TheUPside Podcast

Most people sit down to plan their year by writing a list of numbers. Production goals, income targets, metrics to hit. Then they build a strategy around those numbers without ever asking what kind of life they’re trying to build.

In this episode of TheUPside, Theresa Flood walks through five focuses for intentional living using the acronym FOCUS: Find your future, Own who you are becoming, Choose what matters, Use your time on purpose, and Simplify with systems.

Theresa talks about why vision has to come before goals, why identity comes before habits and habits come before results, and why she wipes every recurring event off her calendar every single year. She also shares a book she and Tommy recently read together, The 10 Year Letter, and how it changed the way they think about the long game.

If you’re in the middle of Q4 business planning or just want to finish 2026 with more clarity than chaos, this episode will help you slow down, get honest about what matters, and walk into January with momentum. Think big, go small, and choose consistency over intensity.

If you are feeling a little stressed out today, it may not be as bad as you think.

Theresa shares her takeaways from Dr. Alia Crum's keynote at the Center for BrainHealth: mindset is the setting of your mind, a filter that shapes what you notice, how your body responds, what you do, and how you experience the outcome. You'll hear the surprising housekeeper study, why two agents in the same market can have opposite years, and a new way to look at stress. What if it isn't proof something is wrong, but evidence that something matters?

Stay to the end for three reflection questions to help you choose a more useful belief. Full credit for the research shared goes to Dr. Alia Crum and the Center for BrainHealth.

Have you ever had a week where you did everything right and still had nothing to show for it? In this solo episode of TheUPside, Theresa Flood unpacks why consistency beats intensity, and why time on task over time is what actually produces results in life and business.

Theresa walks through four things consistency builds. It creates momentum, and she explains why you earn the right to intensity by starting small, using her own half marathon training as the example. It builds confidence through John Maxwell’s model of courage, consistency, competence and confidence. It builds trust with clients, with the people closest to you, and most of all with yourself, because every promise you keep makes the next one easier to believe. Over time, it also shapes your identity into the person you are becoming.

She also takes on the all or nothing trap that derails so many of us after one missed day, and closes with a simple challenge: pick one thing to be consistent in this week, and when you slip, get back in the game as quickly as you can.

If you are a leader, entrepreneur or business owner who wants lasting growth without burning out, this episode will help you trade intensity for steady progress. Download the free teaching guide at theresaflood.com.

What does it really take to go from selling houses to building a business that creates freedom? In this episode, Theresa Flood sits down with Kimberly Davis, a 26 year real estate veteran, team leader, and wealth builder. 

Kim was a successful, top producing agent and then a serious neck injury and months of recovery showed her that her business could not run without her. That moment pushed her to build a team. She talks about the hard lessons of hiring without clear core values, quarterly planning in 13 week sprints, and why slowing down helped her grow.

Kim shares how she built a team, why hiring too fast without clear core values cost her two painful years, and why she had to let go of the belief that she had to go fast. She explains her philosophy on wealth, her definition of freedom as having cash flow that covers your life costs, and why she works for the dream and not the dollar.

Kim also explains the Sunday questions she asks her 14 year old son. They are one of the most intentional parenting practices you will hear about. If you feel stuck in your business, your leadership, or the rat race, Kim’s advice on clarity, priorities, and cutting out chaos will help you move forward.

What if not finishing is actually the secret to getting more done? In this episode of TheUPside Podcast, Theresa Flood unpacks the Hemingway Effect, a simple productivity principle drawn from one of the most prolific authors in history. When Ernest Hemingway was asked what made him so successful, his answer was surprising. He never stopped writing at the end of a chapter or a complete thought. He always stopped at a point where he knew exactly what would come next, so sitting back down the next day was easy.

Theresa explores why the hardest part of anything is usually starting or restarting, and why so many leaders and entrepreneurs work until they are completely empty and call it commitment. She shares practical ways to apply the Hemingway Effect at work and at home, from naming tomorrow's first move before leaving the office to ending a lead generation session with tomorrow's call list already in hand.

If getting started each day feels harder than it should, this episode offers a fresh way to think about productivity, energy and momentum. It's an invitation to stop at an inconvenient place on purpose and leave breadcrumbs for your future self.

Listen now and learn why life is lived in the middle of the sentence, and why you should never end at zero.

