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00:00:01
Amy Shoenthal
93 Plays20 days ago
Thanks for listening to our episode with Amy Shoenthal.
To keep up with or connect with Amy:
✨ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amyshoenthal/
✨ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amysho/?hl=en
✨ Website: https://www.amyshoenthal.com/
✨ Book: https://www.amyshoenthal.com/the-setback-cycle
To stay in touch with Meredith and Medbury:
Follow Meredith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredith-farley/
Follow Medbury on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/medbury_agency/
Subscribe to the Medbury newsletter: https://meredithfarley.substack.com/
Email Meredith: Meredith@MedburyAgency.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Amy's Background
00:00:00
Speaker
it We're going. And realized we both got the memo on wearing black today. It's funny. Yes. I just did an episode with Erica of Evie Salon, and she and I were both wearing blue. I feel like there's a funny thing that happened.
00:00:13
Speaker
But Amy, I'm really happy to get to have this conversation with you. i think you are so cool and you've done so much interesting work. For anyone who is not familiar with you, what you've written, what you do, could you introduce yourself and give your elevator speech of who you are and what you do?
00:00:30
Speaker
Schoenthal, The Setback Cycle, How Defining Moments Can Move Us Forward. I'm also a corporate speaker, leadership coach, and marketing consultant where I help people not only work through setbacks in my coaching, but I help people elevate their stories and position themselves as thought leaders within their industries.
The Setback Cycle and Its Impact
00:00:55
Speaker
Very cool. So can you talk about your book, The Setback Cycle? I think it's been a year. Has it been a full year? I'd love for you talk about it. I think it's so cool.
00:01:06
Speaker
Thank you. i was just on a call preparing for a keynote i'm giving next month, and they were saying some people reached out and said, oh, this is such a negative topic. have I was like, oh, my God, my book is so uplifting and positive. And my whole framework is to help people work through setbacks so that they can overcome them.
00:01:25
Speaker
So it was really interesting to hear that theory. But when people think of setbacks, they do tend to be negative at first. But it's really what you after you come out of the cycle that defines your next chapter. And when a lot of people retroactively think of the biggest life decisions they made or the thing that led them to what made them most successful or the thing they're most proud of, it's almost always something that came from the aftermath of a setback.
00:01:52
Speaker
I started know this pattern when I was interviewing a ton of people for my Forbes column. And I was interviewing all these really big name leaders, executives, founders, people who had really incredible, compelling stories, had found some level of success, or depending on how you define success. But they were really well known. They had created something that got a lot of attention and was they were well liked for something that they had done.
00:02:22
Speaker
And that's why I was interviewing them. And I always asked about the messy middle of their career journey. What happened? How did you overcome any obstacles? The general questions that you ask of prominent people when you're doing a profile on them.
00:02:37
Speaker
And what I noticed was that pattern that I just shared, that the big idea, the most creative or innovative thing that they came up with was because they had been on a path towards one thing.
00:02:49
Speaker
They got sidetracked, they got bumped off the path, and they had to reroute and create something that ended up being better than the original thing they were creating. And I saw this over and over again. When you do something long enough or when you do something enough times, you start to see trends and patterns come to the surface.
Pandemic Insights and Women's Roles
00:03:08
Speaker
And this was also probably around 2020, 2021. We're in the middle of the pandemic. And the whole narrative around women leaders is that women are being forced out of the workforce. Like everything is miserable. Everything is doomed. Right.
00:03:24
Speaker
And that was absolutely there was truth to that. But at the same time as this cultural narrative was taking shape, I was seeing women who were having a vision for the future they wanted to create and building it.
00:03:38
Speaker
And they were saying, yeah, the workforce doesn't work for us. So we're going to go do this cool thing and we're going to build this thing and we're going to just make our own sort of system and institution that's going to actually work for what we need right now. The creativity and the innovation and the It's a positive spin on what yeah I'm being. And that's why i came up with the idea to write the book, because I was seeing something and it was really inspiring and really exciting. And I wanted other people to see what I was seeing.
00:04:09
Speaker
And that's how I came up with this back cycle.
00:04:13
Speaker
It's so cool. I have so many thoughts and follow up questions. I have to say, I think what you're saying about women like building better alternatives for themselves really resonates with me.
00:04:25
Speaker
So that Medbury's name mean one, it was the name of the road I grew up on in upstate New York. But in Old English, it means Maiden's castle and or a castle that's so well built, even a single woman could defend it like in battle.
