Entrepreneurship is a rollercoaster, marked by dizzying highs and daunting setbacks. But what if we told you that these setbacks, the glitches in your matrix of success, can be your most potent breakthroughs? Today we unpack the secret art of embracing setbacks with Amy Shoenthal, renowned journalist, ForbesWomen top contributor, marketing executive, and author of 'The Setback Cycle'.
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00:00 She gets a knock at the doors like 6am and several armed FBI agents were at her door.
00:06 Welcome to Beyond Unstoppable, the podcast that explores the intersection of biology,
00:11 psychology and technology. Here is your host Ben Angel.
00:15 Entrepreneurship is a roller coaster marked by dizzying heights and daunting setbacks.
00:21 But what if we told you that these setbacks, the glitches in your matrix of success,
00:26 can be your most potent breakthrough? Today we unpack the secret art of embracing
00:31 setbacks with Amy Schoenthal. Renowned journalist, Forbes Women top contributor,
00:36 marketing executive and author of The Setback Cycle. Navigating through topics like the rise
00:41 of toxic positivity, the enigmatic dopamine dip to the four phase process of the setback cycle.
00:47 Amy offers us a roadmap to manoeuvre setbacks into stepping stones.
00:52 And if you like what you hear, please give us a rating and review. Your support means the world
00:57 to us and helps us reach more listeners when we're ready to become unstoppable.
01:02 This episode is brought to you by Ben Angel's new book, The Wolf Is At The Door,
01:06 How to Survive and Thrive in an AI Driven World. Brought to you by Entrepreneur.
01:11 Get an exclusive sneak peek and order at thewolfofai.co.
01:14 Amy, it's such a pleasure to meet you. I've just finished reading your book and I have to say,
01:20 you did such a beautiful job of telling stories throughout. It's very hard as an author to be
01:26 able to write a story and pick the reader up and carry them along in this journey and keep
01:30 them engaged. So congratulations. Thank you so much. And thank you for actually
01:36 reading the book. I feel like this is going to be a good interview because you really know your stuff.
01:39 Well, what inspired you to write this book now? Like part of my intuition says,
01:47 we all kind of experienced major setbacks and some even trauma during the pandemic.
01:52 Was the pandemic a bit of a litmus test for how we adapt and deal with setbacks?
02:00 Absolutely. And I mean, this book is coming out in March, 2024, which means I wrote the bulk of it in
02:08 2021, 22 and 23, which was really like the years of us emerging from the pandemic and trying to
02:16 fit ourselves into this like new society and like adapting to the culture shift.
02:23 And that was nowhere more apparent than within the entrepreneur community. I heard a lot of
02:31 stories of people saying women and marginalized folks in the entrepreneurship community are having
02:37 it so hard right now. But I was also seeing, and that was true, but I was also seeing people doing
02:42 really incredible work and not getting enough attention for it. And so I wanted to really
02:47 shine a spotlight on those stories. And that's part of why I wrote this book.
02:51 How do you balance that? I guess someone who's going through a setback at the moment
02:56 and then seeing other people succeed, how do you kind of reconcile that within your mind? Because
03:04 we almost create a cognitive dissonance of, I know it's possible, but it's not possible for me right
03:10 now. I think that's exactly it though. Seeing other people succeed, but really getting into
03:18 their stories of what led them to that success. The story, the messy middle of their journey
03:26 generally comes from a setback, a setback of some sort, right? It could be the really small,
03:30 subtle ones, or it could be the big life changing ones. But a lot of people's success
03:36 is not handed to them. It comes from a setback. It comes from some sort of creativity and ingenuity
03:42 that came after they had to either pivot or rethink something. And I hope that by reading
03:48 these stories, if you are someone who's currently in a setback, I'm not just showing you the happy
03:53 ending or like the success numbers or the big sexy idea that they came up with, that they got all the
04:01 funding for and all the attention for. I'm showing you the journey and the struggle and the resilience
04:05 that they had to build in order to get there. And so I hope that by reading those parts of the story
04:12 and by really digging into it, you see yourself in that and you see wherever you are in your setback
04:17 in these stories and knowing that they came out the other end might inspire you to understand like,
04:23 okay, maybe I can too. And maybe this actually is possible for me.
04:27 And it's almost, for me, I think being in business and personal development for so many years,
04:35 I've witnessed the rise of toxic positivity. And I think being an entrepreneur, I don't want to hear
04:42 those stories of, hey, they did this within six months and built a million dollar brand.
04:47 I want to hear about the stories of, okay, these were all the setbacks that were faced.