When you're late, it's because traffic was terrible. When someone else is late, it's because they don't respect your time. In this episode of TheUPside Podcast, Theresa Flood unpacks one of the most common habits that quietly damages relationships at work and at home: we give ourselves context, but we give other people labels.

Theresa explains the fundamental attribution error, the tendency to explain our own behavior through our circumstances while judging others by their character. Because other people's context is invisible to us, we fill in the blanks with stories, and those stories turn into labels that shape how we treat people.

Drawing from her experience teaching the Six Types of Working Genius, Theresa shares how often we mistake someone's natural wiring for laziness, negativity or a lack of care. She offers one simple question that can shift you from judgment to curiosity: what else could be true?

In this episode you'll learn:
 ✓ What the fundamental attribution error is and how it shows up in everyday life
 ✓ How behavior gets turned into identity, and why only the behavior is a fact
 ✓ Why we tend to moralize our differences instead of getting curious
 ✓ A three question practice to separate fact from fiction
 ✓ Why extending the benefit of the doubt comes back to you

Whether you lead a team, run a business or are raising a teenager, this conversation will help you trade a little certainty for curiosity and a little judgment for grace.

What if the way to increase is not by adding more? In this episode of TheUPside, Theresa Flood flips the usual growth question on its head. Instead of asking what else we need to add, whether that's a new strategy, a new habit or a new system, she asks what we need to subtract.

Theresa explains why more often leads to dilution instead of growth, and why every yes we give carries a cost. Drawing on conversations with her daughters about sports, choir trips and full calendars, she shows why our yeses are precious while our nos are unlimited. She shares why you cannot organize clutter, what pruning a plant teaches us about redirecting resources, and why sometimes the thing we need to cut is good but not best.

Theresa closes with a simple Subtraction Audit built on three questions. What do I need to stop doing? What do I need to say no to? What do I need to let go of? Whether you're a business owner spread thin across too many priorities or a leader looking for your next level, this episode will help you create capacity for what matters most.

Invest in your growth every day and it will yield you great returns.

Theresa Flood believes every lasting change in life and business starts the same way, from the inside out. In this solo episode, she breaks down five anchoring questions that separate people who chase external circumstances from people who build something that lasts.

Theresa walks through the identity question, the belief question, the focus question, the vision question, and the character question, drawing on a teaching from John Maxwell that winning generates momentum but character sustains it. She explains why new behavior never comes from a new plan, it comes from a new identity, and why the stories we repeat to ourselves eventually start to feel like facts.

This episode is a practical framework for anyone heading into year end planning or thinking ahead to 2027, whether that means leading a team, building a business, or working through a personal season of change. Theresa challenges listeners to stop obsessing over the fruit and start tending to the root.

If you have ever felt like you were doing all the right external things without the internal shift to match, this episode gives you the questions to ask instead.

Subscribe at theresaflood.com and keep living on TheUpside.

In this episode, Theresa Flood sits down with Brindley Tucker, a Six Sigma certified coach and systemic constellation facilitator, to unpack why the same problems keep resurfacing in organizations even after leaders change the people or the process. Brindley shares the three systemic laws that quietly shape every business, family, and team, and explains why the real fix usually isn't more effort, it's more alignment.

They talk through how personal family patterns show up in professional leadership, what actually defines a healthy organization, and a simple two question habit Brindley uses to open every coaching call. Brindley also opens up about her own journey through addiction, a life altering turning point in 2012, and how that experience became the foundation for the deep, systemic coaching work she does today.

If you've ever felt like you're doing everything right and still hitting the same wall, this conversation will change how you think about leadership, culture, and what's really driving the results in your business.

In this episode of TheUPside, Theresa Flood unpacks what it actually means to pursue mastery, and why most people misunderstand it from the start. Mastery isn't a finish line you cross. It's a path you choose to stay on, one rep at a time.

Theresa breaks down five truths about mastery that apply whether you're leading a team, building a business, or trying to get better at your marriage, your health, or your craft. She talks about why focus matters more than chasing the next new strategy, why self mastery has to come before skill mastery, and why repetition without reflection will never get you there.

She also challenges the idea that maintenance exists at all. You're either sharpening a skill or letting it dull. There is no neutral.

This episode closes with a challenge: stop trying to master ten things and pick one. Learn it. Live it. Teach it. That's the real path.