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Business Blasphemy
Sarah Khan, Chief Ease Officer, is calling B.S. on the hustle-focused status quo of online entrepreneurship and getting real about what it takes to grow a business that doesn't become a statistic. In each episode, Sarah helps navigate the rampant B.S. that permeates business strategy, marketing, operations, and mindset that has business owners hustling and pivoting themselves into burnout. She cuts through the noise and gives you guidance on how to view the status quo with a more discerning eye. If you're ready for success without the B.S., buckle up for hard truths, fun rants, terrible puns and (more than) the occasional curse word.
Business Blasphemy
EP73: [REPLAY] Emotional Labor: The Hidden Struggle of Entrepreneurs w/ Shulamit Ber Levtov
Ever wondered how to handle the emotional rollercoaster of running your own business?
In this repeat episode, Shulamit Ber Levtov, the Entrepreneur's Therapist, breaks down the seven mental health risk factors that hit entrepreneurs hardest. From isolation to managing impressions and the relentless ups and downs, Shula offers sharp insights and practical strategies to keep your well-being in check.
Balancing self-disclosure and professionalism is tough, especially for leaders and therapists. Shula's powerful car accident metaphor sheds light on trauma and healing, stressing the importance of thoughtful sharing.
We dive into the emotional labor of portraying authenticity on social media and the unrealistic expectations that can strain team dynamics. This conversation highlights the necessity of maintaining boundaries to avoid overwhelming those who can't help.
Success shouldn't come at the cost of your mental health. Shula shares her journey from trauma survivor to sought-after trauma therapist, warning against the misuse of "trauma-informed" marketing.
She urges listeners to seek genuine support and embrace self-compassion as key to well-being.
The episode wraps up with no-nonsense advice on finding the right therapist and simple coping mechanisms for tough moments, offering practical steps to thrive in business and life. Tune in for a wealth of insights that will empower your entrepreneurial journey.
Connect with Sarah:
- Tired of being the "best kept secret"? Download the FREE Thought Leader's Playbook for 5 essential steps to to ignite your influence and get noticed! Get Your Playbook HERE
- Follow Sarah on Instagram (instagram.com/corporate.rehab)
- Learn how to work with her HERE (getcorporaterehab.com/services)
The Business Blasphemy Podcast is sponsored by Corporate Rehab® Strategic Consulting.
Hello, hello, blasphemers, this is a replay episode that I absolutely loved and it really resonated with a lot of you out there, because I think we all feel this, especially as entrepreneurs. This episode is with the entrepreneurs therapist, shulamit Berlevtov, and she talks about a number of really, really important things in this episode, including things like isolation and impression management. You know when entrepreneurs feel really isolated because of really, really important things in this episode, including things like isolation and impression management. You know when entrepreneurs feel really isolated because they're constantly holding space for other people without having support for themselves, and what compounds that feeling of isolation and why we feel like we need to impress others. She talks about the mental health risks for entrepreneurs and identifies seven mental health risk factors very specific to entrepreneurs, so you're definitely going to want to listen to those. And then she also touches on self-compassion and support and how that's a really powerful strategy for entrepreneurs to cope with mental health struggles. And while we're acknowledging the difficulties that entrepreneurs go through, we're also providing steps that you can take to help mitigate some of those difficulties. So here is one of my favorite episodes. I hope you enjoy it. Let's get to it.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Business Blasphemy Podcast, where we question the sacred truths of the online business space and the reverence with which they're held. I'm your host, sarah Kahn, speaker, strategic Consultant and BS-busting badass. Join me each week as we challenge the norms, trends and overall bullshit status quo of entrepreneurship to uncover what it really takes to build the business that you want to build in a way that honors you, your life and your vision for what's possible, and maybe piss off a few gurus along the way. So if you're ready to commit business blasphemy, let's do it. Hello, hello blasphemers, welcome back.
Speaker 1:Today we have a special treat for you. We have Shula Meet Bear Levtov, better known as Shula. She is here. Okay, I got to give you a little bit of backstory. We connected on Instagram and we've been following each other's content for a while and she's freaking awesome. She is the Entrepreneur's Therapist and she's the co-founder of the Business Therapy Center and the conversation that we're going to have today super, super, super important, especially given what has been going on in this space the last few weeks, maybe even the last few months.
Speaker 1:So Shula is the entrepreneur's therapist. She works with business owners to care for their mental and emotional well-being in an era of relentless stressors that can make you lose your shit on the daily. Isn't that the fucking truth? Shula has been an entrepreneur for over 27 years and has more than 22 years of professional experience applying therapeutic coaching and somatic tools to support women's mental health and personal growth. In addition to working with clients one-to-one, shulamit teaches in private and university-based business programs. She speaks locally, nationally, internationally about the intersection of mental health, trauma, financial, psychology and entrepreneurship. So many good nuggets here. As an award-winning entrepreneur, master's level licensed trauma therapist and trauma survivor with certifications in Brene Brown's Dare to Lead methodology, trauma of money, facilitation, nonviolent communication and yoga, shula brings a unique perspective and approach to supporting women in business. Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 2:I'm so. I'm like such a fangirl. This is like a fangirl moment. It's Sarah, I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad that you took the time. When I have amazing people on, the first thing I want to ask them is like what led you to specialize in this particular area? You have a really rich background in supporting mental health, but what made you want to focus on, like entrepreneurs specifically?
