#178 Burnout Is Not a Personal Failure (feat. Elizabeth Rosenberg)

Elizabeth Rosenberg : I define spiritual health as whatever it is in your life that is a higher power that is driving you towards your purpose. So it's not religious at all. I think it is unbelievably important as humans that we find some kind of purpose in our life. And unfortunately, I think we've all attached purpose to work and that's not necessarily the best version of ourselves.

I think purpose is so much bigger than that. Matt Poepsel : Everybody's talking about burnout these days. How do we prevent it? How do we recover from it?

What supplements to take? What routines to build? All this great resilience stuff. But today's guest has a much more uncomfortable message.

Burnout's coming for you. The question is, what do you do when it arrives? Elizabeth Rosenberg spent 25 plus years as one of the most respected voices in PR and communications, including Global Head of Communications for a top advertising agency. Then a migraine, took away her motor skills, landed her in the hospital, and she went back to work that night.

The moments in her on a journey that most people would never have the courage to take public. She went from burnout to intuitive medium, from corporate communication strategist to a chief spiritual officer and founder of The Good Advice Company, Elizabeth, welcome to the show. It's so great to see you. Elizabeth Rosenberg : Hi, it's nice to see you too.

Thanks for having me. Matt Poepsel : I can't wait to dive into your story. I know it doesn't start off on such a great tone, but it's great to see you now. I want to take you back to that time.

You had so much experience, as I mentioned in PR and communications, and you're working for the most respected brand agencies in the world. You were crushing it and then your body gave you that loud signal. Can you take us back and just tell us what was happening there? Elizabeth Rosenberg : Yeah.

I mean, I think that people think that burnout always has to do with you hating your job. And I loved my job. I was just working too hard. And the thing that my coach taught me at the time was that your brain can be moving a million miles an hour, but your body's giving you signals when it's time to take a rest.

And I just ignored all of that as it was happening until finally my body was like, "Okay, we're done now. Now we're going to put you in the hospital." It was terrifying. And I did what all very independent people do, called my mom as I drove myself to the hospital, ended up there and then was like, "Oh no, this can't be burnout."

I for sure thought I was having a stroke. And when they said, "Everything's fine. It's just a migraine." I was like, "Okay."

And went right back to work. Matt Poepsel : Right back to work. Holy cow. And what do you think is that story that we're telling ourselves?

At that point, are you wishing it away? Are you just in denial or is it just that the thought of not working as much just is almost unthinkable? Elizabeth Rosenberg : I was really loving what I was doing. I was traveling the world.

I was working for one of the most iconic brands in the world, innovating in a very creative way. And I think mentally I didn't want to stop. And I also think that there was this fear of if I stopped, I was going to get left behind. And I think there is this shame around when you have burnout that you're almost doing it to yourself.

So when I actually had that realization, because of course I went down every other path. I went to all the doctors, I went to all the things and was like, "Tell me what is wrong with me. " And you're hoping for a diagnosis so at least you have an answer. But when somebody says to you, "Oh no, nothing's wrong with you.

You are working too hard and you're not paying attention to what your body's saying." There's embarrassment and shame around the fact and guilt that you're doing it to yourself. Matt Poepsel : Yeah. And you're like, "Or what else could it be?

" Elizabeth Rosenberg : Or what do I do? And I have to pay for the doctors that I'm going to go see and I have to do ... This cycle is too difficult. Matt Poepsel : It's a loss aversion thing.

So you're like, "Oh no, how will I still have all the things that I enjoy?" And like you said, people hear burnout and they're like, "Well, it's because you hate your job." No, I love my job. Some of the best jobs are the most consuming and that's what makes them great until all of a sudden we spend too much time in that red line and then they're not so great.

Elizabeth Rosenberg : And I also think we burn out when we're at the height of our career Matt Poepsel : When you're Elizabeth Rosenberg : Doing something that just feels really important to you. Matt Poepsel : That's right. My parents are retired now, no chance of burning out in retirement, I don't think. I don't think it works that way.

They're having too Elizabeth Rosenberg : Much fun. Exactly. Matt Poepsel : Yeah, we do much fun. But I feel like it's that exact situation where you push and you push and you finally get to that level and you've worked hard for it and now all of a sudden the thought of doing something different, it just, I don't know.

