Mental Health Challenges for Female Entrepreneurs with Shulamit Ber Levtov

H: So I am here today with my friend and colleague Shulamit Ber Levtov, and we are going to be talking about some of my favorite topics, which include the intersection of entrepreneurship, feminine conditioning, and mental health, because like me, Shula is a clinical social worker who works with entrepreneurs so let's get into it. Why do so many entrepreneurs struggle with mental health issues?

G: Well, it's the nature of the job. It's enormously stressful, like enormously stressful and the cognitive load is so much more significant than the cognitive load of a person who is employed, for example and we know there's such a thing as stress induced illness. And then when you're exposed, therefore to in a chronic and possibly extreme stress, which is the nature of entrepreneurship, it's likely to result in some stress induced illness or other kinds of mental health challenges. Not to mention the emotional whiplash you get from like, you know, this morning you signed a big contract and got a bunch of money. And then this afternoon, you know, the bank. The bank, I don't know, the bank says you can't have a loan and you're in the toilet, you know, emotionally, like that's just hard on a person right. And so there are many, many things that contribute to the difficulty and it's the nature of the work.

H: Do you think that people are drawn to entrepreneurship because of that rollercoaster lifestyle like there's something inherently seductive or glamorous about it? Because you and I both see how much Marketing is being done in the last few years, particularly aimed at women that I think is really glamorizing entrepreneurship in a way that doesn't tell the whole story.

G: Yeah, I agree that what we see how we see it presented. I mean, even like either where we have the marketing you're talking about that we see online in the online business space, particularly on, Instagram and Facebook and then there's the stuff we see about the tech bros like Elon Musk and the I can't think of the other guys, you know, but you know what I mean and neither one of those portrayals show accurately the experience of most women entrepreneurs who are solopreneurs, micropreneurs quite small business owners not running huge corporations or tech startups, right. And I think first of all, yes, it's misleading and folks when I did some market research a couple of years ago about what brought folks to entrepreneurship, women, particularly the number one answer was flexibility. And so many women who have responsibilities of a spouse and children want that flexibility and get penalized for those needs when they're in the corporate workplace or in a nine to five job, right?

And so of course it's appealing that you can still earn money and contribute to the household income and feel, you know, have a good story to tell yourself about yourself because there's prestige associated with being an entrepreneur and you can also be the kind of you think spouse and parent that you want to be and that's just like really misleading. But you talked about in your earlier episode this summer about the research done by Dr. Michael Freeman who's a psychiatrist and a psychologist in the U.S. and he talks about the dopamine. The role that dopaminergic activity plays in entrepreneurship and I have not yet been able to find published research, but folks can listen to podcasts by him where he details what he has found in his work around the link between dopamine seeking behaviors and entrepreneurship behaviors, because that whiplash, the emotional up and down also, you know, there's dopamine surges involved in that. So, I suspect from my experience with folks that there is a pole for a number of reasons and then, you know, Dr. Freeman talks about that more in detail.

H: It makes so much sense why so many of us with ADHD are drawn into entrepreneurship for that very reason because while most neurotypical people would run in the opposite direction, from a lifestyle and a financial stability that is completely up and down. But for those of us that are dopamine seeking, even if we don't realize it, that's a plus and yet once we're in it, it absolutely contributes to difficulties stabilizing our mental health, doesn't it?

G: Yeah. It just, it can really exacerbate whatever's already there. Dr. Freeman talks about 40% of people who are entrepreneurs have preexisting mental health diagnoses, interestingly also the remaining 60% of their families have diagnoses, so it's a really complex interaction, you know? And if you come in like, it's just, that's the nature of stress. It's just a human thing, if you're already under resourced and you get involved in something that takes even more resources you're going to struggle.

H: Yeah, you're gonna exploit your bandwidth and then go beyond it. It sounds like you, you use the term entrepreneur for anyone who's self employed so they could be a tech startup, they could be a founder of some sort, or they could be a micro business owner, like a coach or a consultant or a small service provider. Do you think the struggles that entrepreneurs have as a category have with their mental health are the same regardless of what type of entrepreneurial venture you're in or do they vary?

