Ep 130 Transcript: How to Stop Paying the Accidental CEO Tax

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors in spelling or inaccuracies in the spoken words.

Shauna Lynn Simon (01:50.574)

Welcome to the Real Woman Real Business Podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And today I want to talk about something that you might not have had any warning about before you started your business. Now, listen, I remember when I started my first business, there were a lot of people who asked me, like, do you know what it's like being an entrepreneur? Do you know what you're getting into? You know, writing a business is a lot of work. And I will say that for

All the preparation that I felt that I did for all of the things that like I knew there were gonna be late nights, I knew there were gonna be extra hours, I knew there was gonna be a whole lot of hustle and grind to it. I knew all of that. And yet I still tell people to this day that I don't think there's anything that anyone could have told me to really properly prepare me for what business ownership truly looks and feels like

on the inside. And for myself, I have a background in business. So I did create my proper business plan before launching my business. Nonetheless, you don't know what you don't know before you start your business. So even with a plan, it's really easy to find yourself a little bit off the rails, a little bit running around in circles and not quite sure where to focus your time. But in my experience, most of the women that I work with

Did not start with the plan. There wasn't this laid-out clear business plan strategy of what they're going to be doing from one year to the next, what they want the future of their business to look like. And the challenge with that is that no one really talks about like what does it cost you if you don't start with the plan? Sure, everyone always says it's easier. There's a lot of things that certainly would be easier if you started with the plan. It sounds great in a perfect world.

But what's the cost of starting without a plan? Now here's the thing. I also understand that you're listening to this, it's kind of too late. Like you're already in business probably. And whether you started with the plan or not, it doesn't matter. Like we're moving full steam ahead here. But I do want to talk about the tax that we essentially pay when we don't start with the plan. And I'm not even talking about a financial cost. Although, of course, we will talk about that as well. But

Shauna Lynn Simon (03:44.886)

I'm talking about that deeper cost, the kind that shows up little by little, where you barely even notice it at first. And it just kind of keeps creeping in till one day you look up and you realize that the business that you're running actually looks nothing like the one that you set out to build. The passion that got you started feels like it's buried somewhere underneath the weight of everything that you're carrying every single day. And you maybe can't even remember the last time that work actually felt

fun and enjoyable. And sure there are moments of it, but your day-to-day, like, do you feel when you get out of bed in the morning, like, yes, this is going to be the most amazing day. I'm looking forward to every single thing I'm going to do today. And the reality is that when you started the business, you did, right? You were so excited to get started. You were building something. But then it starts to kind of run away from you a little bit. And this is what I call the Accidental CEO Tax.

And so today I want to talk about what it is, what it actually costs you, and why so many brilliant women end up paying it, regardless of whether what they set out to do in the first place. And most importantly, we're going to cover how to actually stop this task tax. So, first of all, what is it? If you've been listening to this podcast for any length of time, you have definitely heard me talk about the Accidental CEOs, and you may have even identified yourself as one of those Accidental CEOs. This is someone who followed more passion

than plan. You had a gift, a craft, something you were genuinely good at, like a zone of genius. And you thought, I'm gonna turn this into a business. And you did, which is incredible. But here's what happens for so many of the women that I work with. In all of that excitement of getting started, you might have skipped a few steps along the way. Cause I get it, especially if you are a creative professional, patience is not something that you're really well known for.

You just want to go and get her done. You want to go and do the fun thing, the super cool thing. So you might have skipped a few steps. And, you know, it might look in hindsight a little bit like it you were being careless, but that wasn't the case. You weren't intentionally trying to, you know, fast forward and take a shortcut necessarily. Again, you were just really excited to get going and doing the thing that you really wanted to do. You were excited, the opportunities they started coming in. There was some momentum. And stopping to slow down and actually plan things out kind of felt like the opposite of what you actually needed to do.

