Susanne Mueller Consulting

Susanne Mueller Consulting "Think like the pro, be the pro." A successful football team has a coach, a successful business man/woman has a coach.

Susanne Mueller Consulting & Coaching serves professionals and teams
of different sectors including pharma, banking, retail, consumer goods, media, advertising, digital, manufacturing, government, education and non-profit. Susanne will not tell you how to lace your running shoes to run a marathon or an Ironman race; she will give you insights into how to combine sports and business philosophies into your professional or personal lives.

I'll Just Say It: When I Don't Sleep, I Am a Terrible Leader.Not "a little off." Not "slightly less sharp." Terrible. Yo...
06/06/2026

I'll Just Say It: When I Don't Sleep, I Am a Terrible Leader.

Not "a little off." Not "slightly less sharp." Terrible. You don’t want to be around me.

My patience is gone. My creativity flatlines. My empathy the thing that makes me good at coaching leaders through the hardest transitions of their careers just… disappears.

I become reactive instead of responsive. Short instead of spacious. Present in the room but absent in the ways that matter.

I learned this training for Ironman triathlons and marathons, where the consequences of poor sleep were immediate and physical. Bad sleep meant bad miles. Bad recovery meant breakdown, not breakthrough.

But the leadership version is even more costly because you rarely feel it as dramatically as you do at mile 18. It erodes slowly. Quietly. Until one day someone tells you that your team feels disconnected from you. Or your decisions have been missing the mark. Or your presence in the room has changed.

Sleep deprivation is a leadership crisis in slow motion.

The greatest athletes alive figured this out.
Federer. Bolt. Serena. LeBron. Brady. Biles. Phelps.

They ALL made sleep a non-negotiable. So did I.

As an executive coach (MA/PCC) who has spent 20+ years helping leaders navigate transitions from senior individual contributors to C-suite, from one culture to another, from burning out to thriving I can tell you with certainty:

The first habit we always work on is sleep.

Not because it's easy. Because it's foundational. Because everything else your vision, your team building, your executive presence, your capacity to lead the future workforce is built on top of it.

Here's your challenge:
Decide on your bedtime. Block it on your calendar. Defend it tonight.

I do it. What about you?


→ Ready to go further? I am with you on this journey.

Susanne Mueller, MA/PCC | Executive Coach | Leadership Transition Strategist | 20+ years | Ironman | TEDx Speaker

The Leadership Non-Negotiable Champions Have Known for Decades (And Executives Keep Ignoring) Usain Bolt was asleep 35 m...
06/05/2026

The Leadership Non-Negotiable Champions Have Known for Decades (And Executives Keep Ignoring)

Usain Bolt was asleep 35 minutes before he shattered a world record. Roger Federer sleeps 11–12 hours a day "If I don't have that amount, I hurt myself," he says. LeBron James: 12 hours. Serena Williams, Simone Biles, Michael Phelps. Every single one of them treats sleep as sacred. Non-negotiable. The foundation everything else is built on.

And yet in nearly every leadership transition conversation I have, sleep is the first thing that's been quietly sacrificed.

Sleep Is Not Where You Rest FROM Performance. It IS the Performance.

Neuroscientist Matthew Walker calls sleep "the greatest legal performance-enhancing drug that most people aren't using enough." Science is unambiguous: sleep is where your brain consolidates learning, cortisol resets, emotional regulation is restored, and creative capacity is rebuilt.

What disappears without it? Focus. Empathy. Decision-making nuance. Executive presence. The exact capabilities that define great leadership and that the future workforce is watching for, every single day.

Sleep deprivation is not a badge of commitment. It is a leadership liability. I've Lived This From Both Sides.

I hold a master’s degree in psychology (MA) and a Professional Certified Coach credential (PCC). I've spent over 20 years working with leaders at every stage of their careers from high-potential managers stepping into their first leadership role, to senior executives navigating the most complex transitions of their professional lives.

When I skimped on sleep during Ironman training, the cost was immediate and physical. In the boardroom, it's slower and quieter until one day someone tells you your team feels disconnected, or your decisions have been missing the mark.

The leaders who build Olympic-caliber teams for the future workforce are the leaders who model sustainable, recovered, fully present performance. It starts with you.

Your Get Fit Challenge This Week (and beyond)

📅 Block your sleep window on your calendar tonight bedtime AND wake time and treat it like your most important board meeting. Add one 20-minute recovery block this week. Notice what changes.

