#115: The Road To Becoming A Resilient Leader with Barb Stuhlemmer

Welcome to The Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, bestselling author of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markel. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life. You'll gain powerful insights into how you can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your performance, and master the art and science of innovation and resilience. So please join Adam as he guides you on your conscious pivot.

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I'm excited, as you can tell, just excited for this moment, excited for this breath, excited for all the wonderful things that are happening at this moment. I know there's a lot that we look at today and think isn't so great in many ways, whether it's in regard to our our environment, our physical environment, whether it's regarding our politics or business, money, anything and everything kind of can be a source for complaint. And I will not lie to you and say that I don't complain sometimes because I do, even though I know every time I complain, it's like I could just figuratively imagine taking out a knife and just cutting, slicing my throat because I think— That's really what complaining does. It's very self-defeating. And in a workplace, we know that complaining is just toxic. I mean, it's just a tremendous toxic energy around people that are focused on what's wrong versus the solution to things. The what's— not so much the Pollyanna side or the what's right. I think it really helps to be focused on what's right, but to be grateful for the creative opportunities. The challenges present us is another way to look at challenges. And I was always a big fan as a CEO and even in the company that I now run, smaller than the larger enterprises I've been involved in in the last 10 years, it's still the same. Even with a small team, managing energy is so important and to be able to bring solutions to the table is a big deal because when you bring a problem without a solution, it really is the definition of a complaint. So, I am thrilled to be able to be here with all of you today. Thank you, Adam. with no complaints, absolutely no complaints. And actually, more than anything else, I have gratitude and gratitude for the conversation that I'm envisioning having with Barb Stuhlemer. And Barb is an incredible woman. I'm going to share a little bit about her, read some of her bio actually, and then dig right into the juicy stuff that I know you all love and I love as well, which is really rich conversation. So, in her 30-plus years with small incorporated businesses, Barb Stuhlemer has seen exactly how owners struggle to balance, and that's a key term right here, struggle to balance the requirements of growing a business with the financial and time restrictions, time restrictions that growth brings. Through her journey as a laboratory technologist, medical research assistant, then transitioning into high-tech customer support and being a technical writer, Barb found that she had always been in small businesses. She defines that as being under 50 employees. She's learned firsthand the challenges that have collapsed great businesses and the wins that drive business owners to continue through adverse times. We have a word that we call, we say that ability to navigate the tough times and come out on the other side, we call resilience. So, what does it mean to be a resilient leader? I hope we'll get into that. I know we'll get into that today. Barb is a business owner herself, an author of hundreds of articles, traditionally published books, a speaker on entrepreneurship, and a college professor. She started her first full-time business in 2003 and has since helped hundreds of business owners manage the planning and implementation of strategic growth and change in their businesses. And I think that's One of the most glaringly lacking aspects of most entrepreneurs or wannabe or would-be or whatever you want to say it, startup entrepreneurs, is the implementation side. They're just really, really lacking in the skill of implementation. So without starting there, I'll just say thank you first of all, Barb. Thank you for being on the show. It's a pleasure to have you. Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And in times of massive change and disruption, the kind of rapid change that we're all experiencing as leaders, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we have to learn how to not only increase our own resilience, but that of our teams. So right now we have a powerful opportunity for you to find out just how resilient you are. Some years ago, my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are.

Oh, I am so honored to be here, Adam. This is— like I told you ahead of time, I've listened to many of your shows and the people and the conversations They're just so rich and I'm honored to have that opportunity as well.

Oh, so beautiful. I loved reading your bio and there's a lot, a lot in there. It's kind of a meaty journey there. What's not written in this bio that you would love for people to know about you?