Shauna Lynn Simon (06:03.798)

So you said yes to things. You figured it all out as you went along. You let demand dictate direction. I can't tell you how many women I have spoken to who basically say, my motto was just say yes to everything that comes in and figure it out as we go. This is such a common thing that I hear women saying. So what ends up happening is the demand, the things that people are asking you to do, you're saying yes to it. That starts to dictate the direction that your business is going in. And for a while, this works. This feels

productive. This feels like you're moving in the right direction until it doesn't. Because what starts to happen is that your business starts to take on a shape all of its own. One that was not quite intentional, which is where the term, of course, Accidental CEOs comes from. Because maybe you're serving clients that you didn't really design your business for. Maybe you're doing work that doesn't fully light you up in the way that it did when you first started. Maybe everything just kind of feels a little more chaotic, and this is a word that I use often, reactive.

Because your processes, they were built kind of on the fly, or they might not really fully exist. Like you've got systems in place, but you don't really have a full process or policy for how you do things. And so they're starting to crack under the weight of the growth. And this is a foundational thing, right? Think of a house that you're building. If that foundation isn't solid, if there's some holes in it, it's not going to be able to withstand the height of the house. And if you keep building stories on top of it, eventually it's going to topple over.

I use the example often of playing Jenga. And that's exactly what you do. If you've played the game Jenga, it's basically you're building this tower and you start taking pieces out from the bottom so that you can build the top. And that's pretty much what happens when you're an Accidental CEO building your business on this sort of unsteady foundation and you keep making it weaker because you keep pulling pieces out from the bottom so that you can build on the top. And then we start ignoring the bottom, and that eventually will topple over. So what ends up happening is you get so buried.

under the operational side of things, the stuff that you never signed up for, that the creative, the doer, the reason you started in the first place, barely gets to show up anymore. And so that gap between the business that you imagine and the business that you're actually running, that's the Accidental CEO Tax. And you pay it every single day that you stay in that gap. So let's talk about what this tax actually looks like because it's not just one thing. And again, it's not necessarily just financial. It shows up

Shauna Lynn Simon (08:29.226)

In layers. So the first layer, we're going to call that your time layer. When you don't have a clear process, clear criteria for what actually deserves your attention and a clear vision of where you're going, everything takes longer than it should. You end up making the same decisions over and over again. For example, that is a process breakdown.

When you are literally making that same decision multiple times, this is probably one of my biggest pet peeves. Anyone who has ever worked with me knows that I will actually spend five minutes digging for an answer to a question that I already answered. Like if I've already made a decision, I am gonna spend five minutes digging for that answer rather than spend five minutes thinking about it because the five minutes of digging takes less energy because I already thought this through. I've already figured out from all the different angles and I came to a conclusion on it. And usually

I actually document not only what my decision is, but how I got to that decision because that comes in handy more times than I can count. And you might not be that organized, and I get that. This is not throwing any shade at you by any means, but understand that every time you have to make a decision again, like the same decision you've already made, that is costing you not only time, but energy. That is brain capacity that you could have used for something else. There's a reason why we talk about decision fatigue. And decision fatigue comes from making

unnecessary decisions. So the more we can eliminate some of those unnecessary decisions, the easier it is to run our business. So you end up making these decisions over and over again. What else ends up happening? Well you're reinventing the wheel every time a new opportunity shows up, right? You're creating a new process or a system for it. And then you end up handling things that shouldn't even be in your lane because there's just no system to being able to properly hand them off. If something isn't documented and it's just living in your head, really difficult to pass it off to someone else. And I will say

This is sort of a hidden place that this ends up showing up. But oftentimes I hear people say to me, Well, I had team members and I tried to give them things to do, but they weren't able to do them properly. That is usually a delegation issue. And that is because you didn't hand it off properly. You did not set that person up for success. You did not give them all the tools that they needed in order to be able to effectively and properly complete the task in a way that you wanted them to. And that's because you didn't have a proper

Shauna Lynn Simon (10:47.022)

process or system in place to be able to hand it off to them easily. So you just kind of like rattled a bunch of things off for them and expected them to pick up all the pieces of it. And sometimes that works. And I'm not going to get into this in this episode necessarily, but there are ways that you can build in some of these processes and document the systems that you have in place, the standard operating procedures, without you having to sit down and build a 200 page manual. And part of that is literally showing your team

And kind of spouting out here's how to do it, and they're capturing it. But the key is they have to capture it. There has to be an intentional way that they're capturing it. But again, I'm not going to too far into that right now. But the point is that time is your most finite resource. You can make more money, right? But you cannot make more time. Time exists in a finite amount. And without a plan, that time that you have disappears faster than you can earn it back.