00:04:40
Speaker
but One thing I've been super mindful about is when bringing on new folks trying to be like, for example, one of the women on our team was a VP I managed like back in a previous agency life.
00:04:52
Speaker
And she has two kids at home. She does not want to be working a full time nine to five right now. But for so many women in her position, it seems like the only two options are go back to a nine to five grind or take a part time role. But it's like ah bit of a demotion insofar as the impact of their contributions and the hourly rate.
00:05:11
Speaker
So we work together to figure something out where she works two days a week and she's doing really high level senior incredible work. But there's flexibility there and there's flexibility to grow or pull back as she needs to. And I also feel too, like the more and more women who start and run businesses, the better and more flexible and creative the opportunities for women are going to
Understanding the Setback Cycle
00:05:32
Speaker
be.
00:05:32
Speaker
But when you say setback cycle, I can see people being like, Oh, it sounds like a Sisyphean experience where oh, you're just constantly going to hit setbacks. And your point is, you know, the set opportunities to reframe and rethink.
00:05:45
Speaker
ah Do you feel you have really good pattern recognition? I do tend to one of my superpowers, which is a blessing and a curse, is like I see. I can see the future, not in a fortune teller way, but like I could just see how things are going to shake out.
00:05:59
Speaker
And sometimes i see it before the people around me and I point it out and they're like not ready for the information yet. That was something that I definitely struggled with in the corporate world. I would have ideas for structuring things in a certain way and people would be very resistant to it. Sure enough, six months, a year later, like the thing that I wanted to do, all of a sudden people were like, we should do this. i was like, I know. I suggested that a year ago.
00:06:22
Speaker
What I think was happening at this time was there was such a negative response to everything that was happening. When I started to notice this pattern, I was like, someone must have written about this. There must be something that exists. Yeah. Right. Like the six stages of grief. There must be some framework for this. There must be a playbook that all these founders and executives are sharing because if they're all having these experiences where they're bumped off course and then they're building these amazing things right after, there must be some sort of playbook that they're all sharing. Like, where's the playbook? Who has written about this phenomenon? Where is it?
00:07:00
Speaker
And so i started reading like every business psychology book you could ever imagine. and I did see hints of it. Like, it's not like I'm not the person to tell you that a setback is ah thing that inspires creativity.
00:07:14
Speaker
That's a principle. But what I wanted to know was how do you take that principle and actually apply it to your life? Once I found hints of it, I took so many notes. But I started reaching out to experts. I reached out to my own therapist, other psychologists, a bunch of executive coaches. And then I sought out a neuroscientist because I wanted to understand if this phenomenon was something that had been named or is it something that's biological? Am I just trying to see a silver lining where there really is none?
00:07:46
Speaker
And a lot of conversations led me to what is now the framework known as the setback cycle with the four phases of how we process setbacks. And once you recognize it and you understand the phases, like regular people like us, you can just understand the setback cycle so that when you experience a setback,
00:08:05
Speaker
It doesn't take away the pain oh of the setback. It doesn't take away the ick. But at least you can recognize it and you can know that, okay, something good is going to come out of this. We just have to figure out what that's going to be.
00:08:17
Speaker
Yeah. Normalize the concept that everyone's life has these cycles and there's pros and cons to it. A setback is an inevitable human experience. You know, it doesn't take away the horrible feeling when you encounter a setback, but it does prepare us. It makes us understand our own experiences and it prepares us to work through the future ones.
Phases of the Setback Cycle
00:08:42
Speaker
Can you talk us through the framework a little bit? Sure. it's The cycle takes us through four phases or the four E's. The first phase is establish.
00:08:53
Speaker
So phase one can be like a split second or it can be decades because establishing your inner setback can be very obvious or it can be very... Unrecognizable.
00:09:06
Speaker
Some people sleepwalk through or float along into their own setbacks and you don't know what it is until you wake up. So establish, yes, you're fired, you're laid off. Those are very clear. Those are you're in the established phase like you are in a setback. But some people, maybe they stay at a job for too long.
00:09:27
Speaker
Or maybe they stay in a relationship for too long. They're in that established phase for a really long time before they finally wake up and recognize they're in a setback. And that's what enables them to move through the rest of the phases. And I have an alarm clock checklist that's intended to wake you up if you think you're sleepwalking through a setback.
