The Bravery Effect: Why Bold Action Builds a Better Life

If you’re like a lot of entrepreneurs, you’re no stranger to fear. You’ve got goals, ambition, and this deep desire to make an impact—but every time you think about hitting "publish," launching the offer, or stepping into the spotlight, a voice whispers, What if it goes wrong?

Here’s the truth that Jill Schulman and I unpacked in our powerful episode of The Amanda Kaufman Show: Bravery is not the absence of fear. It’s choosing to act in the presence of it.

Jill is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, keynote speaker, and applied positive psychology nerd (her words, not mine!). She brings science and soul into conversations about courage. And this interview? Whew. It was a masterclass.

Let’s break down what we learned—and how you can start building your bravery muscle today.

Bravery Isn’t Just for First Responders

One of the first myths Jill shattered was the idea that bravery is reserved for military heroes or extreme situations.

We all have fears—public speaking, being seen online, launching something new, pivoting careers. And for entrepreneurs, fear shows up a lot. According to Jill, bravery means taking aligned action toward your goals or values, even when fear is present.

In fact, if you’re not a little scared, you’re not being brave. You’re just comfortable.

Waiting for Confidence? That’s a Trap.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever said, “I’ll do it when I feel more ready.” 🙋‍♀️
Here’s what Jill wants you to know: waiting to feel confident delays your momentum—sometimes indefinitely.

Confidence doesn’t come before the action. It’s built through action.

So that thing you’ve been putting off? The email, the call, the launch, the event—do it scared. Because every time you step into fear, you expand your capacity for courage.

Bravery Is a Muscle (Literally)

This is where the science gets juicy. Jill broke down how bravery is like going to the gym. When you do something that scares you—even a little—your brain rewires itself to get stronger for the next challenge.

There’s actually brain remodeling happening in your prefrontal cortex and ACC (anterior cingulate cortex) when you take bold action. So yes, bravery literally builds mental strength over time.

That’s why it’s crucial to do the reps. The more you step into discomfort, the more natural courage becomes.

Why Playing Small Doesn’t Work

One thing that made me want to stand up and shout “YES!” was Jill’s point about entrepreneurs lowering their goals at the first sign of difficulty.

We’ve all seen it—or done it. You set an ambitious vision, hit resistance, and then decide maybe you should “just” scale it back.

But bold goals come with bold resistance. And choosing to press on—even with shaky knees—is what sets thriving entrepreneurs apart from those stuck in doubt.

Bravery is not about reckless leaps. It’s about consistent, aligned, uncomfortable growth.

The Power of a Brave Tribe

Here’s something I hadn’t fully considered before: your environment is either reinforcing your bravery or feeding your fear.

Jill emphasized the importance of curating your "brave tribe"—people who’ve done what you want to do, who support your vision, and who won’t let you shrink when things get hard.

You need people who lift your standards, not lower them.

And guess what? Asking for mentorship or support from someone ahead of you isn’t an imposition. It’s actually a gift—to them. Helping others triggers pro-social emotions that boost their own well-being.

So stop scrolling and start connecting.

Bravery and Your Bottom Line

This isn’t just personal growth fluff—it’s strategy. Jill works with top-tier corporate clients, and she sees firsthand how bravery impacts business.

The most successful leaders, founders, and changemakers aren’t the ones who “have it all together.” They’re the ones who act anyway.

If you want to create a bolder business, you have to become a bolder version of yourself. That means showing up, making the ask, launching the offer, telling the truth, setting the boundary, and raising the bar.

All of it takes bravery. And all of it is trainable.

Let’s Get Uncomfortable—Together

I want you to walk away from this post with one big idea: you don’t have to feel ready. You just have to be brave enough to begin.

So what’s one step you’ve been avoiding?
What’s one conversation, one decision, one moment that feels like too much?

That’s your training ground.

Start there.
Do it scared.
Do it bold.
And then do it again.

Because the life, business, and impact you crave? It’s on the other side of that fear.

Let’s get uncomfortable—together.