Speaker 2:Well, the short answer is when I went back to school and got my master's degree and started my private practice, well, I was starting a career from zero as an older woman. I was 50. Employment prospects are not so good for older women, especially when you're starting in your field. So I went into private practice and I wanted to be sure that my practice ran like a business, because we know that small businesses fail usually very early on and also that among the professions, those who score most poorly on financial health measures are mental health professionals. And, like this, business had to support me and it had to survive. So I dove into business training, business coaching, business classes and hanging out with other entrepreneurs, because I wanted to know how to run a business. And in the process of establishing a business that paid me and paid my bills and hanging out with these other entrepreneurs like I lived the emotional ups and downs. I'm sure you've also experienced them establishing a business that paid me and paid my bills and hanging out with these other entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1:Like I lived the emotional ups and downs. I'm sure you've also experienced them right.
Speaker 2:You can get whiplash, you know, one minute things are going great, and the next minute they're in the toilet and you're like like oh man. Anyway. So I understood, I came to understand from my own experience and from what other folks were saying, the emotional toll of running a business. And so when I had my mental health mind look at the stress of entrepreneurship and the emotional ups and downs I was like there needs to be support, mental health support for entrepreneurs who get what they're going through. And that's how the Entrepreneur's Therapist was born.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, I mean. And mental health is such. I mean we're starting to talk about it in the mainstream, we're starting to be a little bit more aware of it, like you know, with the various campaigns and whatnot, but in the entrepreneurial space it still feels like there's a lot. I feel like there's more stigma here than there is just in sort of the general population, and I don't know what it is. But what do you feel like the? I guess the unique mental health challenges are of entrepreneurs as opposed to individuals and other professions.
Speaker 2:So I have in my work identified seven factors of risk to the mental health for entrepreneurs. But to come back to what you said around first, around the discussion about the discussion around mental health, it's become acceptable to talk about it. It's not become acceptable to disclose that you are experiencing mental health challenges.
Speaker 2:Yes, or for those mental health challenges to show up in any way to inconvenience other people. And the less white you are, the less male you. The further away you are on the circle from white male, cisgender, heterosexual, the less okay it is for you. You know that it's okay to be not okay. Yeah, yeah that there's been memes going around. It's okay to be not okay. Well, only if you fit all, if you're white. You know, the further you get away from that, the less cool it is to even talk about it, let alone for it to show up and inconvenience anybody in your life.
Speaker 2:And if you might, I'm a little bit, I'm a little bit bitter in your life and, if you might, I'm a little bit, I'm a little bit bitter, like actually a lot bitter.
Speaker 1:The bell, let's talk. Oh, don't get me started. No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2:It's such gaslighting when corporations endorse well, you know, this happens with all kinds of things pride and everything else right, and environment, where corporations think it's a good look for them to endorse mental health campaigns but then continue to exploit their workers and treat them like shit, oh my gosh. Don't even do that.
Speaker 1:You know. So I used to work for a telecommunications company here in Canada I'm not going to name names, but I worked for them. One of my colleagues, her spouse, worked for Bell and you know they were very vocal about just how different it actually was on the inside. You know, because they talk very openly about let's talk. Let's talk about mental health and the mental health of their actual their teams were just in the shitter all the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because it's, let's talk. Yeah, let's not do anything about it, let's talk about your own. And God forbid it should show up.
Speaker 1:I love what you said. It's acceptable to talk about it, but not to disclose it or inconvenience others with it. How fucking true is that?
Speaker 2:So true, I see it over and over again. So how that comes up for entrepreneurs is in a phenomenon called impression management, where we perceive ourselves, rightly or wrongly, as the face of our business. And for many of us, when we are our brands for example, I am my brand, even though there's more to me than the work that I do and to some degree, I would imagine also you, because you're a coach providing services one to one. Your brand is corporate rehab and to some degree, you as a human are showing up in your brand. Right, entrepreneurs worry that if they convey anything that might make people doubt their capacity or doubt that they will be around, that people will not do business with them. And so we engage and I say we because I do it to a degree as well we engage in impression management, which means that we are careful about what we disclose and what we don't disclose.
Speaker 2:And there's a fine line between this. Right, because I mean, as a service provider, I'm holding space for other folks. As a therapist, I'm there for their what's going on with them. It does not serve my clients for me to bleed mentally, healthily speaking all over them if I'm having a bad period. Right, yeah, I want to disclose so that they have enough information.
Speaker 2:For example, if I'm having a bad headache, I will say you might notice that my body language is a little stiff and that you know you might read my expression like there's something going on.
Speaker 2:That's because I have a headache today. So that they know in the therapeutic space that what's happening with me is not based on me thinking about them. So I'm transparent in that way. But they're not holding the space for me, right? So you know when I show up on a stage or in a networking environment or any other entrepreneur does, they're not going to engage in conversations with people about what a shitty mental health week they had, because God forbid the person they just talked to. Then next week somebody says I'm going to call so-and-so for business and that person says you know she's not doing so well right now. Maybe you better hold off on that, right. Like it's a legitimate fear around how people will interpret if we talk about disclose our mental health status, because there's stigma and there's preconceived notions around a person's competence when they have a mental illness or are not doing well mentally or emotionally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can absolutely see that and I can see, like the pressure that people are under. I want to, I want to ask you. So I mean I want to put a pin in this piece. But, like, what happens or what do you see when you see the opposite? Cause I see a lot of that now too. I work with a trauma professional right now as a client, and so I see a lot of this in their space as well. But lately, the trend I guess for lack of a better word around curated vulnerability and trauma dumping in this space. When you see that not just, I guess, from entrepreneurs, because I mean, that's what we're talking about, but you do see it in some entrepreneurial businesses, it's a part of their brand or it's a part of how they show up online what do you think when you see that happening?