So, this is one of the biggest costs of the Accidental CEO task, is your time. And I think sometimes we underestimate just how much this time costs. I actually did a call recently with my group coaching members, and one of the women on the call, we were talking about some wins that we had. And she's like, this might not sound like a big thing, but it really is. So she's in a home staging business, she operates a home staging firm. And what she would end up doing is sometimes, you know, you go out on a staging project and it turns out, whoops, we forgot something at the warehouse.

And instead of paying one of her staff members to go back and get it, she would go back and get it herself. Because it seemed like I'm going to save that cost. I'm like, okay, how much time did that take? About 45 minutes. How much do you pay that staff member? $20, $25 an hour. So you're talking about for about $15, $18 that you're saving, you're going to spend the time going back to the warehouse, like 45 minutes of your time. What could the CEO of a business do in 45 minutes? A lot more things.

Than going back to grab a couple of decor items and bring them back to this home staging project. So one of the things that she mentioned was that that's one of the big changes and shifts that she's made in her business recently is she shifted her mindset to what are the high-value tasks that only I can do, that I should be doing. And when something comes up that doesn't fall under that umbrella, she looks at ways that she can delegate it to someone else because it is always going to be far cheaper to pay someone else to do a task.

Shauna Lynn Simon (13:08.066)

That does not require your attention so that you can spend your attention on other things. So, this is one of the biggest places that I want you to think about when it comes to where you're losing money in your business. You're losing money through your time. Okay. And it's not about having a productivity hack or better time management or time blocking. Yes, all of those tools are wonderful. And I'm a huge, huge advocate of every single one of them.

But they don't fix the underlying issue. And that is that you are focusing on the wrong things. Okay, so I mentioned there were a few layers to this Accidental CEO Tax. And so the second layer, that is money. Okay. And this one actually surprises people sometimes because, you know, you might look at your revenue and think that things actually look okay. Like I'm bringing in some good money. I literally just had a call with someone yesterday who's joining the program soon, and we were talking about the money. And she's like, you know, like I bring in a pretty decent revenue every single month. And yet,

She feels like she's in the red every single month as well. So when you look at where that revenue is actually coming from, are you pricing in a way that actually reflects your value? Like here's the thing, you can have a lot of revenue coming in, but if it's not covering the expenses and the value that you're really providing, or if you've got such a razor-thin margin on a particular product or service, there's no room for error there. And you have to be incredibly efficient.

And be able to do a super large volume in order to compensate for that. And personally, I don't understand why I want to work harder just to bring in the same amount of money that if I just raise my prices, but you have to be able to communicate your value in order to be able to get the pricing that actually reflects that value. So are you spending time on the things that are actually generating real income for you? Or are you just staying busy? And this is another thing. Like I'll admit, I get caught in this sometimes. There are things that we want to do, there are things that we don't.

want to do. One of the things for myself, for example, is I don't like getting things over the finish line. I like getting things to about 80% and having someone else take them over the finish line. But there are some things that I just have to do myself. And I know that if I complete them, I get paid. And that is a great incentive, you would think, to actually get them done. And yet I don't really want to do it. And I know that sounds awful, but there are just just like everyone else, you know, there are elements of my job that I don't necessarily enjoy doing that I don't want to do.

Shauna Lynn Simon (15:30.406)

And I'm continually looking for ways that I can be more efficient at it, make it easier for me, and pass it off whenever I can. But there are some times where as I look at it, you know, I can't help but realize, like, no, this one actually does require my hands on it. So how do I make this a little bit easier for myself? Because if we are just spending time on the tasks that we enjoy, sometimes they're not always generating income. Now, if you've ever heard me talk about this, I'm always asking the two questions, my two main filter questions in terms of prioritizing tasks is.