Sleep well and dream well



Photo: my hometown with its magic mountains inviting YOU to join. DU = YOU

🏆 The Leaders Who Will Win the Next Decade All Have One Thing in Common.It's not their MBA.It's not their network.It's n...
06/04/2026

🏆 The Leaders Who Will Win the Next Decade All Have One Thing in Common.

It's not their MBA.
It's not their network.
It's not even their strategy.

It's how they recover.

We are living through the most demanding leadership environment in a generation. The future workforce is watching everything your energy, your presence, your decision-making under pressure, your ability to be fully human while being fully effective.

And none of that is possible when you're chronically under-slept.

Here's what the science says and what the greatest athletes in the world already know:

"Sleep is the greatest legal performance-enhancing drug that too few leaders are using enough." - Neuroscientist Matthew Walker

As an executive coach with a Master's degree in psychology (MA) and a Professional Certified Coach credential (PCC) and as someone who has trained for Ironman triathlons and completed marathon races I've seen this same pattern in the C-suite.

The leaders who last are the leaders who recover.

The ones who build great teams Olympic-caliber teams for the future workforce? They understand that leadership is not a sprint. It's an Ironman.

You need to be in it for the long game. That requires:
✅ Sleep as a non-negotiable
✅ Recovery rituals that protect your cognitive edge
✅ The discipline to say NO to late nights that steal your next day's leadership capacity

The future workforce doesn't need a leader who burns bright for two years.
It needs a leader who shows up fully, for decades.

Are you building that kind of endurance?



→ Build YOUR Olympic Team for the future: susannemueller.biz

Join Friday, June 5, 2026, 1pm-2pm Complimentary session to get to know GET FIT
"Build your Olympic team" - same in business and in sports - what are the parallels?
https://luma.com/join/eh-KS3CsCAmocx7xQC

Susanne Mueller, MA/PCC | Executive Coach | Leadership Transition Expert | Ironman Triathlete | Marathon Runner | TEDx Speaker

This week I will muse about SLEEP and REST - something that is not talked about much.📅 You Learned It Last Week. The Win...
06/03/2026

This week I will muse about SLEEP and REST - something that is not talked about much.

📅 You Learned It Last Week. The Window to Make It Stick Is RIGHT NOW.

Here’s a truth about habits that most people learn too late:

Knowledge has a 48-hour half-life.

The session was great. The insight hit hard. You were ready to change.

But if you didn’t put it on your calendar, it’s already fading.

I’ve coached executives through some of the most pivotal leadership transitions of their careers. And the #1 pattern I see in the ones who transform vs. the ones who don’t?

The transformers SCHEDULE the habit. The rest just intend to.

When I was training for Ironman triathlons and marathons, I didn’t “try to sleep more.” I put my sleep window on the calendar. I defended it. I treated it the way Federer, Bolt, Serena, and LeBron treat it as the foundation everything else is built on.

Because here’s what your future workforce needs from you:

Not a leader who runs on fumes and calls it hustle.

A leader who models sustainable, peak performance.

A leader who SHOWS their team what it looks like to invest in yourself.

A leader who makes the hard habit easy by making it non-negotiable.

That’s what Get Fit is about. Whether you’re in a 5KM Sprint preparing for your next performance review, navigating a leadership transition, or building the team that will carry your organization into the future it always starts with the fundamentals.

Sleep is Fundamental #1.

This week: Take ONE habit from last week’s work. Put it on your calendar. Start tonight.

What’s your bedtime tonight? How do you schedule sleep or even naps?

Join Friday, June 5 for a complimentary session “Build your Olympic Team” What does it take as a leader to motivate your team and win the gold medals?

Susanne Mueller, MA/PCC | Executive Coach | Leadership Transition Strategist | 20+ years guiding leaders through transformation | TEDx Speaker

While You Were Grinding at Midnight, Usain Bolt Was Napping.Let that land for a second.The fastest human being in record...
06/02/2026

While You Were Grinding at Midnight, Usain Bolt Was Napping.

Let that land for a second.

The fastest human being in recorded history a man who broke world records in front of 80,000 screaming people was asleep 35 minutes before he walked onto that track.

Roger Federer: 11–12 hours of sleep. Every single day. "If I don't have that amount, I hurt myself," he says.
LeBron James: 12 hours. 22 seasons at the pinnacle of sport. Coincidence?
Tom Brady: in bed by 8:30pm. non-negotiable.
Serena Williams. Simone Biles. Michael Phelps. Venus Williams. Andy Murray.

