Ep 115 Transcript: Why the Loudest Business Advice Is Not Always the Smartest Move

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

Shauna Lynn Simon (01:50.158)

Hello and welcome to the Real Woman Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And today I am challenging the idea that the newest strategy, the loudest expert or the latest business trend is automatically the smartest path forward. For many of my "Accidental CEOs", as I affectionately refer to my "Accidental CEOs", these are people who followed more passion than plan and woke up one day and realized, oh my goodness, I am the CEO of a company.

What I find for many of them is that the problem is not that they don't know enough. It's that they have started ignoring what they already know works in favor of whatever is currently getting the most attention online. Whatever that latest fad is, whatever that latest trend is, that latest hack. And there's a very good chance that one of the smartest strategies that's available to you right now is actually something that you are already doing or something that you used to do, but you've started to dismiss it because it doesn't feel new, exciting.

trendy or algorithm friendly. So as entrepreneurs, it is important that we keep learning. It's important that we keep improving and sharpening our skills. But the problem starts when learning starts to turn into self doubt about the things that we know we're good at. But we start doubting that when outside advice pulls us away from our own strengths. And when we start building what I call a borrowed business based on what the loudest person in the room says, we quote,

should be doing. Now, the women that I'm working with, they're not starting from zero. You're not starting from zero, right? You've already built a real business through talent, through instinct and hard work. And as much as I agree with and respect the saying that what got you here won't get you there. And so I want to encourage you to always look to outside sources to learn new things. I don't want that to replace the things that you already know and that you already do well. So at a certain point,

what you need isn't more noise. It's just a clearer way to decide, you know, sort of what stays, what goes, and what actually deserves your energy. And this can be really difficult in today's day and age when there's just so much coming at us at any given time. And good advice still needs context. So today we're gonna talk about how to filter that expert guidance through your own business and why the best strategies are often built by combining proven principles

Shauna Lynn Simon (04:14.37)

with your own strengths, values, brand capacity and actual evidence. So if you've been feeling pulled in too many directions by trends, by hacks and all the things that you again, "should be doing", this episode is going to help you to come back to what fits, what works and what actually supports the business that you want to lead. Because we want this business to feel like yours. We want it to feel comfortable for you because at the end of the day, it is still your business and we need a whole lot of you in it. If you take a look historically at businesses,

that were built by their founders. When you pull the founder out of it, it becomes a whole different business. So we want to keep you in it as the founder. We don't want to replace that. We don't want you to lose yourself in what the loudest person out there is saying. But there's no reason why you also can't take some inspiration from some of these things. So here's a thought for you. A lot of entrepreneurs have been taught to believe that if something is simple, familiar, it's already working, it must not be enough. We've got to improve it.

And trust me when I say I'm all for growth and all for improvements, but then we start going looking for like the next hack, right? The next content strategy, the next funnel. If I hear one more of my clients say, well, I need to work on my sales funnel and don't get me wrong. Yes, we all need a solid sales funnel, but when we're just, you know, sparting those, words, like the jargon of it, and we're not really paying attention to what actually is going to resonate and connect with our audience. And we're just building another PDF just to try to get someone in the door.

We're losing ourselves on that one. When the newest platform comes out and we jump all over it or the newest reel is coming out or whatever that looks like online, the next person online who seems so confident, so polished and very, very loud. I do want to be clear from the beginning here that I am absolutely not anti-learning. I mean, if anyone knows me, you know that I consume numerous books every single month. In addition to my, the...

the coaching that I get from my own coach in addition to the training, the webinars and different things that I participate in. So I am not anti-learning, I'm not anti-strategy and I'm certainly not anti-expert. There are people out there who have learned how to do things and if you can learn from them, that is a shortcut to getting to a path that probably took them a lot of time and energy, heartache, mistakes and failures to get there. So yeah, obviously shorten your path if you can learn from the things that they've already done and that they've already succeeded at.

Shauna Lynn Simon (06:38.926)

But what I'm really, really wary of, the loudest voice in the room is automatically the smartest one. Because in my experience, that's not necessarily true. Unless of course I'm the loudest voice in the room. Because, you know, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. If you know me, you know that I'm kidding. Because you know that I never think that I'm the smartest person in the room. In fact, I believe I can learn from every single person in the room at all times. But it doesn't mean I'm going to lose myself to do it. And I'm also especially wary of the way

business owners, entrepreneurs, especially highly capable women who've already built something meaningful, how they can start to lose trust in what they already know, simply because someone with a bigger audience told them that there's a better way to do it. So that's what we're gonna be digging into today. I want you to keep sharpening your skills. I want you to keep paying attention to what's changing out there. Keep seeking out smart mentors, coaches, peers, resources, and ideas that help you become a stronger business owner.

But here is where I see things start to go sideways. Somewhere along the way that learning, like I said, turns into self doubt. That research that you've done is now turned into second guessing and professional development can turn into chasing every new trend. And instead of using new information to strengthen the business you're building, you start using it to question everything you know. You start throwing out things that have been working for ages because someone just told you that you can't do that anymore.

