Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business Podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon, and today we're going to call out one of the biggest profit leaks that I see in specifically in women run businesses. If you feel like you are working harder than ever, not just physically, but mentally as well, you're probably not imagining it. One of the biggest profit leaks that I see in women run businesses. It's not pricing. It's not marketing. Do want to know what it is?

It is emotional labor. This is the invisible work of carrying every decision, every doubt, every relationship, every fire drill, every outcome all alone, all by yourself. And today I'm breaking down the emotional tax that no one really warned us about when we entered into entrepreneurship, right? And we're going to talk about how to finally set your business up to support you instead of draining you. This is a conversation that I've been having over the last several weeks with clients who are

just exhausted, feeling just burnt out and drained, not because they're lazy, not because they're disorganized. Yes, could we have some more efficient systems in our businesses that would give us a little bit more energy and revive us a little bit? Sure. But that is just a fraction of what the challenges that they're facing. The problem is that they're carrying everything. I can't actually count how many times in last few weeks I've had conversations about people

pleasing specifically. And so we're going to talk about the emotional load that comes with running a business, serving your clients, serving your family, taking care of everyone and basically keeping it all together. It really adds up and most of us don't even realize that it's happening. I actually had a conversation recently with someone about my experience with burnout, which I have talked about on this show several times. This happened back in 2017 for me and it took me

three long years to recover. And I've talked about how burnout can sneak up on you. So I have conversations with women all the time, every day, different women, usually women who are running businesses and especially women in the creative fields. And one of the big conversations that often comes up is just talking about their energy levels, talking about their passion, talking about their mental health. And a lot of what I'm seeing, I'm telling them, you know, I feel like you are

Shauna Lynn Simon (00:02)

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon, and today's guest is someone who took one dollar and eleven cents and a whole lot of grit and turned it into a multi seven figure legacy. Kandi Lee is the CEO and co-founder of the 111 network. Guess where that name came from? And for over 30 years, she has coached over 10,000 or sorry, 100,000 entrepreneurs to scale their businesses with clarity, confidence and systems that work. And she's been where we've all been.

Over 30 years ago, after divorce left her with two suitcases, her daughter and just $200 to her name, she made a decision that would change everything. And she didn't just rebuild, she redesigned her entire life. Kandi has been where so many of us have been. She's the strategic force behind the Cashflow Compass, a proven system that helps legacy led women scale freedom based profit without the hustle. She's been featured on CNBC, HuffPost, HGTV. She shared stages with

legends like Mark Victor Hansen, Bob Proctor, and Jack Hanfield. And so she's not just teaching business strategy. She teaches the identity shifts that make million dollar momentum possible. And today she's going to share exactly how you can stop plateauing and start scaling with structure and not stress. So welcome, Kandi, to the Real Women Real Business podcast. my God. I love that. So funny when someone's reading my bio and like, yes, I remember all of those moments in time. I those things. I did those things.

Yeah, I'm so excited to be here. I am so excited to have you from the very first conversation you and I had. was like, I got to get this woman onto the podcast because you have such a powerful story. And I think the best part is that you're so grounded and so real. And I think that's where you and I really connected.

Shauna Lynn Simon (00:02)

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business Podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And if you've ever felt attached to your branding, especially if it is a DIY, you did it yourself kind of branding and you're feeling guilty maybe about wanting something better or maybe you've wondered if a rebrand is really worth the investment of it or maybe you're just scared of what is this investment going to look like and not just financially but time? What is it? What all is involved in this? This conversation today is really going to hit home for you because today's guest

Puja Malhotra is the founder and creative director of Roop Creative Agency, a boutique branding and web design studio. She's got over 15 years of experience in branding and marketing and has worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs across North America to create brands and websites that don't just look beautiful, but they're built to scale your business with clarity and purpose. And she's also the creator of Corporate Dropout, which we're going to touch on a little bit as well. She's created this mentorship program.

that helps designers like herself and creatives like herself to build profitable agencies of their own. So today we're to be talking about the emotional side of rebranding and what rebranding looks like. I've talked about branding on this show. I don't even know how many times and I've touched on rebranding very lately as and I always say do it sooner than later because it doesn't get any cheaper the longer you wait.

But I'm so excited to actually dig into this today with Puja . So Puja , welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. I am so excited to get into this. Now, before we get into the rebranding side of things, let's talk a little bit about where you're coming from, because you've been in marketing for a number of years. You started your own agency back in 2016. That's Roop Creative. What was that leap like for you? What was that transition like from corporate to entrepreneurship?