Every single one of them protects their sleep like it's sacred. Because it is.

Now here's the leadership truth they don't teach in business school:

Sleep isn't where you rest FROM your performance.
Sleep IS the performance.

I can talk from my experiences: When I am not rested → I don't feel good → I don't look good → my decisions suffer → my presence disappears → and your team feels leaderless.

I know this intimately. As a certified executive coach (MA/PCC) and someone who has trained for Ironman triathlons and marathon races, sleep was never optional. It was the competitive edge.

The future workforce demands leaders who show up fully present cognitively sharp, emotionally regulated, creatively alive.

You cannot lead the future on a sleep deficit.

📅 Your action this week: Block your sleep window on your calendar right now. Treat it like your most important board meeting. Because it is.

What time are you going to bed tonight? Drop it below. 👇



→ Ready to build champion leadership habits? All Get Fit programs at susannemueller.biz
Susanne Mueller, MA/PCC | Executive Coach | Leadership Transition Strategist | susannemueller.biz

“Take it from the Ironwoman” Monday Podcast EpisodeThree Legs, One Heart: How a Para-Triathlete Defies the Odds, Robert ...
06/01/2026

“Take it from the Ironwoman” Monday Podcast Episode

Three Legs, One Heart: How a Para-Triathlete Defies the Odds, Robert Anthony, Ep. 542

Meet Robert Anthony — below-the-knee amputee, para-triathlete, world-ranked competitor, and one of the most inspiring humans you'll ever hear.

🙌 Born with a birth defect called Fibular Hemimelia, Robert grew up navigating childhood, sports, and identity with a prosthetic leg long before today's technology made it easier. From his leg falling off during a Little League championship

🏅 to hopping across a finish line in Turkey after a mid-race fall 🇹🇷, Robert has turned every setback into serious fuel. In this episode, he shares how COVID became his turning point

🔄 leading him to triathlon, the Challenge Athletes Foundation, and eventually the USA Elite Paratriathlon Team, racing across the globe.

🌍 🦋 Key takeaways:
🧠 Your internal coach is your most powerful tool make sure it's cheering for you
🔄 Restart, reset, refocus rest is part of the training, not a weakness
🦾 Being adaptive isn't just a para-sport term it's a life skill
🐛 Growth requires going through dark spaces before you can fly
🦅 Busy doesn't mean productive get your ducks in a row first Never give up. Be persistent. Be adaptive. Be Robert.

Let's put on the leadership running shoes. Because the best time to train is before the race gets hard.No serious athlet...
05/30/2026

Let's put on the leadership running shoes. Because the best time to train is before the race gets hard.

No serious athlete waits until they're injured to start building strength.

They prepare. They periodize. They learn their body — its rhythms, its limits, its signals — before the race demands everything from it.

Leadership is no different.

And yet almost every conversation I have about burnout begins the same way:

"I should have seen it coming."
"I should have slowed down sooner."
"I should have asked for help before it got to this point."

Here's what I've come to believe after years of coaching leaders through high-stakes moments, difficult transitions, and complete professional reinventions:

Mental strength is not what you have when things are going well.
It's what you've built before things get hard.

And it is absolutely, completely trainable.

Like any physical discipline — you develop it. You practice it. You build it until the response becomes automatic, not emergency.

That's the whole idea behind the Get Fit program.

Not a rescue plan. A training plan — for leaders who want to perform at their best without burning out in the process.

Because the leaders who come through a demanding performance review, a restructuring, or a high-pressure project still standing — they didn't get lucky. They prepared. They knew how to pace themselves. They knew how to recover. They knew how to meet themselves where they were, and make that the starting point every time.

There's a distance for every leader:

🔵 5KM Quick Sprint — five focused sessions for performance review prep
🟢 10KM Comfortable Pace — ten sessions toward your next promotion
🟡 Build YOUR Olympic Team — developing your future leaders
⚫ Marathon Journey — deeper coaching for lasting change
🔴 Ironman Challenge — executive presence across three disciplines of your choice

All programs are tailored to you.
All programs begin exactly where you are today.

If you're ready to lace up — or just curious what your distance might be — I'd love to connect.

👟 DM me or visit susannemueller.biz

When the Trail Goes Wrong Sinner in Paris, a ski fall, and a mountain in Africa — what sport teaches us about burnout an...
05/29/2026

When the Trail Goes Wrong

Sinner in Paris, a ski fall, and a mountain in Africa — what sport teaches us about burnout and knowing when to stop.

