Shifting From Scarcity to Abundance with Shulamit Berlovtov Ep109

Get ready to transform your entrepreneurial journey with expert insights from Shulamit Berlovtov, the Entrepreneur's Therapist. Discover how to navigate the emotional rollercoaster of running a business and shift from a scarcity to an abundance mindset. Shulamit's heartfelt advice on managing cash flow anxieties and building a supportive team will empower you to face financial stresses with confidence and resilience.

Ever wonder how acknowledging your negative emotions can actually bolster your resilience? In this episode, we unpack the power of recognizing and embracing discomfort, moving beyond the simplistic positive versus negative dichotomy. Through personal stories, like confronting financial crises, we delve into how a balanced approach to emotions can lead to sustained well-being and a more resourceful mindset. Shulamit's tips on using affirmations effectively and addressing past traumas, particularly around money, provide a nuanced roadmap for fostering emotional health.

In our concluding discussions, we focus on the importance of completing the stress cycle with activities like dancing and singing to transition from a state of stress to creativity. Shulamit's passionate insights offer profound peace and reassurance, emphasizing simple gestures and empathy. This episode is a remarkable resource of strategies for maintaining mental health in business, punctuated by heartfelt moments that promise to leave you feeling inspired and connected. Tune in and embrace the journey toward a more balanced, abundant mindset in your entrepreneurial endeavors.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:48

I'm delighted because I have with me here today one of my fellow members of Innovation Women, shulamit Berlovtov. Hey Shulamit, how are you doing today? Hey, brenda.

Speaker 2: 0:58

It's sunny here. I'm so happy it's been so gray for so long. Feels good.

Speaker 1: 1:04

Yeah, and we were talking in the pre-show. I know you're in the Ottawa area, I'm in Metro Detroit. I agree with you when the sunshine is shining, it just really helps to add to our mood, doesn't it?

Speaker 2: 1:15

Yeah, I used to live in Windsor actually, and I must say I really miss the Southern Ontario slash Detroit weather, because it's heavenly warm compared to the rest of Canada, like where I am now.

Speaker 1: 1:28

We just roll with it. We do, and I want to welcome our audience. If you're watching us live right now, we'd love it if you could drop a comment below. We're actually live streaming on three networks on LinkedIn, on YouTube and on Instagram and, as you are watching us, that's like our mic tap. If we were at a live event, I would be tapping the mic and saying, hey, can you guys hear me in the back? And you would gesture if you weren't, or you'd give me a thumbs up, just like Michelle is giving me a virtual thumbs up in the form of a comment and she's saying hello from Rutherford, new Jersey, while we're waiting for other comments to come in from our audience. Shulamit, why don't you take a minute and tell us a little bit about you, for people that are just getting to know you today?

Speaker 2: 2:06

Sure, thanks for the invitation. So, as you can see, I'm the entrepreneur's therapist and my passion is mitigating the entrepreneurial mental health crisis and transforming the entrepreneurial ecosystem to include the whole human in business by integrating mental health into our business planning and processes. And I came to this work because, as a therapist learning to run a business and hanging out with other entrepreneurs there were no therapists in the business training programs and like at the chamber and stuff. I had my own experience of the emotional ups and downs of running a business and got to hear from other folks and I was like I think there's a need for therapists who understand entrepreneurship and that's how the Entrepreneur's Therapist was born.

Speaker 1: 2:57

That's great. You've identified a market, you found a need out there and nobody else was serving it. And I think as somebody who is self-employed, as an entrepreneur, I can totally relate to that, because it's a certain special type of person to want to be an entrepreneur and then to actually thrust themselves out there and start a business and run a business. But there's a special level of stress that can come with that as well, and it's not always bad stress, it's sometimes good stress. Sure, you can certainly be on a roller coaster. So I applaud you as an entrepreneur serving entrepreneurs with mental health, I think that's really great.

Speaker 2: 3:33

Thank you, I think I do. It's just so hard when you wear all the hats right. And we need a team. We really everybody who runs a business and is self-employed needs a team, because it's just tough work?

