A Therapist’s Guide To Mental Wellness For Business Owners with Shulamit Ber Levtov

Andréa Jones (00:00):
If you feel like you're in a toxic relationship with social media, this is the episode for you. I'm excited to dive into today's conversation because I've been hearing a lot about how we want to delete Instagram off our phones and how Facebook and TikTok feels like it's dominating our lives. So I think this conversation will bring some enlightenment, hopefully some relief to all my business owners out there who feel completely dragged by social media. Let's get into it.

Intro (00:41):
Welcome to The Savvy Social Podcast, the show that blends stories and strategies to help businesses create engaged and profitable online communities using the unique power of social media. And now, your host, Andréa Jones.

Andréa Jones (00:58):
Listeners, you're in for a treat. Before I dive in today's episode, I got to remind you to grab your 15% off over at Riverside. Riverside is the podcast recording studio that we now use for our show. And y'all, they feel super luxurious. So head over to Riverside. You get 15, that's one 5% off all of their plans by using the code Drea, that's DREA at checkout. Click the link in the show notes to get started today for free. Shula, welcome to the show.

Shulamit Ber Levtov (01:32):
Thank you so much, Andréa.

Andréa Jones (01:34):
I'm excited to dive in this conversation because I just love your wisdom when it comes to business owners, specifically how we care for ourselves, because oftentimes we spend so much time pouring into our businesses that we forget about the human running the business. So I want to get a sense of how you specifically started working with business owners in their mental health and why that is so important to you.

Shulamit Ber Levtov (02:01):
Well, as I was growing my business, well, let me take one step back. So I graduated from school. Many of us who are in business for ourselves, we are great at what we do and don't know anything about running a business. And that was certainly my case where I graduated from a master's program that trained me to be an excellent therapist and didn't teach me anything about private practice. And in the process of learning about how to run a business like a business and growing my own practice and then a holistic clinic with associates, I experienced the emotional roller coaster and the fears that are associated with am I or aren't I going to make it? Is this or isn't this business going to survive? And I was also hanging out with other entrepreneurs in the business training programs that I was in. None of them were therapists, but I think I had a privileged position because people knew me as a therapist and were telling me things they wouldn't tell other people. And with my mental mind looking at or lens, let's say, looking at my emotional experiences with a business and hearing from other folks about their emotional experiences with running a business, I was like, there needs to be somebody who can support entrepreneurs, who understands the emotional side of things because the context of running a business and the emotional impact is very different from what folks who aren't business owners go through. And so that's how the entrepreneurs therapist was born.

Andréa Jones (03:31):
Oh, I want to talk more about the difference. So what is different about the emotional impact as business owners versus the laymen out there living their regular lives?

Shulamit Ber Levtov (03:40):
Well, I have a blog post, which I'll give you the link to put in the show notes about seven aspects of the mental health challenges that entrepreneurs face. And I won't list them here, but we can acknowledge that the nature of running a business, we're isolated, we're wearing all the hats. There's a lot at stake. There are many, many factors that have an impact on, there are demand on our resources emotionally. And also what comes up around folks that we're working with, clients or contractors or employees and the leadership role that we play. And these are all things that folks may or may not experience if they're not running a business. For example, the parent who's the CEO of the home has a lot of work to do. They're wearing a lot of hats around that. Or a leader who, a person who has a job but whose work is leading a team, let's say, they'll experience aspects of what an entrepreneur does as well. But for people who are running a business, we experience all these things more frequently, more intensely, and perhaps also more at the same time than folks who aren't business owners do. And I think it's the intensity and the frequency and the fact that they come together in our lives and experiences where folks might experience one here in one there, I think that really distinguishes the business owner's experience from the employee experience.