Speaker 2:It's a part of their brand or it's a part of how they show up online. What do you think when you see that happening? Well, it's complicated, you know. I am taken aback for the most part. For me, there's again, there's a line, the metaphor that I like to use, the way I like to talk about it is like if you've been in a car accident and you're in the middle of the street and you've just extricated yourself from your car and you're stumbling around, bleeding and kind of incoherent on the road, the first thing you should be doing is calling 911. Right. And then after that there's the healing process that has to occur. You have to have care beyond the 911 while, let's say, your broken limbs heal or whatever, and there's work that happens and change that happens as you go through that process.
Speaker 2:As a therapist, we were always taught. We are taught self-disclosure must serve the client. There must be benefit to the client from what we are sharing. And, in my opinion, when you are in that trauma, actively trauma space where you're still trauma is still happening to you and healing is still happening to you, you're not functioning, your brain is literally not, you're in, you're in an amygdala hijacker, a form of emotional overstimulation and your prefrontal cortex is not serving you, so you are not able to take in and synthesize information, you're not able to communicate effectively, you're not necessarily able to consider the needs of others and discern from what you have going on what might serve others and how to present it in such a way that it is of service. That only comes at the end of the process.
Speaker 2:And so there's the sharing that happens when leaders lead all over their folks and are doing it to meet needs that they have, which I would say is a boundary violation and is actually abuse.
Speaker 2:And there are leaders who, you can see, have given consideration to what they're sharing and how it's going to serve people and they share it in a way that is of service. Share it in a way that is of service and that is being a leader and holding the container where you are taken care of and have your support elsewhere, because I'm not saying don't bleed, yeah, bleed, bleed is how the body heals itself, but do it with people who are there holding space for you and your bleeding, and you can alchemize that to be of service later, right, right, and it's more like transparency around past process, past experience and the learning that has come from it, as opposed to like I'm actually bleeding out right now and somebody better come put their finger on my jugular so that I don't die, and these are people who are on. You're asking people who are unequipped to perform CPR, let's say, to do so, and that's overwhelming to them, very upsetting and dysregulating to their emotions and possibly also traumatizing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but this goes back to what you're talking about with respect to impression management, right, the idea that we constantly feel like we're on and I mean I'm never going to say that everything you post should just be the highlight reel, because I'm very much like, no, you know what Share the ups and downs and be realistic and be transparent. But there's a fine line between being transparent and just trauma dumping all over social media in the hopes of like what validation? In the hopes of like, like, what is the purpose behind that, right? So I love that you're saying there's got to be an intention behind why you're sharing what you're sharing, why you're sharing what you're sharing.
Speaker 2:The human transparency that people are like. This is something that I'm working on for myself in my own public presenting, you know, in podcasts, like when. When I'm talking with people, it's a whole different thing. I really am not like within the parameters of the purpose of the conversation. I'm pretty much myself. I don't censor very much.
Speaker 2:It's a challenge for me when it's rather than on the fly, when I'm developing material for my marketing, to cultivate that kind of like warm, like you see in my stuff that I know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2:We don't see a lot of me there and that's a struggle for me about how to bring the fullness of myself into, particularly into, social media.
Speaker 2:You know it's hard to do, it's a hard thing to find your way forward in that way and there is value in the warmth, especially for those of us who are service providers, like as a therapist. I'm asking people to trust me with their most vulnerable. People tell me stuff literally that they have never told anybody ever. Right, and if I am, I have any hope of showing up in a way that a person might be willing to take the risk of connecting with me, not even just working with me, but connecting with me. I have to come across as human, like as real you know. But I'm still really working on how to do that myself and I do think that there is a role for that. Just because I don't do it, it's because it's hard for me and I have to figure it out. But I think it's an important aspect of those of us who are doing one-to-one work with people that we show up in our humanity in some way.
Speaker 1:I see it a lot, particularly in the service provider space, the operations space. You know you're working in the back end of someone's business and sometimes a founder, a visionary, just has such an unrealistic expectation of what team members are capable of and the level of pressure they're putting on people because they are not able to manage their own expectations and team members, especially in this economy. You know they don't want to do in timeframes that are completely unreasonable because everybody's afraid of losing clients. We're in this weird space right now in online business, where people are, you know they're holding on for dear life almost with a death grip because and there's this weird I don't know if it's a misunderstanding, a miscommunication, but you're just you see a lot of entrepreneurs who have teams that are not, I think, emotionally equipped right now to handle having teams.
Speaker 2:Well, there's a lot of emotional labor that goes into having a business and I thank Diane Wingert for name. I was, I knew what it was, but she named it. And when she said, yes, that's emotional labor, I was like that's exactly what it was. But she named it and when she said, yes, that's emotional labor, I was like that's exactly what it is. And that's why entrepreneurs, business owners, need emotional support, because the demands of the emotional labor are enormous and are beyond the capacity of most humans.