Speaker 1: 3:46

Absolutely. We're here, surrounding ourselves with other great people, lifting ourselves up. And today, my friends, if you see up on the screen here, we're going to be talking about a really cool topic. This is one of my favorite topics shifting from scarcity to abundance and I frequently talk about having this abundance mentality when it comes to shining the spotlight on others and my competition, I like to say coopetition, which is a word I learned from my friend, terry Bean, who read it from someplace else. But when I was talking to Shulamit and inviting her to come out on my show, I said what do you want to talk about? And she said let's talk about the secret from shifting from scarcity to abundance. And I'm like brilliant, this is going to be great. So, shulamit, let's just jump right in here. And what advice do you have for us as it relates to shifting this mindset?

Speaker 2: 4:33

Sure, the first thing is I'm imagining we just had this big chat about mental health and entrepreneurship and people are like mental health scarcity what, abundance, what? But like one of the biggest, I would say, challenges to our mental and emotional well-being as entrepreneurs is cash flow right, money, right money. And so we can get caught up in this feeling of panic and fear or hustle pressure to hustle go because if I don't work all day, every day, my I won't have enough coming in my business. Right, there's a so called scarcity mindset. You've talked about an abundance mindset and but what often happens is we say to people you just need to have an abundance mindset. And what often happens is we say to people, you just need to have an abundance mindset.

Speaker 2: 5:16

But if you're feeling the threat to your existence as a business owner, which is cash flow in the business, it does feel on a visceral level like life or death. Right, because it is in many cases the survival of your business and your own survival, because you have to be able to pay yourself. So if you're feeling fear related to scarcity, it's not your fault. There's nothing wrong with you. It's absolutely what we would expect from an experience of threat, that we would go and feel all panicky, right Totally normal and, I would imagine, for some people.

Speaker 1: 6:04

I was talking about this in the beginning of the show. Being an entrepreneur is not for everyone and I think when you talk about money and having income and money coming in, I think that's the biggest fear that a lot of people have on the other side, like I could never do that, because it's like you're 100 percent commission, you're running only on sales that are coming in. You don't have any other money coming in, like for me. That drives me that I know that I can't just sit back and wait for the next. I've got to make myself marketable and even for you, you started a business finding a service that didn't exist in the marketplace anymore. So how do we get comfortable with that uncomfortable or how do we move away from that thought? What do you think?

Speaker 2: 6:46

The very first step is, like I said, to recognize that there's absolutely nothing wrong with you for having the feelings that you're feeling, for having the reaction, for having the fear for that kind of reaction to that situation. Because when you're in that kind of fear response, what will often happen is people what's the matter with you? Get over it, Stop worrying. That's our self-talk. You're better than this. Pull yourself up. And in fact, that, in a way, discounts the truth of what we're feeling.

Speaker 2: 7:16

And so the very first step in moving from scarcity to abundance is this moment of recognition. First of all, oh, like I'm, parts of me are afraid this is. I'm feeling fear in this situation. And the second step is to say no wonder, Look what's happening here. Of course I would be having this kind of reaction. And as I do this, I'm going to take a breath, Because I'm noticing, like when I place a gentle hand on my heart and my belly and tell myself it's okay, this is normal in quotation marks, right I feel a down regulation, a kind of relaxation in my nervous system. And that's the very first step, because scarcity psychology has scarcity, has its own unique impact on your emotions and on your thinking, Because it reads scarcity of anything time, money, affection, resources, anything reads like a threat, right as I said before and to. The first step in that is to down, regulate your nervous system and be like, yes, of course you would be afraid there's nothing the matter with you.

Speaker 1: 8:22

And it's almost normalizing it right, acknowledging to yourself. Instead of letting your brain spiral and saying, yeah, you do need to be worried about this, call it back a little bit and say, yeah, that's a normal reaction.