G: Well, part of the reason I use the term entrepreneur is because I don't want to work with folks who aren't thinking about their self employment as a business. It's a particular frame of reference around the enterprise, around what it is that you're doing and so if you're thinking of yourself as self employed or a freelancer, that's perfectly okay. And my frame of reference and yours are not going to match and so we won't be a good fit. So I just want to say that around, but you're right that I do in general use that term to refer to anybody who thinks of their work as a business, whether they're self employed solopreneur or if they have a larger business and I think it's a question of degree only that across the board there are enough similarities. And it's rather the degree or intensity and frequency of these challenges that vary across the spectrum from a very small business to a very large one.

And there are some extra, like there's the, I loved how you said in your mental health episode earlier this summer, you talked about the emotional labor of entrepreneurship.That was a very succinct way to capture kind of what happens and so as you become more and more of a leader in your business and you end up dealing not only with clients, but also with possibly contractors or employees, the emotional labor of leadership in becomes a more significant proportion of what it is you're dealing with as your business gets bigger. So there is that aspect that is missing from the smaller businesses, you know, but that's the only difference that I can put my finger on in the moment.

H: I appreciate you reflecting back on the emotional labor and as much as I love being clever and often am. The term emotional labor is coined by Rose Hackman, who wrote a book called Emotional Labor, who I happened to stumble across on TikTok and fell in love with and reached out to her and asked her if it would be okay if I started using this term and referencing her, which I do, because the first few TikToks of Rose Hackman's that I saw where she was talking about the emotional labor within heterosexual relationships and how men typically go to work, come home and they're done for the day, whereas a woman goes to work, comes home and goes to work. Maybe you turn yourself around at the kitchen table from looking at the kitchen to looking at the table, or maybe you have a back bedroom that's converted to your office. But either way when a woman finishes work for the day, she begins her second shift. So the emotional labor is not valued and it absolutely depletes us and makes our lives much more complicated and adds to our mental health struggles.

G: Sure, in my degree in women's studies, that's when I encountered the term, what I think is innovative is how you applied that term to entrepreneurship specifically. But also I would like to add that I understand it as before you applied it to entrepreneurship, I understood it as Rose did. And also as the, speaking of feminine conditioning, the social expectations of women whether they're at work or at home to manage the emotional environment and to manage their own emotional life in such a way as not to disturb others, their emotions and to manage like things, you know, so that if somebody is upset, they perceive that that person is upset and there's a social expectation of that perception and then that they should take steps to address that person's upset, right?

So the emotional labor that women do just as women is very complex that, like you say, they come home and there's that work, but then also in any position, women are fems, I should say. Also there's that expectation and then add to that a woman with her social expectations, a partner and children who also runs a business and the amount of emotional labor in which she's expected to engage is enormous. And who's there for her, what happens to her emotions then if she's always managing them for other people, like who holds space for her?

H: Well, if they're fortunate, someone like you or I, but many women are not resourced to work with an entrepreneur therapist or a coach who works with female entrepreneurs. It's absolutely true. I think oftentimes we don't recognize our feminine conditioning, we do not recognize how much additional work we're doing. I think about some of the women that I have worked with who own businesses in service industries, often healthcare businesses who have all female employees and the amount of stress they have managing their reactions to what's going on with their female employees who also have complex lives is a huge burden for them that eats up a lot of their bandwidth. So you're absolutely right that we, as women either have it foisted upon us or we take it on ourselves simply because it taps into a lot of our gifts, as well as our social conditioning. And the goal is not for us to become, you know, like men and compartmentalize and not care or not be concerned, but to create space for ourselves and I think most importantly, recognize. I don't care how dynamic you are. I don't care how energetic you are, all of us have limited bandwidth. And if we don't implement boundaries, burnout is not a matter of if it's a matter of when.