Oh, interesting. Well, it does say that I've been in small business most of my life, but I think the kind of key to the challenges that I had over the years was that as When I was a teenager and a young person, I was very spiritually connected to everything that I did. And I was connected to the people around me and the things that I did. And when I got into university, I just kind of focused on the tech. And my whole life just kind of switched over to this idea that I had to have a good education and get a good job and make good money. And that's what life was about. And I just kind of lost touch with all these pieces of who I was. And it took me a long time. I mean, I was in my late 30s before I kind of had that moment again. And of course, you refer to pivoting a lot, that kind of moment when I realized that I really missed the business side. And the story around that is longer than that, but that business side and that connection to small business and the spiritual connection I had to everything that I did started coming back. And I spent a lot of time Researching, paying for education on it, like anything that I could do to become a better person so that I could help people in a different way. Because helping people was important, but I couldn't help people as a technical writer. I couldn't help people as a laboratory technologist. Like, it was interesting and it just wasn't that piece. That relationship piece was really missing. That's kind of the piece of who I am that doesn't show up in my bio.

Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. Well, I'd love to know, Barb, just what— because you brought up the word pivot and obviously it is a big part of our conversation here. What's your definition of a pivot? How would you define that?

For me, a pivot is really just coming into the realization of something that you didn't have previous. And it might be the realization that you needed to make changes in your life or that you're not in the right place or— so that realization and then actually taking the action. So it's kind of a 2-piece, making the realization or Finding that point where something's not working for you and then taking some action to whether you end up in a better place or not may or may not be true, but it's the action afterwards that makes a difference.

Yeah. And I assume that you've had those pivot moments.

Yeah. I don't think you get through life without them. It would be fairly— I mean, you'd be a teenager for your entire life. You have to get to a point where you actually

Which was painful. I just can only go by my own experience, but being a teenager was not an easy go of it. I mean, I think some of us when we get to be a certain age, we go, oh yeah, I would love to go back to the time when I didn't have to have a job and respond, you know, all that. But man, it was fairly torturous to be a teenager.

I agree. I feel quite sorry for people who say, these will be the best years of your life when you're a teenager, or those were the best years of my life. And I'm thinking, If every year isn't getting better or feeling like you're adding on to life, then you really stop living at some point. And again, that's going back to the pivot. It really has to— there's a constant learning, lifelong learning, lifelong implementation. And with that, every year, I mean, when I turned 30, people go, oh my gosh, you're turning 30. How do you feel? I don't feel any different. This is great. The 20s were much better than my teens. The 30s I'm expecting to be much better. And then when I turn 40, people are going, oh my gosh, you're turning 40. I'm going, well, hey, 30s were better than my 20s. I expect 40s to be better. And then when I turn 50, they're going, oh my gosh, you're turning 50. And the same thing happens every time. It's like every decade just feels like it gets better and better because there's so much richness that you can just continue to add to your own lives.

Yeah, it's wonderful to hear you say that, Barb. I mean, I'm kind of a Debbie Downer, I guess, in a second because I want to bring up a Or not so much the statistic, but the increase in a statistical segment of our world that is really disturbing. And I didn't expect that maybe our conversation would go here, but when I see how you've laid that out, this trajectory of higher and higher ground as a human being, you know, yeah, I had my challenges in my 20s, but it was a good time. Like, I enjoyed my 20s. And my 30s were not without challenge, but they were better than my 20s. And my 40s were better than my 30s and on and on and on. That's contrasted by the stark reality that a lot of people out there are taking their lives or attempting to. So suicide rates are up. I think the statistics don't actually tell the full story of the people who've attempted it or have thought about it seriously. And then there's another whole category of people that maybe haven't been in that place but are just unhappy or even depressed, are taking meds, Xanax and other things just to sort of get through a day. Ambien to go to sleep and this to get up. And I'm not knocking any of that because honestly, whatever works to keep you, get you to the next day, I think is important on some level. And yet, I think it's also important that we look at that and talk about it because I think part of the challenge for people who are feeling that way is the feeling as well that they're alone, that somehow there's something wrong with them or that they're alone and nobody can really relate to the feeling of My life doesn't feel great. I mean, that I don't love my life. So any thoughts on that? I was just kind of rambling through there, but—

Yeah. Wow. Geez, Adam, that's a huge topic. And I didn't hear that the suicide rates are going up and that is a little shocking. I'd be interested in knowing at what age the average increase is happening at. I heard— Oh yeah.