04:53 This is the mental framework that they used to get through it. And are you almost on the
05:01 same philosophy that we need to meet people where they are? So meet them within the setback
05:07 to help move them forward? That's exactly it. And at least showing people
05:12 how to identify what a setback is. So, oh, if I can see it in this person,
05:17 maybe I'm going to see my own experience through that lens. And that's going to help me. Like,
05:22 once you kind of understand the thing you're going through, it's easier for you to work your way out
05:26 of it. Right. And when you talk about toxic positivity, I mean, I have a whole section in
05:31 the book where I talk about how the evolution of something called positive psychology, which is a
05:37 real psychological concept invented by Martin Seligman and kind of came to prominence in like
05:44 the seventies, eighties. And then in the nineties, it kind of morphed into what we now understand as
05:51 toxic positivity, the, the sort of drive to let people around you think that you're doing great
06:00 and everything is fine. And social media has really exacerbated that. And so I think this is like
06:06 the counter to that. The, Hey, yes, of course. I mean, of course, if you go to my Instagram,
06:12 it's just a highlights reel. Right. But let's, let's understand that. And like,
06:17 let me tell you the years of struggle that it took me to get to these accomplishments. Right. And
06:21 that's, that's how we kind of illustrate this here. What's the biggest setback that you've
06:27 ever faced and what did you take away from that setback? Well, I write about my own, this book
06:34 is really about career and business setbacks and obviously the personal and the societal come into
06:39 play because it's all related. We all overlap. So I do talk in depth about my own career setback,
06:46 which again, it was personal. And that, that happened when I was working in the corporate
06:51 world at a marketing agency. And I went and I was a little afraid to tell them I was pregnant
06:57 because it was a very sort of like happy hour, boozy lunch kind of culture. And of course,
07:05 I told them and I wasn't always invited to the boozy lunches anymore. And sure enough, I go out
07:12 on maternity leave. I come back and my role was slowly and subtly diminished. Now there's some
07:20 people who want to come back as a working parent and have a lighter workload. That was not me.
07:27 I had energy. I was excited. I was feeling ambitious. I wanted to go back and like,
07:32 think that everything would be the same as, as I left it. And I was just like really excited to go
07:37 back to work. And it just wasn't the same. Right. And that's by no fault of one person, but a lot
07:43 of factors contributed to, I think people assumed I would want a lighter workload. I was removed
07:48 from accounts that I had built. And I had to really kind of like, find my place again and
07:52 climb my way back up the mountain, which wasn't great. And that's the story of so many working
07:58 parents, right? You have to like, find your place again. And that setback I, because I couldn't
08:06 direct all my energy and ambition to my full-time job anymore. I directed it elsewhere. And that's
08:15 when my freelance writing career really started to take off. And that's when I started interviewing
08:21 really high profile people and getting more visibility and getting really exciting opportunities
08:26 and speaking on stages and leading workshops for companies about the habits of successful leaders
08:33 and getting some consulting gigs on the side. And little by little, I kind of like built up this
08:40 whole side career, which is again, what led to the book deal and what led to fast forward a few years.
08:48 And I was laid off as a round of big layoffs with impacting mostly senior people and getting
08:54 laid off from my job was not a setback. It was a green light to go start my own business. Something
08:59 I had always been curious about doing, but was never going to really fully dive into because
09:04 that steady paycheck is so, so, so comfortable, you know? And it was just so interesting because
09:10 I had actually handed in the manuscript for the setback cycle less than 48 hours before I got
09:16 laid off. Oh, wow. Talk about timing. I know. Do I need to read my own book again? I know.
09:23 Oh my God. This is a huge career setback. I need to go through the setback cycle. And
09:29 I waited for like the feelings to come in and to be all upset. And I just, I was sitting right here
09:36 when it happened. It was on a Zoom meeting and I stood up and I walked over to the window right
09:41 there and I was like, okay, am I going to cry? Like what's going to happen? And this huge smile
09:47 spread across my face. I don't think this is the setback. I think the one that sidelined after
09:54 maternity leave was the setback. So how long did it take you to pivot after you were sidelined
10:03 during maternity leave? Years, years. It was so I write about, there's many different types of
10:11 setbacks. There's the micro setbacks we experience every day. There's the big dramatic ones that
10:16 change your life in a moment. And then there's these setbacks that we sleepwalk into. I sleepwalked
10:24 into my own setback. When I came back from maternity leave, I was told the people who had
10:28 replaced me while I was gone did a great job. They should continue running these few accounts.
10:33 And that was totally true. They did a great job, but where did it leave me? Right? I hadn't
10:39 considered that. And so I gleefully agreed to let them continue running the businesses that
10:46 I had brought in, built up, gotten off the ground. It seemed like the right thing to do. And
10:51 everyone was telling me like, this is great. You have a little less responsibility. You have a
10:56 baby at home. This is great. And so I'm just like, I'm hearing what everyone's saying, but it's like
11:01 not quite feeling right for me. And yeah, like I definitely did not identify that as the setback
11:07 that it was. And it took years. And it took also a colleague of mine, someone who reported to me,
11:15 came to me one day and she said, I didn't want to tell you this at the time, but I really noticed
11:19 how you were sort of pushed aside when you came back as a parent. And her giving me that, saying
11:25 like she saw it too, was everything I needed to just like validate that experience. And then I
11:30 became a little more vocal about it. I had talked to my manager about it. I said, okay, this happened.