Speaker 2:You don't have to be a flawed person, it's superhuman capacity to manage all that on your own. And so to have so-called auxiliary cortex come in and support you so that you can metabolize all. Because in therapy they teach us as a therapist, you'll have counter, what they call counter-transference, which is basically a reaction to what to clients, and you're not supposed to like. If a client pisses you off, you're not saying, well, you just fucking pissed me off. You know we, but we'd like to. That happens to me for sure. What my desire is around that is to have care for myself in that, not because I don't want to harm the client. And there's, there's information in there for me as a therapist that I need to know, and so it's up to me to go to my supervisor and work on myself, do my own work, to understand what the fuck is going on with me, that I'm having this kind of reaction to that kind of person, because it's about me and there's information for me about this therapeutic interaction that I need to access in order to come back and fully support the client.
Speaker 2:And being an entrepreneur or a leader is no different. We have reactions, because we're human all the time to stuff that to clients, to workers, to economic conditions, to contractors, to our families, whatever Right. And it's beyond the capacity of one human being to metabolize all that. The emotional labor is enormous and that's why you go and get the person who's there to hold you and accompany you, so that you can metabolize all that, get the gold from it and go back to the person whose head you want to bite off, which you know you're not going to. You don't want to bite it off because it's going to burn a bridge, it's going to harm a relationship.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and that's not in alignment with your values. You come back with the gold and you say to them hey, you know, I learned this thing, I've got this nugget, let's talk about it. And it becomes a joining conversation because you, as a leader, that's your. I would say, same as it's my responsibility as a therapist, it's my responsibility as a leader of my team, it's your responsibility as the leader of your team, to hold space for those people, and that means that you have to care for yourself and do your own emotional labor to come as a whole person back to the conversation.
Speaker 1:So how do you care for your mental health? Being an online entrepreneur, being in this space, you know, and having, I would say, the extra layer of being told things that people don't tell anyone else, and holding that container in that space, like what do you personally do to take care of your mental health?
Speaker 2:There are a couple of things. First of all, I have a. I call him a supervisor, but I mean it's a dual role in that he will educate me about things I'm doing well or not well in my interactions, but also when I have processing to do, he holds space for me to process. So he's my therapist, so I have therapy. The second thing that I do is I have peer support sessions for sure twice a week. I've been engaging with these two folks for peer support for more than 10 years now, I think it's 13 years, anyway, long time without fail, two days a week, for sure, and sometimes more. And then the third thing is I'm engaged in a practice called sustainable compassion training, which is a training that comes from the meditation tradition. It was developed by two academics who took it out of the religious context and the cultural context of Buddhism and the Dzogchen tradition, which is Japanese, so that folks of all faith traditions could take the structure and benefit from it.
Speaker 2:So it's for, like activists, therapists, nurses and doctors, people who are doing hospice work, caring for ill or dying folks, and so the primary practice for that is called the field of care practice. And so engaging in particular practices, structured practices that help me locate myself. It makes me think of immersion in water. You know, when you immerse yourself in water, you feel yourself in the water and you feel the water around you. You know you're in water, right? The idea is that this field of care is there all the time, we just aren't aware of it, and the practice is to open yourselves more and more and more to the field of care.
Speaker 2:It's easier said than done, there's a lot of complexity to it, but the practice is to locate yourself somatically in that field of care, just like you would feel it when you're immersing yourself in water, right? So, engaging in practices that give me the embodied sense of being located, held in this web or field of care where I care for people, there are others who are caring for me, but it's beyond individual care, it's also communal care, that there are people that work in the world around racism, around ageism, around fat phobia, all those kinds of things, and that I can sense that their contributions to that net of care. But then also, like my breathing in and out, the world is caring for me and I'm caring for it. It's giving me breath. I'm giving it breath like, really in the widest sense this net of care. That is the thing, that is the big thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so you, you mentioned earlier seven factors of mental health risk. So, so I'm guessing these are signs that you might be struggling with some mental health stuff and maybe you're not aware of it. Or is this like a personal assessment, or is this something that other people would be able to see, or both?
Speaker 2:These are the things entrepreneurs experience that have mental health impacts. Ah, okay, awesome People, things that people come to me and complain about, maybe not in so many words. We'll start with where we were before around impression management. Okay, the category of risk that impression management falls under is isolation, and isolation is the single biggest threat. I mean, it's a social determinant of health. Isolation is a threat to anybody's health. We all heard, I'm sure, a couple of weeks ago, where the US Surgeon general identified isolation, um, as having a health impact equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
Speaker 2:Yikes and entrepreneurs, the way we are isolated has its own unique characteristics, of which one is impression management, but we are isolated. We were just talking. Actually, another aspect of our isolation is that there are people all around us, but we are holding space for them. Who's holding space for us? So we're alone with our experience, but we are also surrounded by people. So that's another aspect of isolation that shows up for entrepreneurs differently. The other factors are VUCA, which is an acronym from leadership that was developed in the 1980s and it stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, and we face these factors as entrepreneurs daily. So does everybody else, but just not like we do not to the same intensity and frequency that we do.
Speaker 2:Hustle culture, which is really a stand-in for systems of oppression Again, systems of oppression harm everybody. White supremacy in particular, and all the subsystems of oppression that arise under white supremacy, harms everybody, and how it comes out for entrepreneurs is different and, in particular, how hustle culture, which is one aspect of white supremacy culture, shows up for entrepreneurs is complex and is a significant factor in mental health problems for entrepreneurs. Barriers to access to mental health support Everybody has barriers to access. There are even fewer mental health professionals who understand entrepreneurship. Self-worth we tend to link our self-worth to our business success and, again, people link the self-worth to their performance in a role. It's not unusual for humans, but for entrepreneurs, especially vision-driven entrepreneurs who want to change the world through their businesses. When things don't go well in their business, their self-worth tanks.
