Sink or Swim: Managing Your Emotions in a Volitile Market

Hey everyone, welcome. This is Catherine with Titan Impact Group where we love to collapse timelines and add commas to bank accounts. And I am really excited because today we are talking about a portion of investing that I feel is the most important part. And it's around being an accredited versus a non accredited investor. And how do you get there? But, but not from the financial standpoint, but from the emotional standpoint, that's what we're going to talk about. And given that what's happening in the market, all the volatility and the turmoil that's happening and why companies would rather work with accredited versus non accredited investors. And yes, there's a financial component to it, but it really comes down to the emotional piece that the emotional maturity that are accredited investors have versus non accredited. And we can actually address that and deal with that while adding commas to bank accounts to get people to the financial position where they are accredited. And what I've done is I actually asked a really good friend of mine to join us and her name is Tina Greenbaum and here's why I love her, is that I've known Tina for years and we actually met, funny enough sitting in a little coffee shop and and had an amazing conversation about parenting teenage twins. And she gave me an obscene amount of insight into how their brains were working and what was going on and how to actually use that to my benefit, which is really great. And what I love is that she works with investors and business owners and works with them so that they become savvy investors and business owners. She's an author, a speaker speaker, a therapist. She's actually a TED Talk speaker. She has her own TED Talk, which is really exciting. And you know, she's a mom and a wife and a grandma, but really a truly extraordinary friend, a friend of mine. And what I love is that she has this way of working with people through many modalities on how to have accurate thinking and accurate, accurate emotions when it comes to being in business and investing and how to deal with the volatility of the market. So yes, there's the financial volatility, but with that comes the emotional volatility and having to deal with the monkeys that are going on with that. So Ms. Tina, I'm so happy to have you here today with us talking to everybody about something that's really, really important inside of building their portfolios.

Absolutely. And Katherine, thank you so much. We do have a love fest between the two of us and I'm delighted to be here with all of you. Katherine has and we Kind of started talking about this. Now, again, we've known each other for quite a while and it was like, duh. You know, I would be talking about the emotional side and she'd be talking about the investing side. Well, why don't we put it together and see if we can help people manage both. Katherine is a genius in what she does in terms of all the accurate thinking around investing. And hopefully I have enough experience to kind of both personal and professional, I have to tell you, dealing with the emotional side of being an investor. So, Kathryn, we talked a little bit also about if you were an Olympic level athlete. Now, again, if you're talking about investing and you're talking about investing thousands, hundred, thousands, millions of dollars, you're in the big game. You're not just a small person, you know, with a couple dollars that you can lose or gain. Right? So I like to say that if you are an Olympic level athlete, you would no sooner go out there to compete without training. The mental side, you know, the mind and the body work together. I like to think of it as an instrument. And when we fine tune this instrument, then we can handle so much of what comes our way, you know, emotionally.

Well, especially nowadays, like, you know, everybody's clear. I mean, there's this, like some people, like, we're in a recession, we're not in a recession. Whatever. The recession's coming. Whether you believe it's here or not, it's coming. And we know that it's cyclical. All markets are cyclical. There's always, you know, good times, there's always bad times. But how do we deal with that and more importantly, prepare for it, get out in front of it so that now we can actually use it for our highest and best views. Right? That's what I'm interested in, you helping people walk through.

Okay, so before we even kind of go there to the things that you can do, I'm just going to tell you just a little sample of an experience that I had with a client. This person was, at 32 years old, a wild and crazy entrepreneur with ideas that were as big as the universe. He started the first international art fair in America. He bought European galleries to the US Nobody had ever done that before. So he was really disrupting the art business. And for three years he was a celebrity. Wined and dined in France and the south of France and all kinds of places. There was a point where people who had been in the art business much longer than him were suggesting, you know, take this show to New York, take the Print dealers take this show to New York. That's where the action. It's not in Washington, D.C. where he started it. And then the very, very fine art dealers said, let's take the paintings to Chicago. But he thought he was right. He thought he was going to stay where he was because he was afraid of the unions in New York, and he was afraid of some other things. Long and short. The print dealers went to New York. The art, you know, the fine art dealers went to Chicago, and he lost that show. But for 12 years, 12 years of his life, he attempted to put it back together. And he was talking about the business and the business and the business, but emotionally he never did the work. And that's kind of, for me, just, you know, kind of a glaring example of somebody who was quite brilliant. And unfortunately, his life took a really, really kind of downturn and he never, never, never experienced the potential that he had.