⁓ I think I was a little delusional.

Shauna Lynn Simon (00:02)

Hey there and welcome back to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon, and today we're going to talk about something that's going to hit home with a lot of entrepreneurs. Many of you are going to be really feeling this, especially those of you who are maybe working nonstop, serving your amazing clients. And yet somehow that bank account doesn't ever seem to really reflect the amount of effort that you are putting in. So if you've ever thought, how am I this busy and still stressing about cash flow?

This episode is for you because here's the truth. You might be sitting on thousands of dollars just hiding in your business right now, not in some magical new offer that you need to spend weeks or months creating, not in a marketing hack that's just follow this specific formula and you'll instantly get a ton of Instagram followers and all the money that your heart desires. But we're going to be at finding these this money that you're sitting on in the work you're already doing. And I want to help you to find it.

So let me start by telling you a bit of a story about something that happened in my life a couple of years ago. I made a business decision that let's just say I wish I could take back. I think we've all made some of those decisions. This one definitely hurt a little bit. I was in a position where I really needed to bring in some additional revenue and I was feeling maxed out myself and I didn't have someone on my team.

existing that I felt could really help with this. So I found this coaching program that was going to provide the resources for my team to be able to learn how to do the things that I needed them to do in order to generate more sales and bring in some more revenue. And so I went all in on this program. I was going to be a game changer. They promised me the moon and I did the work. I showed up fully. My staff showed up fully. We were following every single step.

putting in a ton of effort, no joke, they told us that we needed to put in 10 to 15 hours every week, which seemed obscene to me, but okay, I'm going to trust the process because that's what

Shauna Lynn Simon (00:02)

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon, and today I am joined by Emily Rosales and she is a brand strategy coach and messaging strategist at Simply Me. And she's proving that you don't need to have a massive following in order to build a thriving business. You really just need to have the right people that are paying attention.

Emily specializes in helping entrepreneurs who feel invisible online and helps them to transform their messaging so they stand out authentically and attract clients who actually are actually ready to buy. So she's got a done with you approach that blends coaching and copywriting and she's built a community of I think it's around 1500 Instagram followers who aren't just liking her post, but they are engaging, they're connecting and they are converting.

Her mantra is to be seen, be remembered, and be you. And in today's conversation, she's going to be sharing exactly how she has grown her business organically by personally connecting with every single person in her feed and why clarity matters more than posting more content. Clarity over quantity. So Emily, welcome to the podcast. Hi, Shauna. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for the intro. I am so excited to have you. So let's start with your journey first of all. What led you to focus specifically on brand?

messaging and helping entrepreneurs to feel seen by the right people. Yeah. It actually goes back to your, some of your messaging is like an accidental CEO. Like you totally relate and identify with that because it does feel like a bit accidental. does feel like ⁓ branding chose me. ⁓ I first started in the coaching business. I started coaching, like the, I started the coaching business about two and a half years ago.

And that was being mentored like, Hey, you really have to hone in, figure out where, who you're going to help. You know, what's the problem you're solving. I first, I thought it was going to be a relationship coach, to be honest. I'm like, ⁓ interesting. I'm really good at relationships. ⁓ so let me learn all there is. But then I was like, no, I mean, I do feel like I really have much more of the business side of me. ⁓ and I just started to inquire more, inquire more. I'm like, ⁓

Shauna Lynn Simon (00:02)

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And what if I told you that being an introvert could actually be your secret weapon in sales and in business growth? Well, today's guest is actually living proof of exactly that. I'm excited to introduce you to Inga Faison-Cavitt, also known as Inga Fay And Inga left her engineering career to follow that entrepreneurial spirit. And I know this is resonating with all my accidental CEOs out there. And here's what's remarkable.

She grew to the top five percent of her direct sales company, but didn't get there by forcing herself to become an extrovert or using any sort of high pressure sales tactics that would leave her feeling socially and energetically drained. And so, in fact, she's proven that you don't need to be the loudest person in the room in order to build a thriving business. She is an authenticity strategist. So Inga has developed the authentic.

sales accelerator method, which is specifically for introverted female entrepreneurs. And her approach is all about treating people like humans, not numbers, leveraging your natural strengths, deep listening, genuine relationship building and scaling your business without burning that social battery and absolutely draining it to zero. So if you ever felt like you need to change your personality to succeed in sales or in business or if networking events are leaving you completely exhausted,

You're going to love today's conversation because we're going to be shifting how you think about growing your business. So let's dive in. Inga, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for having me, Shauna Lynn. I'm excited about this conversation. As I mentioned before we hit record, I feel like this is one of those conversations that doesn't get nearly enough attention or air time. But before we get into your methods and such, I want to talk a little bit about what got you here in the first place. So you were in an engineering career and you decided to become an entrepreneur.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon, and recently I did something a little unhinged and I'm going to share that with you today. I gave out my personal cell phone number and I asked people to actually text me the one thing that they wish that they could fix in their business. Now, I know this might sound a little bit crazy and honestly it was not the first time I've been a little unhinged and radical and a little bit of a disruptor, so to speak, but the responses that came in from this absolutely blew me away.