Andréa Jones (05:13):
Yeah, yeah, I totally see that. And I know for me personally, I went through an experience that made me realize that back in 2017, I had had my business for three years, hadn't really taken a break and completely burned out and was like, I am having what I think is a panic attack right now. This feels overwhelming. Is there any signals that we can look for? Maybe you can give us an example of a signal to look for a sign for before the burnout happens. Is there something that is a sign that like, Hey, you're about to have a panic attack at. Even the thought of an email, Andréa,

Shulamit Ber Levtov (05:54):
Well, that's a sign. That's a great sign. It's a late stage sign and not something that we would want for people to have to go through. And this is part of what I teach in my work. I call them the lead and lag indicators for your mental and emotional wellbeing. And so in my work, I support people in understanding what are the things, the lead indicators, what are the things that impact them and their lag indicators? How do they know they're being affected? And so I'm really appreciating that you're asking this question because being connected with ourselves and understanding the signals that we're receiving from ourselves, from our organisms and from our environment. For example, when things are going sideways, you might not be aware of it, but your partner might say, listen, honey, you've bit my head off five times already today and it's not even breakfast.

(06:43):
And that can be like, whoa, okay, wake up time, something's going on with me. And it can be an invitation to check under the hood. It's like these signals are not bad. They are invitations. Similarly, we might find that you might have difficulty sleeping that's not normal for you, and any abrupt change in your experience. So eating a lot when you never were a big eater or having no appetite when food was always a fun thing for you. Or if you find that the things that you used to do for fun are things that you're giving up on now that you just don't have the time or energy for. Those are some behavioral type signals to check under the hood. But also you might have on the inside feeling easily overwhelmed by your emotions crying at the drop of a hat. You can even have physiological symptoms like persistent headaches or digestive issues like a heartburn or here's the TMI department, but we're all friends here because it's really important to acknowledge. Constipation can be a thing too. When you're stressed out, your digestive system can just shut down, but each person has their own idiosyncratic lag indicators. Indicators that you've been affected by what you're going through. And it's really a question of becoming attuned to these so that when the signals show up to check, wait a minute, what's going on here?

Andréa Jones (08:15):
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's so important to think about that now before we get into the moment of burnout, because that moment is hard. Now you're also dealing with all of those symptoms, as you say, coming together all at once and then you're trying to solve the problem. So if you can think about it now, hopefully this episode is a signal to you to start thinking about what those signs look like. So I'm curious about social media and how social media plays a role in this because there are lots of studies done in relation to children, teenagers and effects on social media, but I don't really see a lot about adults. And then I definitely don't see a lot about business owners and the emotional impact. And I know for me personally, there's this huge amount of responsibility, especially because this is my job to be present and show up and be consistent when sometimes that's not possible or it's not accessible to me. And I know for business owners out there, they feel the same way. So do you have any insights on how social media plays a role into this mental health issue?

Shulamit Ber Levtov (09:24):
Well, I think it's at its root, no different from life. When we didn't used to have social media and we went to the chamber breakfast once a month and we saw people there who were apparently more successful than we are, we are, I mean, comparison is a human behavior. We do it because we have this alertness to belonging and community, which has to do with safety signals. It used to be way back when that if we were tossed out of our community, we would perish. And it sounds silly to say now because I mean just because you're not buds with the people at the Chamber of Commerce, you're not going to die. But yet it's, it registers on us that way. And so then even more so with social media where at the chamber, maybe we went once a month, maybe we went shopping on the main street, but we don't perceive them because we are interacting with those in three dimensions in real life, we see the real picture.

(10:31):
Whereas social media, the intensity, it's not like I'm shopping on a Saturday afternoon, I'm like morning, noon and night seeing, being exposed to. And what we see is not like we go into the shop door and look at the cute things they have in the shop, or we go into the graphic design studio and look at the posters of other people's stuff up on the wall. We're given a window into a curated view of these businesses and what they're presenting. And I'm not saying this is bad, I'm just saying this is how it is. They're presenting the information on these platforms with a purpose in mind, and we're affected by that. And we are equally vulnerable in those same situations to that comparison. And it's tough to remember, Hey, wait a minute, this is not the same as just walking down my main street. There's stuff going on here that is affecting me.