Does this make me money and does this bring me joy? And both are important, but there are some times where it makes you money but doesn't bring you joy and you still gotta do it. And there are times where it brings you joy and doesn't make you money. And you've got to allow yourself time for those things as well. It's about balancing all of that. This is actually something I go into deeper in my Real Women Real Business Mastery Program, the group coaching program that I take you through 12 months of building those foundational elements to your business. But one of the first things that we do is we help you to eliminate.

the task that you shouldn't be working on by using what I call my Power Play Profit Filter. And we actually identify the items that should actually be on your desk and which ones shouldn't. And we work to remove the ones that shouldn't be there. Anyway, okay, going back to the Accidental CEO Tax. Okay. So we've got the second layer that is money. So are you spending your time on the things that actually generate income or are you just staying busy? Are you saying yes to clients or projects that cost you more than they actually pay you?

Whether it's in time, in energy, in opportunity. The Accidental CEO Tax has a very real dollar amount attached to it, even when it feels a little more invisible on the surface. So I want you to ask yourself the next time you're saying yes to something that costs you more in time or energy than you feel that it should, that you're not necessarily getting paid your worth. I want you to ask yourself what that really costs you in dollars and cents. What's the opportunity that you said no to?

Or what's the time with your family that would have recharged you in order to make you more productive? Like these are very real costs. And that brings us to the third layer of the Accidental CEO Tax, which is energy. This is the one that honestly breaks my heart the most because the women who come to me, they're not lazy. They're not unmotivated. They are some of the most driven, passionate, hardworking, talented women that I have ever met. And they're exhausted.

Shauna Lynn Simon (17:58.132)

Listen, I've been there for anyone who knows my story. I ended up with adrenal fatigue back in about 2017 after fighting about of shingles, and that shingles was brought on by burnout. It was a very real burning the candle at both ends kind of scenario that brought me to my knees basically. And adrenal fatigue was something that took me three years to recover from, and it was not an easy process, and it's not something I wish on anyone. And you might not be literally manifesting in your body as adrenal fatigue, but

That very real exhaustion. And listen, especially women, we carry that hit a certain age and our hormone levels are shifting and our cortisol levels are rising and falling. And all of this is impacting how we feel from one moment to the next, from one day to the next. Let's not add this other layer of it that comes in from the Accidental CEO Tax, right? Because, you know, it's not that you can't handle the hard work. You've proven that you can. But

It doesn't have to be as hard as you're actually making it. And because you're spending your energy on the wrong things, it's exhausting you that much more because these are things that are not feeling productive. They're not taking you where you actually want to go. And so one of the things that that ends up draining these women instead of energizing them is this element of the task that they should not necessarily be doing. Now I get it. Before you say to me, listen, Shauna Lynn, I don't have someone that I can pass these things off to, I get it. I do. But

It's not always about passing it off. Are there ways that we can make it easier, make it less time consuming? Can we automate certain elements of it? And there are also times where when you take a hard look at things, there are tasks you can full out eliminate. Okay. So I want you to take a really close look at some of the tasks that you're working on and just filter it through a little bit of a different lens today. As you're going about your day, what are the things that are really draining you? And then do you need to be doing that? Could someone else do that? Could it be a matter of paying someone a couple of hours a week?

To do that thing for you. These are tasks that you know could be systematized, delegated. And when your energy is going to the wrong places, the right things, the things you actually love, the things that you're brilliant at, and the things that are generating real income for you, those things are not getting enough of you. And that's again a big part of the tax that we're paying because again, we only have a finite amount of energy. And if we're not focusing on the right things, it's our energy is not going in the places that are actually going to move the needle.

Shauna Lynn Simon (20:22.87)

In our business. And this is why it feels like you're spinning your wheels and not actually moving forward. Now, the fourth layer I want to talk about. I'm going to talk about that right after we take the short break for a quick message.

All right, welcome back to the Real Women Real Business Podcast, where we've been talking about the Accidental CEO Tax and what that costs us. And I mentioned that there are several layers to this. So the first layer is your time, second layer is your money, and the third layer is your energy. And the fourth layer, this one's gonna hurt. I'm not gonna lie, because this one I think is one of the most expensive ones.