Speaker 2: 8:35

Yes, yes, 100%, and in fact, that mobilizing reaction is what we need. If we didn't have the mobilization, we'd be marshmallows on the couch. But the mobilization, the alertness of your nervous system is what gives you what you need to address the challenge at hand. Nervous system is what gives you what you need to address the challenge at hand. So, like you said, this is what I treat this as a way to get myself going, as motivation, and I would call that. It's called the challenge response in the technical language, so that, instead of being in a fear response, you're like all right, this is a challenge, Let me see what I can do about it. And so, in this is one of the ways that you can shift from scarcity to abundance is invoking the challenge response. So first you acknowledge and then you normalize, and then you're like okay, this is a challenge, what can I do about it? And the next, one of the next things to keep into in mind I'm making this because scarcity puts you in tunnel vision.

Speaker 2: 9:30

Any fear puts you in a very narrow frame of reference and in scarcity psychology it's called tunneling, tunnel vision so that you see only what's right in front of you.

Speaker 2: 9:43

And again, to recognize that and I'm going to say this many times today that there's absolutely nothing wrong with you.

Speaker 2: 9:50

That being in this tunnel is exactly what your nervous system is going to do, Because it's going to be blind to the larger, longer term issues. It's just going to be like I got no money in the bank, how am I going to get money in the bank? And so you might make decisions in that moment that take into account what's right in front of you, but don't take into account the longer term, bigger picture. And so one of the things after you've you've acknowledged that this is normal is to start pulling in support and consultation. Right, and these people then can help you. And Sandra talked about this. I forget her last name, but you talked about in burnout, in entrepreneurship. She talked about regulation and co-regulation to call in your co-regulators, in particular your business coach or your financial consultant, your CFO, to come up with strategies so that they that helps you get out of the tunnel vision, to get the support from others, tunnel vision to get the support from others.

Speaker 1: 10:58

And so this is these are just the first- couple of ways in which you can make that shift. Yeah, I like, and I'm already like. I'm like, oh my gosh, I can totally relate to this because you do get into moments when you are self-employed, where business is going well, and I remember this is funny to share this I remember for the longest time it was like month after month. It was my business was growing and more and more successful and I had these songs playing in my head and then for the longest time, the song stopped playing and I felt like my business wasn't going as well and it was during the pandemic, things were happening and whatnot.

Speaker 1: 11:28

But I feel like sometimes, when you get into that negative mindset of looking at the bank account, I can totally relate looking at the bank account, I know what I want my number to be and it's not there. And I know what my projections are and I'm not going to get there next month. It might be the following month, but sometimes you can get so focused and then it just becomes you're looking that downward spiral of maybe this is the end, maybe this is not going to be successful, as opposed to saying, okay, what do I need to do to turn the revenue around? Or what has been successful in the past that I can bring back and you start opening up your mind and that starts to move you in that direction. Would you say, yes, I agree.

Speaker 2: 12:07

And coming back to Sandra, she talked about moving your body.

Speaker 2: 12:11

This is another way. When you're in the fear response, the scarcity response, your body thinks, your organism thinks there's a bear, yeah, and your organism gets ready to run from the threat or to fight the threat. Not that we ever get to do either of those, but this is what's going on an organismic level. So when you find yourself in that tunnel vision, it can help to shake it out. Right, and you can just shake your hands like this you can get up and have a little dance party in your office, you can run around the house, go up and down the stairs a couple of times, just to get that mobilization kind of fight flight energy out, because that also will direct your awareness toward escape and getting out. And when you can let that energy out, then that brings your widens, your focus, so that you can take into account many of the different factors at is what we call regulating the nervous system. And so there are many different tools to do this. Any of them will help you when you're in this situation.

Speaker 1: 13:21

Yeah, it's interesting because when you're talking about this and, by the way, for those that are joining us here we're talking today with Shulamit Berlatov about the shifting from scarcity to abundance, and there's a lot of these self-help gurus and these big speakers and things out there, and there's the secret and the abundance mentality is an approach and writing. What do they say? Write things on post-it notes affirmations writing affirmations. I will be doing this on this date and this time, and there's some people that say that's just a lot of you know.