And what happened next actually completely shifted how I think about connection, clarity, and what we really need to focus on in our business. And so in this episode, I'm going to share with you what people told me was their one thing, what most people were talking about, as well as some individual one offs as well, why most of the time what they're telling me is their one thing isn't actually the real problem there and the surprising ripple effect that comes out from or that came out from this little experiment that I did. So if you've ever thought

If I could just fix this one thing, everything else would finally fall into place and this episode is for you. Okay, so let's start off with backing up the truck here a little bit. Did I actually give out my cell phone number? Yep, I sure did. I emailed every single person on my email list, which is in the thousands and gave them my personal cell phone number so much so I actually had one person who responded to the email. She was like, is this actually real or did I just get spammed here? Like, or like scams, sorry, not spam, scam.

And I reply back, no, no, is legit. Tell me your one thing. Like, let's do this. Now, I also did share this on social media, but I did not give my cell number on social media. I just told them that they could DM me. But on email, I also know that sometimes it's easier if you can just text someone or send a voice note. And I wanted to create a more real connection and make that barrier a lot smoother for those people who are not as comfortable typing in email. And some people did just reply to the email, which was also totally OK.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon, and joining me today is Jaci Russo. She's the CEO and co-founder of Brand Russo, which is a strategic branding agency. And she's part of a very elite, less than 1 % of women-owned agencies in the US. She brings over 25 years of marketing experience, has built multiple successful ventures.

And we're going be talking today about some of those ventures, including Brandstate U that she's created. Stay tuned for what this is. But if you don't have the budget for a high-end marketing agency, we got you covered. She also co-hosts two podcasts as well. So she's no stranger to podcasting. And what makes her story even more remarkable is that she's doing all of this while raising four children and working alongside her husband. I'm sure there are plenty of listeners that are giving you whole lot of kudos for both of those feats.

So she started back with in her early days with Media Mogul, Barry Diller, and she was building, she's now building her own empire in Louisiana and has been doing so for many, years. But her background includes like USA Network and ⁓ some pretty major brands. So I can't wait to hear everything that she's gonna be sharing with us today. So Jaci, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon, and today's guest is Jennifer Lemmert. She's an award-winning communications consultant and expert in executive branding as well as employee engagement. She comes to us with over 20 years of experience supporting leaders in various industries from healthcare to tech to finance and government. But here's what makes her story so relatable to our audience is that Jennifer herself became an accidental CEO when she lost her job during the pandemic.

the pandemic. Sound familiar, anyone? So starting her business during nap time and late night, she's built a high six figure company in just five years while also get this raising three boys under the age of eight. She's passionate about helping leaders to craft authentic brand stories that are going to inspire trust and action. And today she's going to be sharing with us how women entrepreneurs can help to build that executive presence that commands respect.

and drives results. And she's going to talk about how we're sabotaging our brand sometimes and how we can overcome some of that. Because I think we all know that sometimes we are our own worst enemies, whether we mean to be or not. But we know how these things happen. So Jennifer, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much, Shauna Lynn. I can't wait to talk all things executive branding. And I so appreciate you having me today.

I can't wait to dive into this.

Welcome to the Real Women Real Business Podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. picture this, OK? Tell me that sounds familiar. It's two o'clock in the afternoon. You have that super important task on your list. And like when you woke up this morning, you're like, that is the thing I'm going to tackle today. And somehow, even though you haven't done that task yet and it's part way through most of the way through your day, you've decided that at this very moment, the most important thing for you to do is.

reorganize your desk drawer for like the third time today or something along those lines. Like, are you a master procrastinator? And you know exactly what you're doing when you're doing it, right? You know when you're procrastinating. You say to yourself, I'm going to focus. And then you find yourself grabbing a snack, taking a bio break, scrolling through social media. ⁓ You know, this is actually your subconscious sending you a message. Did you know?

that according to research by Dr. Pierce Steele, 95 % of people admit to procrastinating. 95%. So like, I don't know who the 5 % are that don't procrastinate, but I would love to meet you. If that is you, please message me. Reach out to me at Shauna Lynn Simon on Instagram, because I want to know who you are and how you're doing it. Because the reality is 95 % of people are admitting to do it. So either the other 5 % has found some magical code that we all need to understand, or they're lying.