Good.

Did you hear that? Yeah.

Yeah. It's interesting because in different places in the world, it's different. groups of people. So in Australia, when we first started hearing about this, my wife and I were traveling and doing some business there and we heard that it was the largest segment by increase-wise in the suicide rate were sort of late teens into 20s. And we thought, wow, man, okay, that's really upsetting to hear that. And then only a year or two later, we're in the United States and there was a front page of the New York Times where the statistics of a 15-year research study on suicide in the US was published. US and Canada, it was sort of North American-based. And the highest increase, not the highest total number, but the highest increase were among women 50+ years old, 50 to 65. And I thought, wow, that's really disturbing to me that women at that age where I would think there's just all that goddess wisdom, there's all that understanding of life and having all this rich life experience, to be taking your life or thinking about it, considering or trying, attempting it, it was really disturbing. And obviously the military, there's just ridiculous numbers about military veterans that take their life on a daily basis, something like 22 or 23 that take their life every day. And then there's another demographic of very young teenage girls, still a very small number, but the uptick was significant. So any thoughts about what that might be and what the conversation ought to be there?

Yeah. I mean, obviously, they would be for various reasons and in the different demographics, you certainly have various concentrations of reasons. I've been looking a lot at millennials. I teach at the college and so I am— I guess the millennial age is just starting to finish up. My cutoff for that age is 2004. There's all kinds of different demographics on that and different ages and whatnot. But I find very interesting that the front end of the millennial demographic and the back end are very different types of people with a very different background. The front end are most likely to have been raised by boomers and the back end are most likely to be raised by Gen Xers. And so I think because there's been so much change, actually doesn't know how to manage this amount of this accelerated change that we're going through. And we don't know how to teach our children the different things that they have to encounter. We try to relate them to the things that we had when we were young, which are very different than the things that they have when they're young. Like, my youngest is at the end of the Gen Y and maybe considered a Gen Z depending on who you're talking to. And they're the generation that has grown up always connected. Like, there's lots of people who are always connected, but they don't know any different. They've never seen a time when they're parents didn't have phones when you couldn't text someone. So I think that there's a lot being lost in that communications on how you connect. Like, how do we become human beings as we grow up? How do we connect on a soulful level when we can't teach our children the things that we don't understand? And so there was a lot of pressure on parents to learn Not only what it is that you have to learn to become a parent, because you're a parent, right, Adam?

4.

Yeah, that's right. So, and I have 3, and my niece lived with us as well. So the 4 at dinner, I certainly understand that piece. When you have children, you go, you have the first kid and you go, oh my gosh, I've got a child. What do we do? Like, everything—

No manual.

There's no manual. And there's lots of people can teach you, but there's just really no way to know how Your interaction with your kid is going to go based on what your background is and what you've learned growing up and how you're going to interact and react. And then you have the second kid and then you have the third kid and you go, oh my gosh, we're now outnumbered. And like, how do you deal with this stuff? And so you're learning this and it's a huge learning component. I mean, every child when they get into school has different problems and like learning different learning disabilities and different psychologies and things like that I learned from my kids. And I applied to my business, which works really well helping other people be able to do things. But I think that is a huge amount to learn. But the fact that we as Gen Xers and baby boomers would have been even more difficult, had to learn all of this tech at an age when it wasn't easy for them to learn it. You weren't growing up with it. You didn't easily get put into it. You didn't use it when you were a kid. Everything that you did was so much more analog. I think that there's a disconnect with relationships and teaching relationships to people who are so connected.

Yeah, it is, it is an interesting thing. And we probably won't go much further down that path in this conversation, but there feels like there's all this sort of online connection and offline loneliness.