(11:40):
And to really kind of hold onto that truth while you're there, again, without saying any of this is bad because I don't believe that it's inherently bad. I think it's important to recognize going on and how you are affected by it so that you can navigate it autonomously with choice and awareness. Because I love social media, I love it. I love the social side of social media. I love being there and seeing the folks who are there and mostly connecting in the direct messages with folks with whom I feel a connection. That's so fun because I'm a social person. It's like chamber breakfast, but every day of the week. And I love that side of it. So it's not bad, it's just knowing what's going on and navigating it with awareness.

Andréa Jones (12:27):
Yeah, I'm a hundred percent with you. I love social media too, and I like the example of the chamber breakfast because if you had to spend all day with those same people, I think you'd feel the same emotional response, right? Overwhelmed by all of their conversations and the demands of having to be on an entertainer group of people. But going for breakfast, that's a one and done situation. I love that analogy because I think it really is helpful for business owners to kind of separate the two ideas between spending all day, scrolling on Instagram and jumping in for breakfast and then going about your day. Oh my gosh. So we're going to take a quick break. When we get back, I want to talk more about your personal approach to social media. I love all of your content, so we'll dive into that when we get back.

(13:20):
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(14:05):
Alright, and we are back. Alright, so I love how you show up on social media. So I want to dive into the nitty gritty of it all, specifically with your background as a therapist as well. I work with a lot of therapists and coaches and I feel like there are a lot of those people listening as well, and also someone who's managing their own social media. One of the things that I'm so committed to on this show is showing a real person doing it and not a marketer. We have our own ideas of what should be happening, but a lot of times it doesn't happen in reality. So I want to start with how you feel about social media. You said you love it. What's your favorite platform?

Shulamit Ber Levtov (14:48):
I like Instagram. I like it for its information. I mean, I've been on Instagram for a long time, so my affection for Instagram arose when it was a different space than it is now because all my peeps are there. I'm still, the love I feel for it is for the folks who are there, not necessarily people with whom I'm already connected, but for the community of business owners, small business owners, that's where I'm connected with them. And Instagram is, and my second favorite is LinkedIn, but Instagram is where it's just more fun and informal for me, and I like it there.

Andréa Jones (15:24):
Yeah. How much time do you spend on Instagram, would you say? Any given week?

Shulamit Ber Levtov (15:28):
I would have to check my app on my phone. That tells me, I don't actually know, but I do know that for sure. Three, four times a day I'm checking in. I don't know the duration of time, but I know the frequency.

Andréa Jones (15:44):
Okay. That's pretty standard. And then what about creating content? How much time does it take you to create a post?

Shulamit Ber Levtov (15:54):
Well, social media is not where I find my clients. This is what I have discovered as a therapist working on my marketing. And now particularly with the niche that I have of working with only entrepreneurs or small business owners, freelancers, self-employed folks, SEO is my main strategy for attracting clients because my understanding is that when folks are looking for the kind of support that I offer, it's the 2:00 AM Googling, I can't sleep, help me, I'm going to burn my business down. And so that's really where I need to be found. And my website needs to be responsive when people land there. So that's my main priority. And so I blog for SEO, and I say that because that feeds my social media strategy. So I create long form, really juicy content in my blog, and then I hire someone to do what's called the content remix, where they look at what I have all the work I've done to creating the content on my website, and they break it down into posts that they take themes from my blog posts and break it down into what I can do for social media.

(17:05):
And there are times when I've had somebody create the graphics and I've written the post. This time I experienced with having somebody else take from the blog the excerpt and adapt it to a post for Instagram and create the graphic and then post it. And I think that's the way, I mean, I really prefer to write my own stuff because I really, as a service provider with the level of intimacy that I have with folks, I really want, if I were a business, I don't think it would matter a business. I mean a retail business, my meanest doesn't have to show up in the same way that I think it has to show up when I'm engaging with folks on platforms because that's who they're going to take the risk of revealing themselves to. And so creating an environment in which they can, we talk about know and trust, but for a therapist, it's really high stakes like and trust.