Speaker 2: 13:55

Shulamit, what would you say to those people? I think there's a step missing. This is one of the things that gets me all worked up about mindset, abundance, mindset and mindset coaches, because they're not wrong, they're incomplete. We need to do something first, and that's regulate the nervous system. And the most important thing of all is that when, for example, I'm sure you've had the experience of reading an affirmation and really feeling that it doesn't fit and then feeling like discouraged or shame, or why isn't this working? That kind of thing, and the very first thing is to acknowledge the emotional reaction. This just doesn't sit. Something's happening with me that is making me feel uncomfortable. I'm in distress, right, the affirmation has a way again of denying the distress or minimizing or invalidating the distress, and the very first step is to say, for example, of course I'm having a hard time, this is hard, and you can see I'm using this gesture this is my favorite gesture placing my palm down on my heart space.

Speaker 2: 14:57

Of course, this is hard, I'm trying to do something. That's hard and you can allow the emotions to settle and then you say and I know I can do this, or I know what I need to do, as a very next step is call somebody, or I know that abundance is coming to me because I can look back. This is one of the things that happened to me, oh my God. So on a Friday afternoon in a February a number of years ago, I sat down to pay my bills for the month and discovered that the line of credit in my business had been closed. Oh no, am I just? I just? A line of credit was how I managed my cashflow and all of a sudden it wasn't available to me. Like I crapped, I literally like just did not. And so I moved through the whole emotional process around that and that Friday afternoon there wasn't anything I could actually do about the line of credit.

Speaker 2: 15:48

I knew that, the things I had to do the next week, but in that moment I and it was bigger than me, it just happened on its own that I rose up above. I think it was because of the extreme stress and it was like I was looking back over my lifetime of experience, because I was 50 something at the time and I could see all the crap that I had been through in my life and I could see how, no matter what ooh, I'm getting a little bit choked up about this that even though it didn't turn out the way I wanted, the way I would have liked, the way I had planned, still I was okay. All of those things I'm a trauma survivor all of those things that happened to me in my life. Again, like I wouldn't want for anybody to have to go through that. But I could see how I managed to be OK.

Speaker 2: 16:39

Not that I was happily ever after, not that everything was perfect, but I was OK. And so I was able to turn my awareness back to this moment and say, ok, ok, I have some experience that teaches me that I can trust myself and I can trust it might not turn out the way I want, I might not get the outcome that I'm planning for, and I will still be OK. But I had to be with my emotional self first in order to be able to then use the affirmations that have worked for me all my life and worked for me to this day. It happens that I have always been okay and I can trust that.

Speaker 1: 17:21

I love this, this whole focus like this missing piece of the puzzle, and I've always wondered about that myself and I'm curious for our audience too. We're going to start opening up the floor for questions there in a few minutes and comments, but I've always felt like there is something to affirmations and there is something to having a focus on abundance versus scarcity and being a positive person versus a negative person. But I think what I'm hearing you say today is acknowledging it, normalizes it and that kind of helps our brain to calm down and then it allows us that path to start moving on towards. What do we need to do next to?

Speaker 2: 18:00

move out of that Right.

Speaker 1: 18:01

And yes, and with wisdom and with age comes experience. I like to use the expression experience rich. Right and the more experience rich we are, I think, the less things ruffle our feathers Like when we were younger and earlier in our businesses you may have been freaking out, and as you get more experience in your business, you're probably less ruffled. So if that same situation were to happen to you today, you'd probably be like oh, I got a backup plan.

Speaker 2: 18:26

Sure, I've been through it before, so I know this. But I really want to challenge this positive versus negative dichotomy, because actually I would say that turning toward what people call negative emotions is actually positivity. That's shutting down your negative emotions and saying positive vibes only, in my opinion is very negative. And what's positive is to turn toward ourselves. It's to turn toward it and to acknowledge it and to make room for it and then to add on the next thing.

Speaker 1: 19:00

That's a good point, Cause I think if you don't allow it, if you don't allow yourself to feel what you're feeling, and if you can't acknowledge that those feelings are real and they are negative at the time that you're feeling, they can bottle themselves up and then they manifest into something even worse. Right, it's like a volcano exploding, actually of the outcome, right.

Speaker 2: 19:18

Yeah, and so then the step is we have a negativity bias in our mind, that it's like Rick Hansen says. It's let me get this right Teflon for good and Velcro for bad. So you can have a great day and then one crappy thing happens. And what do you remember the crappy thing?