Yeah.

And so it's really an interesting thing to be observing how tied to this the devices we are tied to technology. And even like you say, I grew up without any of that. And yet now it's so much a part of my daily experience of living. I'm not saying I would choose it, but I do choose it. So it's not a matter of even whether I would, I do. I pick up the phone, I look at it, and we're constantly on it for what, quote, business reasons or what have you, but for a lot of things. And yeah, the idea that we are spending so much time sort of looking down at a device and not necessarily looking up at the world around us is— might sound like it's pretty far-out stuff, but it's true. It doesn't take a lot to look at people in your environment around wherever you are and see where their attention is focused. I mean, at a meal, people are focused, even in a public place, in a restaurant, sitting at a table and they're looking at their phones and they're looking at their phones in the airport and they're looking at their phones while they're walking. Literally walking, as we know, so many of us walking and texting, walking and reading a post or making a post. I mean, it's like, it's fairly interesting and it's going to be great for sociologists to be writing about, right? 20 years from now.

It's going to be lots to research. Yes, that's for sure. And it's funny, today is actually The day that we're recording this, Adam, is Bell Let's Talk Day, which is a big movement by Bell to bring awareness to mental illness. And I have quite a few friends that I have that have gone through something, either someone in their family or themselves, and it is a difficult thing to live with. It's a difficult thing to understand. And even when you know people and you have to go through it yourself, it's still difficult to deal with.

Yeah, I mean, look, just that label, mental illness, and I have a client of mine who's got a foundation called Journey's Dream that's all about bringing increased awareness to mental illness, and our foundation is called Feels Like, and the foundation this year is going to be committing resources to doing a youth TEDx event where kids get to just speak into and tell their stories of what peace feels like to them as a part of Bringing that conversation about suicide and about mental or the times when mentally we're not well. See, I just feel like there's so much charge around mental illness that we lump mental illness with somebody that's diagnosed as schizophrenic or something.

Yeah.

Right?

You're right.

Or has borderline or personality disorder with somebody who's just like, I've got a bit of a chest cold. A bad day. Yeah. And it's working through me and I'm getting better and a week from now I won't have a chest cold. But when I'm sick, I'm sick.

Yeah.

So when we're not feeling well mentally about ourselves and our life and whatever that looks like for people feeling lonely and without some hope or something, yeah, I mean, that could also be very akin to having a flu or something.

Yeah.

So what's the day that we're— as you just mentioned earlier today?

It's today. It's called Bell Let's Talk Day, and I'm not sure if it's specifically a Canadian thing, but

Let's

Talk.

Yeah.

Yeah. So if they donate 5 cents for every post that is put up with the hashtag, I think it's Bell Let's Talk.

And is that Bell Labs or is that what you're talking about?

Bell Communications and their phone systems. Yeah, Bell Canada.

Beautiful. No, that's great to hear. So I would love to dig into the pivot that took you from— I mean, so you were obviously going down a certain path at a certain point professionally and you You had a moment. So what was that like?