And that is your passion. That thing that made you start in the first place, that spark over time when your business doesn't feel like it's yours anymore, when you don't feel like you have control over your own time, over your own decisions, when every day feels reactive and chaotic and like you're just trying to keep up, that spark, that spark starts to dim. And it's not that it goes away, it's just that it's getting buried underneath these layers of drudge every single day.

I have sat down with these women, absolutely brilliant, capable women, who have looked at me and said, like, I just don't know if I want to do this anymore. And what's interesting is when I have this conversation, listen, there are some times where we do just get to the point where, you know, it's time for the next chapter in our lives. But most of the time when women are coming to me saying this, it's not because they can't actually do it anymore or that they're too burnt out to do it. It's that they just can't see the real passion anymore. And the business isn't.

Shauna Lynn Simon (22:49.502)

working for them. It's working against them. And it stopped feeling like it's theirs. And I want to get really personal for a moment because I think it matters that you know that I'm not just talking about this from the outside looking in. Yes, I have worked with incredible women through this type of process. As I mentioned earlier, I actually have a bit of a business background. So I actually majored in mathematics. I have a bachelor of mathematics degree with a minor in business from my university days. I worked for startup companies in my

First days of my corporate life, worked for several years as an analyst. I understand strategy. I understand numbers. I understand planning. Despite all of this, I still found myself in the early years of my first business feeling like an Accidental CEO. And I, as I mentioned earlier, I started with an actual business plan. But here's the thing about being a creative: it's really easy to want to skip some of these steps, to trust the vision and the momentum and just like, I'll just figure the rest of it out as I go. There were opportunities that came up that I thought.

were close enough to what I was trying to build that sure I should take them. And in hindsight, they pulled me further away from what it was that I was actually building. And so for a while, I was kind of, you know, doing all these different things and just hoping that something was going to stick. And if I'm being perfectly honest, I haven't made a secret of this. My first business, it almost failed in the first couple of years. So here's what happened. About two years into the business,

My dad got sick. So for anyone who hasn't been tuning in for a while, you may not know the full story about my dad. But my dad lived with MS for about 30 years. And back in, I guess this would have been 2010, my dad had an MS episode, which landed him in the hospital. And it was a pretty serious, it's probably one of the most serious episodes he had throughout living with MS. And like I said, it landed him in the hospital. My dad lived three hours away from where I live. And

I had to kind of pick up everything and sort of go to see him, help him and my mom out, help with his care. And essentially wasn't really paying much attention to my business. To me, I still had the business. But admittedly, that I wasn't doing a whole lot of work on it on a daily basis. And so what ended up happening is I'm sitting with my dad the one day in his hospital room. And I can't remember how it came up with my business, but he says to me, you know what, honey?

Shauna Lynn Simon (25:10.412)

You gave it a really good shot. And I was like, what are you talking about? He's like, this business thing is like, I'm really proud of you. Like, you did something not a lot of people do. Like you went out, you started your own business, you worked really hard. You know, it was a great idea. But like sometimes these things just don't work out, and that's okay. And I'm looking at him and thinking, like, my dad was always my biggest fan, my biggest supporter. He coached all of my sports growing up. He never made me feel like there was anything I couldn't do. I'll admit that as a woman in business, as a woman entrepreneur,

I never felt the woman part of it was working against me because my dad raised me to not believe any of that, that I was just as capable as any man that was out there. And so my dad, who was my biggest cheerleader, my biggest supporter, is now basically like telling me I failed and give and get kind of giving up on me. And I'm like, Dad, I still have my business. Like, I know what you're talking about. He's I still have my business. He's like, Really? Cause like you've been here for the last three weeks.