And this is the line I want to talk about today because there's a big difference between learning in a way that enhances your own strengths and learning in a way that pulls you away from them. And there's a big difference between improving your skills and abandoning your values. There's a big difference between getting outside perspective and handing the steering wheel to the loudest person in the room. So if you are an "Accidental CEO, if you built this business through talent, instinct, hard work, and a whole lot of figuring things out as you went, this distinction matters.

because you have done something incredibly powerful to get to where you are right now. And I don't want you to forget that because the goal is not to stop learning. It's just to learn without losing yourself. Okay, so your business is going to require you to evolve. Your leadership is gonna require you to evolve your marketing, your systems, your offers, your communities, your pricing. All of those things will need to mature as your business matures, absolutely. But growth should not require you to build against the grain of who you are.

Shauna Lynn Simon (09:01.346)

The right learning should help you become more effective as yourself. It should help you communicate more clearly, lead more intentionally, make better decisions. The wrong kind of learning makes you feel like the only way to succeed is to become someone else. And that is why so many business owners get a little tangled up in the latest trend, the latest hack. It's not that you're lacking ambition or work ethic or intelligence. You've got all those things, but you start doubting how they apply for this next level of your business.

and you're just trying to apply advice that was never designed for your business, for your audience, for your personality, your values, your stage of growth and your capacity. So here's the problem with the latest hack. There's always gonna be some new business trend, always. Whether it's a new marketing strategy, new content format, a new social media platform, new way to sell, a new launch method, a new AI tool. my gosh, isn't there a new AI tool like every single day?

a new way to structure your offers, a new thing that someone is calling the only thing that works now. And I think that phrase alone should probably make us pause just a little bit, right? Because business absolutely does evolve. Marketing does evolve. Buyer behavior changes, technology changes. We do need to pay attention. But there are a lot of strategies that we've been using for decades. I mean, are you a Zig Ziglar fan? I know I am. There was a ton of stuff that Zig Ziglar talks about.

from decades ago that is still absolutely relevant today. So I don't want us just throwing all that out. We don't want to throw out the baby with the bath water, so to speak, right? And so that this is the only thing that works now is usually not a business strategy. It's usually a sales tactic. And sometimes those sales tactics work again, like, you know, we, we change as a society and the marketing mediums that we're using are changing. So the way that we utilize them should evolve with that as well. But this

Sales tactic of saying this is the only thing that works. It's trying to create urgency and fear and trying to create that FOMO effect, right? The fear of missing out, making you feel like if you're not doing this, you're going to be left behind and everybody else is going to figure this thing out before you. And when you already feel like you're being stretched and pulled in so many different directions, you're already carrying so much, your business already feels so dependent on you. That kind of messaging is saying like, I've got the fix. I've got the answer to all of your problems.

Shauna Lynn Simon (11:24.952)

That can be really persuasive at times because it's hitting a nerve. And that's what they're intending to do, right? They're trying to hit your pain points. This is not a new marketing strategy. We all know if you can hit your ideal clients, actual pain points and tell them you're going to alleviate it without all the stress and the chaos and the pain that they've been feeling, then they're likely to buy from you. And so you start thinking, maybe this is why things are feeling so hard right now. Maybe this

Maybe I am missing something, this is what I'm missing. Maybe I need to be doing what they're doing. Like what they're doing looks like it's working, right? Maybe my way is outdated. Maybe I need to start all over. And before you know it, you're not making decisions from strategy, you're making them from more of an insecurity. And that's when businesses start becoming borrowed, right? Because you've borrowed someone else's blueprint, someone else's personality, their audience, their definition of success. And that's a pretty exhausting way to build a business.

Okay, so I've said this a few times now, the loudest person in the room is not always the smartest. And don't get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for true thought leaders. And trust me when I say that I still continue to follow some of those thought leaders who have been around for ages now. And I also, I'm always looking to the next person who's making some waves and who's saying some really intelligent things. But I will tell you that I pay a lot of attention to what the loud people are saying.

And sometimes they're just simply regurgitating things that other people have said. Sometimes they're barely saying anything at all. I have had literal conversations with people where I'm looking at them and all I'm thinking in my head is you're saying a lot of words, but you don't seem to actually be saying anything. Have ever felt that way before? That said, because they're saying all these jargony things, they're capturing people. And, you know, there are people who have built incredible businesses, real bodies of work, pioneered ideas.

and genuinely contributed to the way that we think about business today. But those aren't the ones that I'm talking about. What I want to talk about is what can be called the guru effect. Tony Robbins even wrote a book that covers a little bit on this. I it's called something along the lines of "I Am Not Your Guru" or something along those lines. And I think most of us have seen this where someone gets a lot of followers, their videos go viral, they speak with a ton of confidence, they make some outlandish claims, they say things in a super punchy, clever,

Shauna Lynn Simon (13:44.534)

and memorable way. And suddenly their advice starts getting treated like universal truth. But that doesn't necessarily mean that just because they've got this big platform that they're automatically the person who understands your business. And in fact, the bigger someone's platform gets, the more I find their advice actually gets flattened because now they're trying to make it more generic and generalized to speak to more people. So it's more absolute and more simplified, more do this, not that, and trying to cut out all the other things.