I feel that push pull sometimes as well where you really want to lean in, but at the same time, you kind of know you should lean out, but it doesn't feel right because that's not how you got to where you are. It's real, which is why I'm so glad that we're talking about it. Elizabeth Rosenberg : It is scary to try something new because we are so accustomed to this is what I'm actually good at and this is what people have paid me to do. What if I actually try to do something else and I won't have the same response?

The society won't see me the same way. My colleagues won't see me the same way. I won't be paid the same amount of money. And that's a scary thing to do when you have children and a mortgage and bills that you have to pay.

Matt Poepsel : Yeah. And while it's not universally true, it is the known path. You always know that doing this thing, doing more PR and more communications and more airplanes and more miles, that's like, oh, I know that path of the other one. I know that path.

Yeah. The other one's like, "I don't know that other path so much where people say I can pull back a little and maybe even do better." You're like, "Okay, maybe." But that's a big leap of faith.

So when we know it's going to show up, especially for high achievers, people that are really leaning into their roles, et cetera, what's the job of a leader then when it comes to saying if you feel that you're burning out ... And maybe again, like you said, I don't hate my job. I just feel like it's costing me something. What's the job of a leader in that moment then?

Elizabeth Rosenberg : I think everyone is going to experience burnout at some point in their career. You can have physical burnout, emotional burnout, mental burnout. We are living in a very, I think, busy, contentious, chaotic timeline that we're all experiencing. So as a leader, I think the thing to do is recognize it first, but again, if you're going to ignore recognizing it, what's the point?

So I always tell everybody, make sure you have kind of an accountability partner in your life that is recognizing it for you. Everyone is going to experience burnout in a different way. Everyone's not going to have a migraine where they land in the hospital. There's people who have insomnia, GI issues.

I've talked to people who've gone blind and I'm like, "What? That is wild. Your body will do what it needs to do in order to shut down." But the recovery is also different for everyone.

: There is no silver bullet for burnout because it shows up in so many different ways for all of us. So for some people, it's like, "Oh, I need a long weekend where I'm not on my phone and I'm actually just really connecting with my family." Some people need to go camping in a desert and in nature by themselves for a week to recover. Some people need six months of really deep, I think, physical and emotional and mental work to get through why they're even at this place in the first place.

So when it comes to what a leader should be doing, a leader needs to really start listening to all aspects of their life and your body is one of them that we just so easily choose to ignore. Matt Poepsel : We're getting further and further from our bodies. We're spending so much time in this mental space and these virtual experiences and detached from sort of what used to be a very primal existence, I suppose. But what I'm taking solace in is the fact that you're saying to a leader, it's not always going to look the same.

So don't be surprised. Whoever's showing up for you. I had a guest who said they lost their sense of smell. I'm like, okay, I wouldn't have seen that coming, but that happens.

And so it's going to show up differently, but you're also saying what it takes to sort of come back down, for lack of better term, also going to be different. So you really have to have awareness, it sounds like on both ends. It's like see how it's showing up for you, how it's presenting in your body, how it's feeling. : I know that when I get very drained mentally, I get cold.

My body doesn't regulate temperature as well as it does when I'm going good. So I'm like, okay, I need physical rest or I need mental rest to be able to get that back. So you learn your tell after some period of time. I haven't figured out the second part yet though what to do about it.

Elizabeth Rosenberg : It's hard. I also think as a leader, as a manager of people as well, we need to have grace for the people that are working for us, but also we have to display the kind of behavior that we are hoping that they are going to do as well. So as a leader, if you are experiencing burnout, you need to be very, I think, honest and transparent and vulnerable about what that looks like for you so your staff also feels comfortable feeling like they can take a few days off and/or showing up and listening to their bodies and their brains that they need to be the best version of themselves.

You don't want everybody on your team to all be flailing all the time. That's just not going to work for business. Matt Poepsel : Right. And we've seen some of the return of that in this more recent environment where it's back to a grinder, back to these, "Hey, for a while you're going to have to do these 80-hour weeks, maybe for a little while, but maybe not.

I don't know that's great advice. Just exactly as you were saying, what I found is that in the very beginning when I started to demonstrate that type of vulnerability to say, Hey, I'm going through some stuff here, it was scary and it was a real leap of faith, but my team stepped up and said, how can we help? Because I had invested in them for so much and it gets easier over time to let people in and talk about your restorative practices or say, Hey, I'm taking an afternoon. I wasn't going to, but you know what, I need to.