And I haven't seen you like working on things, taking client calls, really doing much. And you know what? Honestly, he was right. The phone wasn't really ringing the way that it should have been. I was two years into the business. And it's not that I had zero business. It's just it wasn't like no one really missed me that much when I shut down for a few weeks. Like that's saying a lot, right? And so what I had to do is I had to take a really hard look at my current life, at

The decisions that I was making, the way that I was running the business, but also like, what do I actually want here? And I spent some time imagining what would it be like if I wasn't running this business. So this was my first business. This was my home staging business. And I remember thinking to myself, like, what if I wasn't a home stager? And I had had another career before this, I could have another career after it. But everything in my gut was telling me that I was born to do this, that there was more for me, that

I would I just needed to figure this out because this is where I was meant to be. It I had never felt so comfortable in my own skin. Like it was kind of like, you know, that you try on that jacket, it just fits perfectly. That was how home staging felt to me at that time. And so I ended up shutting the business down for a couple of months. Again, no one was really missing me that much anyway, and did a full rebrand. And it's not like I said no to anything that came in. It was just more that I wasn't advertising, I wasn't out there.

Shauna Lynn Simon (27:32.314)

spreading the word. I wasn't networking. I wasn't doing any of those things. I just shut it down for a couple of months, completely rebranded things, relaunched the business with a whole new focus, a whole new vision and a whole new set of priorities. And my goal was actually to double the previous year's sales. Well, I didn't double the previous year's sales. I did five times the previous year's sales because I was clear in my focus. I was clear in my processes.

I knew exactly what it was that I was building, who I was building it for, how I was building it. My messaging was clear. Everything was clear. And so basically what I did was I went back to the basics. Those foundational things that I had skipped initially, I filled them in. One of the big things, for example, was even just the on the marketing side of things, my ideal client was way too vague. I got really specific. I knew exactly who I was marketing to. You know what that meant? That meant I knew exactly where to find them.

Everything just got crystal clear. I put what I needed to in place to make it work. Like I said, I rebranded, I refocused, I rebuilt on solid footing instead of just that momentum. And that's why I did five times the previous year sales. It wasn't that I worked harder. I actually felt like I had more free time for my friends. Didn't feel like I was spinning my wheels so much. I just got clearer. And that clarity, that foundation, that changed everything. And eventually.

That experience of rebuilding my own business became the foundation for everything that I teach today. Cause I know what it feels like to be in that gap. And I know what's possible on the other side of it. So here's what I see happen over and over with the women that I work with. They come to me, they're feeling stuck, they're feeling overwhelmed, almost like they're frozen in place. They just can't move forward. And it's not for lack of drive or desire. It's just that they're like, I tried this thing and it didn't work, or I tried this thing and it didn't work. And I've talked on previous episodes about.

Gurus and their frameworks. And listen, I got some great frameworks and they really do work. But it's not like it's just a cookie cutter thing that you can just copy and paste my framework, stick it into your business, and hope that it's going to fit. It's going to take some adjustment. It's like retrofitting a kitchen in a new space. Like you, you're going to have to make some tweaks and adjust it to your own business. But that's exactly what I help you do in my Real Women Real Business Mastery Program because the frameworks exist.

Shauna Lynn Simon (29:48.514)

Because they work. And I've seen them work time and time again for every Accidental CEO that I've worked with. But it's not as though it's just a cut and paste and it's gonna instantly work. And this is the problem that these women have are saying, like, I tried all the things. I listened to what this person said and I tried this other thing, but it didn't work because it did it wasn't for your business. That wasn't built for you and your business. So what we do is we start to pull back the layers. We look at what they're actually spending their time on.

We look at what they originally set out to build. We look at where the gap is between those two things and why it's there. And sometimes, don't get me wrong, like what we set out to build originally, we had that vision based on the information that we had at that time. As you gather data, as you're building your business, it's easy to shift that, right? Like you realize, there's actually different things that I want to do, or there's things that are, you know, kind of calling to you and pulling you. And

That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it needs to be intentional. And then we need to update our vision if that is actually the case to make sure that we still know where it is that we're heading, that we're not just reacting and letting demand pull us in all these different directions. And almost every time that I look at this gap with these women, there's this moment. It's like a light bulb goes off where they realize that what they actually want isn't as far away as they thought it was. It feels like it, because it feels like it's buried under all these layers, right?