11:34 This wasn't great. Let's like, make sure it doesn't happen again with other working parents.
11:38 And so it was, it was out in the open. And, but I think I was probably attracted to the stories of
11:44 leaders and business owners and founders who were working through setbacks to reach the other side,
11:50 because really while writing this book, in those years, I was working through my own professional
11:54 setback. One of the stories that you talk about in the book is the Amy Nelson story.
12:01 Yeah. And it was, it was beautifully written. Can you tell us a little bit about that story
12:06 and what happened with Amy? Amy and I, we have the two Amy's both in chapter one,
12:11 because I wanted to juxtapose the two of us in our setbacks because mine was so subtle,
12:15 so subtle that I didn't notice it, that unfolded over the court of over a period of, of several
12:21 years. But Amy Nelson setback was so obvious and so blatant because it was one moment that
12:28 absolutely uprooted her life. So right in the, in the heart of the pandemic, it was like April, 2020,
12:35 she gets a knock at the doors, like 6am and several armed FBI agents were at her door.
12:42 They came in and they searched her house. They told her her husband was being accused of a crime.
12:49 And it just led to this entire journey where she had to figure out what was going on.
12:58 Was he guilty of this crime? Turned out he was innocent and all, eventually all charges were
13:02 dropped. But it was not until she had to like go on this many years long journey of understanding
13:09 how things like civil forfeiture work. And she like in order to pay her legal bills, she had to
13:17 sell her house and move in with family. So this is something that really bankrupts people. And
13:24 unfortunately, not everyone can like sell their house to pay their legal fees. She was able to do
13:29 that because she was able to move in with family. But really, if you look up Amy Nelson, or I mean,
13:34 I write her story in the book, but it is just such a fascinating account of like what the federal
13:39 government can do and the power and the lawsuit was against Amazon. And so like what the power
13:43 that Amazon holds over the DOJ. I mean, it's fascinating. It's just so fascinating. And so
13:49 she really obviously took it very hard. It impacted her health and impacted the wellness
13:56 of her family. And then eventually she climbed out and she emerged from her setback. Again,
14:02 all charges were eventually dropped and he his innocence was sort of validated by many judges and
14:07 people involved in the case. And now she's just like on a mission to educate people about
14:13 civil forfeiture and how it really like destroys families. And that's really interesting.
14:18 I think I vaguely remember that story popping up in the media at the time
14:24 and seeing interviews of her. So it's amazing that you're able to interview her for this book because
14:29 many of us compare our setbacks to others. Oh, yeah. Is that a good idea? I think it depends
14:38 on the situation. So if you are going through a setback and you see that someone you admire
14:45 went through something similar, maybe it's okay to compare yourself because you could maybe get
14:50 the inspiration of, well, if they got through it, I can get through it. However, there's also a lot
14:55 of people in this book that had really big dramatic setbacks and came out with this like
15:00 incredible win. And I want to say, doesn't always work like that. But you're not expected to emerge
15:05 from every setback with like, the most brilliant idea that's going to change the world or make you
15:10 millions of dollars. Like, most setbacks are much more subtle. And the reason I really focused in
15:16 on setbacks was because there wasn't really a lot on this particular phenomenon, right? There's a
15:22 lot that's been written about post-traumatic growth or learning from your mistakes or in the
15:28 entrepreneur Silicon Valley community, there was a lot of like, fail big and learn and like, it's
15:34 none of those, but it could be any of those. Like a setback is defined as a reversal or check in
15:39 progress. And so again, it could be like the most subtle thing that bumps you backwards unexpectedly,
15:47 or it could be an Amy Nelson type of situation where the FBI comes in and like destroys your
15:52 family's life for a while. Does it the setback cycle kind of almost follow the stages of grief
15:58 in a way? Because we have shock, denial, depression, anger, then eventually work our
16:05 way through to hope and acceptance. I don't want to compare it to that because I think going through
16:12 a setback is not grief, right? It could be, but it's not always. And I think the stages of grief
16:21 are a unique thing. And going through a setback is more, again, it doesn't always have to be grief,
16:29 or like experiencing such a loss. It can be I mean, there's plenty of people whose businesses
16:36 they're working towards a business, they're getting investors, they're about to launch,
16:41 and like everything falls apart. I mean, that's grief, you're going to go through the stages of
16:45 grief in some way. If that's your experience, and that could be part of the setback cycle. But I
16:52 think they're a little they're a little different, especially in terms of like the micro setbacks,
16:56 like you don't have to go through the denial, you don't have to go through the denial part in the
17:01 setback cycle, you don't have to go through the real like dark depression. As part of the setback
17:07 cycle. I mean, you could cycle through through it five times in a day. Or you could cycle through