00:09:48
Speaker
What are some of those alarm clock triggers? So one of the things I think the easiest thing to do to start to establish if you're in a setback is to joel and now I don't mean write out all your feelings. Take like start just keeping track of things every day or like every three days a week. However often you can commit to this. Take two minutes and write what are you energized by and what are you disengaged with?
00:10:18
Speaker
Write down those answers and base it on the activities that you have on that day. And keep track of your answers over some period of time, whether it's a month, whether it's two months.
00:10:31
Speaker
And while you're keeping track of what you're energized by and what you're disengaged with, rate your motivation on a scale of one to ten. After a month, go back and review your answers.
00:10:43
Speaker
This goes back to that pattern recognition we were talking about. Like this is how you recognize patterns. You write it down. So it's really interesting because I actually still do this myself if I'm feeling like a little lack of clarity in what I'm supposed to be doing or how i'm supposed to be spending my time.
00:10:59
Speaker
I do this. And what I realize, what I continue to realize every time I do it is that I'm always surprised by the patterns that emerge. Like you think you know what you're happy with. You think you know what you're not happy with. You think you have a handle on how you're spending your time. But once you actually start tracking this stuff, you're going to be surprised by something.
00:11:19
Speaker
Usually. Yeah. Yeah. i'm a huge fan of journaling and morning pages, but I've never really done that type of tracking, but you're inspiring me. I think that could be really fun and cool. whole In the book, there's a whole list of other things you can do during the alarm clock checklist, but those are easy ones to start with.
00:11:37
Speaker
So you establish that you are in a setback cycle. The first step is admitting you have a problem. and the Exactly. right Name it to tame it, right? The second phase is embrace. And this means it doesn't mean give it a warm hug and be super happy that you're in a setback.
00:11:52
Speaker
It just means, all right, we are in this situation. Let's digest it. Let's figure out what happened. And this is really like the analysis phase. You have to get a little introspective. You have to figure out what happened.
00:12:03
Speaker
What did you contribute that led to this? What did other people contribute that led to this? It's very easy to get stuck in a spiral of shame where you're ashamed of yourself. Or it's easy to just get stuck in like a blame cycle where you're caught up in resentment by what someone else did. And it is usually a combination.
00:12:23
Speaker
of something you did, something someone else did, or some societal factor, economic factor that is totally out of your control. And so you have to try to avoid getting stuck in like resentment or self-doubt or shame.
00:12:35
Speaker
Because when I started talking to people and interviewing experts, we actually changed the phases because a lot of people are in embrace, but they actually haven't established what their setback is.
00:12:48
Speaker
Once you really identify it, that's how you say, okay, this is the setback I'm in. Let's now figure out why it happened. And then... So were you going to ask a question? Yeah.
00:12:58
Speaker
OK, so as you're talking, on like I get when you say they're an embrace, is that because they're more they're like, I don't feel good. I feel like I'm stuck. I'm in a rut. I'm dealing with a setback.
00:13:10
Speaker
But they aren't totally able to articulate what that setback yeah was or is for them. Is that the emotional space they're in? That's exactly it. And that's why we try to go through establish so that we can understand what it is before we go through embrace.
00:13:27
Speaker
Accept it. Yeah, accept it. i try to understand it and really get introspective. The embrace phase is really not fun. It's the worst phase. I hate this phase. I always, again, as the setback expert, I still try to fast forward through embrace because I hate it so much.
00:13:42
Speaker
But if you look at the neuroscience of setbacks, it's really in the dopamine dips. Like we all understand a dopamine hit, like we're chasing dopamine hits when we're on our phone, our brain's reward center is activated, but it's really in the dips.
00:13:58
Speaker
where our brain gets the rewiring that it needs to build resilience. It makes sense, though, because when things are going really well, you're not really thinking about how you can do something differently or do something better.
00:14:10
Speaker
You're just on autopilot. But when things are not going great, you're getting creative and you're trying to think of new ways to do things because you have to. And so in the embrace phase, one of the I guess, I think it's fun. i know some people think it's silly, but it's a proven psychological concept.
00:14:27
Speaker
When you get stuck in this moment of like self-doubt where you're just like, wow, you're terrible. You cannot be successful at anything. like Why are you so bad at everything? Whatever your personal self-doubt narrative is,
00:14:38
Speaker
It's important to name your inner critic. Have you heard of this? Like you take that voice that's telling you're no good, you're not worthy, you like remove it from yourself. You give it a name.
