I've been building businesses since before the term 'entrepreneur' was mainstream.
I'm Sue Shekut — founder of Shekut Strategies, Inc. and developer of the Strategic Discernment Method. I'm also a licensed clinical professional counselor, a somatic experiencing practitioner, a former massage therapist, an instructional designer, a technical writer, an improviser (Second City and iO Chicago, if you want the specifics), and someone who taught business planning for five years to massage therapists and helped them feel better about making a profit from helping others.
I don’t tell you all this to impress you — the work I do now is the culmination of my skills, experience, mistakes, corrections, and insights. I want you to understand how I got here, and why I understand some of your pain.
A lifetime of applying creative solutions to practical problems.
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My first business was a backyard “day camp” for neighborhood kids when I was 10 years old. In my teens, I sold Avon products door-to-door. As an adult, I started a mobile massage therapy practice. I built it from scratch, ran it for 25 years, learned about pricing, the importance of cash flow, business boundaries, marketing a service business, managing relationships (client and staff), and what happens when your identity is fused with your work. I made mistakes, learned from them, and made new mistakes. I learned from my staff and my clients and my vendors.
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I spent nine years as a technical writer and four as a trainer and instructional designer. I learned how to take complex systems and explain them in ways that actually help people use them. I also became very good at noticing when a process is complicated because it has to be, versus when it's complicated because no one thought through the best way to make things work.
Being a lifelong learner, I’ve completed graduate level courses in economics, finance, accounting, statistics, law, and marketing, and then in clinical psychology. I spent 2.5 years learning improvisation as a way to play (adult recess!) and learn how to think fast on my feet. All this learning helped me understand the emotional dynamics of running a business. The financial mechanics. The legal structures. The way personality shapes strategy, whether you intend it to or not. The social and physical impact of stress and work dynamics.
I opened my psychotherapy practice, specializing in career counseling, trauma, and the particular stress patterns of high-functioning people. Many of the people I work with were struggling with the gap between how capable they appeared and how lost they felt inside the work they were doing. This led to me somatic experiencing training. Which helped me understand what was lacking for many business owners–a method to make better decisions about their business from a place of discernment.
Shekut Strategies is what I created when I combined my training and experience to meet a real need I kept seeing: founders who were smart, accomplished, and making decisions from a place of urgency, shame, or exhaustion, rather than from clarity. Not because they lacked information — but because they'd lost access to their own discernment.
I realized I can do more and help more entrepreneurs as a coach and consultant, than I can as a therapist. There are many great therapists. There are many great coaches. But few can do what I do and meld business savvy, discernment-based practice, and psychology into a program that helps founders the way the Strategic Discernment Methods does.
What I Actually Do
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Not therapy.
The Strategic Discernment Method is a framework for evaluating business decisions through financial data, operational feasibility, and what I call regulated internal signal — the difference between the clarity that comes from your values and the noise that comes from fear, urgency, or a version of success you built for someone else.
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Not hustle coaching.
The founders I work with span a wide range — some are launching for the first time after years of corporate or professional experience; others are restructuring businesses they’ve run for a while. What they share is this: they know enough to know that something in their current approach isn’t working, and they’re not sure whether the problem is the strategy, the model, or themselves. Usually it’s all three, in proportions that take some time to sort out.
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Something more specific.
My clinical background means I understand the psychology of high-achieving people: the imposter syndrome that lives right next to genuine expertise, the way shame warps financial decision-making, the cost of building a business model that optimizes for revenue and ignores the person running it. My business background means I can read the numbers, challenge the model, and help you build a plan that is actually funded.
Both matter. Neither is enough alone.
Credentials
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Licenses and certifications
Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor (LCPC) — OH, AZ, IL, IN, GA, MO
Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP)
Licensed Clinical Massage Therapist (26 years)
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Education
BA, Communications — University of Michigan
MA, Clinical Professional Psychology — Roosevelt University
Graduate coursework, Eastern Michigan University: Economics, Finance, Accounting, Statistics, Law, Marketing
Diploma, Massage Therapy — Wellness & Massage Training Institute
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Training
2.5 years improvisation training — Second City and iO Chicago
9 years technical writing; 4 years training and instructional design
5 years teaching business planning to massage therapy entrepreneurs
3 years Somatic Experiencing training
Completion of Wellcoaches Institute 6-month certification program
A Note on Wiring
A significant portion of the founders who find their way to this work are what I'd gently describe as high-engagement thinkers: fast pattern recognition, strong ideas, high tolerance for complexity, low tolerance for boredom, and a deep suspicion of conventional wisdom — which is often completely warranted.
Some of them have a name for it. Many don't but would recognize the description. All of them have built businesses that reflect this wiring in both the most useful and most costly ways.
I understand this from the inside. The work is designed for the way this kind of mind actually functions — not the way business books assume minds work.
I built this practice because I kept meeting founders who needed something I couldn't find anywhere else. Rigorous. Honest. Grounded in how people actually function under pressure. Not afraid to name what's really going on —And give them a path forward.
If that sounds like the kind of support you're looking for, I'd like to hear about what you're building.