Chapters List

00:00 Introduction to Bravery and Entrepreneurship

05:27 Understanding Positive Psychology and PERMA

10:05 The Nature of Bravery

14:51 Bravery as a Skill

19:23 Building a Brave Tribe

24:03 Overcoming Limiting Beliefs

28:53 Conclusion and Call to Action

Full Transcript

Jill Schulman (00:00)

bravery is not being fearless. That's what it's not. Actually, bravery is taking

steps forward in the presence of fear toward something that is in alignment with your self-concordant goals, the goals that you really care about, or your values. So you're not brave unless you're a little scared.

Amanda Kaufman (00:44)

Well, hello and welcome back to the Amanda Kaufman show. And today I am joined by Jill Schulman. And when I say that I was so excited for this interview, I was basically jumping off of the walls as she comes on and her microphone didn't even work. She didn't hear my level of excitement, the initial level. Here's why.

So Jill is a US Marine Corps veteran and a keynote speaker, and she is an expert in bravery. And this just totally got me going because I work with so many entrepreneurs, so many people pivoting out of a corporate career or an academic career and into this crazy world of entrepreneurship. Bravery is 1,000 % required.

to deal with the lack of structure and the creativity and all the personalities and all the things. Now, what I really am getting goosebumps about is Jill is not just bravery is good. She's not just saying like, here's my military background and now bravery is good. No, no, no, she's a straight up nerd. So she has a master's in applied positive psychology, which is the science of happiness and wellbeing.

And she combines evidence-based research with real-world experience to help individuals and teams embrace courage, push their limits, achieve greater performance and well-being. She's writing a book, y'all, and I'm going to ask her all about it. And it's The Science of Bravery. And it's about taking these practical tools for developing a courageous mindset, taking bold actions. And I just love that she used the word bold, right? Because a lot of times people think, you got to be confident. No, no, it's bold.

and building some brave relationships. So Jill, welcome, welcome to the show. So excited you're here.

Jill Schulman (02:25)

Thank

Well,

I'm excited to be here. I mean, how can I not be excited with your energy? One of the things I learned in positive psychology is energy is infectious. Like, literally it's contagious. So I just caught your positive energy and I am pumped up. So excited to be here.

Amanda Kaufman (02:44)

I'm so pumped. Okay, okay, okay. So I love asking entrepreneurs this question. And also not just entrepreneurs, I love asking high performers in general, why this? You know, because you've developed a deep expertise in this area and you chose to go the academic route. That is not an easy thing to do at all. There's a lot of things you could have done with this chapter of your career. Why this?

Jill Schulman (03:09)

like the world needs to learn the skill of being

I feel, and then I'm to back it up with evidence, that we're getting a bit soft. And again, to back it up, there's research that has demonstrated that when we do too much to protect people from things that are difficult or challenging or things that they fear, we have the best of intention of helping people live their best life by just

Like not making them face what they fear and those beautiful intentions have backfired. In fact, when we look at the state of mental health across the country, a number of people who are clinically diagnosed with depression, anxiety, et cetera, have literally doubled, especially for the demographic of 18 to 25. But it's everyone, everyone. I kind of look at part of the reason is

It's our modern culture of just really telling the story of like, you want to be happy? Then just, you know, stay comfortable, wait. You just said something too, like, you know, people wait until they're confident. Just wait until you feel ready, wait until you feel confident. That is bull crap. It actually doesn't work. And so I became interested. So when I went back to school and I studied positive psychology, people might think of like, positive psychology, it's...

It's happy-ology, it's always just being positive, which means I just, don't ever want to be stressed. It's actually not what I found in studying the science of happiness and well-being. There are actually five things that we know with certainty contribute to happiness and well-being. One-fifth, so there's this acronym called PERMA, P-E-R-M-A, you know, one-fifth is about positive emotions. The rest of it is not about feeling happy emotions all the time. And the one that I got most interested in is accomplishment.

like setting really challenging goals and making meaningful progress and actually accomplishing them, and that will include stress and obstacles and all that, and that's what brings us our best life. So the reason I'm here is I want to bring a little dose of maybe that marine in me of just saying like, we got to toughen up, we've got to be brave and do hard things, and it's not only going to make us most.

the most successful or more successful and have a bigger impact. The most important benefit is what it does to us as a person. It's who we become on the journey, our self-confidence, our self-efficacy. You will lead a better life and a more successful life if you learn the skill of bravery. So I'm here to be a, I'm more of a provocative, unique voice. Stop being so easy on people. Stop taking the easy route. Be brave and you'll have a better life.