17:11 one big one over a decade. I know you spoke to neuroscientists for the book. What were the most
17:17 fascinating discoveries that you uncovered in those conversations? One of my favorite people
17:23 is neuroscientist Chantal Pratt. And I think I mentioned her in like every interview I do,
17:27 because she she was so generous with her time. She spoke to me so much because I always had
17:31 more questions for her. And she told me that people are hardwired to learn more from setbacks
17:38 than successes. I figured since setbacks were such a universal human experience, there must be
17:44 something biological behind it. And and she validated that theory. Apparently, so we have
17:50 our brains like central, our brains command center is called the basal ganglia. And that's like
17:55 the center of the brain that processes learning and like absorbing information in order to dictate
18:02 future actions. And so when you have a setback, it results in a dopamine dip, and your brain wants to
18:11 avoid that kind of experience at all costs. Before we continue beyond unstoppable is brought to you
18:17 by Ben angels new book, the wolf is at the door. Get your exclusive sneak peek and order your copy
18:24 at the wolf of AI co. Now back to the show. Right. And so because of that, your brain is
18:32 actually changing when you experience a setback, because it is training itself to learn the tools
18:38 or learn, okay, this feels like this, we don't want this, don't do this again. Right. And that's
18:44 not always a good thing. Right. And you have to kind of like take that for what it is. But I think
18:49 that's why our brains are hardwired to learn more from setbacks than successes. And it makes sense,
18:55 because when things are going really well, you're just going to do things as you've been doing them.
18:59 You're not gonna adapt, you're not gonna pivot, because why would you write, if you've been doing
19:06 the same thing the same way for 3040 years? Why stop? And you I think you see this a lot,
19:13 especially in the corporate world where people get very comfortable with jobs, they get complacent.
19:17 And they're sort of like phoning it in, and they're like, not really open to change.
19:22 I think in the entrepreneurship world, you're seeing you're seeing that a lot less, because
19:25 you have to adapt, you have to change in order to stay relevant in order to stay afloat. And that
19:31 is why I think like, innovation and creativity really come when things aren't going well,
19:36 because you have to figure out how to reroute or course correct.
19:40 And what are some of the techniques that she recommended for getting through that dopamine
19:47 hits? I know, I know, for me, personally, pandemic, we were here hard, we were crushing the sales,
19:54 went from 170 grand in revenue a month down to 10. Oh my god, that's like major fire alarm
20:00 is going off. And I was because I've researched biohacking and neuroscience, I was very aware of
20:08 when that dopamine hit actually struck. Yeah. And it was hard. But I think bringing awareness to it
20:16 makes it a lot easier to move out of it. Absolutely. What techniques did she give you to
20:22 help people deal with that dopamine drop? I don't know if she really gave me the techniques. But I
20:29 talked to a lot of psychologists and executive coaches who were more like she kind of just
20:33 explained the way the brain works. And then I think the coaches and the psychologists explained
20:38 how to get out of it. There's, I mean, there's a lot of techniques. One of the main ones kind of
20:43 is what you just said, just acknowledging why this feels a certain way or why this is so bad,
20:50 right? It can be a logistical thing, like, okay, the finances are not there, what do we need to do?
20:56 Or it can be an emotional thing like, oh, my intelligence has been insulted. And that really
21:01 triggers me. So that's why this feels so bad. Like, that's why that one little thing that person
21:06 said that was thoughtless and meaningless is really offending me so much because I've seen
21:12 this before. And my for example, my intelligence has been insulted before. And so it's all just
21:19 this is the embrace phase of the setback cycle. Phase one is established. And that's knowing when
21:25 you're in a setback and understanding the signs and being able to identify it. But embrace is the
21:30 part where you really have to take stock of what you're going through, embrace the situation you're
21:35 in, decide why it feels so bad, why it's impacting you or your team so much. And this is like the
21:43 data collection phase. Right? It's the emotional data. It's the neuroscience data. It's also just
21:48 like the logistical data, the finances, like, okay, it's a pandemic. We've taken this financial hit.
21:55 Why is this happening? What happened? You have to understand what's happening before you can start
21:59 to plan what to do next. And a lot of people want to fast forward to the, okay, this isn't working,
22:05 let's do something else. But if you don't take the time to analyze and evaluate, you're not going to
22:10 get to the answers, you're just going to keep like spinning in circles. And that's probably the
22:14 hardest, hardest bit of a setback, right? Because depending on how bad it is, we're in hypervigilance
22:21 mode, where every little thing becomes a threat around us. So those little comments hugely
22:27 triggering. Oh, God, so bad. How do we how do we break out of that hypervigilance? I mean,
22:34 I know for me personally, I when I was going through that I was meditating at least three
22:39 times a day. I was trying to train my brain as an athlete would train their body for a race. Yeah.