Right. And I know how deeply that's impacted you because we've talked about it a lot. You know, just like for me, we had friends back in 2008, 2009, the last time, you know, everybody knows what happened back then. A lot of people lost everything and had to start over. We actually had friends of ours, a husband and wife that actually committed. You know, like, had they actually actually had accurate thinking and had their be able to weather the storm emotionally, they wouldn't have done that, right? I mean, people commit suicide because they feel like there's no other options, right? And it comes down to the emotional. Like all human beings make choices and actions based on emotions, right? And the emotions, there's some inaccurate thinking there. If we haven't actually done that internal work, right? And so knowing what we're coming into, what we're already dealing with on many levels, like that is my main concern and wanting to give people, like take them to the gym, so to speak, develop that muscle, right? Because when we can go to the gym and the proverbial gym and develop that emotional muscle, develop that accurate thinking, then what does that actually give them, right? So in the spirit of collapsing timelines and adding commas, I mean, that's why you're here, is because I know for my own self, you've done a ton of work with me over the years, my kids, other investors, other clients to help them, you know, be able to get through this. So the question is, like, you know, a lot of people and I, we just got back from a conference and people have asked, how did you turn out the way you turned out, Catherine? Like, my Background, you know, coming from, you know, growing up in multiple homes, you know, being born to a, you know, 14 year old mother, multiple homes, 13 different schools. Didn't learn to read till I was in the eighth grade. Finally got adopted at 16. I mean, just so some really horrific things happening, like how did I turn out? And I'm crystal clear it's because I did the internal work, right? Like I am the woman I am today because I chose to dig in, lean in and do the work. You know, was it uncomfortable? Yeah. But was it necessary and worth it? Absolutely. Right. Like, I'm clear I am where I am today. You know, I have an investment bank. I have a pretty substantial investment portfolio, multiple streams of income, you know, and a part of it is when my husband died unexpectedly four years ago, like very tragically like that ripped the carpet out from underneath me. But because I knew that I needed to do the emotional work and I had done so much leading up to that, I was able to get back up on my feet with my, you know, my twins and create a life that actually works for all of us. But it's only because I chose to get responsible and do the work, right? I did the work beforehand, during and after, and, you know, still continue to do the work. So. And Tina, you've been a huge part of that inside of, you know, I. Why I have been able to get back up after all of that and continue growing. So for people knowing that it's coming into a recession and already feeling that anxiety, that angst, everything, like, what is it that they can do to turn this for their own benefit and actually have it be productive for their lives, much like you've helped me.

So there are. This is a vast subject, but we're going to just kind of look at the pieces and I'm going to use Catherine as a perfect example because when she talks about doing the work, what does the work look like? The work looks like becoming aware. You know, the definition of mindfulness is, you know, kind of thrown around now as a, as a New age term. But mindfulness is an ancient practice. It's being aware in the present moment without judgment. So we're going to come back to that. But just, you know, you want to even write some notes down because this is just a wonderful definition. Every time you start to go down the spiral of fear, the first question that you want to ask yourself, and I do this every time I start to feel that anxiety. What's in my control, what's out of my control? It's a simple Kind of thing, and it starts to put things in perspective. But let's go back and look at again, you're an Olympic level athlete. What are the things that you need to know? Number one, you need to know how to focus. You need to know when you're in focus, when you're out of focus. We get so distracted by so many things. How do you work best? What are the days and, you know, what are the times of the days that you work best? Many people, again, when they're under a lot of pressure, it's, I got to do more, I got to do more, I got to do more. The brain is not designed that way. There are chemicals and, you know, transmitters that kind of go off like this when the brain is on overload. When the brain is on overload, we cannot think clearly. So when it comes back to the partnership that Katherine and I have is she will help you to think very clearly, to get the accurate thinking about what is happening as best as she can see from her experience. This big kind of view and mentally and emotionally, that's the piece that we need to work on. So we need to know when to focus, when we're in focus, when we're out of focus, there's a broad focus.

I remember when I was taught that that changed mine and my kids lives forever. Like, for me, it's like my brain wakes up ready to go 5:00am and I've got till about 1:00 clock and then I'm done.