Speaker 2:And it's very intense and the flip-flops of bad quote and good quote in business. Again, you can get whiplash from them and it's just not intensity and frequency, it's different for entrepreneurs. Finally, there are two last ones. The sixth is predisposition to mental health challenges. We as a group, the group of people in the general population from whom entrepreneurs come are predisposed to mental health challenges.
Speaker 2:Oh, interesting entrepreneurs come are predisposed to mental health challenges, and there's all kinds of research on this and I'll give you I've written a blog post that gives all the citations and stats. I'll provide the link to that for you. And finally, the secret seventh factor and the reason I call it secret is because we miss it is that all these six amplify one another. And so what will happen is clients will come to me and they'll say I could take anything. I've been through everything I've done, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and suddenly I can't even handle that. My fridge broke down. What is the matter with me?
Speaker 2:So the best analogy I can think of for this is the straw that broke the camel's back. Entrepreneurs are like the camels. And it's straw after straw after straw after straw. It's just a straw. We forget that there's two tons of straws already on our back. We just keep thinking straw, what's a straw? Why can't I handle? And here's that last damn straw, and it's just a straw. Who can't handle a straw? I can handle a straw. I've handled a million straws. And I chucked that straw behind me onto my back and my back breaks and I'm like well, what's the matter with me?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the way in which they come together for entrepreneurs leads to much greater mental health risk for us than the general population.
Speaker 1:I love this. There. I mean, oh my gosh, there's so much to unpack here.
Speaker 1:So much so this oh my gosh, there's so much to unpack here, so much right, yeah, so much. So this perception of the entrepreneur is the camel right. The entrepreneurs are tough. You have to have a certain constitution to ever do this thing in the first place. You must be so brave. The number of people who've said to me I'm brave, I'm not fucking brave. Come on, I call myself the reluctant entrepreneur because I never intended to be one, I never wanted to be one, and I'm here and I love it and also want to frequently burn my business down. How does that perception affect an entrepreneur's willingness to get support or even acknowledge they might be struggling with mental health?
Speaker 2:issues.
Speaker 1:I know part of it is impression management, but what like? What's really going on under the surface there?
Speaker 2:I've thought about this a lot for my own self. I don't have any information as a result of working with clients, but I've been thinking about this, just like you think about trends and things in the business world. Right, I do the same. My guess is that the non-entrepreneurs look at entrepreneurs and think we're all Galen Weston and Jeff Bezos, we're swimming in the box. So what the fuck is our problem? How could we be unhappy? We are just not understood. Folks will also think I've now this I've heard from clients and colleagues who are self-employed where family members especially women, I have to say family members will drop by.
Speaker 2:Well, you're not really work, like they don't take their jobs here. Oh, I'll just drop by this afternoon. So they struggle to set boundaries with family members because family members don't take them seriously, that they actually work. So when we express that we're having difficulties, people misunderstand the context and think that we've got all kinds of money, that we're living the life, that we're not really working anyway, and how could we be having problems? The non-entrepreneur has an image of what an entrepreneur is. It's a little bit like the black and white thinking around rich and poor, where there's disgust and envy, both from folks who perceive themselves as having less, or who do have financially less than folks who are perceived to have more. Financially, that you yourself are in a position where, sure, who wouldn't want more money? But at the same time, we've been taught that people with money are bad and all that kind of stuff. So it's complicated how people see non-entrepreneurs and that all comes out in their attitudes towards us.
Speaker 1:So what would you suggest can be done, I guess, to counteract that stereotype?
Speaker 2:Well, okay, this is where I'm just going to. This is my bitchy phase. Hello, yeah, they can just smarten the fuck up. Yeah, they can just smarten the fuck up. They can educate themselves. It's not for us to educate like right, it's not. It's not for us If it's a friend, somebody who's intimate with me and who says I really want to connect with you by understanding what you're going through.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Then I will have a connecting conversation with them around any of my intersections, including being an entrepreneur. Yeah, cause it's a beloved person in my life about whom I care. I have all kinds of time and energy for that Mm. Hmm, as an activist, though, if you're engaged in the struggle with me, then okay, up to my capacity, right. But if you're not, like, go away and do your own research, get to know, hang out with some entrepreneurs some real life, not some YouTube assholes, not some. I made seven days in seven days.
Speaker 1:It's part of the problem. I think you know, like you you're talking about non-entrepreneurs who think that we're swimming in the bucks and blah, blah blah, but that we have a we have a very loud subset in entrepreneurship who do the exact same thing. I made six K, and you know, in six days and I made six figures in six months and you must be doing shit wrong. And then you go out and talk to people and they're like I don't know who the fuck's make this kind of money Cause it sure as hell ain't me Nope and I feel like yeah.
Speaker 1:And I feel like they are actually perpetuating everybody's shitty mental health these days.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, that is a yes, yes. Social pressures comparison. It is a significantly. I know somebody a significant a person who's a major figure in online business who's completely left social media because of their mental health, because of exactly that kind of the harm that they see happening online when people behave in that way and they just were like I can't take this anymore. I have to leave this space now because I cannot function in my life because of the mental health impact I'm experiencing, but it comes. I mean folks who are doing, who are behaving in that harmful way.