G: Yeah, I'm chronically ill and in the chronic illness community in the eighties, there was a woman I'll give you the link, so you can include it in the show notes who came up with what's called spoon theory. And she talked about how when you're chronically ill and any given morning, you have a variable number of spoons and you have to figure out the challenges to figure out, well, if I have X number of spoons today, what am I going to do with those spoons and what activity is going to take how many spoons? And I think it was like, it was very, very helpful to me when I, as a chronically ill person, before I became an entrepreneur. Or even was thinking about becoming in, like, full time self employed. It was a real self compassion move to be able to think about myself and my limitations in that way. But as I've worked with that idea over the years, it's become clear to me that we all have only a certain number of spoons, right? And I think managing capacity, managing energy is important no matter managing our resources, right? It's a principle that applies to humans.

H: Absolutely, and I think especially creative individuals of all genders. And I think it takes a certain amount of creativity to choose to become an entrepreneur. What do you think are the primary reasons for you see women going into entrepreneurship when it wasn't necessarily part of their plan?

G: Flexibility is one, you know, they encounter difficulties in the traditional workplace and just can’t I mean, I'm making it sound like it's an individual issue that a particular woman can't make it work. It's really a reflection, an individual manifestation of a systemic issue so there's that. But also one of the things that happened over the pandemic is folks were sent home to work. And these were folks who were exposed to so called microaggressions in the workplace because they were black or they had disabilities or they were women. Or they had mental health challenges and they went home and discovered they felt so much better out of the workplace in which they were doing their work and they're able with the perspective to go wow, that was like totally toxic. That was really a bad place for me and then when they got called back to work, we're like well, fuck that i'm going to create my own I cannot have a world free from these microaggressions when i'm in other people's workplaces So i'm going to create my own workplace that is as safe as possible as it can be for me.

I think that's one of the reasons that people do. It happened like on mass during COVID but I think that that was a thread even throughout the women, you know, like over the decades, women who come into businesses, I mean, there's also women who are inspired and passionate about changing the world. And so I see a lot of vision driven women who start their business as their sort of activism, so to speak, they may not call it activism, but it is when you're thinking about changing the world so that it's you know, people are heading in the direction of more liberation for themselves, more wellbeing and more wellbeing for the world.

That's activism in my opinion. But, you know, I think coming back to people's experiences in the workplace, women's experiences in the workplace, like that's certainly, I know you have alluded to the fact that that's why you did it. And my leap into full time, solo business was always a plan. But the timing of it, I don't want to characterize it as a fit of peak, but may, I mean, I can feel it just coming up from my belly and into my chest, the anger because of what happened at work on a particular day. And I that was it, I was done with people having power over me. And that was what brought me to do it at the time that I did it. It had always been my plan. I was just waiting for the right time. And it was clear, like people say, the universe was sending me a message, that was the time.

H: Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense, Shula. And I also think that, yeah, as I have mentioned to you privately, I always had entrepreneurial traits. As I look back, my first job after college, it was so obvious. I was highly entrepreneurial, but I didn't have anyone in my life who was self employed. I didn't have anyone who was mentoring me, who was saying, wow, you really have, they were just traits that were being taken advantage of by others without actually being reflected back to me. You know, you really are the kind of personality that should be running your own business and, maybe I would have done it a lot sooner, but I'm one of the women who, like many, many others I've known kind of had to be pushed out of the workplace by reaching a point where, you're in your fifties, you're making decent money you know, at least

I was making decent money because I was on a particular trajectory. I was pushing my heart to climb up the food chain and do all the things that were necessary to move up. I was a single parent, head of household for more than a decade with three kids and I finally found myself being laid off for the first time ever and having difficulty getting a job. When I did finally get a job, which took months, it was for considerably less money and that job ended in a harassment situation. And when I spoke to an attorney about it, he said, well, there's no question that you're being harassed, but it's not unlawful harassment because you're not a member of a protected category so if I were you, I would just leave. And I was like, great, I don't think I can get anybody to hire me at this point. So I really didn't have a choice but to start my own business, but pretty quickly realized, this is what I should have been doing all along. And I think when working with women like me, and I'd love to hear your thoughts about this.