Yeah. It's funny because I think what happened, I've been a part of a family business. Like my family had businesses for generations and growing up to a certain point, we were part of that. And then my parents both went and got blue-collar jobs or white-collar jobs. And when I grew up, I changed the way I thought about entrepreneurship, not really realizing that every job that I had, I got it because I knew the business owner. So I was always connected to the business owner. I was always kind of on the inside of what was going on because they would be friends of the family. I'd know when they were having financial problems. I remember when my parents had the loan friends of ours back in the '80s when the interest rates went through the roof and their interest rate had come up and they had a payment that needed 20% interest on it, 18% interest, I can't remember. They were gonna lose their house. So I can remember they had a business that was doing really well. They had several employees and they were going to lose their house. And getting to this point where I realized this is a really tough thing for people to do, but I was still an employee at that time. As I went through all the tech and all the education and the jobs working in medical device and doing technical writing, I came out the other end of that wanting to be more connected to my kids. And I live in a city that's just outside of Toronto and I was commuting. I tell this story a lot that I would leave at 7 o'clock in the morning. My husband would be getting my babies out of bed and I'd come home at 7 o'clock at night and he'd be putting them to bed. And I'm going, why am I mother? Like, why did I do this? This is crazy. I took on motherhood and I couldn't actually even be around when my kids were up. So I decided to start a business that did technical writing for medical device and software development. And in the first 6 years of that business, I had other engineers that were doing technical writing for me and whatnot, but I found that I was more interested in helping my clients be able to make money on their technical writing. Like, I was interested in the business for them. I wanted to see them become really successful. And I kept seeing incredible business owners that were like fighting to keep their businesses open, that were taking incredible products to market that were changing people's lives. And all I was doing was technical writing. Like, it just wasn't enough. I really wanted to help them on a different level. So I spent those 6 years investing about $60,000 in my knowledge of how businesses worked. And that's kind of where the pivot happened. But there's a very specific story that kind of shifted me because I had no plans on actually giving up that business or not doing that work. I had been offered to take over another person's business. They wanted to sell their business. And their business was to help new business owners become successful. And she had seen in me exactly what it was that I couldn't see in myself. The person who wants to see other people successful, that cared enough to actually step up and do the work, and that knew what it was that people needed, like instinctively knew it. And then my training made it easier. And during that kind of negotiations, I realized that her business wasn't the right business for me. But that I was in the wrong business. That was like literally that weekend. It was a 2-day event where I just spent the whole weekend evaluating her business and what I'm doing and why I wanted to do it. And I came out of that weekend going, oh my gosh, I'm, I'm in the wrong business. I'm glad I'm in business, but I'm not doing the right thing. I can't make a difference. I'm not fulfilling my purpose. I can't help people on the level that I know I'm able to do, doing the work that I'm doing right now. And That's when I changed, and that was 10 years ago now, 2009, when that change happened.

Wow. The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new. But the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about, and it's the reason why my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other Free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So, go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. Yeah. And that's got to be in that moment like it is for all of us when we are going to contemplate making a change. That's sort of the pivot by design is what we call these terms we use like pivot by design and then pivot by default. So when you design that pivot, there's one sort of process that you go through and hills and valleys and things. And then sometimes when you ignore the call, you know, that urge to do something or that wisdom or guidance that seems to be coming from within, and you ignore it because fear says no, or other people or circumstance or lack of whatever you want to call it, those limiting beliefs say no, then sometimes those pivots happen by default, as in, you know, the universe just— Says, well, you don't want to change voluntarily.

I'm going to make that happen for you.

I feel like it's an old movie, some old like mafia movie or something. There's 2 ways we can do this here. Do this easy way or we can do this the hard way. And I don't know that there's any easy way, but you were on the design side.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know that it's any easier because when you're forced to do it, Everybody around you has to fall in line because there's no options. So you may not get buy-in, but you get understanding. Okay, it has to happen because whatever. But when you're designing it, you have to pitch it to everybody. So you're like, your inner salesperson has to really step up and say, okay, I'm doing this because I'm making this change. This is the benefit. And for your spouse or your partner, you have to be really clear about this because it's really hard to be Unless you happen to be a serial entrepreneur as well, it's very hard to be a partner of someone who's an entrepreneur when you are an employee and have an understanding of, okay, you just put 6 years into this business. Now you're doing what? This isn't a free-for-all. You have to make money. You have to do things. So it is difficult.

Yeah. I think the way you just turned— how you explained that was really eloquent because, yeah, when it's not your choice on some level because your job ends or you get fired or whatever the circumstances are that lead to a change, People don't have to necessarily be bought in, but they understand. There's a rally cry because it's sort of like, okay, it's do-or-die time, right? But on the design side, you've got to be a salesperson. You've literally got to get the buy-in. You've got to pitch what you're doing to other people because you need their involvement. You need their support. You need their understanding at a minimum. That's a very challenging thing at times for folks.