Amanda Kaufman (05:51)

love this. Now the open loop in my brain is what is the rest of perma? So there's the positive psychology, there's the accomplishment. Can you take me through the ERM part?

Jill Schulman (06:01)

Yeah, yeah,

Yeah, let's go through it. I started going there, but for your audience, I sometimes just start geeking out and get really excited to share a bunch of evidence. And I'm like, wait, be concise. She didn't ask me about what are the five factors. She said, made you... So thank you, but I want to share it. So five things. PERMA is an acronym. This comes from the father of positive psychology, Marty Seligman, and his research from the University of Pennsylvania, where I study another.

The first thing is positive emotions. So positive emotions are really important and there's things that we can do to generate positive emotions. Like hang out with people like Amanda, it's infectious. there are, again, in all five of these things, like literally there's strategies, tactical strategies that we can do to elevate this element. So positive emotions is just one fifth. The second thing in Perma E is engagement. This comes from Chasinkmi Hai's research on flow.

It took me about two years to learn how to pronounce that name. That was one of the hardest things I ever had to do is, me hell, just sink me high. But it's about finding the thing that you're passionate about, that aligns with your values and then always pushing the edge of it. Flow is when you kind of lose track of time because you just get in your zone. That's what flow is. Engagement, that's what they mean E and engagement. The R in PERMA.

You probably can guess this one. It's the quality of the relationships, ours relationships. And this one has the most research, the most predictive of the quality of our happiness and wellbeing is the quality of our relationships. Not just at home, but also in the workplace. So when I work with my clients, you know, we talk about elevating the quality of the relationships at work can increase happiness and wellbeing because we spend half our time at work, right? So as entrepreneurs,

Let's make sure we have great relationships and a culture at work. So that's the R in PERMA. is meaning. We've got to feel like we wake up each day and our life has purpose. Our life has meaning. I was just talking to a friend of mine who is a Navy SEAL and he was talking about how hard it's been because so many of these amazing, just brave souls.

when they get out of the Navy SEALs, they actually fall into the depression and we were talking about, like, why is that? And if your purpose, your mission is to be a Navy SEAL and then you get out and you just go to submit, like, you lose that meaning, that purpose. So we all have to find, like, what is that meaning, that purpose in life that we matter, right? So that's what the is. And then the A is

Amanda Kaufman (08:41)

Mm.

Jill Schulman (08:44)

accomplishment. And in the field of positive psychology, there's a lot of people that do work on the PERM, the perm, but I'm here to bring the A back and wear it on my shirt. if I'm like, Superman, but I'm the accomplishment, you know, queen here, like you need bravery to accomplish hard things. And that increases self-confidence, self-efficacy. It leads to a flourishing life.

Amanda Kaufman (08:46)

love it.

Jill Schulman (09:10)

And even in my field of positive psychology, people are like, we don't need to talk about accomplishment. Let's just talk about positive emotions and relationships. I'm like, no, this is one fifth of well-being, so we need to work on it. So those are the five elements, the most significant contributors to well-being. There's other things like there's sleep and nutrition and other health factors too, but from a psychological point of view, those are the big five.

Amanda Kaufman (09:35)

Huge, huge. And thank you very much. One of my ambitions in the content that I create is I want people to grab a notebook and write things down and really retain them because I think there is a lot of noise out there. And thank you so much for taking us through that framework because it does make so much sense. I know that in the field of high performance, so I'm a high performance coach, we talk a lot about ambition.

and that being ambitious is a good thing, right? Because if you really think about it, even just the physiological aspect of things, know, eating well, sleeping well, managing your screen time, doing all of these things we know we're supposed to do, there's accomplishment in that, right? The accomplishment of like reducing that screen time. There's accomplishment in choosing the K all over the cake, you know? Like there's a lot of your life circumstances can dramatically improve if you give yourself permission

to set goals and to make achievement of those goals something that's meaningful to you. And one of the things I noticed with a lot of the entrepreneurs I work with, like so many, is when they encounter the difficulty, the first thing they go to is lowering the standard, lowering the goal, pulling that back in. And I can see that's like.