Speaker 2: 19:36

Our work as humans, remembering the crappy thing was evolutionary. We had to know where the bear poop was so we pray could stay away from the bear, because the bear will eat us. We didn't need to know where the flowers were, but as human beings, we need to see the whole picture. So the point is not only we do need to know the negative, because it's important information, adaptive, right, we have to make a plan to address it, but we also need to remember the positive and to be positive with ourselves to get resourced to address the negative. So it's about the whole picture. Most people think of the positive as negating and getting rid of the bad, but or else the bad will take over, when really our work is to see the whole picture, both the good, right that gives us resources and the bad that we need to address so that we don't die, metaphorically speaking.

Speaker 1: 20:30

Yeah, yeah, Cause we're always going to have challenges. We don't. We can't live in a world that's just flowing with money and butterflies and flowers and sunshine and no snow.

Speaker 1: 20:39

We have to be prepared for the unexpected on there, and I think this is a really great new concepts and I feel like now that you've vocalized them and you're putting voice to them, I feel like it makes sense it's been there all along but I've never really been able to put my finger on it and that there's so many different insights that I've learned so far and I want to hear from our audience what are you learning so far? Or what questions or comments do you have to bring into the conversation? And I see a few that are in here. I want to bring up a couple of comments on here. Here's one from Royce, who's watching us, who echoes what you're saying here. Shulamit, all entrepreneurs are definitely in need of help with mental health and we talked about that at the beginning, especially mindset. Did you want to add any thoughts to that?

Speaker 2: 21:36

Sure, it's so rare in my experience that folks in business recognize the importance of this kind of thing and how mindset itself is. I'm not anti-mindset. I just think most mindset people miss the first step because mindset is so important. It takes such a blow when we face because we face challenge, challenge and many of them don't work out the way we would want to, and then we end up with this kind of self-talk and nothing ever works out. And what do I mean? Like who do I think I am? I don't know what I'm doing, I'm a terrible business person, right? That's all mindset stuff. And when we don't have support for our mental and emotional well-being, then our mindset can get stuck in that groove and get the best of us. So I do. I'm really grateful that Royce appreciates how important it is. The way we think and the way we talk to ourselves can have a significant impact in our day-to-day experience of running our business, but also in the success in the business.

Speaker 1: 22:34

Absolutely, and I think there's been a renewed focus on mental health, as in healthcare in general, which is a really good thing that our society is starting to embrace discussions more about mental being and not shy away from them.

Speaker 2: 22:47

So I think that's an important distinction.

Speaker 1: 22:50

Hey, we have Dr Kimberly joining us and she says, yes, you have to be able to pay yourself. Yeah, you can only do that with ease if you're approaching it in abundance instead of scarcity. Really good point, kimberly Shulamit. Any comments to add?

Speaker 2: 23:06

on to that, around this idea of scarcity and abundance, there are some of us who have fewer barriers than others, and so we have life experience that tells us there's lots to go around. And one of the bigger secrets is the impact of trauma or past experience on our ability to see abundance, our ability to experience not materially experience it, but to be able to retain the sense of there's enough to go around. And it's quite reasonable that a person who, for example, has experienced material scarcity in their life may struggle with making this shift, because there are parts of them that have deeply absorbed this idea that there isn't enough to go around. And this is where the deeper scarcity to abundance shift comes into play, where working with someone who can support you around the trauma related to money in particular and scarcity in general, can help you metabolize the experiences that you've been through and care for the parts of you that are activated around that, so that, instead of being consistently in the hypervigilant mode for danger, for scarcity, for threat, that you have ways of working with that hypervigilance that makes it possible for you to see that there is more, but who also can help you see the systemic barriers, so that you're not blaming yourself, and this is what often happens with the abundance mindset stuff.

