The Business Of Happiness · Tarryn MacCarthy

#399 - The 60 Second Practice To Boost Your Business Success with Charyse Williams

January 21, 2026·37 min·2 clips

A former ICU nurse reveals how she built a six-figure health coaching business without sacrificing her health or family.

1. The Business of Happiness episode #399 features Charyse Williams, former ICU nurse and CEO of Green and Glorious, discussing the link between self-prioritization and business growth with host Dr. Taryn McCarthy. 2. Williams is a former ICU night-shift nurse of 25 years who built two businesses to six and multiple-six figures before launching her current holistic health coaching and female-clinician business-mentoring practice in 2020. 3. The episode's central thesis is that high-achieving women are programmed to equate total sacrifice with success, and that unlearning this pattern is not just a wellness goal but a prerequisite for sustained business performance. 4. Williams describes working 12-16 hour ICU night shifts four nights a week, missing her children's bedtimes and arriving at soccer games in scrubs, while simultaneously launching a business. 5. Her second business was project management for electronic medical records implementation at large hospital systems, which required her to live out of a suitcase and travel across the country. 6. The defining moment came when Williams fell face-down on an Ohio parking lot asphalt at approximately age 35-36, sat in her car with her head on the steering wheel, and concluded she was 'literally falling to pieces.' 7. Following that moment, Williams researched holistic health, nervous system regulation, visualization, meditation, therapeutic essential oils, and food-as-medicine, then went raw vegan and dropped 80 pounds in eight months with her knee pain resolving entirely. 8. She notes that as an ICU nurse she was unaware of the healing modalities she subsequently learned, which prompted her to ask 'how many other people don't know this?' and ultimately launch her coaching business. 9. Williams describes launching her holistic practice with an explicit commitment to model what she teaches: she works Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday only, starts no earlier than 1pm, wraps around 7:30pm, and takes Friday through Monday off. 10. Her reasoning for the schedule is that she can only give from overflow, not from an empty tank — a contrast she draws explicitly against her earlier businesses which were built on 'hustle and grind.' 11. Williams introduces the concept that chronic overextension causes the nervous system to treat additional success as a threat: 'your body is saying it is not safe for us to experience any more success' and physically suppresses it. 12. She connects this to the self-sabotage experience where a person knows exactly what to do but cannot execute, framing it as the body having 'reached capacity' rather than a mindset failure. 13. The primary practice Williams prescribes is hourly intentional breathing breaks triggered by phone alarms, which she says communicates to the body 'we're safe, we're not in fight or flight' and resets the stress level from 10 back to zero. 14. She explains the physiological mechanism: sustained high stress keeps the body's 'internal pharmacy' producing cortisol continuously, which blocks weight loss and cognitive performance; breathing breaks switch production toward endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin. 15. Williams recounts a recent client who was experiencing inflammation, unable to lose weight despite doing 'all the things,' and running on fumes; Williams told her to breathe, the client asked 'then what?' and was told 'you're going to breathe again.' 16. Williams notes that the breathing break practice costs nothing, requires no equipment, and is simple enough that her son now shouts 'breathe beautiful' from another room when her hourly alarm fires. 17. The conversation is warm and mutually validating, conducted between two healthcare-professional-turned-entrepreneurs who frequently share personal anecdotes and affirm each other's experiences throughout. 18. McCarthy's questions are structured around practical application — she pushes Williams to give specific techniques rather than philosophy, resulting in concrete scheduling examples and the phone-alarm practice. 19. This episode will resonate most with female healthcare professionals considering or already running a coaching or consulting business alongside clinical work. 20. Listeners who prefer heavily data-driven business advice or who are not in healthcare professions may find the wellness-first framing less directly applicable.

As heard by us

A calm reminder that sustainable work starts with protecting energy first.

Dr. Taryn McCarthy and Charisse Williams frame happiness for high-achieving healthcare professionals as something practical: work has to be sustainable, not ruled by busyness.

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Why you'd press play

If you're running on empty but still calling it productivity, this one will land.

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