When working with women like me, who I sometimes call accidental entrepreneurs, it wasn't their plan, even if it suits them really well, they kind of either got pushed into it, forced into it, or sort of fell into it. I find with these women, it's more about what they have to unlearn then what they have to learn. I'd be curious to know what your thoughts are on that.

G: Well, I'm a big fan of planning. I'm a big fan of reflection what I have some restorative justice training. And in that training, what the teacher said was that if we don't make choices about how we want to handle conflict, the dominant cult, it creates a vacuum and the dominant culture will rush in to fill the vacuum and it's the same. I've observed this in entrepreneurs that when you come from the nine to five, or you come from your worth is tied to your success and your productivity and how much you earn, you reproduce those things in your business without stopping to reflect about how actually you want to do things. And so the scramble that occurs to try and make sense of things and put an order into things when you're at the same time starting your business without having planned to do so is its own unique shit show. And so, yeah, I do see like some of the folks that I work with. For example, are unfamiliar with the concept of time blocking, which can really help it, but it takes kind of like, you have to look at the idea of a model calendar and what do I want my work week to look like and let me structure my work week that way.

And that's kind of like a higher level thing and if you haven't taking the time to sit down, that's just a very simple aspect of a small tactic that can really alleviate people's stress. The when you haven't planned your work and you haven't thought through what is this project even you're trying to do like a very it's much more chaotic than folks who are already engaged in the annual and quarterly and weekly planning type processes, which helps give some organization to their work. So, it's tougher when you're forced into things and the author of the E-Myth, whose name I forget, has a great phrase. Michael Gerber, he says most small business owners are technicians having an entrepreneurial seizure. That they're great, great, great at what they do, and they don't know anything about running a business. And I knew that was the, I knew that because so when I finished my master's degree and opened my business, my private practice, I knew that I knew nothing about business and I knew that most small businesses failed within the first one to five years.

And like you, I was 49 when I graduated from my master's degree, starting at the bottom of the career path. And I knew as an older woman who was starting that my employment prospects were not going to be fantastic. And also that this work had to last me until the day I died because I came into the job market in the 80s when there were no jobs. There were only contracts and that's how I started doing the entrepreneurship thing. Because I would get laid off or my contract would end and I'd have to do some freelance stuff to fill in the gap till I found another one. And that's kind of, it was a function of the gig economy, which newsflash has been around for 40 years. So I knew that I wanted something sustainable and I went into business training and business coaching and participated in a mastermind. When I came out of my master's degree, because I did not want to be the technician having an entrepreneurial seizure in 5 or 10 years down the line, end up having to go back to work at an entry level salary.

You know, I'm looking at 60 now, you know, I'm 60 next year I'm really happy that I did that because I really love the way my business is now. And I love the like that I just get to say, fuck that to all the corporate bullshit, you know, even in agencies, even in nonprofit agencies, and especially actually in the mental health arena, there's so much moral injury that occurs and I just don't want to be a part of any of that anymore. And I'm really grateful that I've created a situation that I don't have to be and I do think that's the promise for so many of us, you know,

H: This is so good. I'm thinking about all the women who have gone through the same kind of training that we have. I mean, let's face it, a master's in social work is the lowest paid master's degree on the planet and not surprised. But I think when you, a lot of people who go into the helping professions, particularly social work are very idealistic. They want to change the world. They want to help people, but there's nothing that we learn about how to run a business. In fact, at least in the States, I know you're in Canada, a lot of people frown upon someone with a clinical social work background going into private practice, because social workers are indoctrinated into, you know, being associated with helping marginalized communities disenfranchised people. So the thought that you would start your own business would…

G: And you're in charge of fee, right, you're selling out. Yep. Yeah. So yes, because it's a noble profession and it's women's caring work, which is undervalued to begin with. There are so many and all those assumptions apply as much in Canada to the helping professions as they do in the US.

H: And yet the work that we do is absolutely necessary and frankly, I think the work that we do now in supporting female entrepreneurs they are a marginalized community because even though there's all this hype about how glamorous and lucrative and exciting and how much passive income is available to us. If we just start our own business, none of that is true. Every woman I have ever met who has her own business works just as many hours as they did when they were working for others. But what is different is they're doing it for them and they have at least the possibility of envisioning and creating a business that's right sized and aligned with their values as opposed to toiling away for others that have completely different beliefs and values.

