Featured Member of the Month: November 2019

Creating Your Own Path

This month, we got to chat with Karin Bellantoni, Coach and Founder of the Crazy Busy podcast, who will also be our featured speaker at the Art of Slowing Down on November 15th!

Q: Tell us a little about yourself — where you’re from, what you do and how you got to where you are today?

I am an East-West Native, meaning I have spent an equal amount of time on both coasts. I love the time I spent in California and am thrilled to be living in NYC now. Having grown up here I will say I love this version of NY more than the one I left in the 1980’s.

It's a really exciting time to be in New York City — from the women's movement to the entrepreneurial boom to convergence spirituality and science... I find doing business here, right now, absolutely exhilarating and exciting.

In many ways, I identify as a millennial! In some ways, I've been waiting for the millennials to show up since I was 16 years old and decided to disrupt my own path and leave the traditional education system. 

My path was always unique and I would say the road less traveled. I'm a highly educated human being who is frequently mistaken for someone with an advanced university degree however my education came very much outside the traditional systems. 

I learn by experience. The system wasn't built for me so I had to build my own. I was also intuitive although I didn't know it back then and so somehow I just knew that this was my right path. Choosing a more independent way made me really good at problem-solving, getting to the root cause of something and understanding people very quickly.

I frequently said yes too soon during my career! This put me in very awkward situations that I had to step up and into; like saying yes to being a branch manager at Citibank when I was 22. Running a 50 million dollar business and dealing with multiple personalities from different ethnic backgrounds at a very different time here in New York. It gave me a much more powerful experience than any undergraduate degree I believe I could have received. I'm self-taught and self-learned at almost everything I do. Now there's no excuse — y'all have YouTube and Google. I often say if I had YouTube and Google when I was 16, I'd be President right now!

Q: What do you like most about being a coach and an entrepreneur? 

You're asking me what I love most about getting paid to tell other people what to do for a living?

Seriously, I love and literally live for the moment my clients face shifts they make a connection during the work we’re facilitating that changes their life. It happens almost every day that I'm seeing clients. People having breakthroughs releasing themselves from patterns and programs that keep them stuck — it's quite empowering to me. I get something back as soon as I see them lifted.

Q: What inspired you to start the Crazy Busy podcast? 

The story is in the podcast opener so you'll have to listen to that! Really, it's the sheer numbers of people particularly, Millennial Business Leaders who are stressed out, and in some cases burning out because they don't know that they're fighting a losing battle. They don't have the operating system to manage themselves.

It frustrates the heck out of me that people who are quick to judge this generation are typically the ones who raised them! The biggest complaint I hear from my clients is that their parents disabled them. They didn't allow them to solve any problems on their own and fixed everything for them. Now they realize a key life /work skill is problem-solving, and they don't have the tools.

Add to that the 24/7 lifestyle and the powerful fact that this is the first generation of leaders who had no space between work and their personal life. Someone needs to help them find a way to create that space, and I decided to do that.

Q: What does slowing down mean to you?

Slowing down means I'm showing up more powerful, more present and more grounded. Slowing down means my experiences are richer, my work is more valuable, and my relationships are deeper. It also means I am healthier, more thoughtful, strategic and creative.

Q: Why are you excited about the Art of Slowing Down event at the Susan Eley Gallery on Friday November 15th and what do you think attendees can expect to gain from the event?

Well as you know I love anything to do with the Women of Culture and the incredible Mission you've created. I'm also passionate about this topic or it would not have devoted my podcast to it. As a woman who does a lot of events and participates in many types of forums, I was really intrigued at the multi-sensory approach we're going to be taking on the 15th. I find people who have issues slowing down really appreciate this type of event as the information can speak to them in different ways. I look forward to being with you then!

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Meet Karin in-person and take an evening to bring more art, calm and connection into your life with us at the Art of Slowing Down at Susan Eley Fine Art on Friday November 15th! Get tickets here.