00:14:50
Speaker
You give it a whole persona, a visual. Like my inner critic, her name is Roz. And she's got like a raspy voice. She's like smoking a cigarette. She's going, you can't do that. Get back here. What are you doing?
00:15:02
Speaker
It draws as the combination of them. And they're just telling me not to move forward, not to have ambition, just to stay where I am and not progress at all. And you have to combat that inner critic. Again, you remove it from yourself. You have a little laugh.
00:15:17
Speaker
And all of a sudden you hear that voice and it's not you. These are not facts. They're thoughts. It's the inner critic coming out. You can combat that inner critic with your inner hype person. And that's the whole talk to yourself like you would talk to your best friend.
00:15:31
Speaker
You can even name your inner hype person if you want to. Right. Like mine is named Rhoda to combat Roz. And yes, I do have conversations between the two of them in my apartment fairly frequently. It resonates. There's so many things that are getting sparked to me by what you're saying.
00:15:43
Speaker
One, i love the psychological bent to this. You strike me as someone who has done the appropriate amount of therapy. and to be helpful. I've done a lot of dreamers. And so I have all different named parts of myself. have different inner children. I've got all kinds of folks. So I love that. And I found that really helpful as well, too.
00:16:01
Speaker
And you're making me think of Carl Jung and identifying and then integrating. yeah But and something else you said, too, it's funny, the inner critic. Have you read The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron?
00:16:12
Speaker
I have it and I have not read it, but I do morning. I understand the concept of morning pages and I have done them, not in any consistent way, but I have done it. It's cool because also further in, one of the steps is naming your inner critic. And like hers is a gay man named Nigel who hates everything she does. There's the journaling prompt. There's the naming the inner critic prompt. There's lot of patterns. Totally. I got this from interviewing psychologists about how to get through the embrace phase. And that came up fairly frequently.
00:16:42
Speaker
A lot of the research I did comes from already existing research and proven principles that therapists have used in their practice. I interviewed a cognitive behavioral therapist. So there's a lot of CBT principles in there. I feel like in my next life or in my retirement life, like after I get my kid through college, I want to go back to school and become a behavioral scientist because I'm just so fascinated by this. So that's my like 60 plus plan.
00:17:12
Speaker
All right. So after embrace, number what's number three? OK, so after you go through embrace, which is the worst phase, your reward is getting to phase three, which is explore.
00:17:23
Speaker
The explore phase is really fun because you get to just play. You don't have to commit to anything yet. You get to just explore. This is when we turn to our community. We try to see what people are responding to. Like we test out ideas with our friends, with our networks. We make new connections.
00:17:41
Speaker
And this is where we figure out what is the intersection of my passion and my strength and how can I build toward, you know waking up every day and being able to do something that honors my strengths but weaves in my passions. You can find that like you've hit the holy grail. One of the exercises I do during this is figuring out your superpower.
00:18:00
Speaker
If you have scored well in a certain area on a performance review, that's great. Client relations, high marks. Public speaking, high marks. But what is really making you uniquely you? What is making you good at this?
00:18:14
Speaker
Right. And so there's a lot of find your superpower exercises that I found all over the Internet and I ask people about it. I put together a list of what I think the most guiding questions are to get you to the answer you need.
00:18:27
Speaker
So what role do you play on your team at work and what would go away if you were to leave? What energy do you bring to a cocktail party conversation? And this starts to get people to answer things that are beyond the just I'm an account executive.
00:18:45
Speaker
I'm a mom. I'm a senior leader. It's like these identifiers don't really mean anything because so many people hold those titles. What is your unique superpower and how can you harness it as you go through the explore phase?
00:19:01
Speaker
What I'm curious what your superpower is. Oh, if we all have many, but the superpower I have that comes to the top is energy. i have a lot of energy. there Look, there's an Achilles heel to that because I have a lot of energy, which means I say yes to too many things.
00:19:17
Speaker
And i get really excited about stuff. When I'm in a room with people, I show them how amazing they are, whether I am writing an article about them, whether I am coaching them one on one, whether I'm in a group setting or whether I'm speaking on a stage like when I talk about this at X cycle, I illuminate people's life experiences in a way that they hadn't seen their own life experiences before.
00:19:40
Speaker
And when I talk to them, i can mirror how awesome they are. Like I am like a true hype person. And that, I think, is why I always scored high on client relations.
00:19:52
Speaker
My clients feel awesome about themselves. I think that's why I am a good public speaker because I just look at the audience and I talk to them like I'm in a room with friends. so There's things that I do well that helped me in the corporate world and now as a business owner.