G: Yes and I think that as we mature in our businesses and as women who are older in their lives as well, we begin to see that we don't have to work as hard in our businesses as we did in our jobs. If we had jobs that that is actually a capital, an overlay from capitalism that it's as we are, instead of being exploited by a boss, we're exploiting ourselves and extracting labor and productivity from ourselves. And certainly that's where I am now, I have a big session planned this afternoon with a coach to help me reorient my business because I want time and I want a sense of spaciousness that time gives me. And I'm thinking about ways that I can, for example, this is a real wacky idea that it feels wacky to parts of me.

And even as I mentioned it to you like I feel a little fluttery in my chest and in my stomach, the idea that if I have a little, a tasky tasky thing, which is not a high stakes task that I have scheduled for a given week and it doesn't get done in the course of that week, can I undate it and let it fall into the big pot and not carry the pressure of ugh, I didn't do that last week and rescheduling and rescheduling and not doing and not doing and pressuring myself in that way can I and like the adrenaline type response, you know, I have the fears parts of me are afraid that that's going to sink my business. And so to be able to like, but I had to be willing even five years ago, I don't think I would be willing to take this leap and to say, listen, I'm really my word for this year is potency.

And if somebody said, and I'm not, I don't remember if it was you in one of our Voxers or not. But like what's potent is something that is boiled down to its very essence right. And in business, we can think of what's the critical, what are the critical things that I have to do outside of direct client care, which is obviously not going to ever get dropped in the business, running the business what like hanging on to only what's critical and letting go of all the rest. And I think that's an aspect of finding my potency for this year. But you know, I have fears, these old stories about how you've got to work just as hard, just as long for my own business. And if you don't, you know, some evil will befall you and I think this is part of the possibility for us also as women entrepreneurs and older women entrepreneurs is beginning to question all the assumptions and building businesses, creating businesses that operate in a way that serve us not just paying our bills, but like really on a holistic level. Do you know what I mean?

H: I know exactly what you mean. As a matter of fact, you are speaking to a conversation that is very powerful right now and a lot of people are having. You and I have touched on it about the hustle culture about toxic productivity and also the intersection of all that with feminine conditioning, which rests on a foundation of teaching women from the time they can speak that they are not enough. There are many multi multi billion dollar industries exclusively devoted to indoctrinating women into the belief system that they are not enough. They're not thin enough. They're not pretty enough. Their boobs aren't big enough. Their ass isn't firm enough. They're not smart enough. They're not sexy enough.

They're not engaging enough. They're not fill in the blank and keep on filling. So, if we come to entrepreneurship with the belief that we're not enough, and it's so deep in our mindset that we don't even recognize it because we honestly can't remember a time that we didn't think that we, of course, are going to apply the standards of toxic productivity to everything we do in our own business, just the way we did when we were working for the man or nonprofit or academia. So what I see a lot and I bet you do too and you're actually talking about right now in a very vulnerable and personal way is I think about it this way. It's like the gas tank, we don't have that little floating thing. And forgive me, for people who are more sophisticated about cars than I am, this might be totally off, but it works for me. In your gas tank, you have a little floater. You have a float.

G: It's called the float.

H: Okay. Perfect. Then, you know, and in some cars, it's not functional. It's defective so those car owners don't know whether they have a full tank or fumes so they always have to assume that they could run out of gas at a moment's notice or no notice at all and literally find themselves stranded by the side of the road. So I think a lot of women sort of have this broken floater, where we never know if what we're doing is enough, so when you don't think you're doing enough, you do more. When in fact, most of the women I know, including me and probably you, are actually doing too much, we're doing too much of the wrong things for the wrong reasons or at the wrong time.