But the path back to the business that they envision, the one that feels like theirs, that energizes them, that lets them do the work that they love, it's not necessarily complicated or as long as the overwhelm made it to feel, but that overwhelm can just make it feel like it's so unclear. It's like trying to navigate through muddy waters and you just can't find your way.

And that light bulb when it goes off, it's like shining light and clearing that water up and saying, like, it's just just over here. Like there's a few little obstacles along the way. There's there's some things we're gonna need to navigate. It's not necessarily a straight line, it might still have a few zigs and zags in it, but it's within sight and it's not actually as difficult as we think it's going to be. You don't have to shut it all down. Like this is probably one of the things I hear women say a lot. I I'm just kind of debating about like just burning this all down to the ground starting all over again. Don't light the match. I promise you, it's not that bad. That moment though.

Shauna Lynn Simon (31:59.662)

It's one of my favorite things in the world to witness because I've seen it completely transform how someone shows up in their business. It's not like things necessarily change overnight, but clarity does change everything. When you know what you're building and why, every decision gets easier. Every yes, every no gets clearer. The chaos starts to quiet. And that passion, that passion comes back. So if you're sitting here thinking, okay, I'm recognizing myself in all of this, but you're wondering, well, what is it that I actually do?

I'm gonna give you a place to start, not a complete overhaul, just like a place to start. First thing I want you to do is get really honest about that gap. Think about the business you set out to build when you started, and then think about the business you're actually running right now. Where are those two things different? What did you imagine your days would look like? And what do they actually look like? It's not about judgment. And it's not to say that how you're doing things now is wrong. It's just that clarity. You cannot close a gap until you've named it. Again, it's not that you're gonna throw everything out.

That you've built, but there are probably elements of it that you don't really want to be doing and you do want to get yourself back to some of the things that you first set out to. And you might feel like that seems really far apart, but I promise you it's not. Because the second thing we're gonna look at is where your time and your energy are going. What are you spending the most time on? And of those things, how many are actually moving your business forward? How many of them are energizing you? If you've listened to episode 76 that I did.

You know that I have a whole framework for this called that Power Play Profit Filter. And like I said, we dive deeper in the Real Women Real Business Mastery Program about this. But go back and listen to that episode if you haven't, because it's it's a really practical tool for exactly this. But I'm not gonna get too far into it in this episode because I got a whole episode on it. So I want you to identify like where your time is actually going, how many of these things that you're working on are actually energizing you.

And then identify where your time should actually be spent. So again, listen to episode 76 to get more clarity on that. And then the third thing that I want you to do, and this is the part that a lot of people tend to skip, or you kind of want to skip, because this is where it starts getting a little bit hard, is that I want you to give yourself permission to want what you actually want. if you've ever ever read Dan Sullivan's books, he talks a lot about being a really good wanter. And I think, especially as women, we've been

Shauna Lynn Simon (34:19.039)

trained and conditioned to feel like we shouldn't want the things that we actually want or we shouldn't want for anything for that matter. And that's not necessarily true. So I want you to think about like, what is it that you actually want? Not the business someone else told you to build, not the version that looks good from the outside, the one that actually fits you, your strengths, your values, your vision of your life. That business is possible, but you have to be willing to get clear on it first. Small little sidebar story. When I moved to university,

It was the first time in my life I had really felt that I could be who I wanted to be. And the more I leaned into being myself, my true authentic self, the happier I was, the more I could show up for myself, the more I attracted the people that I wanted to attract. The same goes for your business. The more you allow your business to be what you really want it to be, the more the right people that you can serve are going to show up. Now, I want to be honest with you, the this work, the work of getting clear on where it is that you're going.

Of rebuilding on that solid footing of identifying what you actually want, what you're creating, and building a real strategy to get there. It's not easy to do that alone. I'm sure that you are more than capable, but the reality is that you've been drained by where the business is today and it can feel overwhelming. But when you're inside your own business, inside your own head, inside the day-to-day of it all, it's really hard sometimes to get the objectivity that you need to see it clearly. And I know this because I've lived it myself. And I know because

I've watched so many brilliant women try to figure this out for themselves for way longer than they actually needed to. And so this is exactly why I built the Real Women Real Business Mastery Program. I was working one-on-one with so many women who are all struggling with the same foundational things. And I felt like if I could help them fix those things, the one-on-one time and folks that we have together can really be spent really digging into the things that actually matter.