Yes, yes. And knowing that the brain can only hold about 90 minutes at a time of that laser, laser, laser kind of focus again, There are neurotransmitters that are operating to help us do that. After 90 minutes or so, everything shifts and changes. It is time to get outside. It is time to garden. It is time to go to the gym, take a walk, do something, get on the phone with a friend, do something where you are not using those same chemicals. And then your brain kind of has a chance to regenerate and, and most importantly, it's the time when the creative thinking happens. You know, when you're just falling off to sleep or when you're in the shower, or you take, oh, I could do this, or oh, I, yeah. And then. And the brain does the work for us. It connects the dots in the ways that we cannot do it with this heavy duty thinking brain. So focus, narrow focus, broad focus, times of day, those kinds of things. The next thing everybody tells you, when you're feeling stressed, take a breath. It's a very, very, very Important thing to do because it is the only voluntary mechanism that we have that can change our nervous system in an instant. So when we get, when our stress level, let's just say that this is called your window of tolerance, right? So as long as we're in our window of tolerance and we're investing, we're doing the things and we're working, we're good. But as soon as the stress level hits your nervous system's capacity for stress, then the stress response happens. Okay? The hands get clammy, the heart starts racing, we lose concentration. We absolutely cannot think. So if you think about making decisions and when you're making decisions and clear decisions, are you making them when you're under a lot of stress where you're not really seeing the whole landscape, or are you utilizing some of these things that we're talking about to be able to make good, accurate, clear decisions? Sometimes as leaders, it's really good to make really fast decisions. And other times it's like, no, no, no. That's a really dangerous thing for me to do. So again, being aware and knowing yourself, I call this an instrument. Your mind and your body work together. Now I want to go back to the breath for a second because it's great to take a breath when you're feeling anxious. But just imagine that if you went to the sort of the breath gym and you did your breathing and you learned how to expand your, you know, your lungs and you're bringing in lots of oxygen on a regular basis. The goal of all of this is here comes the stress. Just another problem, right? That's the goal. Honestly, that's the benefit of doing all this work is being able to manage this window of tolerance and have great, greater and greater, greater amount of tolerance for, for stress. So, so we've got focus, we've got relaxation. Now the big one, dealing with negative self talk. This is the one that takes everybody out. The monkey, unfortunately. You know, your friends who have this inaccurate thinking. Depression comes from feeling hopeless and helpless. Those are the two qualities. As clinicians, we're always looking for how people are thinking on those things. If you don't know the answer, ask for help. You can't possibly know everything you know. Again, we look at the world through our lens. You know my TED talk I talked about, we create pat. There are patterns that are created in childhood that impact us as grown ups. How many of you have studied yourselves as much as you study your markets and you study your business?

Right?

I mean, that's really the bottom line. It's not like you have to go back into deep pain and all of this, but we have skills, you know, for a lot of the training that I don't need the whole story, but to be able to connect the mind and the body. These are my emotions, this is what I'm feeling, this is how I'm thinking. How are these two things related? In our culture we just talk about being above the neck, we're looking for logic. But as Katherine said earlier, we make decisions based on emotion.

Well, and I feel like people are becoming more and more aware than ever before. That connection, right, that self awareness. I'm noticing way more people have it, which is brilliant.

Which is again, you know, I've been in this field for many, many, many years and people say, oh, there's nothing wrong with me. No, there's nothing wrong with you. These are skills just like things that you learned in school. And how many of you actually studied these skills? What I like to say in my business is what I talk about is common knowledge. There's nothing I'm going to say to you that you haven't heard these words before.

Right.

Common practice. How many of you actually have a practice? I just talked to a young man yesterday, a friend of mine, a young 30 year old brilliant entrepreneur, got ideas and family connections and hadn't talked to him in a while and he had kept breaking appointments with me and I looked and we finally get on and he's exhausted. He said, I am totally burnt out. He said I'm not ready for all of this success. I need to build my foundation. And again, how many of you have built the foundation that's really, really, really strong, that can withstand some of these ups and downs?

Again, well, and understanding it is going to happen, like that's the piece. It's like we all know ups and downs are going to happen. So what are you doing to prepare for it mentally, emotionally? Like what are, you know, it's like we, we eat healthy, we brush our teeth, we exercise, but what are we doing to take care of the other piece, which is like the mental and the emotional piece that's connected to all of it. Right. And it's like what are you doing to essentially like, you know, brush your teeth emotionally or you know, like, you know, mentally or emotionally? Like what is that that you're doing so that it actually supports you when it happens? And it's again, recessions happen, life happens. Now our job is to prepare for it so that we can weather it right and have accurate thinking.

Absolutely. Which then takes us to the next piece is dealing with fear. There are two wonderful sayings that I love about fear. One is it's the only thing that gets smaller as you get closer. Because most of us, when we come to scary things we avoid, we don't want to look at it.

Right.

And that builds up its own level of pressure. And I don't know what the percentage is. It's something somewhere in the 90s, 95% of illnesses are stress related.

Wow.

This behooves you, no matter whether it's money or whatever, to learn these skills, to be able to manage all of this so that your unconscious doesn't manage you, that you actually manage it, that you have enough relationship and know how to access these deeper parts of you so that you can sit down and say, what, what's really going on here? Oh, I get it. Oh, my heart feels like it's hurting. It feels like I'm stuck. Okay, now that I am aware, what am I going to do about it?