Jill Schulman (10:44)

you

Amanda Kaufman (10:51)

What are you talking about? I know, I see it and I'm like, danger, danger, Will Robinson, right? Like there might be more, there's so many people that I think would otherwise be wildly successful and happier if they chose accomplishment and perseverance and resilience and bravery. So I would love your take, Jill, on like.

Jill Schulman (10:52)

Yeah, I'll do it.

Amanda Kaufman (11:13)

What is bravery? I know that's such a simple question, but like not really, because they think a lot of people try to activate it and maybe they're actually focusing on something a little bit sort of like bravery that's not bravery. So what is bravery?

Jill Schulman (11:17)

Let's see how it goes.

Yeah.

Yeah. So bravery is defined as, and then I'm going to cite Dr. Cynthia Perry. She's from Clemson. She's a leading researcher in bravery in the world. And so how she defines bravery, how it's the truth about bravery is, bravery is not being fearless. That's what it's not. And that's what a lot of people think like, like you're not scared of anything. You're so brave. Actually, bravery is taking

Amanda Kaufman (11:44)

Mm-hmm.

Jill Schulman (11:51)

steps forward in the presence of fear toward something that is in alignment with your self-concordant goals, the goals that you really care about, or your values. So you're not brave unless you're a little scared.

That's the first thing. There's a couple of myths around bravery where people think that, well, bravery is just for first responders or United States Marines or Navy SEALs.

That's actually not the case. Like we all have fears. Every single person has fears that hold us back many times from accomplishing our goals. it's instead of running away from what we're scared of, it's about stepping forward in the presence of fear. And you just opened, you know, the session talking about like confidence. And this is where I tell people like, if you wait until you feel ready, if you wait until you're confident, you will delay the forward movement.

so significantly that you're gonna lose all of your momentum, the trajectory of your success in life, or you won't even take the step. So I teach people, like, do not wait until there's no fear, because then you're not being brave. It's about learning that when there's some fear there, it's a signal that something's really important. This is important to me, and so I wanna step forward.

toward it instead of run away. Now, we do still need to prepare, right? We need to still do our best work, but the feeling is not going to go away. mean, if you really want to look at the highest performers, they're the ones that are brave and they keep stepping forward. And there's this zones of proximal or discomfort. So if you want to climb a mountain, don't try to do Mount Everest next week. That's just stupid brave.

push outside of your comfort zone, not feel quite ready, and then do that. So it's about taking those steps, but always facing that little bit of fear and getting on the edge. The trajectory of someone's career or their business is dependent on this. That's why my book is called The Bravery Effect. It's about the science of bravery, but I called it The Bravery Effect because what I really care about is if people can learn the skill.

What's the impact? They're going to feel like a freaking rock star. They're going to feel so confident, shoulders back. They're going to feel pride in themselves. And then their career and their business is going to be so much more successful. So we've got to learn to step forward, not step back. Don't be a coward.

Amanda Kaufman (14:23)

Yes, just yes. mean, so much yes.

You know, love so a couple of things you keep repeating and I'm going to repeat as well just so that we really, really get it, folks, as we're listening. Number one, you keep saying it's a skill and I can I not not speaking from any kind of studies or reviews just from personal experience. yeah, it is. It really is. It's a skill. It's something that you can you can be bad at. And it is a skill that you can develop.

with training and with exposure and deliberate practice. I loved what you just had to say about the signal that it's important. So I do a lot of social media and this is one of the things that stops a lot of entrepreneurs is they're scared of saying things on social media and people like coming back at them and all this kind of stuff. And a really visceral experience I had recently was I became a citizen of the United States. I'm originally.

Jill Schulman (15:14)

Congratulations!

Amanda Kaufman (15:15)

Thank you. And I came from, I'm from Canada and I've lived here for 15 years and I went through the whole process. Yeah. And here's what happened. And like, is not, just preface, not a political statement, just saying what happened and how fear showed up for me. And what it was is I go through this whole process and it was right on time and perfect. And I get invited to do my oath ceremony on Saturday, June 14th. And that happened to be...

Jill Schulman (15:21)

yeah?

Amanda Kaufman (15:44)

know, King's Day that happened to be like flag day. It happened to be like a significant day for everybody for lots of reasons. And it was also the day that was very important to me personally. So I was lit. I found myself actually feeling fear about posting on social media, which I do every day multiple times a day, but posting on social media that I'm an American now. I was actually afraid to do that post.