Speaker 2:I come back to the activism sort of systems of oppression analogy, where they're fully embedded in the system and we are those of us who are not embedded in the system and not benefiting from the system in that way are harmed by the dominant culture, right, and they're just playing into the dominant culture. And for me, what I have to remember is two things that I have to remember for myself around that kind of stuff is that they are fully embedded in the dominant culture and those are not my values. In fact, I'm striving to create a different world. Yes, and that it's like poison. Why would I eat something with the skull and crossbones on it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, there are very specific demographic, aren't they?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, they are. And the other thing is this used to really bother me as a therapist and I do say so myself a very skilled and confident therapist with a lot to offer, who you know marketing I'm not a marketer, it's marketing is a mystery to me and I'm and I do my best. I found something that's working really well for me right now and I'm really so happy, so relieved and happy about that. And years ago, when I was struggling for visibility because the issue is not my competence the issue was my visibility, because if people could see me, they would come to me. There's no question that I'm a good practitioner.
Speaker 2:But but it was like I was under a barrel and for a long time I really shit all over myself about that until I was on a sales call with somebody and they, they, we were talking about one thing and they said you know what I think you really need? I have another product. I'd liked it. Would it be possible, would you? Would you? They were asking me for permission to talk to me about this other program they had and it was an 8,000 USD. I mean, I'm Canadian, okay, I earned 30% less than everybody else and pay 30% more than everybody else for everything in the online world because it's done. So. She wants me to spend $8,000 US on a six week program business building program and I had already had significant business training and coaching and I had this big shame attack.
Speaker 2:I mean I I'm wise to sales techniques so I did not buy on the call. I told her I need to consider this and I was having this big old shame attack and I sat in that shame like the body feeling of that shame and the burn and the heartburn and the like felt like fire on my skin and all that stuff. Just so, so much shame. And I sat with that for a day and a half just like what the fuck is going on here. And then I realized if I had 8,000 US dollars, I don't need to buy more training to tell me how to DIY. What I would spend that money on is hiring myself a marketing department, because the people who do well online that I have seen in the majority are former fucking marketers. Yeah, how to?
Speaker 1:sell. That's me clapping because, yeah, I have been bitching about this for weeks and I have been attacked by like more marketers than I can tell you. It has been an absolute fucking shit show, because that's the thing the vast majority of people in this space who are doing, you know they're marketers, they're not even business people. I'm going to come out and say it, you know the loud they're marketers, they're not even business people. I'm going to come out and say it. A lot of these people who are, you know, purportedly making all this money and have success, they're not fucking business people. They don't understand business fundamentals. They don't understand how to really train you to build a business. They are marketers. They're really good at talking about themselves and making themselves visible, and when you actually get into their ecosystem, they don't know shit. And that is why they keep you in their funnel. They keep you in their ecosystem and $8,000 for a six-week program Jesus.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a lot of money. So those are the two things I have to keep telling myself is I'm not going to drink the poison. Those are not my values, that is not what I want for myself or my life or this world. That's the one thing, and the other thing is reminding myself that less that lesson I learned in a real bodily way around when people look like they're succeeding, it's because they're good at marketing, not because they're good at providing service to their clients.
Speaker 1:Oh, that that that needs to go on a quote card. That's so true.
Speaker 2:It's so true, but that's my mental health medicine, right there.
Speaker 1:So I mean, we've touched on it a little bit in sort of everything that we've talked about, but what do you see in the space that you want to call BS on?
Speaker 2:Well, it's kind of old, it's kind of had its turn around the internet. When I check with myself, like I just did, I checked in my body to see kind of what sensations were present there. Myself, like I just did, I checked in my body to see kind of what sensations were present there. I'm a trauma therapist. I'm a trauma survivor. I saw therapists most of my life until I'm trying to remember, like sometime in my thirties, by a miracle, I was referred to a. I was in a crisis situation and I was referred to another therapist and that therapist turned out to be a trauma therapist. And that to have somebody who understood what I had been through and was referred to another therapist and that therapist turned out to be a trauma therapist and that to have somebody who understood what I had been through and was able to name it for me and to help me understand and heal from that without further causing harm, without making me wrong about any of the things that I had been through that it's because of that that I am who I am today and I'm an accidental trauma therapist.
Speaker 2:I never set out to be a trauma therapist. I wanted to become a therapist and in the process of my training. The trauma training just kept, like all my mentors and everybody was telling me, you know, showing me this, showing me this book, taking me to this training in it, I just was like, oh fuck. Well, it seems clear I'm going to have to do trauma therapy. So I have the experience of trauma, trauma survivorship and trauma treatment as a consumer. In addition, I have training as a trauma therapist and have treated trauma survivors who have had therapy from non-trauma trained therapists that caused them harm and the first part of our work together was their healing process from the harm of the therapy before they could even get to the trauma healing that they wanted to experience Right. So, coming from there, when I see how trauma informed is being used in marketing language online so I'm not anti-trauma training for people I think the trauma informed movement the way I understand it, having done research, is that it came up in the human services you know, like social assistance and community mental health, food banks, those kinds of things.