Yeah, I think one thing that makes it better is if you're choosing to be around the right people. I mean, you can't always Choose your family. My parents didn't necessarily understand what I was doing at any point in time. In fact, most of the time they just said, oh, she's in computers.

My parents still don't really understand. When I was a lawyer, they got that. Oh, he's a lawyer. Yeah.

Lawyer, doctor. Yes. Those are the things that it's easy for all of us to understand. But when you're making this kind of pivot, and I do talk a lot about who is it that you spend a lot of time with, we've all heard that statement. You are the combination of the 5 people you spend the most amount of time with. I know that there is a doctor at Harvard University that said that 95% of your successes or failures can be contributed to who you spend your time with, your reference groups.

Yes.

And so I think when we want to make changes that are easier for us, we need to first take it to the people who are going to support us because their buy-in and their acceptance, because they're going to go, oh, I'm not sure I understand. Tell me more. That's really interesting. Have you thought of this? Because they're gonna buy in with you and they're gonna help you find the way through it. And then afterwards, you can go back and tell your parents or that sibling that always thought of you as, finally, they're doing something crazy because, you know, they've always been the good person and now I can be the good person, whatever your relationships are.

Sure.

And leave them to later because you don't have to have full buy-in from them then. It makes it easier.

Yeah. In our book, we call it your pivot people, the stakeholders.

Okay. I like it.

Yeah. So

your book is on my book list, but it's my book list is Like, it just never gets shorter. Do you have that problem?

Without a doubt. Without a doubt. You know what's helped me recently is that I love to listen to books while I'm on the elliptical machine at the gym. So I absolutely love being able to do 2 really positive things for my mind and my body at the same time. So our book, they are, because it was absolutely a village that took to produce the book Pivot. There's an Audible version. I read the book.

I like your voice that I can listen to.

Exactly, right. I actually lost my voice, interestingly enough, when I read that book because 4 days, it took 4 days to read about 70,000 words and there was just no, you know, I'm used to speaking to people for days and days and days on end at our trainings and things like that and I've never lost my voice. But after 4 days of speaking in a room, in a soundproof room with a microphone and no interaction, no energy at all, being exchanged between myself and anybody else when I lost— was in laryngitis mode the next week, which I'd never had happen before. So it's really interesting. So for that reason alone, go get the Audible, right?

Perfect. Thank you.

The thing I wanted to track, which is also part of the topics that we cover in the book, but relative to these times in our life when we're getting people to buy in Getting ourselves to buy in. This is not an easy transition for a lot of folks. And so, you can become depressed. I mean, it can contribute to that feeling of, oh, I am alone, because being an entrepreneur, solopreneur, can be a lonely or it can feel like a very solitary existence at times because you don't have a business that's so fully matured that you've got 100 employees and All that kind of thing going on. And you specialize in working with companies that are under 50 and all that kind of thing. So, to me, the term that we are fascinated by and the research that we've been looking at has been incredible on the topic of resilience, of how through those times and through that period that can sometimes last years, how is it that you create resilience? So, I'd love to know what your own personal understanding of resilience is, maybe even definitionally. Yeah. The language that you use for it and how important you think it is actually to small entrepreneurs, small business owners.

