Episode 103: How Mental Health And Therapy Can Help Your Business With Sarah El Sherbini

Sarah El Sherbini is a lifelong pet lover with an entrepreneurial spirit. After graduating with a Bachelor's degree in design, she didn’t become a designer. She went full force into the pet care industry, launched PetsGo Pet Care in 2015, and never looked back. PetsGo provides complete and total peace of mind every day to the busy pet parents of Toronto. Learn more about Sarah and her pet sitting company at her website: www.mypetsgo.ca Biggest Takeaways You Don't Want To Miss Our businesses can cause us a lot of stress, trouble, and burnout. That's why it's so important to find your "why" and hold on to it whenever you feel like giving up. Nothing is more important than your physical and mental health. Talking to your family, friends, or even a therapist can help get you through these rough patches in your business. Sometimes the first therapist we go to may not be a good fit. That doesn't mean therapy doesn't work! Usually, we have to go through multiple therapists until we find the one that is able to best help us be the best versions of ourselves. If you've ever tried therapy and think it doesn't work and are struggling, try to be open-minded and try it again with a different person or modality. You spend so much time with yourself, so why not learn how to talk to yourself? Sometimes we just need help framing things in the right way, instead of allowing the world to frame things for us. The 5 Second Rule is a term coined by Mel Robbins. It means that if you feel that you need to do something, but feel yourself hesitating, you count down from 5 and then you do it! It seems so simple, but it's not always easy.   Show Highlights How did you know that you weren't okay and why? [3:30] How did you accept that "it's okay not to be okay," and how did you move on from that? [8:30] Has Mel Robbins' book, The 5 Second Rule, had an impact on the way you run your business and see your life? [12:00] What happened to your business when you took your foot off of the accelerator and put it on cruise control instead? [14:00]     Links: Sarah's Website: http://www.mypetsgo.ca/ The Jump Mastermind: http://jumpconsulting.net/jump-mastermind Remember to use coupon bella25 for $25 off your monthly membership! The 5 Second Rule: https://www.amazon.com/Second-Rule-Transform-Confidence-Everyday/dp/1682612384 Share The Show Did you enjoy the show? We would love it if you subscribed today and left us a 5-star review! Click this link – Bella In Your Business Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section Click on ‘Write a Review’ Transcript: This is episode 103 of Bella In Your Business. The next series is going to be a bunch of interviews with amazing pet sitters that I know will motivate and inspire you and your business. From time to time, I interview incredible pet sitters who have faced some really amazing challenges that have inspired me and I know will inspire you. If you know of anyone who has an amazing story to share, who is a pet sitting or dog walking business owner, I'd love to hear from you. Just email me at [email protected]. Until then, enjoy this next episode. Welcome to Bella in Your Business, where Bella will discuss anything and everything about your pet sitting business to help you land on target. So get ready—Bella’s got your chute. Let’s jump. Bella: Welcome to Bella in Your Business. My name is Bella Vasta with Jump Consulting, and today I have another pet sitter spotlight. I'm really excited to introduce you to an incredible person I really admire, Sarah El-Sherbini up in Toronto. Sarah, how are you? Sarah: I'm good. How are you guys doing? Bella: We're awesome here. I want you to explain to our audience a little bit about who you are, where you're from, and a little bit about your business. Sarah: My name is Sarah El-Sherbini and I'm from Egypt. I started my business after graduating from design and realizing I didn’t want to be a designer. I wanted to work with pets, and that was three years ago. I've been trucking along ever since. Bella: And you're not actually in Egypt anymore; you're up in Toronto, right? Sarah: Yeah, we’re serving pet owners in the city of Toronto in Canada. Bella: Awesome. For all of you geographically stumped people here in the U.S., that’s on the East Coast. I didn’t know that until about a year ago when I started getting lots of friends in Toronto. Now I know exactly where you are. Sarah: Yeah. Bella: So you’re traveling far to get to the retreat! Because Sarah’s actually coming with us to the Jump into Paradise retreat. It’s the first retreat of its kind. We rented a mansion here in Arizona, and we’ve got twelve people coming for a weekend getaway. I’m so excited—it’s completely sold out. Listen, you guys, I wanted Sarah to come on here to share her story because of this Pet Sitter Spotlight. I wanted to highlight people that go