He was five games from victory.

Jannik Sinner world number one in tennis, was leading at Roland Garros on a sweltering Thursday. Then the 32-degree Paris heat found his limit. He cramped, could barely move, and lost the final three sets in one of the greatest upsets in French Open history.

What happened to Sinner wasn’t a failure of talent. It was a collision with something training cannot fully control: the environment. And that is exactly what leadership looks like sometimes.

Know yourself. Pace yourself.

In January, I fell while cross-country skiing in Switzerland. One wrong edge, and suddenly I was sitting on an icy patch of snow wondering how long this would set me back. Months later, my running still isn’t where I want it to be. And I’ve had to make peace with that.

Think about when I was climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. You can train for months and arrive in peak condition but the mountain has its own weather. Altitude, wind, temperature shifts no program fully simulates. The climbers who succeed are not always the fittest. They are the ones who know themselves well enough to pace accordingly, read the signs, and understand that pushing harder into a storm is not courage. It is poor risk management.

Business is no different. You can build a brilliant strategy and still face a market that shifts, a competitor that changes the rules, an economy that turns hostile. The leaders who navigate these moments are the ones who know themselves and adjust without losing their footing.

Overtraining is not just an athlete’s problem.

Athletes overtrain. So do leaders. And the breakdown looks exactly the same.In sports, there’s a condition called overtr...
05/28/2026

Athletes overtrain. So do leaders. And the breakdown looks exactly the same.

In sports, there’s a condition called overtraining syndrome.

The symptoms:→ Fatigue that sleep doesn’t fix→ Declining performance despite more effort→ Irritability, difficulty concentrating, poor decision-making→ A growing dread of the very work you used to love

Sound familiar?

Because I see this every single week not in athletes, but in leaders.

We’ve built a professional culture that treats exhaustion as commitment and busyness as a badge of honor. We celebrate the person who never stops. We promote the one who is always “on.”

And then we’re genuinely surprised when they collapse. Just look at the tennis in Paris this week. It’s way too hot and cramping can happen.

Here’s what sports science figured out long before business did:

More effort without recovery doesn’t build capacity. It depletes it.

The athlete who pushes through the warning signs doesn’t get tougher they get hurt. Sometimes for months. Sometimes they never fully come back.

The leader who does the same doesn’t get more productive they lose the one thing no role can function without: clear, calm judgment.

Mental strength is not the absence of limits. It is knowing where your limits are, training intelligently within them, and recovering with the same intention you bring to peak performance.

The good news? Burnout, unlike a stress fracture, is reversible. But it responds to the same principle: intelligent recovery, not more pushing.

You wouldn’t tell an injured athlete to just push through it.Why are you telling yourself that?

This is the work I do with leaders in the Get Fit program and it starts long before the breakdown, not after. 👟

Hydrate well, electrolytes and salt are your companions. Don't push too hard!

Rest is the trainingThe 2-hour marathon barrier just fell in London. Everyone is talking about the finish line. I want t...
05/27/2026

Rest is the training

The 2-hour marathon barrier just fell in London. Everyone is talking about the finish line. I want to talk about everything that came before it.

That record wasn’t made on race day.

It was made in years of preparation training blocks and recovery weeks, setbacks and slow seasons, days of doubt and the quiet discipline of trusting the process even when results weren’t visible yet.

Every great athlete knows this truth that business culture keeps forgetting:

The rest IS the training.

Recovery is not time away from performance. It is where adaptation happens. It is where the body and the mind actually get stronger.

And yet. How many leaders treat rest the way most people treat annual leave? Reluctantly. Guiltily. Always one more email away from “really” stopping.

I see it in boardrooms. I see it in coaching sessions. Leaders who have been running at race pace for so long they’ve forgotten what their natural rhythm even feels like.

They don’t think they’re burning out. They think they’re being dedicated.

But here’s what sports science figured out decades ago:

More load without adequate recovery doesn’t build strength. It destroys it.

The athlete who ignores overtraining doesn’t get tougher. They get injured sometimes for months, sometimes permanently.

The leader who ignores the same signals doesn’t get more productive. They lose the sharpest thing they have: their judgment.

The winner in London didn’t break a world record by ignoring their body. They did it by listening to it every single day, through every season, including the hard ones.

What would sustainable excellence look like in your leadership not just for this quarter, but for the next ten years?

I work with leaders on exactly this in the Get Fit program. I’d love to connect and explore what your race looks like.

👟

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