00:20:07
Speaker
But it's because of this other thing that I can uniquely do. And you do sometimes, again, like collecting data and going through these question prompts really gets you to the answer. And then you can say, OK, I'm really good at making people feel good about themselves. How can I use that in the workplace, in my relationships? Once you see something about yourself, you can really use it in new and exciting and creative ways.
00:20:33
Speaker
I love that. And I can definitely see you mirroring and amping up folks. Totally. Folks you're coaching, especially your groups of people. I'm curious, like you seem to have such an incredible intuitive, natural ability to do it.
00:20:47
Speaker
Do you ever find it draining afterwards? you feel like, oh if I've given so much energy here and now I'm a little depleted, do you have to manage your special ability there?
00:20:57
Speaker
Yeah. I once held two leadership workshops in one day and did a podcast interview where it was too much. I thought, oh this is an hour. This is hour. And there's enough time in between.
00:21:10
Speaker
but One was in person. One was virtual. And at the end of that day, i was like, I will never do this again. Because it's not just hosting a workshop or giving a talk that I've given a million times. Like you have to be listening and feeding off the audience and coming up with answers to the questions that they're asking. And I always get questions that throw me off or that I haven't answered before.
00:21:34
Speaker
And you have to be on your game. You may have seen it at the beginning of this interview. I think you may have edited it out, but I had a moment where I couldn't think of something very obvious.
00:21:44
Speaker
And I think it's because I just came here from yeah practicing for a keynote that I'm giving. And all of a sudden it's like, My brain is it's tiring. So, yes, I think that doing too many speaking engagements in one day is not ideal. And I have suffered from it.
00:22:02
Speaker
Sometimes you do have to just press on, though. I mean, that there's days where you can preserve your energy and there's days where you just have to do what you can. Yeah, yeah there's an Achilles heel to every superpower.
00:22:15
Speaker
I totally hear that. I understand what you're saying really resonates. That's only an hour. think one thing I've been trying to get better at is recognizing it's not just the time, it's the energy and what you're giving to it. And just because it's not eight hours straight of something doesn't mean that it's not a significant expenditure.
00:22:34
Speaker
And it's funny to come back to Young. I feel like when you're talking about the heel, yeah another way of saying it's like there's the shadow side of it. Yeah. I think that most people's superpowers, as my own working theory, is usually an adaptive behavior. That was something that they...
00:22:53
Speaker
cultivated when they were younger because they had to and now they're preternaturally good at it. And it can take from you a lot if you're not careful about how you spend it, essentially. That makes a lot of sense.
00:23:04
Speaker
I'm now wondering like why I felt I had to expend so much energy as a child, but I'm sure there's something there. I had to find my way to stand out in school or in my family and this became my thing. Like there has to be something there.
00:23:16
Speaker
We should get a psychiatrist and get some. Call a therapist. Validate this theory because I think there's something there for sure. OK, so these is incredible. So I got it. So now we're finding our superpower. And then what is the final stage of this?
00:23:28
Speaker
The final phase of the setback cycle is emerge. So phase four, you go through establish you are in a setback embrace. You digest the information.
00:23:39
Speaker
You don't take action. You pause. You try to understand what happened. You go to explore. You turn to your community and test out new ideas. You find out your superpowers. And that's when it's time to figure out your path forward.
00:23:53
Speaker
All the planning and introspection gets you to figure out your next chapter. But when you get to emerge and you are ready to take that next step into your next chapter, you might be a little tired.
00:24:09
Speaker
ah were just talking about energy. Going through the setback cycle is an energy-intensive process. So after all the work you've just done, it's not like you can just say, oh, I have total clarity on what I should do next. I'm going to just go barge ahead and do it. It's making a New Year's resolution. And those last weeks of December, you're thinking like, oh, my God, I'm going to drink more water.
00:24:30
Speaker
I'm going to eat healthier. I'm not going to drink alcohol. I'm going to do all these things. But you're not doing them yet. You're just talking about it. Then it's January 1st. You wake up. You're like, oh, I got to do the thing now.
00:24:42
Speaker
Yeah. Emerge is like that. And sometimes when people get to emerge, they're like, I'm ready to emerge from my setback. I know what I have to do. Knowing and doing are two different things.
00:24:55
Speaker
Sometimes you just need a little rest after you have gone through the first three phases of the setback cycle. You need to take a break. You need to pause. You need to think through what are any barriers that might be preventing me from moving forward.