22:46 What are your recommendations for getting in the right mindset to pause, breathe, and embrace
22:57 ultimately, to be able to move forward? I think it really depends on you as a person and what you
23:06 need. And also what type of setback you're going through. There's I have a whole chapter on the
23:10 stress response, and how like the sympathetic nervous system gets activated. And it's like
23:15 the gas pedal. And you're like, go, go, go back to that hypervisual vigilance that you're talking
23:20 about. So that's the gas pedal. And you need to find the break, you need to set that parasympathetic
23:26 nervous system into place so that you can find the break. And for some people, yes, it's meditating.
23:31 For some people, it's exercise. One of the biggest recommendations for combating stress in the body
23:39 is movement is to move, right. And that could be taking a walk, like I can't tell you how much I
23:44 pace around my dining room in my living room in the middle of the workday and are like getting
23:49 outside for 15 minutes. And for others, it could be like a big cardio HIIT workout. And so that's a
23:55 really good way of triggering the stress response and calming your body down. Because it's like,
24:00 when you when you are in a setback, when your sympathetic nervous system is like activated,
24:07 it's like, it's biological. It's like you're being chased by a bear. And you have to like run away
24:13 from the bear. And so you have to find a way to signal to your body that the threat is gone that
24:19 the bear is not chasing you. And so you really and that's different for all of us. So what do you
24:25 need to do? Do you need to take a walk? Do you need to walk away from your computer? Do you need
24:29 to call a friend? Do you need to meditate? So what if the bear is there and the threat is real?
24:36 Because in Amy Nelson story, I mean, that threat was very real. It was and it lasted quite a long
24:43 time as well, didn't it? Yeah, yeah. How do you how do you manage in the midst of a setback? Because
24:50 it's almost we acknowledge it and we can kind of look back on the past setbacks. But what do you do
24:56 in the middle of it? The bear? Sure, the bear is there and you need to deal with it. But physically,
25:06 you are not being chased by a bear. Most of us in the middle of a business or career setback.
25:14 You can take a minute, you can take five minutes. It just doesn't your body doesn't feel like it
25:20 doesn't feel like it. No. And look, let me be really clear. Like I'm giving all this great
25:24 advice and I have all this research and I did all these interviews and I have all the information
25:28 and people are calling me the setback expert. Let me tell you, when I am like sent into my
25:34 next setback, like I always want to fast forward through it. I always want to skip ahead. Like I
25:39 don't want to do the embrace phase. I like so it's not like I gracefully go through the setback cycle
25:46 every time I am faced with one because I'm still human and I still make mistakes. And so but I do
25:53 because I have all the information. I mean, it's in the book, but it's also very much imprinted
25:57 into my brain. After all these years, I I do have to sort of like remind myself, OK, stop.
26:04 This is a setback. How to go through it. This this is my inner voice that goes through my head
26:10 every time I'm in a setback or when something really bothers me. I mean, it could be as as
26:16 small as just like an awkward interaction with someone who you really respect and you're just
26:22 like thinking about it all day long. Like, oh, God, why did I say that? I sounded so dumb. And
26:27 now that person is not going to call me for the opportunity, for the job, for the partnership,
26:33 whatever it is. I think when I'm in that mode, I always say, like, OK, why does this feel so bad?
26:40 Like you have to go embrace even if it's a setback, you have to go through embrace.
26:45 I just hope you work through it. I'm so glad that you acknowledge that, because I think when we hear
26:51 from so many authors, they don't want to acknowledge that. Hey, yeah, it does get messy for me at times.
26:58 But I think that's the part of the story and the journey that people experiencing a setback
27:04 actually need to hear that it can be messy as hell. You can be in tears. You don't know what to do.
27:10 But like you said, once we eventually get to the embrace stage, then we can think our way through
27:16 it. Now, what are the what's the third and the fourth step in the setback cycle? So the third
27:23 phase after you work through embrace and you're like, OK, I understand what happened. I understand
27:28 what I did, what they did, what the the factors that were at play that I could not control.
27:33 And here's why it's impacting me so much. You've collected the data, right? Think about the tech
27:39 world and you collect the data. You have all the information and you analyze the information.
27:44 That's what gives you the strategy. That's what gives you the strategy to move forward.
27:48 But the third phase of the setback cycle is my favorite. It is explore. This is when you take
27:54 that data and you say, OK, here's the information. What can I do with it? What things can I try out?