(18:01):
So I do prefer to write my own social media captions, and it does take significant time. And so I'm experimenting with finding, I really put my heart and soul into my blog posts. I take a week away every year and write for that entire week to get the posts done for the month. And it's like writing Dante dusk to, and I love it. It's fun because I love writing and it's a little kind of self retreat. It's very luxurious and it's really enjoyable, but it is a demanding process and I put everything into it. And so letting that come through by getting somebody to help me bring that through to my post is really my preferred strategy.

Andréa Jones (18:48):
Oh, wow. Okay. I love everything you said. I wrote down some things that I want to follow up with because there is so much goodness there. And I want to start with the awareness you have about how your clients find you, because I think there is this assumption that social media helps people find their direct client. And while that may be the case for some people, I know for me it's not the case either. My clients who need me aren't on social media. That's why they need me. So my strategy is a collaboration strategy, networking, like you said. I love that, that your clients kind of Google panic, Google in the middle of the night. How did you come to that realization?

Shulamit Ber Levtov (19:39):
It was as a therapist training with therapists who taught therapists how to do marketing. They had that knowledge, and I took the trainings, and that's what they taught me. And my experience has borne that out. I keep people book free calls with me now, and every time a person books a free call, I always ask, where did you hear about me? And about 95% say Google. So the statistics, now that I've taken that strategy, I guess you could say maybe it's not true, except that I decided to focus on SEO. And as a result that has led people to find me. It could be a chicken and an egg thing. But anyway, that's the story of how I came to that assumption and how I've chosen then to work that way since I was trained that way by other therapists.

Andréa Jones (20:23):
Yes. Oh, that's beautiful. I love that. And I think that's a really good awareness to have because there are a lot, we get caught up in the marketing all the time too, of what we have to be doing, what we should be doing, and knowing how your clients behave is so important. And then I love this week that you take, was it a week that you take to write all of your blog

Shulamit Ber Levtov (20:43):
Posts? Yeah, every year.

Andréa Jones (20:45):
So I know more about this, do you go into the week with an outline already or do you have a sense of the topics, or do you start from zero and by the end of the week you have what, 52 blog posts?

Shulamit Ber Levtov (20:59):
No. Oh my goodness. I post once a month. So 12.

Andréa Jones (21:03):
Okay. 12 blog. That

Shulamit Ber Levtov (21:04):
Got a lot. I should write that much. It's still a lot. Yes, but no, 52 blog posts in a week is ridiculous. No, because my blog posts are somewhere between 1500 and 3000 words. It depends on the topic. No, but I know that you have worked with Meg Casebolt on the podcast before and she's my SEO person. So I hire her on a regular basis to go over my website and then to do keyword work with me, and then she tells me what I should be writing about knowing. So the thing is, it's an integration of my beliefs and values and points of view with the SEO keyword. And Meg knows me very well. I've worked with her for a long time, and we met in a mastermind, so we knew each other as people first. So she knows me well, and she knows my particular point of view. And so she takes that and combines it with the keyword research that she does for me, and then tells me what topics to write, and then I write on those. So yeah, I go in prepared. I know what I'm writing about.

Andréa Jones (21:57):
Okay, I love this. And then 12 blog posts in a week of work. I feel like that takes a lot of skill and practice to be able to produce at that level. Do you remember the first time you went into this scenario versus maybe your most recent time and what the differences are?

Shulamit Ber Levtov (22:16):
I wouldn't say that there is a difference. Well, I guess the difference really has to do with how much money I spend on where I go. Because there have been times when I've gone to off-grid places where I've literally had to carry the water. There has not been water. And that was like no big no, because just I love camping that way, but it's not a supportive environment for work. What I need is a place that's lovely where I can plunk down and there are no demands on me or my time. Somebody else is taking care of my food, and I am in this state of flow for the week so that if I'm motivated to write in the morning, I write in the morning. If I want to fool around for lunch and in the afternoon or take a nap or whatever, that's fine.