Jill Schulman (15:52)

Yeah.

Amanda Kaufman (16:11)

because I wasn't sure how people were gonna respond. I wasn't sure if they would think that it was a political something because one of the things, talking about the signal that something is really important, something that's really important to me is that people have dialogue, right? And so in my personal brand, I want people who vote different ways. I want people who worship different ways. I want that, but I was still really afraid that no matter what I did, if I posted about this, that people would be angry. And guess what happened?

There were people that were angry, right? There were people that were actually angry, but overall there were also so many people that were like, congratulations, this is amazing, this is incredible. And there was like a huge amount of unity that happened there as well. And I just share this story with you and with anybody who's listening that like, it's very normal to hesitate to use your voice and to speak up and to like say what's important. And for me, ultimately,

Like I could have made the choice not to post anything. I could have kept that completely to myself and that would have been okay too. But I chose to post about it because I am really proud. And one of the things that I'm the most proud of as an American is freedom of speech. I felt like I should be able to just say, I did this and I'm proud of this and.

be able to handle the repercussion of it. And like, I felt like I really grew that day. So anyway, that's just like a little side story. Little side story about it.

Jill Schulman (17:33)

Really?

I love it. And

one thing I was a little bit scared of, so you can help me be braver here, is kind of like the entrepreneurs. Like I'm pretty good at it now, but like just the whole social media thing and, you know, doing all that. But if you say something a little controversial and people don't like it, then it blows up and then you get more traffic to your site. So, hey, be a little bit edgy. You're going to be more successful for your business if you just say the same vanilla message that is just not going to

Amanda Kaufman (17:45)

Mm-hmm.

Jill Schulman (18:02)

rustle any feathers or pique any interest, you're probably not going to be as successful. yeah, be a little edgy.

Amanda Kaufman (18:07)

It's true. Yeah,

like be be who you are and like say what you say what you think really out loud and and yeah, I love it. I love it. So good. So I am actually really curious sort of related to to the entrepreneurial thing. What what do you see as a bravery expert that you really wish more people knew about bravery when it came to building a business?

Jill Schulman (18:29)

Well, just in general, I just want people to know that if you're feeling nervous and you're feeling scared, you're normal. It's absolutely normal because I think people think of like, okay, what's wrong with me? Maybe I'm not cut out to be an entrepreneur because I have fear, I'm scared. entrepreneurs just supposed to be just so brave moving forward? So it's that misconception. And it's actually the way our brains are wired. If you go back to evolutionary psychology, our brains...

are wired to pay more attention to risks to avoid than to go toward things that are positive. It's Daniel Kahneman, Nobel research, you know, Nobel winner. Daniel Kahneman's research basically showed that we're twice as motivated to avoid risk or what we're scared of than we are attracted to go toward something that is good. So I just want people to know that it's normal. And then of course, with common culture, it doesn't really help.

But there's ways that you can overcome it and make those feelings go away. that's where bravery is a skill that you were mentioning. Bravery is a skill, so it's like a muscle. If someone wanted to be strong and have strong biceps, if they went into the gym once and they tried to pick up a really heavy weight, like 75 pound dumbbell and try to lift it and they couldn't do it, it would be silly if they left the gym and said, look, see, I'm not strong. I just can't do it.

That would be ridiculous. So bravery is the same way anyone can build this skill of bravery and the capacity can increase over time. And it's one of the things I wish people just would spend more time doing because it has an impact on all aspects of your life. So bravery is a trainable, teachable skill that you can develop over time. And what we actually see in the brain, and this is where the neurology gets

so freaking fascinating. Like I'm still, I'm just blown away at what happened. So when you step out of your comfort zone and you do something that you know is going to advance your business, but you're a little bit scared, right? I mean, again, your whole biology is kind of working against you. Like, God, that's really scary. But when you do, what happens is your body kind of says, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second, wait a second. Okay, this person just made me do something really hard and your brain listens to it and says, well,