Speaker 2:Their clients were trauma survivors who were behaving as traumatized people will, and the service providers needed to understand how to serve these folks without causing further harm, without like basically calling the cops and having them being incarcerated because they were quote unquote violent right. So we need to know ways to interact that are supportive and helpful. So having that kind of training as a receptionist, so that when somebody's flipping, losing their shit in front of you, that you know how to respond in a way that doesn't cause further harm and hopefully deescalates Like trauma, informed in human services, is key and I think we all need that something there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:What I'm concerned about is two things how trauma informed now is being used to attract people through marketing, and when you're not a trained trauma provider and you put trauma informed in your marketing language that's going to draw trauma survivors to you and who are in various phases of their journey and you are not going to be able you are not sufficiently trained or qualified to hold space for what's going to come up when you have unhealed trauma survivors drawn to you by your marketing language. And the other thing that bothers me is who are the people in this economy the online, let's be honest the online entrepreneurship economy who are training these people to be trauma informed? What are they telling them? How are they training them? Who has certified them? I think my voice is going to stay like this for the rest of our time together, so let's just name that. I have had laryngitis and bronchitis and my voice comes and goes.
Speaker 1:No problem.
Speaker 2:Who's training these people? Who are training other people? What are the qualifications?
Speaker 2:You know if you're not clinically trained. I have an issue with that and I'm vulnerable to the accusation that I have a vested interest as a therapist that everybody who's working with trauma should be therapists, and I'd be open to hearing that from someone and having a discussion with them about it. And at the same time I recognize, because of my own experience as a trauma survivor and, as I mentioned, other clients, clients coming to me who worked with therapists who caused harm to them that I don't think just being a therapist is sufficient to not cause harm to other people.
Speaker 1:No, there's lots of therapists who cause harm to other people. Yeah, yeah, exactly yeah.
Speaker 2:So you know, those are the two aspects of the and this has kind of had its day. There was a lot of conversation around this in the online environment, around this whole trauma informed thing earlier this year, but it's still. I'm still deeply, deeply troubled by it and those two aspects of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there is. I mean, I still see it in a lot of circles, like you said, being used as a marketing tactic, and I think that it is like you said unless you're learning from somebody who is clinically trained, it's very irresponsible. But that, I think, is one of the big problems with the online space is that there's so little oversight and there's so little you know, there's so little accountability that it really is incumbent on the person to do the research, to find out you know who are you actually learning under, where were they trained, who were their mentors? And you can learn a lot from doing that research about you know whether this person's values or their ethics are in line with yours.
Speaker 2:I don't think regulation solves the problem.
Speaker 1:I like that you used the word accountability.
Speaker 2:I think if we had communities of accountability you know that's a communal care as opposed to a carceral approach where we're regulated and then penalized if we cross a line or break some rules and I don't think carceral approaches work. But if we could have communities of accountability where we were in relationship with one another and held one another accountable for causing harm, that would be a way forward.
Speaker 1:Okay, so this has been, this has been such an enlightening conversation. I've never actually been, I've never shut up for this long. I'll just say that you're the first. It's been really, really great. I mean, there's so many questions I have, but what I would, what I'd like to ask, I think, sort of as we, as we kind of draw to a close is from a mental health perspective, with with everything that is going.
Speaker 1:So, a little bit of quick context the last, I would say, maybe a month or so, I've been having conversations with so many people who really are struggling. They're really struggling from a mental health perspective. People have mental health struggles outside of entrepreneurship you have. The economy has changed, the landscape of the business world has changed. We've got so many people who are going back to the workplace feeling like they failed as an entrepreneur. We've got people who are not making the kind of money they were making two years ago or even last year. There's so much happening that is causing upheaval in the online entrepreneurial space that is impacting mental health.
Speaker 1:So, taking that into consideration, this is sort of a twofold question. First, I guess, is what strategies or coping mechanisms would you recommend for entrepreneurs who are currently struggling with their mental health, maybe don't have the capacity to afford therapy right now. I know, like here in Canada, for example, God, in most places there's like at least a two-year waiting list to get seen by anybody In the US. If you don't have the privilege of of money to go private, it's a challenge as well. I mean, there's so many barriers. So what can you do? Question one a what can you do? And then the second part is like what would you, what would your message be to entrepreneurs who are maybe hesitating reaching out because of stigma or fear or just not really, not really feeling like what they're going through is significant enough to warrant support?
Speaker 2:So I'll start with the second question. First, if you think about a dam that's about to collapse, you can think of how the dam goes up so high and there's all the water behind it and there's the little pinholes where the water's beginning to trickle. And we know the power of water, even though it looks like a little trickle, that if we allow the water to continue to run through, water can erode and we have a situation like the Grand Canyon. Right, water is very powerful, even though it appears like it's not a big deal, and we know that that dam, if it is not given support, will collapse. The dam is stronger when it is supported. So are we stronger when we are supported? We are strong, capable, competent people running good businesses and we are stronger with support. And when we are stronger, our businesses are stronger. To me, it's as simple as that we are stronger with support. And when we are stronger, our businesses are stronger. To me, it's as simple as that we are stronger with support.
Speaker 2:So if you're hesitant to reach out for support, I invite you to consider that the possibility that if you're feeling like a leaky dam, that you will be stronger with support. If you're thinking, ah, it's not that much of a big deal. I invite you again to think about the erosion of that little bit of water and how much stronger that dam will be when the erosion is stopped. Just kind of toss that idea around in your head and see where it lands for you and then check in with yourself and your apprehension around that and then if you're feeling like, oh, I'm less apprehensive than I thought I would be, I would invite you to do some research around providers who meet your, who have a cultural fit for you, a values fit for you, and then interview one or two or three of them and see literally how you feel you can it's not about getting the information, although you may want to ask them for information but, as you're having the conversation with them, get a feel for what it's like to be in their presence and how they respond to you and then allow your insides to guide you around.