28:00 It's the beta testing mode. And so it's awesome because it's like you get to have fun, but you
28:06 don't have to commit to a path forward yet. So, OK, I just got laid off. I have to deal with my
28:13 finances. I have to rejigger all of these things. I have to figure out health insurance. But at the
28:18 same time, I have all this free time and I feel like the knee jerk reaction is let me go take a
28:24 pottery class. Do something fun that I would never have time to do. Let me get an adult coloring book
28:35 or paint my number. Like that's what we were all doing in the pandemic. But it's it's it is kind of
28:40 that time to explore, explore your deep rooted curiosity. What did I have a thing in the book
28:47 called the curiosity quiz? And it's meant to explore what you are curious about in the present moment.
28:54 But it also has you like dig deeper. I call it like the capital C curiosity. And so like,
28:58 what did you like doing as a kid? Did you play team sports? What did you like about that? It
29:03 wasn't just like kicking a ball around with friends. It was like the teamwork and the
29:07 camaraderie. Or did you like going in a corner and painting by yourself? And what did you like
29:11 about that? So, again, it's like if you really loved this stuff, like how could you take that
29:16 what you loved about it and incorporate it into your current situation? And these I have a whole
29:23 exercise that asks people to identify what their superpower is or what they're really motivated to
29:28 do, because a setback is a time for reexamination and reevaluation. And so a lot of people I know,
29:37 if they either get laid off, and I just use this because it's the most common example of a career
29:42 setback, they get laid off and they just start sending their resume out to jobs that are exactly
29:47 like the one they no longer are working at. That's not always the right move, go through the
29:55 cycle and really decide like, what more is possible for me in this moment? What did I not like about
30:01 that? What did I like about that? What do I want in my next role? And what do I not want? And maybe
30:06 you're not going to get the perfect job. But maybe you can just like prior make the list of priorities
30:11 and decide what you want to do. And maybe you can talk to people in your community
30:16 and seek out opportunities that you might not have otherwise thought to do if you were still
30:22 in that other job if you were still going along that original path, have that path not disappeared,
30:28 you would never go explore this other thing. And that is really I think, what leads people to their
30:33 next big idea, their next moment of brilliance, their creative rebirth. Do you think in some
30:39 respect, a lot of people stay stuck in the cycle because they're experiencing shame? Yeah, due to
30:47 their setback? Absolutely. They're afraid to reach out and get that help that they actually desperately
30:53 need. I think a lot of people experience shame. I have a section in the book called shame and blame,
30:59 because a lot of people are just so ashamed of themselves that they won't give themselves grace,
31:05 they won't admit their failures, or trying to like cover it up, or they're just like, stuck in that
31:09 spiral of rumination. And then some people look at their setback, and they just blame other people.
31:16 Right? And they say, like, if that person hadn't done that, I would I would be fine, right? Like,
31:21 I could sit here and be like, if that person hadn't sidelined me after maternity leave,
31:24 I would still have my job. Like, that's not true. It was not one person's fault. Like I was
31:28 plenty to blame for it, too. It's usually a combination of other people, you and external
31:35 factors that you've no control over. And I'm sitting here talking about the need to embrace
31:41 and evaluate and connect the dots and analyze the data. But you also have to do that in a healthy
31:48 way. Because evaluating and reflecting can really lead to rumination and obsession and can go into
31:57 a very unhealthy place. So you really have to be careful in that embrace phase of not getting stuck
32:03 in a spiral of shame and or blame or rumination. Do you think in the coming years, I mean,
32:10 for me, your book is hitting at the perfect time. Everyone says that.
32:15 Artificial intelligence is exploding right now. And as I shared with you, I've got
32:22 my book coming out, The Wolf Is at the Door. For me, I feel like a lot of people are sleepwalking
32:29 into big trouble in the coming years in terms of, I mean, right now, the economy is strong,
32:37 we have low unemployment, but we are starting to see the signs of tech workers being replaced by AI.
