EP 126: When the CEO Can’t Lead: Bijal Shah, Guild, and the Continuity Plan That Worked
02/02/2026 | 41 mins.
When the CEO role finds you instead of the other way around, everything about leadership gets tested.
Bijal Shah shares what it was really like to step into the interim CEO role at Guild while on parental leave after a sudden crisis. The conversation sits at the intersection of entrepreneurship, business, and wellbeing, and asks hard questions about leadership under pressure. What happens when there is no runway to prepare? How do you lead clearly when personal life and professional responsibility collide?
The episode explores business continuity, succession planning, and conscious leadership through lived experience rather than theory. Shah reflects on how quiet board preparation, steady culture, and honest feedback kept the company grounded. She also shares how conscious leadership became a practical tool at Guild, and why leaders need real mirrors who will push back. If you stepped away tomorrow, would your business hold steady, and would your leadership still work without you?
Episode Breakdown:
00:00 Business Continuity Gets Real When A Founder Can’t Lead
03:36 Stepping In As Interim CEO While On Parental Leave
10:02 Succession Planning That Actually Works
13:49 Founder Reality Check For Business Continuity And Succession Planning
16:29 Conscious Leadership That Holds Up Under Pressure
20:56 Embedded Executive Coaching As A Real Business Advantage
31:49 A CEO Feedback Moment That Changed How She Leads
36:02 Three Practical Rules For Conscious Leadership
Connect with Bijal Shah:
Connect with Bijal on LinkedIn
Visit the Guild website
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EP 125: Emotional Self-Regulation for Leaders - Part 3 Honesty With Yourself (Replay)
01/26/2026 | 26 mins.
Telling yourself the truth might be the most radical leadership skill you’ll ever develop.
In part three of the Emotional Self-Regulation for Leaders series, Sarah Lockwood is joined by Beck Sydow and Marina Suholutsky for a conversation about the power of radical self-honesty in leadership. They explore how self-awareness for leaders isn’t just about introspection but a foundational strategy for building resilient businesses, leading aligned teams, and navigating high-stakes decisions with integrity.
Beck and Marina reveal how easy it is for entrepreneurs to hide from their own truths, especially when fear, ego, or pressure to perform take over. They unpack how avoidance and overcompensation often mask deeper insecurities and explain why facing those hidden parts with compassion is key to true emotional self-regulation. When leaders name what’s really going on without judgment, they create space for better decisions, stronger relationships, and more authentic leadership.
This episode offers a powerful reframe: self-honesty isn’t weakness, but actually one of the most courageous and transformative skills you can build.
Episode Breakdown:
00:00 Why Radical Self-Honesty Is a Leadership Skill
02:56 How Your Relationship with Yourself Shapes Your Leadership
04:49 Embracing All Parts of Yourself to Build Self-Awareness
06:03 Coping Mechanisms That Lead to Dishonest Leadership
10:03 The Hidden Relief in Facing Hard Truths
14:07 Practicing Compassionate Accountability
17:59 Sovereignty, Self-Honesty, and Emotional Self-Regulation
21:32 Practical Tools to Strengthen Self-Honesty
25:02 Emotional Mastery for Leaders
Links
Connect with Beck Sydow:
Connect with Beck on LinkedIn
Humankind Business Leaders
Connect with Marina Suholutsky:
Connect with Marina on LinkedIn
PurposeBuilt
Connect with Sarah Lockwood:
Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn
Visit HiveCast
Connect with The Conscious Entrepreneur:
Visit The Conscious Entrepreneur website
Follow The Conscious Entrepreneur on LinkedIn
Follow The Conscious Entrepreneur on Instagram
Subscribe to The Conscious Entrepreneur on YouTube
HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.
Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm
EP 124: Emotional Self-Regulation for Leaders - Part 2 Interrupt Fear With Curiosity (Replay)
01/19/2026 | 21 mins.
Curiosity is the leadership skill that helps you regulate your nervous system, interrupt fear loops, and make conscious choices in real time.
This episode is part 2 of the Emotional Self-Regulation for Leaders series, where Sarah Lockwood is joined again by Marina Suholutsky, the founder of PurposeBuilt, and Beck Sydow, the founder of HumanKind Business Leaders, to discuss how curiosity plays an important role in nervous system regulation and managing emotions. They break down how fear contracts our experience and narrows our view, while curiosity invites expansion and presence. When leaders learn to pause and ask questions like “What else is true?” or “What story am I telling myself right now?”, they create access to agency, opening up space to shift out of reactivity and into conscious, grounded response.
Marina and Beck offer tools that don’t require time away from work or structured rituals. These moments of emotional awareness can happen mid-meeting, mid-sentence, or mid-meltdown. Whether it’s noticing your peripheral vision, softening your tone, or naming what’s happening in the room, curiosity becomes a live practice that leaders can use to stay connected to themselves and others. The discussion also explores how modeling this curiosity builds team trust and strengthens leadership presence. For founders who want to lead with more ease and intention, this episode is an invitation and a toolkit.
Episode Breakdown:
00:00 Curiosity as a Tool for Emotional Mastery
01:24 Using Curiosity to Shift from Fear to Possibility
02:55 How Curiosity Regulates the Nervous System
04:32 Interrupting Autopilot Responses with Better Questions
06:12 Building Agency Through Conscious Choice
09:59 Real-Time Techniques for Managing Emotions
12:34 Somatic Practices for Curiosity and Expansion
15:23 Leading with Curiosity in High-Stakes Moments
16:48 Asking Open-Ended Questions That Invite Collaboration
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Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm
EP 123: Emotional Self-Regulation for Leaders - Part 1 Fear and Suffering (Replay)
01/12/2026 | 22 mins.