And I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude, but you might be lying. For entrepreneurs, we deal with decision fatigue. We are constantly being bombarded by so many decisions that just wear us out that it's easy for us to put things off even further. that 95 % of people, if there's a lot of entrepreneurs in there, I'm gonna say the entrepreneurs, we're probably 100 % all of us are procrastinating at some time or another. So what if I actually told you that procrastination isn't a character flaw?

It's actually your subconscious trying to protect you. Okay. I want you to really hear me on this. This is your subconscious trying to protect you. And I think we really beat ourselves up sometimes about procrastination, right? Because we know we're supposed to do it. We know that we intended to do it. We had the best of intentions and that should matter, but it doesn't feel like it when we're missing a deadline and someone else is counting on us to do something or maybe it's just something that we feel like we're not moving the needle in our company.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And today I am being joined by Kirsten Graham. She's a CEO of Six Figure Business Coaching and she has built multiple successful companies while learning a very crucial lesson along the way. And that is that time is our most valuable asset as business owners. This is probably not a new thing for you to learn, but we're always trying to figure out, how do I get more of that time? And if we can't protect that time, then we're...

we're not going to be able to actually grow our business sustainably. So Kirsten actually helps business owners to gain visibility and authority through strategic video marketing, podcast guesting, helps you to understand how to create the landing pages, create the funnels, have those all done for you through our software VAs, helps you to understand your books, you're reading your profit and loss statements, having someone organize your financial so you know exactly where you're at and what you need to do financially to move your business forward through her bookkeeping VAs.

So all of these are intended to help to free up your time in order to focus on growing your income so that you don't have to balance between generating revenue, serving your clients, and growing your company. So we're going to be talking today about how we can break free from that. I need to be a solo CEO myth that ends up keeping you stuck and exhausted all the time. So Kirsten, thank you for joining me. Welcome to the Real Women Real Business Podcast.

Thanks, Shauna Lynn I'm excited. I could talk about these topics all day long.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Seanalyn Simon. And today, today's guest is actually someone who knows exactly what it feels like to carry the full mental load as a leader. And if you are listening, you're one of my, as I affectionately call you, my accidental CEOs where you started with more passion than plan. And now you find yourself in that leadership role. Our guest today has actually cracked the code on how to shift the dynamic in the workplace and turn your team members

into strategic thinkers and thinking more like an entrepreneur, which we all know we would love it if people just took a little bit more ownership of things. So today I've got Meredith Elliot Powell. She's a Hall of Fame speaker, award winning author and one of the world's top 15 business growth experts. But what makes her truly special is the journey that she's had from feeling trapped in reactive leadership.

to building teams that think like entrepreneurs. And after over 25 years in the C-suite and doing extensive research with organizations that thrive in uncertainty, Meredith has actually developed the Ask for Change system, which is a proven approach that helps leaders to stop doing all the thinking for their teams and start building cultures where everyone drives the solutions.

We're going to take things beyond standard delegation. You've all been told to let things go, to delegate, to give up some things. But it's not just about being able to feel comfortable giving up control, but ensuring that you have that confidence for your team to be able to take it over. So Merida is here today to share how you can transform from being your business's biggest bottleneck into its most powerful catalyst for growth. So Merida, thank you so much for joining me. Wow, I loved that introduction. Powerful.

Have ever noticed that sometimes we only make a change in our business after something goes horribly wrong? I'm Shauna Lynn the host of this podcast, The Real Women, Real Business podcast, and I am here to talk about why we learn from lessons the hard way sometimes, why we find this is our biggest teacher in life and maybe how we can be a little bit more proactive and preventative as opposed to reactive. So let me set the scene for you a little bit.

One of my clients, one of my one-on-one coaching clients, she's actually a home stager, operating a home staging business, owns her own inventory, which means that she is taking inventory from her warehouse into people's houses and back, and these items go into several people's houses, of course. And recently, she staged this beautiful, it like a three-bedroom house, the entire house was staged top to bottom. And...