I better get ready for the next one. It's the same as a muscle. if you work out your muscle, and hopefully if you're lifting, you challenge your muscle so it hurts when you're lifting, and then you're going to be sore for a couple days after, what happens to your bicep? It remodels. It gets a little bit stronger because your body's going, uh-oh, I better be ready for that next time. Same thing happens with bravery. When you do something, when you step towards something that you fear, so when you're scared and you do it anyway,

What happens in your brain, specifically in the ACC and the prefrontal cortex, those are the two areas of the brain that end up getting stronger, kind of like a muscle. Like, literally like, your prefrontal cortex can get thicker, so like, we literally see that part of the brain remodeling getting a little bit thicker, and then we also see new pathways that are going to the ACC, too. So, our brain is plastic, and it starts remodeling. So that's when I say bravery's like a muscle, like, literally.

The more you do it, the easier it will become over time. So take those first steps, keep working at it, and then that courage, that bravery is gonna become more natural, and we need that as an entrepreneur.

Amanda Kaufman (21:59)

So good, so good. I meet so many coaches and what I do, obviously, from the Coaches Plaza, and we talk so much about limiting beliefs and alignment. And I'm like, you want a new alignment? You want to be able to operate at a new level? You got to not just identify those beliefs, but what do we do? We challenge those beliefs by doing something new and in the IRL.

Like in the real world, in real life, because it's so often it's not what your capability is, it's just what you think it is. And if you can just challenge what you think through the actions that you take, and yes, activating this bravery will allow you to do that. Yeah.

Jill Schulman (22:34)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, we get in our own way. So as you say that, like,

so what I teach in the book and like, I mean, I could go on for five hours if you want, like all the strategies and all the science. No, but ⁓ so, so what your soul is like, what, what I, what I have found in my research about bravery, we work on, you got to work on the cognitive side. So this is cognitive psychology, which is exactly what you say. Like you got to, we got to challenge our belief system. So we got to first believe it's possible in our minds. And we also have to believe that.

Amanda Kaufman (22:50)

I would love that. We'll have to book another sesh, but yes.

Jill Schulman (23:10)

stress and challenges make us stronger. So there's a lot that I do also on challenging self-limiting beliefs, so listening to the voice of our head. So I do a lot of work on the cognitive side of peak performance, but then we get to behavioral psychology. Like some people believe like, have a goal and I believe I can do it, but then just can't take that first step. then I get into behavioral psychology, right? And how do we...

How do we actually take the first step on shaky knees? So then we go over all that psychology and best practices and specific strategies and tips. And then finally is social psychology. Social psychology is like, there's a lot of things that we need to do internally. The first two, like our mindset and our actions, that's us trying to have the motivation to step forward in the presence of fear. But also the environment that we create for ourselves helps us be braver or not.

Who you choose to hang out with, right? What are you like listening, what are you scrolling? If you're listening to Amanda's podcast, that is you're listening to people, that's going to give you the boost, that's going to encourage you to be braver. So who are the people you surround yourself with? Like, know, entrepreneurs do like, when I decide to start my own business, can I tell you this? So I go from the Marine Corps, the most stable job in the world, right? You're working for the government. Then I work for, I go to the pharmaceutical company.

Amanda Kaufman (24:01)

That's it.

Jill Schulman (24:25)

And that was my first industry. So I started selling drugs, legal kind, and I did really well and I moved up. But a big, big stable job, benefits and all that. When I decided to start my own business, a lot of people that love me and care about me, you know what they said?

Amanda Kaufman (24:40)

you

Jill Schulman (24:41)

You have such a good job, there's benefits, like you've got such a brilliant career, you can keep moving up, like why? So you've got to be careful who you're listening to because guess what? Those people, remember we talk about wiring? They're wired to let fear take the wheel and to listen to those risks and let it drive them. So you got to be careful, especially as an entrepreneur, surround yourself with

other entrepreneurs, other successful entrepreneurs, listen to podcasts like Amanda's and other things. You got to surround yourself with the messages and the people that will encourage you. Because we're going to work on all the internal stuff to get us started, but it's the environment that will keep us going.

Amanda Kaufman (25:23)

You're making me think about the mountain climbing metaphor, right? Like if you were, if you were to climb Everest, would you go grab your buddy who's like sitting in their own Doritos on a couch and say, Hey, let's climb Everest. Right? Of course not. You would never do that. but I think in entrepreneurship, we do that all the time. It's out. Is the book out?