(22:57):
And then I write that's part into the evening. As late as I feel motivated or as I feel the inspiration coming. That's part of the reason that I don't do it at home because I can't work in that sense of flow with my creative impulse. If I have to be answerable to anybody else in my environment, my beloved, I adore my beloved. We're more in love with each other. We've been together 20 years, and I'm more in love with him every day. And to work in that way, I can't do that at home. And so the difference is really, the more support I give myself, the more in quotation marks luxury, the more comfort, the more support and resources there are around filling my cup. That is what makes it possible for me to produce more and more. So the more comfort there is for me and the more support and resources, the more enjoyable and the more productive the writing is.

Andréa Jones (23:51):
Yes. Okay. Wow, you have given me a new aspiration that I didn't even realize I wanted, which is go away for a week and just follow your creativity. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Okay. Such

Shulamit Ber Levtov (24:06):
A good feeling too.

Andréa Jones (24:08):
Yeah. And it sounds very restorative the way that you're describing it.

Shulamit Ber Levtov (24:13):
Yeah, I don't come out drained. I come out feeling like satisfied. I've had a good, because here's the thing, I love to write. I love writing. I always have. I'm a big nerd. School is like academics. It's heaven for me. I love writing papers. This would not necessarily be a strategy for somebody who doesn't like marketing, doesn't like communications doesn't. Because I used to be, my first career was working in radio and television, and then I was a PR and media consultant. And so communication is my jam. So this is fun for me. And it might not be fun for somebody who doesn't enjoy, but for me it's like heaven to just go and do that.

Andréa Jones (24:53):
Yeah. I love that new bucket list item unlocked. So I want to dive into as well, the hiring that you do. So after your week away, you have all of these blog posts for the entire year, and then you have someone go in and help you with content remixing. How long have you been working with this person and what was it like finding them?

Shulamit Ber Levtov (25:17):
Well, it's Brittany Berger. She's a work Brighter, and I've been connected with her for some time because I'm chronically ill. And really I'm asking myself and always have been asking myself the question in business about how can I do business sustainably in light of my needs for support and needs for pacing? And so I was following Brittany for a long time because of that and have tried various approaches to my marketing. And in the past two and a half, three years have not have been less well than I ever have been. And it was at that point that I just decided, listen, I'm wanting to actually work less on the non-client related side of my business. And Brittany was offering this content remix thing that she had. And so I just having followed her for a while and understanding that we had some similar values, I thought I would give it a whirl. And it worked out great, and I've been doing it ever since.

Andréa Jones (26:15):
I love this. Stop me if any of this is too in the weeds, but how frequently do you get content from her? And then how are you then using that content? Do you use everything, something, space it out?

Shulamit Ber Levtov (26:34):
So my intention for social media is that it's a place, I call it ground cover, which means that what happens is a person will me on Google and they will then check me out and checking people out includes keeping their website, but more frequently looking at their social media stuff because it's more vital, it's more alive, it's more dynamic. So I do believe that I want to have slash need to have a presence on social media, but I'm not selling. I just want to be present there and have things to talk about. So my approach currently, and for the past probably two years has been one post a week. And so when I go to my content remixing, my goal is having enough posts for three months, but it turns out she'll give me the last one. I have probably nine months worth because if I only go once a week, I can't do the math. But nine times four is 27.

Andréa Jones (27:39):
Math is not my thing. No,

Shulamit Ber Levtov (27:40):
But it's not a lot. And so the other challenge for me is earning my income in the majority in Canadian dollars, I earn 30% less. And then paying USD, I pay 30% more. And so part of managing my whole social media thing is finding something that works with my budget as well. And so I end up buying the SEO consultation and the remixing somewhere between every nine to 12 months. And I'm not always, there may sometimes be a gap of even a couple of weeks or a month before my social media stuff resumes because I mean, I'm a one person show like everybody else, and I don't sweat it. If I don't, I sweat about the blog post. I really want one a month, but I don't sweat about the social media if it doesn't happen. If it happens that there's a little bit of a gap, I'm like, because there in my stories being present, it's more like on the grid that I want to make sure that stuff is fresh, not stale, dated. So yeah, every nine to 12 months, I'll do a consultation for both the SEO and the content remixing. Depending in their mind, they give me three months of stuff. But for me, who's posting only once a week? It can last a really long time.