00:25:08
Speaker
And then when you're nutty you can go ahead and tiptoe into your emerge phase instead of full steam ahead. That's cool. I like that you're saying it because I can imagine it's really cool.
00:25:20
Speaker
I want to start moving on to some of the talks and things you've done, but this is so interesting. And I appreciate you walking us through it. One final question on this would be, what is your suggested timeline? No one's going to be like, I'm going to knock this all out this weekend. It's going to be like weeks, months.
00:25:35
Speaker
I get asked this question all the time. How long does it take to go through the setback cycle? And i have a very unsatisfying answer, unfortunately. Everyone's setback is different.
00:25:46
Speaker
You can go through seven micro setbacks in one day and work through the cycle in one day. But the bigger, deeper, more meaningful, more life-changing ones.
00:25:57
Speaker
Those could take years. They could take years, especially if you get stuck in the established phase or embrace and you just aren't ready to start taking action. The explore phase requires action. It requires work.
00:26:11
Speaker
And some people just get so caught up in a pause or a freeze that they just can't. move forward and rumination is a big problem as you're working through the setback cycle. So it's really up to you. i have heard from people that after reading the book and understanding the setback cycle and having the prompt,
00:26:31
Speaker
They think they have been able to work through it faster than they would have before they had the information. So that's been really nice to hear. I have no data to support that, but it's been anecdotal from people who have read the book. And there's a little workbook in the back of the book. So people fill it out and they told me that it was really transformational. So that's nice.
00:26:50
Speaker
But yeah, it really depends on the scope of the setback and how much you can control on your ability to work through it. Super interesting.
00:27:01
Speaker
I know you're talking about the setbacks cycle, but also other themes. Can you talk a little bit about that work? And I guess sub question, I'm super interested to know. What are the challenges or the patterns that you're noticing are coming up in those particular rooms?
00:27:20
Speaker
It depends on the room and it depends on how comfortable people feel speaking up in front of their colleagues. There I have done keynotes where I'm in a room 200 people.
00:27:37
Speaker
And there's almost no participation. The room is too big. People are afraid to be vulnerable. I'm talking through the setback cycle. I'm sharing my own stories, but people are hesitant to share.
00:27:49
Speaker
If you go to an organization where people aren't feeling super like psychologically safe... then they're not willing to talk about their inner critic in front of their boss or in front of their colleagues because they don't want to admit that they have any self-doubt. I also have to say like doing things in person versus virtual is very different. Like I get a lot more response when I'm in person versus virtual. So I always do prefer to be in person, but I've done plenty of hybrid, virtual, like all the things.
00:28:17
Speaker
People are just less willing to share. find that the best, most impactful workshops and speaking engagements that I do are when I go to a leadership offsite or a team offsite or a professional development day for a department or a leadership team that's about like 10 to 15 people.
00:28:38
Speaker
That I have found is like the perfect size group. And it's a group of people who work together and are fairly comfortable with each other. It's small enough that you can really get to the meat of it and you can really customize it for the team that you're speaking to.
00:28:55
Speaker
If you're in a room of 200 people, you can talk about the principles, you can talk about the setback cycle in general. But again, that cycle is going to be so different for everyone. I've gone to teams who have been through restructuring. They just lost a bunch of colleagues to a round of layoffs and they're trying to find their place, helping motivate them.
00:29:14
Speaker
Their roles have expanded. They're not sure how to move forward without their beloved colleagues. It's a really tough moment for some teams. And going in there and having candid conversations about how they're feeling and how they can work through it has really yielded some strong results. I've heard from those teams like a week, two weeks, a month later.
00:29:33
Speaker
and they talk about how they're still using the principles we talked about in our session. So that's been really rewarding to hear. with so many layoffs going on right now and so much restructuring and job movement and ah people are really looking for help, you know, help regaining motivation, help getting through a transformation or some sort of tumultuous moment at their organization and being able to help even in just a small capacity has been really nice. Yeah.
00:30:05
Speaker
one of our clients is ah pretty prominent leadership coach. And in our monthly meetings, when talking about themes for her content, she's been like, we need to focus on change management, dealing with transitions. That's what everyone's struggling with right now. But I do want to just quickly touch on what you said, 10 to 15 people.
00:30:25
Speaker
It's funny. we just in the last six weeks or so, we launched a LinkedIn training product because ah initially our first offering at Medbury was strategy and content for individual leaders, teams of leaders, brands.