32:44 I think one example in the last few months is Google replacing 30,000 in their ads division
32:50 with a new AI tool that they're going to be using instead. Being in the business space yourself,
32:56 do you think a lot of people are sleepwalking into the AI revolution not being aware of the
33:02 setbacks that they're about to encounter? Oh my god, I was just having a conversation
33:08 with a friend of mine. Her name is Serene Noor Ali, and she's the founder of Sleuth,
33:12 which is an AI tool that helps like children or identify like children's symptoms, whether it's
33:18 developmental or illness or things like that. It's an incredible AI tool. She is sort of like
33:24 my person. She's a friend, but she's also like a personal expert on AI. I was just talking to her
33:30 about this yesterday. I'm going to actually answer your question not as a business owner,
33:35 but as a writer, because writers and artists are so scared of AI. I think rightfully so,
33:43 but also there's a way to embrace AI and say, okay, like this is the future. We need to learn
33:49 how to work with it. And look, I feel horrible. Like I don't want people's jobs to be replaced
33:55 by AI. But I think we were all scared of this when I don't know, like the internet came about
34:00 and social media came about, right? If you think about it, we were all afraid to do our banking
34:06 online in like 2003 or so. Right. And where do you do, like, where do you check your banking
34:12 accounts now? - Finally online. They don't tell us anymore. - Exactly. And so I just, I think if
34:21 you just like take a peek at history and of course, I mean, I'm not, I'm definitely also scared of AI
34:27 as a writer, as a business owner, as a marketer, but I think that we have been scared of technology
34:34 before. And this is not, I don't know if this is in your book, but this is not necessarily,
34:40 there can also be really incredible benefits of AI. So Serene, who I was just mentioning,
34:46 like she said, what if, and if you're a parent of this, what if all the messages that you get
34:55 from your kid's school could be aggregated through an AI generator to only feed you the
35:02 information that you absolutely need? Like, hey, you need to respond to this. You need to sign your
35:07 kid up for this. Like these other things can wait. Or what if, when a calendar invite is placed on
35:14 your calendar, right? An event invite is placed on your calendar for an evening event. What if
35:19 that triggered a message to your babysitter? If you just like think through the applications of AI
35:27 that aren't necessarily going to take our jobs, but just save us time as humans, as people,
35:34 as members of society, as business owners, there could be a really a lot of great things about this
35:42 new technology. And so I think just like remembering that there are practical applications that might
35:46 make your life easier and remembering that we used to be scared of all these other technologies that
35:50 we're now very comfortable with, and just making sure that no matter what your field, no matter
35:56 what your industry, you're at least learning, you're at least getting curious about these
36:01 technologies, and you're learning how you might possibly be able to work within them versus
36:07 totally avoiding them. Think about the people in the early 2000s who just said, I'm not dealing
36:12 with social media. Yeah. I think that's why your book is, it's a great time for it because
36:18 it's that self-reflection that's really needed right now. Am I actually doing what I love?
36:25 Could it, does AI actually do my job better than I can? How do I pivot? Yeah. How do I pivot is a
36:32 great question to always ask yourself, even if you are as satisfied as a person could be in your
36:38 role, your life, your relationship. So what are your thoughts on, I mean, with the setback framework,
36:45 I think any setback that I've ever gone through, the first thing that comes to mind is how do I
36:51 make effective decisions? And I think that's the hardest part for people to get to,
36:57 because once the setback hits, if it is a traumatic setback, then you're afraid that
37:03 you're not going to make the right decision and you're just going to keep suffering.
37:07 What is a decision making process that you recommend to people to help move them forward?
37:14 Well, one of the tools I have in the, I believe it's the emerge phase, like when you're coming
37:19 out of a setback and you have to like carve that path forward and you kind of like have an idea and
37:24 you have a little more clarity on what you want to do. I have a decision-making framework that helps
37:30 you kind of lay that path and it, I can share it now. I can give a little overview. It's the have,
37:38 do, be method. So you ask yourself three questions to lay out that decision mapping.
37:46 Pick some time in the future, right? It's one year in the future, five years, 10 years. I like five
37:52 years. It's like a reasonable amount of time. So in five years, what do I want to have physically?
38:00 Like, do you want to buy a house? Do you want to have a vacation house? Do you want a bigger
38:05 apartment? Right. What do you want to have? Do you want a car? Who do I want to be? Right. Like who,
38:13 not just like, I am a marketing consultant, but like, who do I want to be? How do I want people to
38:19 talk about me when I'm not there? And what do I want to do? How do I want to be spending my time?
38:27 So again, going back to that corporate worker, if you're spending all your time at work and you are
38:33 not spending enough time with your partner, your family, your children, think about if that's the
38:39 life you want to live five years from now. And if it's not, if what you want to have and what you
38:45 want to do and who you want to be is not congruent with the lifestyle you are currently living,
38:51 what small changes can you make? Or what small steps can you lay in front of you to get you to
38:59 those answers to those questions? Now, what is the final step in the setback cycle?
39:08 Emerge. Phase four is emerge. And that's when you leave your cocoon, you spread your wings,
39:15 and you sort of fly into your next venture. And you, you emerge with I think, just like a newfound
39:22 knowledge of all that might be possible for you or all that you're capable of. And I'll go back to
39:27 my friend Chantal Pratt, the neuroscientist who says that motivation is the biggest predictor of
39:33 success. If you are motivated, and you have clarity and exactly what you want to do,
39:39 you're going to make that happen. How do you get motivated?
39:44 Throughout this process when the bear is chasing? Okay, like every part of my brain is telling me I
39:55 need to crawl in bed and hide. How do you get motivated during that particular phase? I think
40:02 so many people in the entrepreneurial community go through those major setbacks, where they're
40:07 raising funding or the businesses and working the way they wanted to. How do you push through that?