Speaker 2: 24:39

Is that people who experience actual scarcity oh my camera has its reactions People who I don't know if StreamYard did that. Is that a newer feature? No, it's the Mac camera function. Mac cameras have a software that does that. Yeah, that when you're working with somebody at a deeper level on this, that you can distinguish between what is yours as an individual and that's your mindset and what is an actual fact, and then not to individualize and personalize the actual external barrier you're experiencing. And that's a way of moving also out of the kind of attack, because when you blame yourself for things that are external to you for example, women entrepreneurs get far less VC funding than men do and if you're a woman who's pitching and you're not getting your and you're like, oh, I'm a shitty pitcher, no, actually it has to do with the systemic barriers around women entrepreneurs and how they're perceived. Right, that's not about you, that's so. This is like a deeper level. There are deeper issues in this shift, and that comment just twigged me to that.

Speaker 1: 25:46

Yeah, that's good. I know sometimes these comments they spring off new conversations and new directions and new nuances that we didn't even address in the initial topic. So I want to just encourage our audience bring your comments in, because sometimes it prompts us to talk about another angle of the topic. And we're another comment coming in from Maureen, and Maureen is sharing. I'm trying to figure out what network she came in from. I think it's from YouTube. She looks like she's got a pink.

Speaker 2: 26:10

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 26:11

Yeah, I was trying to figure out. I'm like, why is it a little different color? At any rate, rory is joining us from Kent in the UK and she shares. I agree with Suleiman things do happen, but I know it is not the end. Even the negative is a learning experience. Now. Suleiman I frequently say this. I say I do not make mistakes.

Speaker 2: 26:39

I have learning experiences. I'm curious what your thoughts are on that. Yeah, yeah, I actually wrote a whole post about this that I forget what I called it now and I'll send you the link. We can put it in the comments afterwards that there is gold even in failure. Yep, I think I called it mining failure for gold, actually, because, but again, we need to have some distance from this experience of challenge or failure. We need also to have a little bit of care for the negative, the difficult, painful, overwhelming emotions. But then we can be curious, huh.

Speaker 2: 27:04

First of all, what skills did I have that I brought even though it didn't turn out the way I wanted to? What skills do I have that I brought to that? And you can do an inventory and be proud of yourself oh yeah, I've got all these different skills that I brought to that. And you can do an inventory and be proud of yourself oh yeah, I've got all these different skills that I brought to bear in that situation. And then you can say you can also learn. And then you have a story to tell yourself about the next time you have a negative experience. I can remember that the last time this happened or the last time I had a negative experience. I had all kinds of skills that I brought to this and I have skills. I can remember that I can address this now.

Speaker 1: 27:39

Yeah, so yeah, that's great, great point, and we can learn even from the things that don't turn out the way that we want them to. We can still learn from them and then it can help us to grow and expand from there.

Speaker 1: 27:49

And I want to bring up Dr Kinsley again Dancing and music helps me tremendously. I'm also sharing this technique with clients and a lot of us who are self-employed. We work from home, from our home offices. Now I've got a dog, I've got Pepper my dog, and we go out on walks and I have whole conversations with Pepper and she talks back to me, because dogs do that. Dog owners know what I'm talking about. They communicate with their eyes and their gestures and whatnot. I've not done a dance party with Pepper yet, but I'm inclined to give it a try sometime. So anything you want to add to that Shulamit about dancing.

Speaker 2: 28:24

I'm just appreciating that Dr Tufts brought that in because it is such an overlooked aspect of mental and emotional well-being, one of the things and again with scarcity aspect of mental and emotional well-being One of the things, and again with scarcity. We have so many threat messages coming in and we need to have a balance, a threat or demand messages. We need to put a balance of other messages of comfort, fun, play, joy into our experience and this is called mood induction. What Dr Tufts is talking about dancing and music, is our mood induction techniques and you can have a little chair dance or nobody's going to see you do this. When you're a solopreneur, when you're enthusiastically self employed, nobody's watching. You can take three minutes Nobody's that's right, nobody's. We're not first responders. People are not going to die and we are not going to die even though our nervous system might tell us otherwise. If we take three minutes to have a little chair dance to our favorite song, it's going to make a difference in your day and it's going to shift you out of this alarm mode, this scarcity, threat mode, and into I'm running one of the ways.