00:30:39
Speaker
It doesn't always make sense for companies to pay us to do 30 VPs worth of LinkedIn, but getting them contextualized on how to support what we are doing and use the platform is important. And we found that 15 is the perfect number.
00:30:52
Speaker
We're doing a training 15 people to your point about the same level. It's amazing. Once we even start to get to 2025, it's like crickets and we're trying to figure out how to keep it affordable for clients while also like making sure it stays.
00:31:06
Speaker
Yeah. So it's funny you say that number, but I am super curious when you're in those meetings and you're like, okay, guys, 30% of your friends and colleagues were just laid off. What do you, how do you motivate and support people in that position? Because it can be so hard to your point.
00:31:23
Speaker
They're overwhelmed with new responsibilities. They're potentially a little shocked by the change and they're incredibly nervous and less confident and secure in their employers, like direct, like how do you support them?
00:31:38
Speaker
it's a pet It really is so dependent on the circumstance. There have also been rooms that I've gone into where some person has hired me as the speaker. but The problem that they're having that isn't being said is that maybe the manager or the boss or the department head like isn't listening to them.
00:31:55
Speaker
And so I'm going in with a little bit more context than I'm allowed to share. you know what I mean? Sometimes I can go in and be really transparent and say, you've lost 30 percent of your colleagues. You guys are figuring out your next steps.
00:32:06
Speaker
You're in the embrace phase of the setback cycle. Let's talk about what to do. Here's what happened. And I take them through the steps. and We go through the setback cycle collectively. And I say, OK, what's your superpower? What's your unique power?
00:32:17
Speaker
thing that you bring to this team. And once you hype people and show them why they're so critical to the team and what they can do in the aftermath of an organizational setback, they do get this burst of motivation. Okay, maybe it's not all doom and gloom. Maybe I can see this as an opportunity, see this as a defining moment.
00:32:37
Speaker
I come in and I give the principles, there's only so much I can control in terms of their workload, their manager their boss. But when I do have and I always prepare a lot with the folks who bring me in before I go into the room and I try to get a sense of the politics and the personalities.
00:32:53
Speaker
And a lot of times there's like a hush whisper. This is the person to really get through to. This is a person that needs that most help. Or these are the people that need the motivation because the most senior person just isn't listening to us.
00:33:08
Speaker
And so I try to guide the conversation in a direction that will address the needs of the people in the room or at least to the level of whatever context I've been given going in, whether it's public and everyone in the room knows it or whether there's been some like, hush, can we get this done, but we can't talk about it, whisper. So it's really i' being a little bit vague because it's so specific. I have my framework and then I have to really customize it to the people in the room.
00:33:36
Speaker
No, and I talk about a superpower you're navigating like eight layers of complex dynamics there. And I can totally imagine it would be impossible to walk away from.
00:33:47
Speaker
motivation session with you not feeling like, all right, going to do this. This is good. It's funny. All the testimonials or post-workshop surveys that I get, the responses I get are, she really customized it to our team specifically. And I'm very careful about that because you can read my book. You can watch my TED Talk. I need to bring something that's more than what you can just get online.
00:34:10
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. That's super cool. And also, too, I'm sure there are folks listening who are like, we need to get Amy in to talk to our teams. So if you're listening, check the show notes.
TED Talk and New Program
00:34:20
Speaker
I want to talk about your TED Talk a little bit. I feel like it resonated with so many people.
00:34:24
Speaker
Can you talk about it a little bit? And what kind of reactions and feedback have you gotten since? Oh my God. Yeah, and that was such a surprise. i was preparing for the book launch and it was the month before the book came out. Got this invitation, like you've been invited to speaking at TEDx in Foggy Bottom, Washington, D.C. at their April conference. I was like, what?
00:34:47
Speaker
Sure. we right or sorry, you didn't have to apply. Like you just got an email and they're like, we want you to come talk to an intern at a PR firm who I wasn't working with. I didn't hire a PR firm for my book launch. That was all me.
00:35:00
Speaker
But I spoke to someone who worked at a PR firm like. Two days before their intern came to them and said, i go to GW.
00:35:11
Speaker
They're doing a TEDx foggy bottom at my school. And it's like one of the biggest TEDx in the whole country. yeah Here's the theme. Do you know anyone, any of our clients that we can pitch for it?