40:14 You have to really know what your North Star is, what your purpose is, why are you doing what
40:20 you're doing? Right? I know entrepreneurs who have like a picture of their kids on their desk,
40:25 and they say, I am building this because I want a better future for them, or I want to
40:29 build generational wealth so that they don't have to worry like I worried, or I didn't have this,
40:34 you know, community when I was in the banking world. And so I want to build it for people
40:39 who are in all industries. Those are the reasons that the people in my book found success,
40:44 because they just stayed true to their North Star, they just stayed true to their purpose.
40:49 And that's what got them through again, like the minutia of building a company,
40:54 the invoicing process, the vendor agreements, like you do all of that, so that you can continue to
41:01 work towards again, like that higher purpose of like, what gets you out of bed every morning.
41:05 And if it's just chugging away at a job where you're going through the motions and making
41:11 money for someone else, it's really hard to get off that couch and to get motivated. And yes,
41:17 of course, if you have been through the setback cycle many times, you might get discouraged,
41:23 but you will also emerge with the awareness that like you did that. So you can do this,
41:30 right? That's what resilience is the understanding that like you have this inner strength, and
41:35 because you've gone through it before you can go through it again. And even if you're not in a
41:40 setback right now, and you read the book, you'll now just like be armed with the tools so that when
41:45 the inevitable happens again, hopefully, it's not an earth shattering one. But even in the small
41:50 ones where an investor pulls out, you lose a customer that was like 35% of your revenue,
41:56 how to work through the setback cycle, right? You have the tools you can, it can help you,
42:02 it can only help you. Is there any research on the average number of setbacks that someone
42:08 experiences in their life? I would love that I, I tried. The problem is setbacks are hard to measure.
42:20 There's such small ones, and there's such big ones. And it's just so objective,
42:24 getting your kid out the door in the morning can be rife with setbacks, losing your podcast studio
42:30 and having to find another like that's such a setback. But if I talked to you three years after
42:36 that happened, you might not identify it as such because you were able to work through it fairly
42:40 quickly. But yeah, like I couldn't tell you the number of setbacks I've had in my life,
42:44 because I haven't been keeping track. And also a lot of people once they read the book, they
42:48 recognize experiences that they've had in the past through this lens. But they like none of us are
42:55 like keeping track of the number of setbacks we have. So it's really, really, it's a tough thing
43:00 to quantify. But if anyone listening has an idea of how to measure the number of setbacks that the
43:07 average human has, or the average, let's say entrepreneur has along their lifetime along
43:12 their business journey, please contact me because I would love to work with you.
43:16 That would be incredibly valuable to know. And I mean, we know how many average careers people
43:21 have in their lifetime. And that seems to be growing.
43:24 Right. But you could also like that's easy to measure.
43:27 Yeah.
43:27 A little more quantifiable.
43:32 Now as an author, whenever I write a book, this is my eighth that I'm about to come out with.
43:38 Wow, congratulations.
43:40 Thank you. There's always something that I learned in the research process. That kind of,
43:47 it just makes me go, Oh my god, how did I not know that sooner? Or this is staggering?
43:53 What did you uncover in the research process in the book that really kind of caught you off guard
44:00 and made you want to research it even more?
44:06 The fact that so many of us sleepwalk through setbacks and that we don't even know that we're
44:13 in one, or we intentionally walk into them without knowing. Some of us look back and we don't realize
44:21 that something that set us along our journey was actually born of a setback and you don't realize
44:26 it. Someone I interviewed for the book didn't realize it until 40 years later. And so that
44:32 was the biggest aha that we don't always know when we're in one. And I was certainly, I was part of
44:39 that. That was my story. I did not realize I was in one until years later.
44:42 I think what's so important about your book is getting people to revisit those past experiences.
44:50 One thing that I always do when I go through a setback is to make a list of all of my achievements.
44:55 I will read through that list every single day and I'll look at the setbacks
45:00 and another list and go, okay, here was my thinking around how to get out of it at that time.
45:07 So the ability, I think you've done a phenomenal job with the book to, through those stories,
45:14 get people to think about, okay, you know what? That was a setback. Yeah. I did get through that.
45:19 It really, reading this book has shown a lot of people the inner strength that they have that
45:25 they don't even realize until they start seeing their experiences for the setbacks that they were.
45:31 Amy, thank you so much for coming on the show.
45:34 Thank you so much for having me. This was wonderful.
45:37 Highly recommend people go out and grab a copy of your book. Like I said, it is beautifully written
45:42 and it really keeps you hooked and engaged. So thank you.
45:46 Thank you so much.
45:48 To learn more about Amy Schoenthal and the Setback Cycle, visit amyschoenthal.com.
45:53 And if you haven't already, subscribe to Beyond Unstoppable and visit thewolfofai.co
45:59 to get your copy of The Wolf Is At The Door today. And stay tuned for next week's episode.