After her and her team completed this installation, putting all the items in place in the house, that's when they discovered it was actually crawling with cockroaches. And here's the best part. So this already sounds horrible. I know. And I won't get too far into the cockroach story because I know if you get a little bit weirded out, I don't want you tuning out. I don't want you turning this off or anything. But here's where the hard lesson comes in. She didn't have a signed contract with the client. Right.

So now she's in a little bit of a sticky situation where her items are in the house. She calls the real estate agent and the real estate agent says, well, just take your items out of the house. She's like, I can't do that. So she can't bring them back to her warehouse and risk contaminating the things that her warehouse. And so she now has to deal with her items are in the house. The house needs to be fumigated. Her items need to be fumigated. Well, who's responsible for all of this? What is what are the next steps? Now, she was quite fortunate.

that both the client and the real estate agent were incredibly understanding. And to my understanding, they did end up managing to work out a reasonable resolution to this. But they stood the chance that that wasn't going to be the case, of course, because she didn't have a signed contract in place. And it's something that we've actually been talking about for some time. And there's a bit of a situation where she got it to the lawyer like six months ago. She keeps waiting for the lawyer to get it back to her.

Shauna Lynn Simon (00:02)

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon, and I am really excited about today's guest because she's got a topic that I honestly had never even heard of this before. So we're going to dive into something brand new here. And I think you're really going to love it. I've got with me Anne Dranitsaris. She's a PhD. She's an author, psychotherapist, and a developmental expert, a leadership coach. And she spent over four decades.

Helping people to break free from the self-protective patterns that are keeping them stuck. she talks about, we're going be talking about codependency and how to move beyond that. We're going be talking a lot about imposter syndrome and people pleasing and how to move into your authentic self. And she's actually got a book on all this coming up in just a couple of months as well. So we're going to be diving into a little bit about that. Her new book is called Not Broken, Just Delayed and it reframes codependency as a developmental delay.

rather than a disorder and helps to show readers how the survival strategies that once kept them safe are now holding them back. And I know that you're probably thinking, well, what exactly does all of this mean? Well, let me welcome Anne and we're gonna tell you exactly what it means. So Anne, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me, Shannalyn. I'm really excited about our conversation, especially based on our pre podcast conversation.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business Podcast. I'm your host, Shauna Lynn Simon, and today I'm thrilled to be welcoming Gabrielle Tongol also known online as Gabs, and she is a self-employed entrepreneur since 2014. She actually evolved from fitness coach to influencer and now serves as the CEO and founder of Assist Her Agency, which is a powerhouse team that supports overwhelmed entrepreneurs in reclaiming their time and, most importantly, their mental real estate.

So with over a decade of experience building and scaling businesses, Gab's actually now leads a team of eight while also mentoring aspiring agency owners, proving that you can build a thriving business without sacrificing your wellbeing. And I think her mission really perfectly aligns with what we talk about here on the podcast, which is sustainable growth that doesn't come at the cost of, your entire life, basically. So Gabrielle, thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you for having me. think it's going to be so great to talk about all the different things today, just given the history that I've had. And like you said, it aligns so well with your podcast. So I'm very excited and thank you for having me. Yeah. And I mean, so, okay, so take us back. We started in 2014. That's when you started as a fitness coach. Did I get that correct? Yes. So was a little bit of a hodgepodge of all the things. I was in college at the time and I had started as a social media manager, actually.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And if you're juggling like 17 different super urgent tasks right now and wondering how everything in your life seems to be a total priority and how the heck you're going to get it all done, this episode is for you. OK, so tell me this sounds familiar. It's like a Tuesday afternoon at, around two o'clock, which is kind of when I'm recording this episode. You've got like forty seven browser tabs open on your computer. Your phone is

going nuts off the hook with urgent requests and you're staring at your to-do list that somehow has grown three times longer than it was this morning. Is this sounding familiar at all to you? If you're drowning in a sea of important tasks and every single thing feels like it just needs to happen today or better yet, like yesterday, ⁓ then you're going to love today's episode. So if you're nodding along thinking,

You know, is she like in the room right now? How is she understanding my life this way? And there are a few of you that I know are religious listeners to this podcast that take me everywhere that you go. And that's right. I'm speaking directly to you right now. And I know you're nodding along saying like, yep, she's definitely getting me. You're in the right place ⁓ because today we're going to talk about the exact system that successful entrepreneurs are using to cut through all of that noise and focus on what truly moves the needle. You've probably.

looked at other businesses and thought, my goodness, like how are they managing to continually move forward and excel? And it seems like they're doing so much. You know, they are balancing the family life and the work life and they're going to these extravagant galas and they're doing all these different vacations and trips. You're thinking, I don't even know how I'm going to take off a couple of hours tonight just to read a book…

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And today's guest is Amanda Kaufman. And she is the founder of The Coaches Plaza host of The Amanda Kaufman Show. Amanda has generated over $2 million in revenue through her coaching and her courses. But what makes her story really so valuable is her willingness to share the real journey, which includes the challenges that even successful entrepreneurs face.