through things that a lot of others do. As a coach, I feel like I hold everyone’s secrets. Sarah, when you were so bold and vulnerable in the mastermind a couple months ago, I had so much admiration for you because you were transparent and brave. I wanted to have you on because I know there are others out there feeling the way you did. Let’s take it back to that day in the mastermind. You boldly got on camera in our safe space where we all support each other and said you weren’t okay. Can you take me back to where you were then? Sarah: That was almost exactly two months ago. I was in a pretty bad place mentally. I was considering closing my business. I’d been struggling by myself for about three weeks, not knowing what to do. I thought I was going to close the business tomorrow, so I might as well tell everybody. I had been in therapy before, and when I talked with my therapist, she said something that lit a light bulb for me—she said I was talking about my business like it was an abusive partner. She said I was a little obsessed with it, that it caused me a lot of stress and burnout, and asked why I kept doing it. She was steering me toward closing the business, saying it’d be better for my health. I got on camera and was really upset because I didn’t want to close my business. It’s my baby that I’d created over the last two and a half years. It was finally growing, I had an employee, things were starting to roll along, and we were actually making money. I felt like I was going to lose everything. So I got on camera and said, “I’m not okay.” I wasn’t planning to film myself—it just happened. I think I was trying to explain why I’d been absent from the group because before that, I was full speed ahead, doing all the challenges and engaging with everyone. I’d burnt myself out and crashed. Then I guess what happened afterward surprised me—the magnitude of the response. Comments started pouring in seconds after I posted, from you, from so many people, from my accountability partner. I got private messages, emails, even a phone call from New York City. It was so touching—the reaction to me simply sharing my struggle and being open. Bella: The theme I remember was that we were all telling you it’s okay not to be okay. Everyone reached out because we’ve all felt that way, except none of us were brave enough to show it like you did. You were crying on camera, which was so strong and real. You got all this amazing support and even had your therapist telling you one thing. What was beautiful was that people in your area, Pam and Charlene, said, “Go take time off. We’ll cover your walks.” They told you they’d brainstormed about it and even considered taking over your software if needed. Sarah: Yeah. Thankfully I didn’t need that help, but knowing they had my back meant everything. It was more help than I could’ve asked for. Bella: That kind of support is unheard of. So you had this realization that you weren’t okay. How did you accept that and start moving forward? Sarah: Posting that video made it real. After I posted it, I felt a lot of relief because my struggle was public and now my recovery would be too. It was a turning point. I told my husband Jake, “It’s real now, and now I have to rebuild.” I called my doctor, got an appointment, and talked honestly. She helped me feel like it was okay, that I wasn’t alone. Posting that video pushed me to make real changes. We started a new treatment plan, and I stopped seeing my therapist at the time because it wasn’t the right fit. Bella: That’s such a good point. I’ve had therapy myself, and sometimes the first therapist just isn’t the right fit. If you’ve tried therapy and think it doesn’t work, maybe it wasn’t the right person, time, or method. Sarah: Exactly. Seeing my doctor ended up being more helpful. She put me on anti-anxiety medication, and I’m not ashamed to say that. Like Mel Robbins says, it’s like giving insulin to someone with diabetes—it’s treatment. At first, I saw her twice a week, then once a week, and now only as needed. I can’t believe all this has happened in two months. Two months ago felt like the sky was falling. Bella: That’s amazing. You mentioned Mel Robbins. Did her book The 5 Second Rule play a role in your recovery? Sarah: Yeah. I hadn’t actually read it before, but I listened to her audiobook through May. It was so inspiring, especially her sections about anxiety. It was there at the right place and time for me. I used it to get to my appointments, to keep my business running even when I wasn’t in growth mode. Bella: I love that. Sometimes as business owners we feel we always need to be growing, but sometimes the goal is just to maintain. What happened when you took your foot off the gas and went on cruise control? Sarah: After posting the video, you and I had a coaching call where you helped me see it was okay to slow down. For the first quarter, I’d been pushing for growth, hiring, expanding.