So I love that you're pointing this out because when it comes to companies like mine that we would prefer to work with accredited versus non accredited investors, it's because they have done that emotional work. Because fear is going to happen when you're making an investment. You know, you, you need to understand it could go either direction. We're going to do everything we can to mitigate it, to obviously have, go in the direction we want it to. But sometimes life happens like Covid, right. That derailed an obscene amount of projects and investments. The whole world. What do you do in that situation? Right? So accredited investors are like, although they don't like it, you know, nobody likes to lose money or make less than what you had projected. They're like emotionally having a conversation with them is like, they've got emotional, like you know, emotional eq emotional intelligence, emotional maturity that they're like, I get it, I don't like it, but I get it. Where a non accredited investor, well, sometimes they lose their mind because they haven't developed that skill and understand how to deal with the fear, how to deal with the unknown, how to deal with, you know, all of that. So it's, it's understanding that piece of what as well as the financial piece, like the, it's the emotional piece. And I talk to a lot of companies like mine, we all are, you know, there's the PETA factor, the pain in the YouTube, you know what. Which if a non accredited investor hasn't done the emotional work, they kind of get put into that category where the, you Know, somebody who has done the emotional work. It's like, okay, we can do this. We're on this ride together.

Because you have a skill set that you can see things very clearly. Okay, if I move over here, then the consequences are this. If I do this. And the consequences are that we're dealing with reality.

Yes.

As opposed to. You know, one of the things that happens with fear a lot is we come into a very irrational place.

Right.

That kind of creep in. What if this happens? And what if that happens? And what if that happens? You know, I was just telling a quick story about God bless my sweet husband. You know, he teaches tennis, and he just has a fabulous, fabulous practice every day. Every day. Every day. People love him. And then it rains, and then he's not working. And then that child. And he has enough awareness at this point to know that, oh, that scary part is coming. He doesn't need to worry about his tennis. Two or three days of rain in California is not going to ruin this business yet. Those kinds of things, they may sound silly, but they're not. And sometimes when we micromanage and we look at every little detail, we are not seeing. Seeing the big picture. And we don't have the capacity to really bring in these tools. Oh, this is the way I need to be thinking right now. This is what I'm feeling. I'm feeling really anxious. I'm feeling really scared. How come?

Right. And what can I do about it?

What can I do about it?

Like, that's the bigger thing. How. What can I do about it so that it doesn't develop into this big thing.

Yes.

Yeah.

So Catherine and Erlaine, who was behind the scenes back there, and Laura, who's also, you know, sort of behind the scenes. We meet weekly.

We do. Yeah. For years.

For years. You know, we go through books and personal growth books and business books, and we.

And you have your book right there behind you. I can see mastery under pressure. Every time I see that, I think about. It's like forming a diamond.

Right.

Like, all that pressure. Like, people, again, ask, how did you become who you are with a completely, like, a ton of disasters in your life? Like, because I learned to use that pressure, you know, use it for my own good, you know, to turn it into something amazing. And everybody can as well. So I know we're coming to the end. I did want to let people ask questions, if anybody has questions, and I also want to let people know how to get a hold of you, because this is. This is a big deal. Again, anybody, any Investors, business owners. If you don't feel emotionally prepared to weather what's coming, I invite you to consider going to the gym with Tina, developing that muscle so that you can weather what's coming. It's coming. You just need to get out in front of it and use it for your benefit. And you can do that, you know, with Tina. So, Tina, how can people get ahold of you?

A couple things. One, and we can put it in the chat. Earlene, maybe you'll put it in the chat for us. If you would. That would be awesome. I have a quiz. It's called masteryunderpressure.net and you can see where you are. We didn't get to visualization, but there are five skills that. That you need to earn to learn. So you can take a quiz on that. You actually, you can. My calendar, I'll put in here as well. You can make an appointment to talk to me. And the third thing, we had three things.

Your book. Your book.

And I'll put that on here in the chat as well. You can get it on Amazon.

I love it. So I just want to thank you for. For your time. And, like, really, Tina, I just thank you for what you've done for me and my kids. You've been there for us through, really, my darkest hour, you know, so I'm clear that having you by my side, walking through, you know, this nightmare with us, it made a huge difference to me and my kiddos. So for you, I'm forever grateful. And I'm grateful for you working with our investors to get them to the place where they're dealing with their own emotions, to have accurate thinking, to become brilliant, accredited investors.

Awesome. We're just about out of time. If anybody wants to stay on for another minute or two. And if you have any questions, we're happy to answer them.

Absolutely. So if anybody has any questions, go ahead and raise your hand or unmute yourself. We are here. No questions. I think we made them think a lot, which is always a good thing.

Anybody. And I just want to thank those of you that came live. We had a really, really great response in terms of the number of people that signed up and that are interested in this. And we will be sending you the replays and sending those who didn't make it today.

Thank you, everyone.

Bye for now.