So with over 18 years of business consulting experience, Amanda has made the leap from corporate to coaching, building her business from just eight names, eight names, and quitting her job in four months. She's incredibly passionate about helping coaches to build authentic and profitable businesses without the social media overwhelm that so many of us struggle with. So I cannot say how excited I am to have you on the show, Amanda. Thank you so much for joining us.

I'm so excited to be here. So we had some off-camera conversations and we could not be more aligned in some of our thought processes and some of our journeys for that matter because there are so many similarities I think to the entrepreneurial journey but not everyone always talks about them. So let's start off with, okay, you built a successful coaching business from eight names. Let's talk about this for a moment.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast today. I am super excited to welcome our guest, Stacey Brown Randall to the podcast. She is a multi award winning author of Generating Business Referrals Without Asking, as well as the upcoming book, The Referrable Client Experience, which is set to release in October of 2025. She's also the host of one of my favorite podcasts, the Roadmap to Referrals Podcast.

And one of things that I think makes Stacey especially unique is her contrarian approach to referrals because she teaches business owners how to generate these naturally without manipulating, without incentivizing, without even asking. And her work has been featured in major publications like Entrepreneur Magazine, Forbes, and Investor Business Daily. And so I want to just explain a little bit about how I originally met Stacey because we actually collaborated as co-authors on a book with LuAnn Nigara

who's also been featured on this podcast. And I will be honest, when I first learned that her whole premise to everything that she does is all about referrals, I was a little skeptical. I'm like, how on earth are you building an entire business around referral strategies? That sounds like a portion of your business plan. And she makes it basically your whole world. And you'll see why when we get to talking about this.

And after listening to her speak about it, seeing the results that her clients have achieved, I got to say, I am absolutely 100 % a true believer.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And today we're going to be diving into a topic on something that's really been bothering me a lot lately. What I've found is that when I'm looking for women-owned businesses to support, especially when it comes to a high level in those sort of specialized services, they're incredibly hard to find. And it kind of got me wondering, why is that? So I dug a little bit into this.

And I'm going to share some of my insights that I've discovered and some incredible facts about this that are going to help you to understand, of all, why this is. And then the next thing we're going to tackle is how do we overcome that and how do we as women continue to rise and to raise each other up? So I'll back this up a little bit and explain that I recently I needed some support navigating a new business development opportunity.

And so there were some specialized people that I needed to speak to at a fairly high level. We're talking sort of legal, CPA, ⁓ valuators, different ⁓ types of businesses that were at fairly high levels. And so a colleague of mine, she introduced me to the first person to speak to, which was a lawyer. ⁓ And he was lovely. But of course, it's a man, an older gentleman, and very knowledgeable.

really supported me well overall, I would say. And he then said, you know, I have someone else I'd like you to speak to. I think that you need to speak to this type of person. Let me refer someone. Of course, it was another man. And that person then referred to me to yet another person. And again, it was another man. Now, throughout this process, I did a little bit of searching on my own behind the scenes to see if I could find someone who is doing a similar job at a similar level to these guys just to get a second opinion on things.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I'm your host, Shauna Lynn Simon, and today's guest is someone who's going to completely change how you think about growing your business. I've got Melissa Snow with me. She is a business relationship strategist and the founder of the powerful women rising community. So after building and scaling two successful businesses of her own, Melissa discovered something that most entrepreneurs miss, and that is that the most sustainable way to grow your business isn't through

complicated marketing funnels or expensive ad campaigns, but through, get this, authentic, real human connections. I know, shocking. So she's now on a mission to revolutionize networking by teaching women how to build genuine relationships that fuel business growth without the whole, you know, sleazy, pushy tactics that we've all experienced. And she calls it networking like a human, not a salesy weirdo, which I absolutely love. And trust me, if you've ever felt uncomfortable with traditional networking, this conversation is going to be a game changer for you.

And I should also mention that she's also the host of the popular Powerful Women Rising podcast. And she lives in Colorado with a couple of dogs, cat, and any number of foster kittens, which as of the recording of this episode apparently is six. Of course, we've already talked about that because she is our kind of people. So, Melissa, welcome. Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to talk to you and your cats.