There's not weakness in that. : There's strength in that, right? Elizabeth Rosenberg : Well, they're strengthening that because you're focusing not just on work, but kind of like your whole human. And I'm not somebody who's like, bring your whole self to work.

I don't think that that's super realistic in the world that we're living in. But I do think that there is an aspect of you want to be emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually healthy to actually do the work and the best work that you can as a business leader, as an entrepreneur, as a manager, as a whatever level you are. Matt Poepsel : Yeah, 100%. And I think just as you said that, when we're talking about bringing your full self to work, some of that really does come down to discernment almost, like trying to decide and some level of clarity.

And I want to go back to your backstory real quick just for a second. You walked away from your career March 2nd, 2020, auspicious these days right before the world shut down and nobody was talking about things like the great resignation yet or any of this stuff. It was just a wild, wild time, but you walked away from that career based on what you had experienced. What was it that gave you the clarity, Elizabeth, when you think about nobody really knew what was coming and you couldn't have known what was coming either, but how did you have enough clarity to say, "You know what?

I'm taking a different path here." Elizabeth Rosenberg : My plan when I quit was very different than obviously how it turned out. I was going to travel. I was going to do all these things that in my brain I'm like, "This is going to be healthy for me.

This is going to be great." I really think that I pandemiced well, which is a terrible kind of thing to say because I know it was such a traumatic time for all of us as a society, as individuals, but I really took that time to figure out what I loved and what I really wanted to do and what I was really good at and what people would pay me for and what they wouldn't pay me for. And that time was very restorative for me and I don't think that if the world hadn't really closed down, I would've had that opportunity to do that.

I would've kept doing the things that I had always done, but I just needed to change. : This is also coming from a place of privilege that I'm by myself. I'm not paying for a family and I have resources and savings that I've been able to really save at the same time. I was really taking a leap of faith on myself in that moment.

Matt Poepsel : I love that you said, "You know what? I'm going to do something different." And the world said, "Oh yeah, watch this. " Listen, we're all going to be doing something different for a while.

That's pretty incredible. And it sounds like in the end, the net of it was positive for you that you pandemiced well, but in those early days, how was it feeling at that point where you're like, you were already doing something a little uncertain and now how did that uncertainty did it compound or was it like, "Oh, actually the timing's probably pretty good because nobody's got it all figured out right now." Elizabeth Rosenberg : To be honest, the timing was perfect because there were so many people who needed PR counsel around layoffs and restructuring and internal comms and how to talk to people in the right way.

I actually had a lot of opportunity to do some of the stuff that I really like to do, which is communications based in human beliefs and truths. I think it's really important that communications and comms people talk to humans like they're humans. We're getting to a place where everyone is using AI in a way that I don't think is constructive moving forward for how we actually communicate with employees. It'll be interesting to see where that all lands.

Matt Poepsel : Oh my gosh. Yeah. Elizabeth Rosenberg : I can't wait to see six months from now, a year from now, it's going to be fascinating. Matt Poepsel : It's unbelievable because we're talking about something that happened over six years ago at this point where the world kind of shut down for a bit and bounced back and didn't ever really look the same sin for a lot of different reasons and it keeps tumbling and tumbling.

But I love this point that you made too where you're thinking about it actually turned out to be a good thing for you not only in terms of timing, it probably put you on a trajectory that you would've been. My experience was similar. I really went through the same sort of values reprioritization so many of us did and I landed on a meditation cushion. I was like, "I'm going to have to figure out this spiritual side of things."

And just the entire mind role of all this had hit that point of my career. And it leads me to this notion that you also identified spiritual health. : You've been talking about health a litle bit, but spiritual health was like this pillar that we don't talk about as much alongside physical, emotional, financial, mental health. And my question for you now, Elizabeth, is where does spiritual health kind of fit in and what is it that leads us in our go, go, go Western society to kind of not prioritize it more than we do?

Elizabeth Rosenberg : To me, I define spiritual health as whatever it is in your life that is a higher power that is driving you towards your purpose. So it's not religious at all. And I think that we as a society really think about spirituality and religion that are one and the same and to me they could not be more opposite. With that being said, I think it is unbelievably important as humans that we find some kind of purpose in our life.