Resilience is a word that is really becoming popular. I would say it's come into my awareness within the last year because it's not a word that I've used myself. And I recognize it as being very valuable. And I guess I just describe in a lot more words, not as succinct as resilience. When you're going through those pieces, particularly at the beginning of owning a business, there's that feeling, I'm not doing enough, I'm not enough, I'm not making enough. Because when you start a job, you immediately get a paycheck. And when you start a business, you don't. And when people look in from the outside, the only way that people can judge whether you're doing well is whether you've got a paycheck or not. And so it's really easy to feel like you are not Competent, you're not capable, you're not as good as other people. And that's— you were talking about the depression that comes along, and it can be very overwhelming for small business owners to manage this. They start hiring other people and they're still not getting— you know, I have clients that I'm 3 years in, I've got 5 people working for me, I got 10 people working for me. When do I get to take a paycheck? That understanding that there's this always this piece that's really almost— it feels like it's out of their control. So I think resilience is really about being able to understand what you really have control over, what really is and isn't, when you're not good at something and when you are good at something, because you can be really good at business and still take 8 months to break even and another 2 years before you start becoming successively profitable. So if you don't understand or know these things, and knowledge makes everything a little bit easier. As long as the knowledge is relevant to what you're trying to do and is real and true. I mean, just knowing things isn't enough, but knowing things that are helpful makes it easier to get through what you're trying to get through. Does that make sense?

It makes perfect sense. I think there's a lot of parts to resilience. So the part that I don't hear all the way all the time being discussed is what you just said. So it was really— that's helpful for a lot of folks to understand that You can't bury your head in knowledge gathering because I think there's a lot of sort of professional seminar-goers, that kind of thing called seminar junkies and the like. And you can get caught up in that, I'm a learner, I'm a student, and you're perpetually a learner and a student. We know that when we're sort of at college age, we'll take— we'll look okay at a person who's getting that second degree in the fifth year, right? Maybe goes back to get a grad, post-grad degree, whatever. But at some point, if we get to be like 35 years old and we're still attending college courses exclusively, there's a problem, right? Because it becomes a failure to launch situation. And we know we have to launch because talk about learning, you learn so much more in the game than you do even just looking at the game or studying the game. But what you've brought up is that while you're in the game, learning can help you to feel more confident. Yeah. feeling whatever it is you might be feeling, alone or solitary or even depressed, listening to podcasts where the topic is brought up, reading material and finding out more about things and being curious, I think is a big part of how it is that you can feel more empowered and know that you're A, not alone, and B, that you've got, always have options.

Yeah, it's funny because, and you may have done this for your kids when they were smaller, but I know when my kids were little, and it's funny because I, I also hear this from my clients, is when something was new to them, they would say, oh, I tried that and I'm not very good. I don't want to do it again. And I would look at them and go, what? You're not an expert? You're not the best in the world at this? You've tried it once and you don't have it down pat? I don't understand. And again, another piece of resilience is the humor. If you can add humor to the things that are going on without belittling people through humor, but I find that now my kids just roll their eyes at me and go, right. I need to do it more than once to be able to say that I actually don't like it, which is fine. But you can never say that I can't do that because if someone's capable of doing it, so are you. Right. I believe that we're all capable of learning something if we're interested enough in learning it and taking the time to actually practice the new actions that you have to do to make yourself better at it. So I just kind of love that idea of learning. It isn't about spending time filling your head with new information. It's about how can I make my actions better? How can I become a better person at everything that I do. And that's where the learning fits into life.

Yeah. I love that, Barb. That's just terrific. I would love to know a little bit about your own personal rituals for success. And you can share one or a couple if you like. But yeah, because this is the kind of thing that buoys us in times when— so to keep the theme in place here, that where we are feeling like we're underwater just a bit. To me, this is like that buoy that you can put both arms around and it will keep you above the water. Those rituals that you have

Yeah. Well, and you spoke of gratitude earlier. So I think key one that it's, it's specific to me and how I spend my time when I'm alone and where my mind goes when I want to spend time meditating is around gratitude, that kind of spiritual connection to the universe and that everything that is downloaded. And I feel extremely wealthy in that aspect of my life. And I would say the second thing that is A big part of the ritual of how I spend my life is who I spend my life with. So again, back to this, the people that I spend time with, there are people in my life and we all have them that are, they have their own way of doing things. They don't completely align, but I love them anyway. But I don't spend huge amounts of time with them because the people that energize me, that I can spend an hour with or 3 days with, and I'll still leave with more energy and more ideas and—

Mm-hmm.