And the reason that we're exhausted and still not reaching our goals is because we're using up all of our energy on stuff that probably doesn't need to be done at all, at least not by us right now. So I think this is potent to be able to really look at all the things on your to do list and think about what would happen if this doesn't get done, like not even not this week, but like not ever or what if it, what will happen if it doesn't get done by me, what would happen if it doesn't get done right now. Because putting things on the next to do list and the next and the next, like reschedule, reschedule, reschedule, that always feels like shit, doesn't it?

G: It does really and I think, I don't know, maybe you can speak to this from your own experience. For me, prioritizing is very difficult, it just becomes, this is a very dated reference, but if you remember what it was like to have a television screen before the test pattern came on and it was all the static, the great dogs. And like, to me, that's all the stuff I have to do is, is that, it looks like that and it's not like some are red and some are green and some are yellow. It's all a mush and I have great difficulty sorting and prioritizing and that's a function of how my brain works. And I'm specifically not using labels cause I don't have a formal diagnosis, but I do know how my brain does and doesn't work in the challenges that I have. And so, you know, when we combine the two things you know, this never enough conditioning and in me, the never enough conditioning, social conditioning, plus my struggles to sort and prioritize, it's, it's very challenging.

H: Well, these are executive functions in the simplest form and when I think about executive functions, it's like deciding what you need to do when you need to do it, what order to do it in how much time to allocate for. I mean, just saying these things, my skin is starting to crawl. I do have an official diagnosis of ADHD, as do many of the people I work with. But with or without an official diagnosis, I believe most entrepreneurs have these traits and, you know, we are risk takers. We get excited by the possibility. We jump in and we start going, but if we don't have at least a rudimentary plan and some way of prioritizing, it's terrorizing when every single thing on your schedule or on your to do list seemingly has the same level of necessity and importance. It's like when I introduced the Eisenhower matrix to people as a possible tool.

G: Yes, I love that.

H: Well, you know what the thing is, is that it can be great. It can be great and I actually like it and recommend it a lot. However, if your executive functioning skills are at a level where…

G: Right, then how do you know what goes where?

H: Dude, it's like, wait a minute, are you serious? Like you want me to determine between important and not important in between urgent and not urgent, everything on my list feels urgent and important and therefore I can't do anything because I don't know where to start. That's a very real situation and talk about a mental health crisis, the level of anxiety and overwhelm can literally induce panic attacks, and I've seen it happen.

G: Oh, sure and for me, also, an aspect of how my brain works is I struggle with remembering. And so there's a constant background of worry about, what if I've forgotten something, or will I forget something, or I might forget this and so, it's like another thing I'm looking at now is like, maybe I don't even put it on the list like maybe it doesn't even get a date. Maybe it doesn't even go in the pot. Maybe it's something that just doesn't even, I don't even write down and working with like the panicky feelings I have around what ifs, around forgetting and remembering is all, you know, it complicates the whole situation. The main reason I'm talking about these things, my own personal experience is because first of all, it's relevant to our conversation, but also entrepreneurs are so isolated around their mental health struggles. And we, as a group we are isolated by our desire for what's called impression management.

We are concerned that if we reveal vulnerability, it will undermine folks confidence in us and our business, and then they won't do business with us. And so we're reluctant to talk about our difficulties and our struggles and having to front in that way and having to carry things on your own, our stressors in and of themselves. So they amplify the stress you're already feeling and so my purpose in sharing bits and pieces of my story and even like the nuts and bolts like I did here is so that for recognition and for acknowledgement for other folks who have the same thing or similar who can have an experience of like, yeah, me too. I thought it was just me. I'm so glad to know there's somebody else. That's part of the way that we can change the discussion around mental health and entrepreneurship so that there's more space and less stigma right?

H: Right. Well, it's absolutely true and something that I know you often say, and I think is really, really, it needs to be repeated loud, clear, and often is that all entrepreneurs have challenges with mental health because it is the nature of what we do. So if you are an entrepreneur and you are feeling challenged with your mental health, there's nothing wrong with you. You're normal. You're just like everybody else. And for those who haven't had those issues and maybe thinking, well, not me, what would you say to them?