And unfortunately, I think we've all attached purpose to work and that's not necessarily I think the best version of ourselves. I think purpose is so much bigger than that. So I really like to talk about the need of spiritual health in the workplace and that can look like meditation. That could be surfing, that could be walking.

I'm not a great meditator. I think we talked about this earlier. : I cannot sit down at home. It does not work for me, but I've talked a lot about the fact that I think that meditation needs a rebrand because what is meditative to one person is totally different for what meditation can look like for somebody like you who has a very dedicated practice.

I also think we just try to define things in such black and white boxes and it's okay in this world to be a little gray. Matt Poepsel : Yeah, I agree 100%. I feel like those immersive experiences when you notice that you're losing track of time and you just really feel really deeply good about something you did. You could volunteer, you could listen to music, you could do whatever you're into.

And I'm with you on that one. These things that make us really take perspective of ourselves, people get involved in their community and they're thinking bigger than their normal day to day. I love all that stuff for sure. Elizabeth Rosenberg : I mean, purpose is so much about connection and the impact and legacy that you're going to be leaving behind, what does that look like?

Matt Poepsel : It's part of the cautionary tale while work is not always suitable as a purpose vehicle. It certainly can be. I hope some people are listening right now saying, "I get a tremendous amount of purpose from my job." I think that's great, especially considering how much time we spend at work.

But if you don't, I think that's okay too. It's just a matter of, okay, where do you get that sense of purpose? It used to be easier, I think. In the old days, you didn't count on your job to give you a sense of purpose and your weekends were totally like, shut it down and just like nine to five, that's when I work outside of that.

It's my family, it's my faith, whatever it is, those things are kind of gone. Everything seeps into itself and it gets a little bit weird now. Elizabeth Rosenberg : I love that you said that because when I'm coaching people with their personal branding and just working with them one-on-one, I do talk so much about that. If your work is not giving you the purpose, what is that side hustle that's giving you the purpose?

What is that volunteer opportunity that's giving you the purpose? But I have personally so much purpose in what I do day-to-day because a lot of what I want to do in life is help people be the best version of themselves and that ladders up to a greater purpose that I have. So I think how it all works together, sometimes you just need somebody else to see the building blocks to get you there. I Matt Poepsel : Think we put such a spotlight on purpose.

Sometimes I see it working against us. Some people will be like, "I feel less than because I don't know my purpose." And we make it almost too grandiose. Almost like leadership itself as a term seems like, "Oh, I'm not a leader.

That's too hoy Pilloya. Word is too elevated." You're like, "Well, no, hold on timeout. Let's definitely make these more accessible.

Everyone can be a leader. I certainly believe that. " And the fact is that when it comes to purpose, it's okay if you don't feel like you can totally name it. It's like, well, what do you enjoy?

Let's start there. And there could be aspects of your work. Maybe you work in a company that you don't totally enjoy, but what about it? Do you like your teammates?

Do you like developing other people? Do you like helping customers? : What is it that you do like? Let's not de- energize what naturally gives you energy or say, "Well, it's not that big of a deal because it's not like we're saving the world or I'm not like a doctor curing cancer or anything."

You're like, "Well, hold on timeout now. Let's take it easy." Elizabeth Rosenberg : Well, and every time somebody says that to me, I remind everybody of the ripple effect. So many people think that they have to be on a stage and that they have to have an audience to make an impact in the world.

You could impact one person that could then impact 10 people, that can then impact a hundred people. So every day-to-day thing that we're doing on a regular basis has that potential for ripple effect that can change the world. Matt Poepsel : We're so connected in ways that we don't really even appreciate. And this is why smiling at strangers is such a good idea because you just never know what's going to happen.

Yes. Elizabeth Rosenberg : It was the worst part during the pandemic when everybody had a mask on and I was like, smile at everybody. I know. I talk to strangers all the time and my family just absolutely cringe, but it's the thing that I love the most.

I will make an effort to compliment a stranger on a daily basis because it feels good for me and it feels good for them. Matt Poepsel : I've done that as well where I've started to ask people, because I'm just so wired for work, but I see people in a working role work at the supermarket, whatever, and I say, "What's your favorite part about your job?" It's my favorite question to ask because then they're like, "Oh, everybody says something." And then you can only imagine that when you're done asking that awkward question and they say something they haven't thought about a lot, they walk away a little bit like, "I do like that part about my job.