Fear isn’t the enemy of great leadership. Ignoring it is.
How often do you walk into a meeting already bracing for impact? Or catch yourself shrinking back in a moment where you meant to lead with clarity? Sarah Lockwood sits down with Beck Sydow, the founder of HumanKind Business Leaders, and Marina Suholutsky, the founder of PurposeBuilt, for a conversation on emotional self-regulation, fear in business, and the kind of inner work that makes better leadership possible.
They explore how fear lives in the body, how it shows up in the boardroom, and why most founders are still operating from old survival patterns without realizing it. You’ll hear why simply pushing through isn’t a strategy and how learning to notice your internal state (tight shoulders, shallow breath, reactive thinking) can open the door to more aligned decisions. Beck and Marina walk through tools for getting out of autopilot, including body scans, self-inquiry, and what they call “active choice,” the skill of pausing just long enough to shift out of fear and back into presence.
This doesn’t just explain why inner work matters. It shows you how to begin. Whether you’re leading a team, building a company, or trying to show up more fully for your own vision, this is the kind of episode that gets under the surface and invites you to lead from a deeper, steadier place.
Episode Breakdown:
00:00 Emotional Self-Regulation in Leadership
02:19 Why Fear and Suffering Matter for Founders
05:03 How the Amygdala Shapes Fear in Business
06:08 Welcoming Fear as a Tool, Not a Threat
10:08 Tools for Recognizing and Naming Fear
14:06 The Leadership Power of Softening and Owning Fear
18:13 Making Active Choices to Lead with Awareness
Links
Connect with Beck Sydow:
Connect with Beck on LinkedIn
Humankind Business Leaders
Connect with Marina Suholutsky:
Connect with Marina on LinkedIn
PurposeBuilt
Connect with Sarah Lockwood:
Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn
Visit HiveCast
Connect with The Conscious Entrepreneur:
Visit The Conscious Entrepreneur website
Follow The Conscious Entrepreneur on LinkedIn
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HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.
Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm
EP 122: Startup Stress Isn’t Just a Founder Problem: Startup Culture and Employee Mental Health
01/05/2026 | 24 mins.
Startup stress does not stop at the founder’s desk and the hidden emotional ripple effects inside a company may be shaping employee mental health startup culture and long term viability more than any strategy deck ever could.
Sarah Lockwood is joined by Yael Benjamin founder of Startup Snapshot and Annika Sten Pärson founder of the Inner Foundation to unpack new research on the emotional reality inside early stage startups. Drawing on data from hundreds of employees alongside an investor perspective on mental health, the conversation challenges the assumption that stress lives mainly with founders. Anxiety burnout and sustained pressure show up across teams, often more intensely than leaders expect. What happens when employees feel startup stress without the context that helps them make sense of it?
A core insight centers on trust and transparency. The research shows that lack of clarity is one of the strongest drivers of distress inside startup culture, outweighing concerns about compensation or company survival. When founders underestimate how much their stress is felt or assume silence is protective, teams often fill the gaps with fear driven narratives. The episode reframes emotional health as a real business variable and argues that how founders communicate, regulate pressure and build trust already shapes retention performance and long term outcomes.
Episode Breakdown:
00:00 The Inner World of Startup Founders
03:54 Research Insights on Employee Well-being
07:32 The Impact of Founder Stress on Teams
12:04 The Importance of Transparency in Startups
16:43 Building Support Systems for Founders and Teams
21:10 Preventative Strategies for Startup Success
Connect with Yael Benjamin and Annika Sten Pärson:
Connect with Yael on LinkedIn
Visit Startup Snapshot
The Inner Circle - Startup Snapshot
Link to the Research
Connect with Annika on LinkedIn
Visit the inner foundation
Connect with Sarah Lockwood:
Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn
Visit HiveCast
Connect with The Conscious Entrepreneur:
Visit The Conscious Entrepreneur website
Follow The Conscious Entrepreneur on LinkedIn
Follow The Conscious Entrepreneur on Instagram
Subscribe to The Conscious Entrepreneur on YouTube
HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.
Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm
About The Conscious Entrepreneur | Leadership, Self-Awareness & Mindset
The Conscious Entrepreneur is a top-ranked business and entrepreneurship podcast where business founders come to sharpen their edge from the inside out - building businesses that are sustainable, aligned, and actually work for their life. It’s about becoming the kind of leader your business needs you to be, and doing it with clarity, connection, and purpose. We don’t buy into hustle culture. And burnout? It’s not a badge of honor. Here, we believe thriving businesses are built by thriving people.Popular Episode Topics Include:
Entrepreneur Burnout - How to recognize burnout early, break overworking patterns, and build a business that doesn’t depend on your exhaustion.
Sustainable Entrepreneurship - Growing your company at a pace you can actually sustain—without sacrificing your health, values, or sanity.
Calm Leadership - Leading with steadiness instead of stress, staying grounded during pressure, and building emotional resilience as a founder.
Values-Based Leadership - Creating a culture rooted in integrity, trust, and ownership while leading in a way that aligns with who you are.
Delegation & Letting Go - Learning to stop doing everything yourself, trust your team, and step out of the bottleneck role so your business can grow.
Founder Mental Health - Real conversations about loneliness, stress, purpose, and the emotional side of entrepreneurship that most people hide.
Anti-Hustle Entrepreneurship - Healthy productivity, aligned ambition, and redefining success without grind culture or burnout.
Growth Mindset - Adapting, learning, and evolving as a leader so you can navigate setbacks, fear, and uncertainty with more clarity.
Emotional Intelligence - Using self-awareness, empathy, and emotional regulation to communicate better, lead stronger, and build a healthier team.
Hosted by Sarah Lockwood, The Conscious Entrepreneur is where growth starts within.
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