:27:41] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Kate was blessed enough to have it with her dad. I love to think that no matter what parents you got in the physical sense, you got a heavenly father that loves you more than you can even imagine. So when you turn to that, you get the safety that you need. So the neuroscience of Kate’s story is really about what it looks like when you’re processing pain instead of storing it. Most people store it in their bodies, their habits, their silences by hiding it or hiding it by numbing it, whatever the case may be. Kate, we naturally do some of that, but in that chemo room, she made a very different choice and then her brain followed suit to make a lot of other amazing patterned choices. So here are a few things that I want to close out with that you can take with you to reflect and use Kate’s story to aid in your story.
[00:28:39] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: So always check your nervous system state before you think about strategy or action or what you’re going to do, because if you’re running on a dysregulated, chronically activated nervous system, you’re not going to have access to great decision-making. Second is ask yourself, what’s the belief that’s underneath some of these patterns and responses that you have in your life? Things that you may not even be consciously choosing, but as you start to observe yourself, you realize are having a more profound impact on you than you thought. The third and final reflection is, where are you hiding the most powerful version of yourself? And usually if we’re hiding it, it’s protective. We just don’t feel safe enough yet to bring it out. And so asking yourself that question starts to peel back some of those layers so you can get to the heart of the matter, the greatness of who you were actually designed to be.
[00:29:40] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: And I would be remiss if I didn’t offer my assistance if you would like to embark on this kind of journey like Kate did with this group. I love one-on-one coaching and would love to work with you and help you discover, is there some sort of pain that’s holding you back that we can actually turn into something really powerful as a catalyst for the next level of your life and career. All right, y’all, we have seven more amazing stories coming in this season and I can’t wait to show them to you. All right, love you, mean it.
[00:30:21] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Thanks for being here. You can follow us on Instagram, Business Is Human, or TikTok, Rebecca Fleetwood Hession. It’s a great way to share some of the clips with your colleagues and friends. All right, make it a great day. Love you mean it.