Andréa Jones (29:02):
Yeah. Okay. I'm taking out my auditory highlighter here because I think this is so important to emphasize that you only post once a week and sometimes you skip a few weeks and it's fine. I think there's, and I'm guilty of this, again, I'm a marketer. I'm very biased in the way that I approach my work, and I also recognize that it's not necessary for everyone to post as much as we're posting. As business owners, especially if you're a one person show, you have so many hats that you're wearing in your business, marketing's one of them social media, even smaller, tiny little hat. And being able to set up a cadence that you can actually manage to me is way more important than trying so hard to post, let's say four times a week and then burning out and not posting for six months. And so I love that you have that approach with your content strategy. I'm also very curious about your connection piece of it, because it sounds like that's a larger part of what you do. And you said you check in a couple times a day. So do you have a strategy around who you're connecting with? Is it reactive or do you have a proactive like, oh, I want to meet this type of new person?

Shulamit Ber Levtov (30:26):
I went through a training with Michelle Warner, whom you might know called networking that pays and she talks about, so most trainings that I had had up to that point teach you about your ideal client avatar. Well, if you're a service provider, searching out clients, a lot of work. And what's more beneficial is to understand who is your ideal connection avatar and understanding being strategic around that. So while I am not Machiavellian strategic around who I connect with, it has helped me a great deal to understand that I really would rather, and it's more fun for me because I still feel the squidgy feeling in my stomach about direct sales leftover from MLMs and my experience not only as having been a participant in MLMs, but also being sold to how, so I still feel uneasy doing direct sales and there's work for me to do.

(31:24):
I recognize that there's nothing that mattered with direct sales. What I'm saying is I have not found my peace with it. And it was convenient and helpful to understand that I don't need to do direct sales. Really that through the networking that pays idea, you connect with your ideal connection avatar. In other words, my peers. And so I'm not looking at somebody and going, oh yeah, they're an ideal connection avatar and they're going to send me clients, so I'm going to connect with them. That's going to be felt anyway, right? That's just as creepy as like, Hey, hun, want to know more about a healthy lifestyle and a business opportunity? And I'm like, we were enemies in high school. Why are you even talking to me?

(32:11):
The same creepy feeling can come through no matter what you do, but it was helpful for me to be able to let go of the whole direct sales thing and stop thinking that I had to find clients and thinking more about making friends with peers. And that really, that's, again, it comes back to what I love to do. I'm a schmoozey person. I love to talk about things I have in common with people. I love to find connections to. So if somebody's a, I'm a maritimer, and I'll be like, I have great affection for the Maritimes and great affection for Maritimers. And so when I see that they're talking about the Maritimes, for example, and I can respond to them and I don't know who they are, but they're like a peer, they're a fellow service provider, I can come from the heart and say, you're a maritimer.

(32:57):
Me too. How fun is that? Right? And then we have a whole conversation and there's a sense of human connectedness around it that is fun no matter what the outcome, fun and nourishing for both of us, no matter what the outcome. And maybe they'll send me clients, maybe they won't. They'll have me on their podcast, maybe they won't. I mean, it would be great if they did, but that's not really the point for me, except that I've been freed from thinking about finding clients and released into the fun things for me. I don't know if that makes any sense. But anyway, that's my hundred percent,

Andréa Jones (33:36):
A hundred percent. I mean, as someone who found my husband on social media, my business besties on social media, my in real friends on social media, I kind of like it for the connection piece because I'm able to connect with people who are outside of just the people in my local community, which 20 years ago when I first started on social media was super important because I was in a very closed, stifling, ultra conservative environment. So it was very important for me to branch out for that from that. And I think as business owners as well, there are so many people in this world and there are so many rich conversations that we can have that can kind of help us not feel so lonely on social media. And it's just great to have those people who've got your back. It doesn't have to be, like you said, sending new clients. It could be as simple as sharing a post that they liked from you or having you on the podcast or things like that. So I really, really like that piece. Okay. My last question is more about, and I think I know the answer to this, but it's more about results. So how do you know this is all working for you and your business?