Jill Schulman (25:40)

I a mountain on the front of my books.

No, this is the advanced reader copy. It's not till August. August 25. August 26, 25. But you're so right. If you have this ambitious goal, like, want to start my own company or if I want to climb Mount Everest, and all of your friends like to game, like they're just into gaming and sitting on their butt all day, they're going to be like, dude, why would you do that? Just hang out with us. So you're right. And the reason why I call this, I call it a brave tribe.

Amanda Kaufman (25:47)

Almost almost.

Jill Schulman (26:07)

Who is your brave tribe? And it takes bravery because number one, you should do some research and go, who's done this really well, right? And who do I have access to? And then you've got to be brave enough to go up to them and say, hey, I want to introduce myself. I really admire the work that you've done or the business that you've created. I'd love to learn from you. So you've got to kind of level up. Who's at a level higher than you that has

done the hard thing that you want to do and be like, can we hang out? Can you teach me? And you're not actually necessarily bothering them because if you look at the literature, because I'm always the scientific nerd here, there's so much evidence when you surround yourself with the right people, it's called social support, right? You get such a boost in your performance, but there's also this thing called pro-social support. So there's all this evidence that when people help others, right? When people can lend a helping hand, they get

an even bigger benefit from the relationship because it drives their positive emotions. So when you see someone really successful, don't be scared of going up to them and say, gosh, the business you have built is amazing. I'd love to learn from you. If you hesitate, if you went bad in that moment, you're robbing them an opportunity to bring them that positive emotion of helping others. So we have to get in the habit of, you know, I say curate your brave tribe. And I use that word curate very intentionally too. Like I want you have your little

board of advisors of who are the right people that have the knowledge, the expertise, and care about you that are going to help support your goal achievement. Not say like, you know, yeah, why don't you lower your standards? You said that before and I was about to like jump out of my chair when people, it's hard and they're just going to lower the standard or quit. Like, my gosh, like the key to accomplishing hard things is there's going to be obstacles. There's going to be challenges because you're, you're setting this ambitious goal.

How you respond in those moments, that is your character. Your future is dependent on how well you show up in the face of challenges. And lowering the standard of giving up, that is not the path to success. You've got to learn to develop the mindset. This comes from Marty Seligman's book called Learned Optimism. When something bad happens, here's what happens. We're like, my gosh, the sky is falling, everything is ruined.

Amanda Kaufman (28:18)

I didn't.

Jill Schulman (28:28)

It's all my fault and I just suck. can't do this, right? Here's the story we tell ourselves. So what Marty Seligman, father of positive psychology teaches, we can learn to move from a pessimistic mindset to an optimistic one. And then people think of like, okay, Jill, you're a little miss positive psychology. So now we're just going to pretend like everything's okay. No, that's not what it is. It's about...

Amanda Kaufman (28:48)

It's not about pink

paint and unicorns, although I love both. It's not about that.

Jill Schulman (28:52)

Yes.

It's being a realist, like this really freaking sucks. We have a setback, but it's optimistic that we can overcome this. There's things that we can do in order to move forward to overcome. Because if you have a pessimistic mindset, and this comes from Marty Seligman's research, if you have a pessimistic mindset, then you won't take any steps forward because you're like, well, everything's wrong. There's nothing I can do about it. Well, if that's your mindset.

then you don't take action and then yeah, you are going to be a failure. But if you change your mindset to become optimistic, and his book is called Learned Optimism for a reason, like you kind of start arguing with yourself. Like, wait a second, like, is everything really ruined? Well, no, not actually. It's this one thing and it does suck and it does have a big impact and it's going to set us back. But there's things that I can do to overcome it. So you can shift from pessimistic to optimistic and being a realist. This sucks, but...

I can overcome this.

Amanda Kaufman (29:49)

love that that that single decision to look for all the doors and all the windows, you know, instead of just sitting in it and saying, well, I guess this is my reality for now and forevermore. Right. Like, Jill, I. Yes, and I could. And you know what, y'all, just real real. I 1000 percent with all of my bones believe what Marty Seligman is saying, what Jill is saying, because I've lived it.