Speaker 2: 29:33

There's a book called burnout and Emily Nagoski wrote the book. It's awesome. I recommend it to absolutely everybody. They talk about being able to tell you're completing the stress cycle. And this movement when you're under threat, you freeze right, you're like frozen oh my gosh, I have to not move, because the bear is going to get me moving tells you you are alive and you have survived. And so this is another way of a lot of people think. What I need to do is soothe and calm myself. Yes, that's true, and also this kind of invigorating movement can send that it's I'm alive, I survived, I'm okay Message that helps shift you out of that unique scarcity psychology and into this wider, more creative capacity as the CEO of your business.

Speaker 1: 30:19

I love that and you just gave me another idea as you were talking to me as a speaker. I'm an introverted heart and I love speaking, but right before I get on stage and I think I've talked about this in Innovation Women it happens your heart starts racing and your body is just like going into this. I'm like, how do you stop that from happening? I know there's like different things you can do box breathing and distracting techniques. I think the next time it happens to me I'm going to try dancing. I'm going to put on some Taylor Swift or Beyonce those are my favorites. I'm going to try to dance some, dance it out and see if that helps and maybe that just sharing that, maybe that's going to help somebody else who struggles with I'm fine once I start speaking, but it's in the five minutes leading up. I know I'm next up on stage and my heart is racing and think what do you think? Would that? Would dancing help? Have you tried that before? What do you think?

Speaker 2: 31:09

What I would say is there's no way to stop any of this from happening Again. Coming back to what I said at the very beginning, what's so important is to recognize that all these responses are natural, normal, adaptive survival responses and to say, oh, that's okay, it's okay that this is coming now, it's all right. Of course, we want to be activated before we go out to speak, because we want to have all our resources available to serve our audience. Right? I? I don't want to be like before I go out to speak, that's not good, right? So, yes, and the dancing is a way of bringing in the. I survived, I'm alive, I've got this energy that is active, that then can propel you onto stage with the positivity that you want.

Speaker 1: 32:00

Yeah, the challenge for me is and maybe other speakers can relate to this too is if you think about you're going out in an ocean, there's like the break waves that you need to get over before you get to the smooth ocean. It's like the first few minutes of the talk. Once I can get over that and then I can get past it, then I'm like I've embraced that energy into energy. But there's always that teetering a few times. I'm trying to dance the dancing thing there.

Speaker 2: 32:24

Maybe try singing behind stage or maybe both singing yeah, well, we see, we see athletes on this on the super bowl yesterday. The athletes come into, they come into work with their headphones on and their game music because they want to be with themselves, connected with themselves, giving themselves the feedback that they need. Why couldn't we, as speakers, do that? Of course, that's brilliant.

Speaker 1: 32:51

I don't have too many good takeaways so far today and I know our audience has probably done so as well. As we start to round up our conversation, I want to share your LinkedIn profile with folks up on screen and as I'm pulling this up in the background, shulamit, can you tell us would you be open to connecting with people on LinkedIn or, if they're listening to the podcast or other places later, are you open to connecting with them and, if so, any instructions you'd like to give them?

Speaker 2: 33:15

Please connect with me. Please send me a connection request. You're welcome to DM me. I love being in the DMs. For me, that's my favorite part of social media, including LinkedIn, is the conversations that we can have. So the door is open. I'd love to hear from folks.

Speaker 1: 33:32

Wonderful and I'm going to encourage you, if you do visit Shulamit's profile, keep in mind and they're in the process right now of changing out creator mode. I don't know if you've heard about this, shulamit, but right now I know you have creator mode set up because I can see that you have the custom link at the top. This is book me to speak. We used to have hashtags. Linkedin is now retiring the creator mode hashtags, but I can still see some cues from here and right now, if you were to visit Shulamit's profile, she probably has follow as the default, unless have you changed it. Were you aware of this change, that you can now change it back to connect?

Speaker 2: 34:04

Oh, I didn't know that, no.

Speaker 1: 34:06

Yeah, and that's part of the problem. Linkedin's rolling out this change and they're not telling people. Hey, you can change it to the connect button instead. But at any rate, if you see the connect button, you can connect with her. If not, click on the more drop down and you'll see an option that will say either personalized invite or connect.