Maybe not the whole thing." Elizabeth Rosenberg : One of my favorite questions is what is a compliment that you recently got that stuck with you? Matt Poepsel : Nice. That's a good one.

Elizabeth Rosenberg : Man, thanks. Matt Poepsel : See you there. I'll give you one right there. That is a great question.

There you go. You're a very interesting person too. Yeah. I've enjoyed this conversation quite a lot.

I wanted to touch on something that you said earlier, which is that you help people with their personal branding and you develop this proprietary personal branding system as well, this practice that includes, I'm probably going to say it wrong, Akashic record readings and behavioral analytics. Clean that up for me because I'm sure I got it wrong, but what do these things, how do they work together and what role do they play in helping someone with their personal brand? I'm fascinated by this.

Elizabeth Rosenberg : So one of the reasons I think that I enjoyed the pandemic was because it gave me an opportunity to really hone in on my skill as an Akashic record reader. The Akashic records are in essence a library of our soul's journey past, present, future. It'd be like if you were going to a tarot reader or intuitive medium, I like to call myself an intuitive, but I do an Akashic reading with every one of my clients and my clients are CEOs at Fortune 500 companies and/or the small business down the street.

My clients are all over the place in every industry. I would say about half of my clients have never had a reading, are very anti-reading, but once they have a reading, it is their favorite part of the process. And I'm like, "Just trust the process. It's going to be fine."

And I think one of the reasons that people trust me in this experience is because I don't look like what social media and the internet has said an intuitive medium is supposed to look like. : I've worked at corporate companies. I still do. I'm very much still in line with the type of people that I'm working with.

Then I work with an executive who's in HR and talent and she specializes in something called predictive index, which is behavioral analytics. Everyone's had a behavioral analytics test. If you've been in corporate America, they tend to take 30 minutes, 45 minutes, they're forever, and then you get this 36 page report. That is not how this works.

It is a graph and it is two questions and it takes five minutes. So in this process, I've got intuitive data from your reading, which I do all over Zoom. I have behavioral data from this other test that we do and then I interview you. And within three sessions, I know more about you, your origin story, where your blocks are, where we want to go, if you should be an entrepreneur, if your behavioral analytics actually backs that up, if you need to be around people, if you're patient, if you have a lot of drive, if you're more operational than visionary.

: And then I take all of this and I really try to kind of uncover what that interesting story is about you. In every one of my clients over the last six years, well, really 20 years of doing this, but in the last six years with this process, the story that everybody wants to tell is not interesting at all. The story that we then really dig down and uncover is the one that is actually one that's going to resonate with people. And I love that so much.

Matt Poepsel : And for listeners, we're not talking about these obscure companies. You're talking about your clientless, Google, Apple, Nike, Riot Games. These are people that are building the products and the services that we love and that we use every day. I think there's this misperception that people who reach that level of success or participate in those sort of technical or very successful industries don't have this side that's interested in intuitive and spiritual and these kind of metaphysical type things.

Not true. I think you're proving that. I think you probably felt comfortable with it, but I'm sure just as you pointed out, some people are skeptical, you mentioned earlier until they get the reading, but even from your own personal brand, I don't want to say it's alienating, but it probably does make some people like, "Oh, that's not for me at all. " How did you reconcile that level of saying like, "I feel this is something that I believe in.

: It's something I want to bring to my clients." But at the same time, it's not all that accessible for people to talk about spiritual health or being an intuitive or anything like that. How did you think about, did it cost you anything or did you wrestle with it at all or was it just, "Hey, that's too bad. This is what I'm doing."

Elizabeth Rosenberg : A little bit of both, to be honest. As a PR person, I put out an op-ed in Business Insider in 2021 about my burnout story. That was terrifying for so many reasons that ended up going viral globally. I still get emails about that.

I think that was permission for people to understand and be able to talk to their bosses and their colleagues and their family about what burnout looks for them. In 2022, I think that was the timing, I kind of came out of the spiritual closet with an op-ed as well. I was so scared with my burnout story. I did not sleep the night before.

I was sick to my stomach. I was like, "Everyone is going to think that I'm weak and no one's going to want to work with me ever again." That went well. When I told my next story, I was kind of like, "Let's see what happens."