I'll feel better about myself and they'll feel better about them. Like, we just work in a synergy. So I have selected people that are, as I go through my life, and I check in with them regularly. So I have 4 people that I check in with on a regular basis and we have phone calls on a regular basis. And some of them are local enough that we can actually get together on occasions and some of us aren't. We just, if we see each other once a year or once every couple of years, that's fine. But we see each other on Zoom. Once a week or once a month. It makes a huge difference when you can describe what's going on in your life with someone who is going to listen, is going to understand, is not going to let you get away with just poo-pooing yourself all the time. So they're going to make you step up. And they're also going to celebrate the wins with you and they're going to feel with you when things aren't really going the way that you want. So I find it very important.

That's so beautiful too, Barb. That's a really tangible and tactical piece of advice that you just gave to everybody.

It's how I think.

I'm sort of restating it for the purpose that I think people should want to write that down. Remember that, that to have a regular group of people, those people that you're curating that environment with for that purpose, where, as you say, they're holding you to a higher standard, helping you hold yourself to a higher standard. Celebrating the wins with you and doing all that great stuff is terrific. I mean, Yogananda said long, long ago that environment is stronger than will. So that an environment is so very important, the people that are around us and the environment that we create for ourselves in every waking moment that we have. And we get to do that at the beginning of every day. And today we all got to wake up. Which was an incredible gift, tremendous. Like you said, gratitude. I am grateful that you woke up today, darling, and I am grateful that I woke up, and I'm grateful that everybody that's checking this out right now and listening, maybe watching, et cetera, woke up to the day, and what a blessing that is. And we hopefully, and this is my prayer now, that we all get to do that again tomorrow. I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof Podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take It'll take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. And I would love for everyone, when you wake up tomorrow, that you have some moment, just even a brief moment as you're lying in bed— this is my waking ritual— that you have this awareness for just a moment that it is in fact special. It's a sacred moment. It's a holy moment. Not religious, if it isn't your bag, but it's spiritual to me that you realize that there is something Really not ordinary at all and not certainly not something to be taken for granted of that you're given another day. And in that moment where you have that awareness, if you're also inclined to create an even more rich context for your day, this is a ritual that you can start your day with that creates a context and environment on an internal level. And that is to put your feet on the floor and take 10 seconds to feel appreciation for yourself, love, unconditional love and appreciation for you, then maybe even declare these words out loud. I love my life. I love my life. I love my life. Barb, do you love your life?

Oh my gosh, I do love my life. And when I heard you say that the first time when I was listening to one of your other podcasts, I thought, wow, that is so beautiful. And I totally agree. The first time I ever learned that, and I would say it's about 20 years ago, in that transitional time in my late 30s, when I said to myself the first time, I love my life, I remember crying. I couldn't understand why I'd never said this before. And I'm actually feeling a little sensitive about it right now. It is such a beautiful moment when you realize that you can love yourself first. And what a difference it makes on how you show up for other people.

Yes, it's the ultimate giving. It's a very interesting riddle. As we know, we live long enough, we realize life is just filled with riddles. This is just one of them. So what a blessing to have you on the show today. Thank you for being our guest.

Thank you so much for having me.

Awesome, Barb. We'll see you guys soon. Ciao for now. Of course, as always, we'd love to get your comments. So adamarkel.com/podcast to leave a comment. There'll be full show notes as well so you can find out more about Barb and her business and the way that she works with small business owners and entrepreneurs. So, please go ahead and read the show notes as well. Join our Facebook page at startmypivot.com. It'll get you right to the front door. But we'll see you very soon. Ciao for now. Bye, everybody.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own pivot. Help us inspire Inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcasts. For more tips, strategies, and support as you consciously pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love, join our Pivot community on Facebook at pivotfb.com.