So this 12-month program is built around the 12 pillars of success. And there is a self-guided element to it. And that's based on the core areas that I see in these Accidental CEOs that they need to strengthen as they grow. And it starts though with our Accidental CEO assessment, which helps you to identify exactly where your business needs attention right now. So that you're not working on everything at once. You're working on the right things in the right order for your specific business.

Shauna Lynn Simon (36:38.456)

So the again, the program has sort of this on-demand curriculum that's a bit self-guided, but then twice a month we're gonna get together on live calls. That's 24 calls in a year that you're gonna get on with me. Plus, there's a whole community of women who are building alongside you as well, who will see you, who are gonna challenge you, who are gonna support you in a way that's genuinely hard to find anywhere else. And it's designed to be adaptable to your business. As I mentioned, these are not cookie cutter frameworks necessarily, it's not a one size fits all formula.

It's not a blueprint that only works if you follow it exactly because your business is yours. And the goal is to help you to build it in that way. Now I want to do something that I've never done before on this podcast. I don't run promotions on my Real Women Real Business Mastery Program. I don't do flash sales or limited time discounts. It's just not how I operate. And in fact, if you've ever worked with me as a coach, you know that that's how I train my clients to operate as well. Like, let's not discount things.

But today I do want to offer something a little bit different, something that I think is actually way more valuable than a discount anyway. And that is for the first five women who join the Real Women Real Business Mastery Program after hearing this episode. I'm going to include a complimentary free power session with me. It is a 90-minute profits, passion, and progress alignment session where we're going to build your own personalized Power Play Profit Filter. You know, that profit filter I talked about earlier.

Just you and I on a 90-minute call, we're gonna build this together so that you can ensure that we're working through exactly what deserves your attention right now, what you should stop doing right now, what your clearest next moves are, so that you are starting off in the program with this clear guide that we've created together to make sure that you are focusing your energy in exactly the right place from day one. And what most of my clients find in the program is that.

Within the first three weeks, they've eliminated so many things out of their priority list that they can really focus on the right things that they see very real results within those first few weeks. And this is a session that I normally charge for separately. It's actually normally almost $1,000 for the session, given that I'm intentionally scaling back on my one-on-one clients so that I can focus more and more on growing the group mastery program. This kind of direct access to me is becoming genuinely more limited. Not necessarily like

Shauna Lynn Simon (38:58.906)

It's not something that that is easily available to just the masses. So if you've been sitting on the fence about joining, this is your moment. Here's how you claim it. When you register for the Real Woman Real Business Mastery Program, you are going to get an email when you register. I simply want you to reply to that email with one word, just send the one word "Podcast" in that reply to your registration email, and we'll get you set up on that call.

All right, so that's a wrap on today's episode. I really hope that this one gave you something to think about and more importantly, something to do with what you're thinking. And of course, if this resonated with you today, I hope that you will continue to tune in each week so that I could be a part of your journey. Regardless of whether or not you join my group coaching program, I still want to be a part of your journey with you. And to all my Accidental CEOs out there, know that I am saying this with so much love and so much grace. And I hope that you are offering yourself that same love and grace every single day. Now

Of course, one that you can do to show your support, not only for this podcast, but other women in business is make sure it's really easy for them to find this podcast. So to do that, I need you to go into your favorite podcast platform, leave us a review, be sure to subscribe to us so you know when all the new episodes are coming up. And then as always, the best way that you can show your support, not only for this podcast, but for your fellow women entrepreneurs, share this episode with someone that you know needs to hear this today. I can guarantee every single one of you who identified in this episode.

you know at least one other person, probably even five other people. Let's try s sending this episode. If every woman listened to this episode sends it to five other people, imagine the community that we can build with that. Please go ahead and share it. I know that she'll thank you for it and I'll certainly appreciate it as well. And until next time, keep thriving.