There was no fear. : There was just like, this is innately who I am and the people who are going to accept it are going to accept it and the people that aren't. It has and continues to be my differentiator. I am not just a regular PR person who is doing the story mining who's telling your story.

I am not just the intuitive who's going to do a reading for you, although I do do one-off readings, but not going to do a reading for you and then just leave you with that information. So part of it was exciting, but I also think part of it was like it was very anti-climatic. I thought it would be the same kind of response that I had from the burnout story when I put this story out. I thought everybody would be like, "Oh my God."

No one was surprised. Everybody was like, "Oh, I mean, that makes sense." And I think part of the beauty of who I am, my entire life has been connection. : I am still friends with people that I have known for 40 something years.

Every job I've had, I've been like, I'm collecting the people that I love from each job and they're just going to stick with me. So my network is my IP and my network is everything. So almost all of my business has come from referral. Somebody experiences it and then has had such a good experience with it, they then tell other people to do it.

So that has always been, I think, the best kind of affirmation that I know what I'm doing is right because other people send business your way. And then there's just people who find me on the internet and they're like, "I just felt called to you. I saw your LinkedIn. I read some of the stuff that you wrote and I just felt like you were the right person to work with.

: " And I genuinely believe that the right people find me at the exact time that they're supposed to. Matt Poepsel : That is lovely. I think it's such a great example where you felt the tension, the anxiety about telling the burnout story, but then just being like, "Hey, this is who I am. Take it or leave it, but I'm going to follow this when you describe your approach and your methods, et cetera."

And people reward that authenticity and you don't have to be for everybody. I think when you run a practice like yours, you're not trying to win every client opportunity. You want the right fit clients and the ones who are like, the more authentic you can be, the more likely there's going to be a fit. And I think it's self-reinforcing in that way.

Elizabeth Rosenberg : The only thing that's quite scary is when you choose to finally be the authentic version of you, you're like, "Okay, I'm doing it. " You go back and you're like, "I have been this other version of me for so long and society really likes this version of me. This version of me is successful. Once I take the mask off, I can't put it back on.

This is who I am now." So you're like, "Ugh, God, I mean, I hope it works." There is something very terrifying about that. But I also had gotten to the place where I'm like, I am so sick of this other person that I have to be all the time for everybody else.

I just want to try on this real version of me and see if the world likes it. And if it doesn't, I'm also going to have to live with that. : But I also think that when you are the best version of you, everybody likes it because that's what you're attracting back to you. Matt Poepsel : Well, and sometimes it's safe and sometimes it's known, it's familiar.

There's an old saying that if you're not careful, you might end up where you're headed and it's, oh, I need to make a pivot here and change because you could keep going down that path. And that was the path of burnout. That was the known path. I don't want to say the easy path, but that was the standard path.

And you're like, "But it's not my path." Not my Elizabeth Rosenberg : Path anymore. Matt Poepsel : Yeah. I gave you a ton of credit for honoring what kind of bubbled up and it landed you at the Fast Company Innovation Festival.

I love the story. You got to tell us this story. So what happened? Who was in the audience there?

What was the topic about and what happened as a result? Elizabeth Rosenberg : When I started really talking about the spiritual world and my role in it, different people started coming out of the woodwork. And there's one woman that I work with, her name is Jessica Cruisecamp and she is a master tarot reader. She also is in the corporate worlds in a very successful role as well.

We sat down and we were like, "We want to do a workshop. What could we possibly do? " And our goal was Fast Company That was like, "This is where we're going to be. " And we wrote up a proposal and it was called the AI Revolution and it was all about the superpower of intuition.

And in essence, what it is, we talked about how using AI we are becoming a sea of sameness and we are trusting everything that AI is saying back to us as fact and we are losing that skill of intuition that as humans we're innately born with and we don't want that to go away because that's where your creative spark is. : That's actually where innovation comes from. So we wrote up an entire proposal, we pitched to Fast Company, then waited. We waited for months and then we got the call and we were one of the very first interactive workshops to be there and we were the first one to sell out.

They actually sent us an email and they were like, "Hey, you guys should know that you're the first one to sell out. " And we're like, "That's because we're offering something totally different." We were playing with pendulums and we were using tarot cards and a man came up to us in it and said to us, "I came here to prove my wife wrong and I'm going to have to go home and apologize." Matt Poepsel : He was going to say, "I went to one of your things that you're all into and it was Elizabeth Rosenberg : More."