00:35:22
Speaker
I don't know if they pitched any of their clients, but I got an email from that person that said, hey, you would actually be a great fit for this. Do you mind if we just throw your name in the ring? And I was like, yeah. And then I just got an email from the TEDx organizers inviting me to speak. I don't think it was a robust application. I think these people who i had just spoken to just sent my maybe like my website or something. i don't even know.
00:35:44
Speaker
honestly don't know. But they got the information. And thanks to that intern, Because I don't know her, but it was very serendipitous. And the timing was amazing because it was two months after my book launched.
00:35:57
Speaker
And it was the same weekend as the White House Correspondents' Dinner. My agent came with me. and We booked hotel where that dinner was happening. We asked everyone we knew, and got into some of the parties. we just, after the TED Talk, had this incredible after party with all these incredible celebrities. And it was a wild end to this moment, which was the end of the book tour.
00:36:18
Speaker
actually doing the talk and figuring out how to adapt the setback cycle to their theme and content and to an audience that was so broad because it wasn't just the people in the room, but the YouTube video and what's going to live on the website and making sure that it's applicable to whoever is going to watch. I put a lot of thought into that. And I was thinking how everyone combats self-doubt at some point.
00:36:46
Speaker
Maybe I can center the talk around how to combat your self-doubt narrative and why self-doubt comes into play in a big way when you're going through the setback cycle. Maybe I can talk about how setbacks really set the stage for reinvention.
00:37:01
Speaker
So I did the talk. It went really well. I prepared like crazy, of course. It went really well. A couple months after that, i got an email from folks at TED, like the big TED organization, saying we're going to feature your talk on our website, on social media, like everywhere. And they put like the full power of TED behind my talk.
00:37:22
Speaker
To the point where it was all over social. The talk has gotten almost half a million views. Emails all the time from people saying that, was I inside their brain? Did I write the talk just for them? And so it had the intended impact of, again, illuminating people's experiences and giving them the tools and actionable insights that they need to understand their own life experiences and prepare for their next inevitable setback.
00:37:50
Speaker
Very cool. We'll put the link to that in the show notes for anyone listening who hasn't seen it. I i know we only have four minutes left. I feel like I could talk to you for three hours. I think the final question I want to ask is what's something you're thinking about or working on right now that's exciting, new? What I've been doing so far when people reach out to me and want to work together is I say either buy the book or let's work together in a one-on-one coaching capacity or bring me in as a speaker at your organization. And those are like hard to do or they're cost prohibitive for people. And so I've been thinking for months about how do I find something that's more in the middle and how could I help more people and make more of an impact, but offer something that's deeper than just asking people to read the book, but not as high as like bringing me in to speak at your organization.
00:38:39
Speaker
And so i actually just launched something yesterday called the Spring 2025 Six Week Career Reset. It's a six week program.
00:38:50
Speaker
It's going to be a learning experience in a group setting where I take people through not only the principles of the setback cycle, but I guide them through how to recognize their own experiences as setbacks, how to prepare for inevitable setbacks or even Just how to get like a boost of motivation and help them articulate their narrative so that they can advocate for themselves in the workplace. They can figure out whether or not their current role is serving them or if they should make a move.
00:39:18
Speaker
And they can really, again, we go through the superpowers and community in one session so that I'm not only explaining the principles, but I'm sitting there and guiding them through applying it the principles to their own lives and to their own experiences. So I've packaged it into six weeks. I'm going to a few cohorts of only four people each. And it's ah really it's so inexpensive that people have been coming to me saying, why aren't you charging more?
00:39:44
Speaker
And I said, that's the point. That's the point of this, to make it accessible. I want it to be accessible for people who have recently been laid off. And if people are listening to this podcast, I would even say, if you put Medberry in it I'll give you 20% if you sign up Oh, all right. Cool. if Amy, thank you so much. I think you're so cool. And I love the work you do and what you put out into the world. And I'm really glad that we got the chance
Conclusion and Contact Information
00:40:10
Speaker
to talk. i bet folks will like it.
00:40:11
Speaker
For anyone who wants to connect with you, we can put your website in the show notes. We can put your LinkedIn profile in the show notes. anywhere else that you'd suggest they look to?
00:40:23
Speaker
No, it's really amyschonthal.com is my website. Thesetbackcycle.com is the book website. And yeah, I think Instagram and LinkedIn are really the platforms where I'm most active. So that's me.
00:40:36
Speaker
All right. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. This is wonderful.