Jill Schulman (30:00)

victim. be be the

Amanda Kaufman (30:15)

You know, when I started as an entrepreneur, every decision I made, my catastrophic thinking would lead me to, I'm gonna wind up destitute, living in a box under a bridge in Duluth. And I don't know why I always ended up in Duluth, I'm in Texas, that makes no sense at all, but I just had like this recurring pattern of thought that I had to challenge. And I had to challenge that pattern and go like, hey, that's delusional. And look, it's all delusional anyway. Like if you're gonna just.

Pick your frame of how you look at the world. Why not pick the doors and the windows? Why not pick that thing that's gonna actually carry you forward? And over time, the catastrophic thinking, you really can shift away from it. And I know this because I had to do it. I had to do it. So Jill, I'm.

Jill Schulman (30:58)

Yeah. You said Duluth.

You said Duluth. I'm a Minnesota girl. Kind of a weird coincidence there. Have you ever been in Minnesota? Are you from Minnesota? you just think of Duluth. Yeah.

Amanda Kaufman (31:03)

stop it. I didn't even know that. No, it's just, it was like a saying I picked up somewhere

and it was like, you're going to wind up in a, you know, under a bridge in Duluth. And I'm like, I don't know. I've never even really been to Duluth. So I don't know why I just, you know, landed there. But anyway, no offense to Duluth. my gosh, my camera just did a thing. Let's get rid of that.

Jill Schulman (31:13)

Lots to do with Minnesota.

Okay.

No, I love everything you're saying. mean, for all of you that are entrepreneurs out there, like you are brave, but remember, like bravery is a muscle. So you got to keep working at it, right? If you don't use it, you lose it. So just like our health, our fitness, our strengths, you got to keep going to the gym and working it out. are strategies, like, you know, I call them exercises. Like you got to keep doing exercises on your mindset. You got to make sure you're always learning about action you can take. You can always be like working on your social circles. So keep doing the work.

Amanda Kaufman (31:27)

There we go.

Jill Schulman (31:56)

You know, and then you'll, you know, you are brave because you already made that decision to become an entrepreneur. But don't think that just because you had one heroic act, it's over. There's, is a skill you need to keep building moving forward.

Amanda Kaufman (32:08)

Jill, know our listeners are going to want to be there when your book comes out and learn more from you. What's the best way to follow you?

Jill Schulman (32:15)

LinkedIn is probably best. I mainly work with corporate clients. So, you know, I go in and I speak or I teach in a lot of Fortune 100 companies. So my biggest presence, my best presence is LinkedIn. So follow me on LinkedIn or go to my website, jillschulman.com. So my first name, last name, last name spelled S-C-H-U-L-M-A-N. So jillschulman.com. And for your listeners, if they go on to LinkedIn.

and they follow me and they send me a message in LinkedIn and just put Amanda's name, her podcast, just put Amanda, and we will send you a link to take a free bravery assessment. And then you get to know like what elements do I need to work on? What exercises do I need to do? Is it the mindset? Is it the behavior? Is it the social circle? So there's a bravery assessment that I will offer to your audience for free and then

Amanda Kaufman (32:47)

Hey, now.

Jill Schulman (33:05)

you'll get after you take the assessment, then you get a bravery blueprint. So all these exercises I keep telling you about, like I haven't told you what to do. So you'll get some exercises to do in all those categories. So free for your audience.

Amanda Kaufman (33:18)

Well, you so much for joining us on the show. I learned so much myself and I can't wait for everybody else to hear it. And thank you so, so much for being here.

Jill Schulman (33:28)

Thanks for having me ahead of last. Love your energy. It's gonna take me through the rest of the day.

Amanda Kaufman (33:33)

Love it love it and dear listener look if anything that we talked about today resonated with you Be sure to grab the link to the episode and DM it or text it to your three best friends that would really really love to hear the message and hey if you haven't subscribed make sure you smash that button because you don't want to miss another episode and If you got 30 seconds just taking some time to leave an honest review on the podcast that makes a huge difference right because people have a lot of choices when they are

Jill Schulman (33:34)

you

Amanda Kaufman (34:01)

blast in the podcast in their ears and you taking those 30 seconds to leave a positive review makes a huge difference in the success of the show and allowing us to attract amazing guests just like Jill Schulman here. And I can't wait to see you in another episode. So until then, make sure you do what matters.