I Spent $30K Learning My Body Wasn't Broken - My Business Model Was
The real cost of building a business while healing chronic illness
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I finally sat down and added it up.
Three years of chronic inflammation and fibromyalgia. Functional medicine doctors. Specialty labs. IV infusions. Supplement protocols that filled an entire cabinet.
Between $25-30K.
That’s just the direct costs. It doesn’t count the hours in waiting rooms. The days I couldn’t work because the fatigue was too heavy. The client projects I had to turn down because the brain fog made thinking feel like wading through mud.
But here’s what really got me:
I spent all that money trying to “fix” my body so I could get back to pushing through.
When what I actually needed? A business that worked WITH my healing process, not against it.
💰 What $30K Looked Like
Here’s where it went:
Functional medicine:
Consultations at $200-400 each. Trying to find someone who could help me understand why my body felt like it was attacking itself.
Specialty testing:
$3000 on third-party labs insurance wouldn’t cover. GI panels. Hormone tests. Inflammation markers. Trying to find the root cause.
IV therapy & infusions:
Over $5,000 in treatments. Hoping each one would be the thing that finally worked.
Supplement protocols:
$300-500 per month. Different doctors, different protocols. My kitchen counter looked like a pharmacy.
Specialty foods:
Elimination diets aren’t cheap. Organic everything. Special meal plans. Trying to heal through nutrition.
Add it all up? $25-30K over three years.
And that’s the stuff I could track.
😔 The Costs I Couldn’t Calculate
The real expenses weren’t on any spreadsheet:
Brain fog so bad I couldn’t hold tasks in my working memory.
I’d start something and forget what I was doing halfway through.
Fatigue that meant days—sometimes weeks—where showing up felt impossible.
Not “I’m tired.” More like “my body weighs 1,000 pounds.”
Client work I couldn’t take on.
Opportunities I had to decline. Revenue I’ll never get back.
The mental load of managing it all.
Tracking symptoms. Scheduling appointments. Researching protocols. That’s more than a part-time job on top of running a business.
The grief of feeling like my body was broken.
And the shame of thinking maybe I just wasn’t trying hard enough and something’s wrong with me.
That’s what chronic illness costs when you’re trying to build a business.
By the way, if you want to start tracking your energy + symptoms right away, I made this simple template you can use 👉🏻 Download the Weekly Visual Roadmap Template
💡 The Moment Everything Shifted
I was sitting in yet another doctor’s office when I had the thought:
“What if I’m asking the wrong question?”
I’d been asking: “How do I fix my body so I can work harder?”
The right question was: “How do I build a business that supports my healing?”
That shift changed everything.
🗺️ The Survival Tool I Didn’t Expect
Brain fog made everything harder.
I couldn’t hold multiple tasks in memory. Couldn’t track what needed to happen next. Traditional to-do lists felt like reading a foreign language.
So I started mapping everything visually.
Not because it was trendy. Because it was the only way I could function.
I’d look at my visual roadmap and see: “Okay. Two things. I can do two things today.”
One client call. One email. That’s it.
And you know what? That was enough.
Visual planning wasn’t just a productivity hack. It was a lifeline.
It helped me hold energetic space for client calls even when my brain couldn’t hold the details. It let me see what mattered without draining the executive function I didn’t have.
It was how I kept my business alive while my body was learning to heal.
→ Read more: Your ADHD Isn’t the Problem. Your Gantt Chart Is.
🎨 Building Business Around Healing
I stopped trying to “fix” myself back to normal.
I started designing a business that worked with my actual capacity.
What that looked like:
Energy-based scheduling instead of time-blocking. (Some days I had 2 hours of good brain. Some days I had 20 minutes.)
Visual roadmaps instead of detailed project plans. (My working memory couldn’t hold complexity. My eyes could see a one-page map.)
Symptom tracking as business data. (Inflammation spike after three Zoom calls? That’s “reduce meeting load” feedback.)
Client work structured around my capacity windows. (High-energy tasks in the morning. Admin when brain fog hit.)
I wasn’t pushing through anymore. I was designing around.
📊 The Framework That Emerged
From three years of expensive trial and error, I created the Symptom Decoder Framework:
🔴 Red flag symptoms = Stop. Rest. This pace is unsustainable.
🟡 Yellow flag symptoms = Caution. Add support or reduce load.
🟢 Green flag moments = This is working. Do more of this.
My body became my business advisor.
Migraine after back-to-back calls? Red flag. Redesign my calendar.
Energy drop mid-afternoon? Yellow flag. Move demanding work to mornings.
Felt good after a strategy session? Green flag. That’s aligned work.
Symptoms weren’t failures. They were data.
The Symptom Decoder became one of the core tools in what I now call The Bloom Method™ - building business around your body’s wisdom, not against it.
📈 What Actually Changed
I didn’t “cure” my chronic illness. I still deal with inflammation daily.
But I built a business I can sustain while healing.
The shift:
I stopped trying to design my business for the body I wished I had.
I started designing for the body I have today.
What that looks like:
Some days I have 4 good hours. Some days I have 30 minutes.
The visual roadmap helps me see what matters without taxing my brain.
Client work is structured around my capacity windows, not arbitrary schedules.
I track my body’s signals like I track business metrics. Both tell me what’s working.
The results aren’t miraculous:
I still have hard days. I’m still healing (100+ days into a carnivore diet, learning what my body needs).
But my business doesn’t fall apart when I have a bad week.
Client retention is solid because I stopped overpromising and underdelivering.
I work with my capacity instead of against it.
The business didn’t grow faster. It grew sustainable.
And that’s what I actually needed.
💭 What I Wish I’d Known
Three years ago, I thought: “If I can just heal my body, I can get back to normal.”
Now I know: Normal was the problem.
The “normal” entrepreneurial pace - hustle harder, push through, grind it out and that’s what made me sick in the first place.
Healing wasn’t about getting back to that.
Healing was about building something different.
💬 Your breakthrough window:
What symptoms have you been ignoring as “just part of entrepreneurship”?
What would your business look like if you designed it around your actual capacity instead of your ideal capacity?
If your body could send you feedback about your business model, what would it say?
🎯 Tools To Support Your Healing While Building
1. Download the Symptom Decoder Framework
Learn to read your body’s signals and translate them into business strategy.
→ Get the free framework here
2. Take the Business Health Reset™ Quiz
Discover your burnout pattern and get personalized strategies for sustainable business.
→ Take the 10-minute quiz here
3. Try the 3-Day Body Feedback Experiment
Track: What you did → How your body responded → What it might be telling you.
Your symptoms are data. Start listening.
The bottom line: I spent $25-30K and three years learning that my body wasn’t broken. The business model that required me to ignore my body’s signals? That was broken.
You don’t have to spend what I spent to figure this out.
Your body is already talking. The question is: Are you listening?
From maxed out to mapped out,
Kate Peabody, PCC
P.S. - If you’re building a business while managing chronic illness, I see you. The visual roadmaps and Symptom Decoder Framework? They were born from the days when brain fog made everything else impossible. Let me save you some of the expensive lessons.
Share this if: You know someone building a business while their body is asking them to slow down 💚