Speaker 2:So when I think about talking to A or B and I think about that part of me that feels apprehensive, which one feels like I'd be willing to take the risk To a person Everybody who comes into my office is anxious. You know it's a natural part of the taking the first step because it becoming vulnerable like that in an unknown situation. But you know what, as entrepreneurs, we take risks every fucking day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know the the the sassy part of me says just take the fucking risk, you know. Right, but there are lots of good reasons why people don't you know. It can be frightening, it can be scary. You can have had bad experiences in the past.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm not dissing you if you don't, but also it's like you said, I know a lot of people who have tried one therapist. It didn't work out and they just kind of tanked the whole idea Like I love that, or try several, you don't have to stick to the first one you got. Yeah, try several before you find the right one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you can be straight up with them when you're booking the appointment. Well, I would recommend doing a free call first and don't book an appointment without a free call with somebody. And even then you could say okay, I'm ready to book one appointment, but we're not getting married. I'm coming to one appointment and I'm going to see. This is how I say with my clients at the end of every session. I say did you get what you needed? I say some version of did you get what you needed and do you want to book another appointment? Right, because that's the assessment phase for you to check in with yourself and see is this working for me or is this not? And I would say it would behoove every therapist to be doing this with their clients, but they don't.
Speaker 2:But you yourself, if your therapist doesn't, you can do your own. And now you're an entrepreneur. For heaven's sake, you know how to do an analysis in order to make a decision. Right? Am I getting what I need from this? If I'm not, then you know, don't book another appointment. Or what a lot of people will do, because they're too shy interpersonally, is they'll book the next appointment but then go home and cancel and that's okay. That's like totally okay. You know you're not committed after. Just unlike coaching, where many people ask you to sign a six month contract with therapy. Like I work in blocks of 30 days, so it's a 30 day block, it's not one appointment with me, but at the end of every 30 day block there's a decision.
Speaker 1:Do you or don't you want to continue? And if you don't, then that's that you know.
Speaker 2:So trying them out is really important yeah.
Speaker 1:And strategies or coping mechanisms that you would recommend.
Speaker 2:I'm going to give one option for folks to try Okay, we're all having a hard time right now. Some days are harder than others, some moments are harder than others. When you become aware you're in a hard moment, I invite you to pause in that moment and say to yourself oh, this is hard. Right now I'm having a hard time. You might want to take your hand and place the palm of your hand on your heart space as you say that like, oh, I'm having a hard time, this is a difficult moment, and pause with the sense of that, with the sense of the contact of the palm on the heart space and the acknowledgement like and you might even then like to validate for yourself Fuck, yeah, this is fucking hard. What's happening right now is just a bunch of fucking bullshit. I'm sick and tired of it. I've had enough. Right. So the validation yeah, I can see you're having some.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, that's that's hitting me, yeah, that's hitting me, yeah, that's hitting me. And then to say to yourself well, no wonder, no wonder, honey, look what you've been through. Of course this is hard. Anybody who has experienced this would be feeling, would be having a hard time. It's okay to be feeling this way, right, like there's nothing wrong with you, or feeling this way and that little move might open a door for you in the moment. So I propose it. It's an invitation Folks can accept or decline and see what happens.
Speaker 1:We forget about the power of self-compassion. We hold so much space for other people and other things and we forget that we don't necessarily have to be out there seeking compassion from others when we are fully capable of giving it to ourselves, and often it's the compassion that we need to give ourselves. That is the most powerful Oof. That was powerful to end on. Thank you so much for that. That was I was just having a moment where I was thinking you know this, what a beautiful practice, also to teach my daughters because, yeah, oh, that's beautiful, shulamit. Thank you so much for being here. This has been less a podcast interview and living in like the hub of you know, like the transportation hub. I love it. Nobody can get here, nobody wants to get here. It's just ridiculous. Where can people find you if they are interested in learning more, connecting with you or maybe even going on that retreat?
Speaker 2:So my website is shulaca S-H-U-L-Aca, and the best way to connect with me is to sign up for my newsletter, which is shulaca slash newsletter. You can also find me on Instagram, the Entrepreneur's Therapist, or on LinkedIn, you can search by my name, because I love. This is how we met. That's the social part of social media which I just love, which met.
Speaker 1:That's the social part of social media which I just love, which is chatting with folks in the direct messages and you're just absolutely the doors open. I would love to schmooze with you in the DMs Fantastic, thank you so much and definitely check her out because and follow her content. It is so informative and entertaining and just so real and down to earth. I mean I like her. So you're definitely going to like her because you're here so awesome. Thank you so much for being here and, like with anything else, you can have success without the BS, even when it comes to your mental health. Talk to you soon. That's it for this week. Thanks for listening to the Business Blasphemy Podcast. We'll be back next week with a new episode, but in the meantime, help a sister out by subscribing and, if you're feeling extra sassy, rating this podcast and don't forget to share the podcast with others. Head over to businessblasphemypodcastcom to connect with us and learn more. Thanks for listening and remember you can have success without the BS.