G: Well, I would invite them to keep it in mind just in case, because what I see when folks come to me in the end, you know, they come because they're in distress. And usually they articulate that stress, like what's wrong with me and then they'll give me a whole bunch. They'll tell me the story of what's wrong with them and how they can't handle this, that, or the other thing and how they used to be strong and capable and competent. And when we review in the first session, kind of what's going on for them and the kind of natural result. The logical result of what they're experiencing, what they have been through is what they are currently experiencing and they kind of like melt and go like, oh. In trauma therapy, we say you know, the trauma response is, there's nothing wrong with you in that regard because it's the normal reaction to abnormal circumstances, the circumstances under which trauma occurred that are abnormal and problematic not you as the victim, the person who has been harmed. And it's the same principle applied in entrepreneurship And people are so relieved to discover that it's the natural consequence.

It's the lodge, any person who has been through what they've been through would be feeling the way they're feeling and they can 50% of their distress is alleviated simply by having that. And so for the folks who are sitting there today thinking, not me, that's great. Like I celebrate that for you, that it isn't you and that it's not your story and that you're thriving. And so should it be an even better for you and to hang on to this because you can share it with an entrepreneurial friend. That it's not their fault that they're having a hard time and that there's nothing wrong with them or that at the time when the shit hits the fan in your life that you can take refuge in that thought, you know, and be it's a way of being compassionate to yourself to tell yourself there's nothing wrong with me. This is what is to be expected given the current circumstances.

H: No, you're absolutely right. And I also think for people that would say, well, I don't, that's not my problem. I don't have that kind of experience. I would say, yet, because I personally, I agree with you, Shula, I absolutely align with your stated belief that it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when, and I would also say, you know, in the dark ages, maybe there were people who had mental health problems, and there was everyone else. But I now think that there is no distinction between us and them. We are them. They are us. It is a matter of degree and circumstance and timing. Like people experience things as a result of starting, growing, running, failing at their own business that introduced them to parts of themselves. They would not have experienced any other way and that may stretch them beyond their current coping resources. So I just think that we can be grateful for every good day, every good month, every good year that we have where we're not stressed beyond our capacity. And remind ourselves for the ones that are really challenging that we are absolutely not broken and we are not alone because the more entrepreneurs you talk to and the more safety we can create in the entrepreneurial community for being vulnerable, the more you realize this is the norm. It really is.

G: And we could even go further and say the nature of being human is to go through difficult experiences and be affected by them.

H: It's inescapable, isn't it?

G: It's just human. You're just so human.

H: That's just so human of you. Yeah, it's a terminal condition, this humanist thing, and you really can't work your way around it. And, I think that life gives us opportunity to be humbled and that is almost always a good thing because that increases our compassion. It increases our ability to hold space for others and if we allow it, it gives us more of an opportunity to make changes within our business and our life so that it suits us better instead of, as you talked about bringing in all those habits that we learned from working for others and then doing them to ourselves. Like, we've missed the whole point of being self employed when we do that, but it's sometimes something that takes a little while to unlearn.

G: It does. It does.

H: So I know there are going to be people who are going to want more Shula after listening to this conversation so how would you invite them to do that?

G: Well, my first invitation would be to sign up for my newsletter at shula.ca slash newsletter. And I know you'll put the link in the show notes because that's where you're going to get all the long form, thinking and sharing around the issues, the intersection of entrepreneurship and mental health. And then the other thing that's super fun for me is the truly social aspect of social media. I love to be in the DMs, that's how we became friendly, right, in chatting. We started out just talking, commenting on each other's, post, but then we ended up talking to one another privately and then we ended up stepping off of social media and into a more personal relationship And that just is a perfect capsule of what I love about social media. So on Instagram, I'm the entrepreneurs therapist and on LinkedIn, you can find me by my name. And I would love to hear from folks in my DMs, you know, to just how things landed for them today.

H: That would be awesome and you are both good people and completely authentic. What you see is what you get so I strongly encourage people to follow and to listen to more of what Shula has to say. She is a deep thinker, an authentic human, and has a world of experience that she's more than happy to share. So thank you, my friend. I'm glad you were here with me today.

G: Thank you so much. Thank you.