Shulamit Ber Levtov (34:55):
Well, I can pay my bills,

(34:59):
But I mean seriously, because I can pay my bills. But also I do keep track of, see where I'm frustrated around? The answer to this question is that it's hard to make direct, to be able to see A leads to B leads to C leads to D. Part of it is trusting that because I can pay my bills, what I'm doing is working, even if I can't forge a direct connection, but I also pay attention and keep statistics. And so that's how I know that of my clients don't come from social media. That's how I know that because I've done more intensive social media stuff and my client flow didn't change at all. I really enjoyed, I would love to be able to post more frequently. I'd love to have the money to hire a really fancy marketing department, your shop, have your team work for me.

(35:58):
And also, I know though that I'm not going to get a lot of ROI, so I would have to have fun money to do that with rather than money that matters that I get on ROI from it. But I pay attention, I keep track, I evaluate, if not for sure yearly and sometimes half yearly. I look at the statistics in my business and where people came from and what people are saying, what's happening on social media, all that kind of stuff. So I don't do an analysis per se, but I do look for patterns and pay attention to those in the data in my business.

Andréa Jones (36:38):
Yeah. Oh, I love that. Beautiful, beautiful answer yearly. Thank you. I love that. I think that's also very approachable for a lot of business owners. Alright, well as we wrap up, I would love to know more about your newsletter and how people can find it, what they can expect. And I'll put the link in the show notes as well.

Shulamit Ber Levtov (36:59):
Thank you. So what I really want to do is support folks. My vision is for a world where people in distress can be met with love. And so this might sound a little woo, but my vision for myself and my business is that it should be a source of those feelings of love, like comfort, reassurance, validation, support, being met where you are kind of a home feeling, right? That is, I am known here and it's okay for me here. That's what I want to try and communicate to folks. And so I really focus on that in my blog. And then the newsletter is where the blog, because I mean, I don't know about you, but for me, I forget to go to look at people's stuff. I just forget. It's just mean. I have neurodiversity issues, but also there's a lot going on. So that's why in my newsletter, I will send all, everything I put up on my blog and Morell be sent through my newsletter because these are the folks who have made the commitment to hear more from me. And it's a more direct and personal rich and juicy, intimate connection through the newsletter than on social media, which is like a blast environment. Whereas the newsletter is, it's exclusive. You're either receiving it or you're not. And it comes directly to you in your inbox. And this is where my wish and intention is that folks could feel this sense of comfort or validation or support or being seen and heard, right? That's really the best and juiciest way to connect and to get the kind of support that's accessible, independent of money.

Andréa Jones (38:53):
Yes, yes. I love this. If y'all have loved everything you hear today, you got to sign up for the newsletter. You can find it at onlinedrea.com slash 2 8 2. I believe the name of it is You Are Stronger with Support. Is that the name of your newsletter or is that just the headline I'm looking at?

Shulamit Ber Levtov (39:11):
That's the headline you're looking at, but that is my fundamental belief that we are stronger with support. And the reason that I say that is within mental health, there's a stigma that if you're weak, if there's something that matter with you and that asking for help makes you weak. But the truth is, when we get help, when we are supported, we are stronger, we have more resources. Two heads, you've heard the thing, two heads are better than one. And it's the truth that when we have people who've got our back, we can face and handle more. We are just stronger with support.

Andréa Jones (39:48):
Yes, a hundred percent, a thousand percent agree. This has been such a good episode. I feel like the listeners are going to want to listen back to this one Again, Sheila, thank you so much for being on the show today.

Shulamit Ber Levtov (40:01):
Thank you. I'm delighted to have been here.

Andréa Jones (40:03):
And thank you, dear listener for listening to another episode of the podcast. We'll be back soon with another topic for you. In the meantime, head on over to Apple Podcasts, Spotify. Leave us a five star review. It helps keep us in the top 100 marketing podcasts. I'll see you soon. Bye for now.