Speaker 1: 34:21

It's not going to show, in my view, because we're already connected. It's chosen first level connections on her profile here and do mention that you saw her on the interview with Brenda. I'm sure she'd be happy to connect with you. And then also, I know you've got a website. I'm going to pull that up right now as I'm doing. So, if people are interested in working with you, can you remind us? What do you offer? What could we work with you on?

Speaker 2: 34:43

Sure. So there are two aspects of the work that I do. The one is the work at the level of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, and so I speak, teach and consult on integrating care for our mental and emotional well-being as business owners into our business planning and processes, because the human and the business are not separate. And then I work one-to-one with women business owners to support their mental and emotional well-being as business owners, specifically the issues that come up around leadership, emotional labor, anxiety, stress, all those kinds of things that affect business owners in particular ways. And I work specifically on what I call money psychology, of which shifting from scarcity to abundance is one aspect, and so if you want support for your mental and emotional well-being or your money psychology, I can provide one-to-one support for that.

Speaker 1: 35:38

Wonderful. So you work with individuals and I know you're also a speaker, so people can book you for events as well. Yeah Right, yes.

Speaker 2: 35:44

All right.

Speaker 1: 35:44

Wonderful, and I just noticed something at the top of your website. I feel like she's speaking to me and maybe to some of you as well. At the very top of her website, it says do you feel like you're going to lose it at any moment? Now Click here. I love this.

Speaker 2: 36:05

And it looks like if we click here, we're able to access your newsletters. Is that right on here? Yes, yes, you can go to directly to Shulaca slash newsletter, or you can click that link at the top of my page and the main page on my site and that'll get you directly to where you can sign up for my newsletter. And this is the kind of thing this conversation that you and I had today, that's the kind of thing that you'll get in my newsletter is my deep, long form thinking about the variety of mental and emotional health issues that affect us as entrepreneurs and what you can do about them.

Speaker 1: 36:31

That's wonderful. I will definitely check that out. I'm going to subscribe to your newsletter as soon as we're done with the call and I'm going to encourage others as well to go to shulaca if they are interested and check out that link at the top of the page here. All right, as we start to wind down our conversation, I want to ask our audience if you enjoyed the discussion today. Could you do us a favor? Because, shulamit and I, we don't get performance reviews anymore, so our reviews exist for comments.

Speaker 1: 36:59

So if you enjoyed the chat whether you're watching this live or in playback on LinkedIn, on YouTube or other places we'd love if you could drop a comment and let us know if you enjoyed watching it. And then, if you have not yet posted on LinkedIn this week, this month, heck, even this year go ahead and click to reshare it. You might see the repost or you might see the little share button with an arrow where you can share it as a post and then tell people something that you learned by watching the show here today. Or maybe tell people why they should watch the show, why they should watch the video, something that they could gain from learning it. If you tag Shulamit and I in the post. We will be sure to comment back. Remember to tag using the at sign and then you type in our names and it'll appear in the dropdown from that. And with that said, shulamit, I want to just give you the final opportunity. Any closing thoughts for us on the secret to shifting from scarcity to abundance.

Speaker 2: 37:50

The number one secret for shifting from scarcity to abundance is to remind yourself that there's nothing wrong with you. There's absolutely nothing wrong with you. If you're feeling fear because of scarcity of course you would. It feels like survival. It's a normal response. There's nothing wrong with you.

Speaker 1: 38:15

I just felt a wave of peace roll over me when you said that and when you gestured by putting your hand to your chest, I just I don't know if you all in the audience felt that by putting your hand to your chest, I just I don't know if you all in the audience felt that, but I was like I just felt like she just told me everything is going to be okay. It felt very grounding. So I want to thank you, shulamit. This has been such a wonderful conversation. I'm looking forward to watching the playback again and then listening to it and the podcast when it airs later. But I just want to thank you again. It's been such a delight having you on today. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 38:44

I'm so grateful that you gave me this opportunity to talk about something I'm really passionate about.

Speaker 1: 38:49

It's obvious your success in what you do and I'm so glad that we cross paths through innovation women. Yes, we'll see you on the next speaker. Friends, friday call and we'll talk about the interview. Great, see you soon.