Yes. And I got to tell you, there were people crying. I mean, you always have some kind of emotional breakthrough when you're doing that kind of work, but there were people that were laughing. We have a community that we've created with everybody there and it was just so fun to be in that moment with those people.

The energy of the room was palpable. It was just amazing. And my dream would be to do this workshop all over the world because it's something that even the skeptics can get behind and really enjoy in the moment. Matt Poepsel : I love that.

It's so nice. We've been talking a little bit about authenticity and one of the things that I found when I was doing the show is that I wanted to be authentic by having a litle bit of fun. So I'm going to give us a hard shift to a trivia segment that I created called Are We Smarter Than AI? We're talking about intuition and AI.

And I always try to find something from my guest's sort of background is inspiration, if you will. And I had seen that you had talked about the name of the good advice company basically during a brainstorm. And I think you had a friend of yours who said, "Well, just buy the website because- " It was my Elizabeth Rosenberg : Mentor. Yeah.

Matt Poepsel : "Let's go get it. " And you did and you ran with it. So I thought I would give us a trivia question about domain names because why not? I mean, hey, we're tech friendly here, but we're not tied to it.

Here it comes. In a web address like Google.com, what does the dotcom part officially stand for? Is it A company, B commercial or C communication?

I have never stopped to think about this. Elizabeth Rosenberg : Oh, I have absolutely no idea. Matt Poepsel : It seems like it could be either company or commercial. It wouldn't be communication.

I bet it's commercial though. Do you think it's company commercial too? We're going to go commercial. Let's try that one.

So audience you're playing along at home.com, does it stand for A Company, B commercial or C communication, B nailed it. It is the correct answer. It was implemented in January 1985.

com was for commercial purposes. They had one or three chance and we got it, crushed it. Yeah. We intuited it, but I got A much more sensible question for you though, which is where can my audience go to learn more about you and all the great work that you're doing?

Elizabeth Rosenberg : The best place to find me is at thegoodadvicecompany.com and then also my LinkedIn. I am unhinged, authentic. You're not going to see any AI slot for me on there.

I write what I feel, so I hope to see you there too. Matt Poepsel : I love it. The goodadvicecompany.commercial.

You can go check that out. Yeah, it's exactly. LinkedIn listeners, I'm going to have both of those links for you in the show notes. You're only one click away from getting connected with Elizabeth, learning much more about her unique work, her proprietary work, her awesome work.

And I'm so glad we had a chance to have a conversation today, Elizabeth. Elizabeth Rosenberg : Yeah, thank you for having me. This is fun. Matt Poepsel : Here are my top three takeaways from my conversation just now with Elizabeth.

The first was around awareness. I really remember the beginning of our conversation when she was talking about having the awareness of how our burnout, our stress, our strain is showing up in our body, but then also awareness as to what it is that we specifically need in order to get back to our steady state, if you will. It's not going to be the same for everybody, so we have to find out what works for us and following somebody else's playbook may not get us back to that restful state that we need.

She also talked about the pandemic turned out to be an opportunity for her. She couldn't have known it, but I love the fact that sometimes when things get turned upside down on us, we immediately go to, "Oh no, this derailed my plans." It turned out to be an opportunity for her in disguise, so to speak. : I think a lot of times the framing that we have, like we need all this certainty, you can't really predict whether something was truly of benefit or a setback, even though we might feel like it's a setback in the moment.

So I thought that was a really good learning as well. And finally, her story is about authenticity and just being willing to walk away from the way that the world had seen her in one light for a long time and she had had great success with it, but saying, "You know what? It's more important for me to be authentic and to put this out there and to see what happens." Put her on a different trajectory and she's clearly benefiting from that and she's clearly showing up in a form of higher service, I would say, to others who are resonating with the kind of work that she is uniquely bringing out.

: That same opportunity is there for all of us. If we're willing to be authentic, to understand what we're all about, to have the courage to put that out there, we're going to have that same sort of resonance. It's going to show up differently for us than it did for Elizabeth perhaps, but it's going to be there for us when we need it. So that's it for today.

Thanks again for listening to today's episode. Don't just manage the business, but you could Lead the People.