Are they in your business every day? Are they seeing what you've actually built, what you're actually doing? So sometimes by the time that advice has made its way into your feed, it's been stripped of all the context that actually made it useful in the first place, especially because we also like to, we like micro bites of information. And so once we start stripping things down to these little sound clips and soundbites, all of a sudden we've missed the main message. Not always the case. Don't get me wrong. We do some great little clips on this podcast.

And I got to say, there are some days where I'm super impressed that my PR rep has managed to pull out some of the juiciest parts of content. like, I spoke for 30 minutes and you managed to sum up everything in like 60 seconds from what I was saying. Clearly I did not need to record a 30 minute episode. I could have just spoken for one minute, you know, sometimes we don't always know where that juicy soundbite is going to be. But there's other times where I see these soundbites and these small clips that are online and I'm thinking, well, you didn't really say anything overly exciting or overly new there, right?

And what works for someone else doesn't necessarily work for you. So they might have like a team of 25 people. They've got a massive audience. They've got years of brand equity. They've got a huge ad budget. They've got a completely different business model that just might not translate cleanly to your business. I worked with a coach for about a year, really, really liked him and his team. And that's kind what I liked about working with him was that I had access to other coaches, other perspectives, but his team was male.

They were all men. And there are some days where they would give some advice and I would have to kind of push back on them and say, well, that doesn't really work for me because as a woman, I can't really get away with saying things, doing things the way that men do. And there are some things that are obviously universal between men and women. But there are a lot of things that unfortunately aren't. I run the Real Women Real Business Mastery program. I've got the Real Women Real Business Podcast. Does it mean that the tips and the insights that I'm giving wouldn't apply to men? No.

Shauna Lynn Simon (16:12.91)

But as women, we take a little bit of a different approach to things sometimes. So while some men may really appreciate my approach, there are a lot of men that might find it too feminine for them, which is understandable. And so how do we make that balance of looking at what someone else is saying? And that's not to say, by the way, not to listen to men when they say things. I personally prefer to learn from women because they've had similar experiences to me.

But there are times where there are men that know things that no woman's ever said and I'm intrigued by it and there's a lot of value to it. So I would never discriminate. I don't want to be discriminated against. I would certainly never discriminate on the advice that I get, but I do run it through a bit of a filter, which we'll talk about in a little bit as well. The thing is that you got this loud person who has, they're delivering their message with so much confidence that you start doubting yourself. And so here's the thing, you may not have

all the structure yet, you may not have all the language yet or all the systems in place, but you do have evidence. Like you have lived data from your own business. You know which clients light you up. You know which offers create results. You know which relationships have led to referrals. You might not have dug into all of this data, but you have real data. You know what kind of marketing feels natural that you can repeat it.

Because if marketing feels unnatural to you, if you are dreading doing it, you're not going to do it. You know yourself well enough to know you're not going to do something if it doesn't feel right. If you can't try it on, this feels good, you're not going to do it. So you know what you're tired of for, so you know what has been working for years, and that evidence matters. And good advice can still be wrong for you. So I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with the advice that you're receiving.

I'm saying that it's potentially not necessarily the right advice for you. So sometimes it's excellent advice for the right person, for the right business, at the right stage and with the right audience, capacity, team, offer and goals, all those things in alignment, this advice works out well. But if that's not you, that doesn't automatically mean that it belongs in your business. And I think this is something that a lot of "Accidental CEOs" especially really struggle with is that they assume

Shauna Lynn Simon (18:30.488)

that if the advice is good, well, then they should follow it. But good advice in the wrong context can still create a bit of a mess. So a marketing strategy that works beautifully for someone with a massive audience doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to work for you. So I want you to have the ability to be able to say, you know, this is interesting, but it doesn't fit right now. Or that could work later, but it's not a priority. Or that's useful, but I need to adapt it to make it make sense for my own business.

or that's smart, but it goes against the experience that I want my clients to have, or that sounds profitable, but that would drain the life out of me. Okay, so that's not resistance. It's not saying that you're resisting idea. I've watched some of my clients struggle with it. Like, know I just need to do this. I know I should do that. And that's not my voice they're hearing in their head, by the way. Sometimes it is, don't get me wrong. There are some times where I'm kind of hammering in a thought that we've been working on for a little while, but they've kind of got it.

mold it into what makes the most sense for them. And as someone who has my coaching business and of course, this podcast and my one-on-one coaching, my group coaching, the training programs that I've created, I have developed a number of frameworks over the years, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to do everything that I'm saying 100 % exactly the way that I'm saying it or nothing's going to work for you.

Alright, we're going to dig into how to use frameworks as more of a guide when we come back from this short break.

Shauna Lynn Simon (20:50.868)

Alright. Welcome back to the Real Women Real Business Podcast. And as I was mentioning before the break, I got a lot of frameworks that I've developed in my program that have been proven successful, not just by me utilizing them, but by my clients utilizing them. I think this is this I really want this to land because this is the thing that you're hearing somewhere. They're like, I've got a proven framework. That's a hard thing to ignore. Right. But a proven framework should

not replace your judgment. And all I might have been guilty of this, there are times where I have not trusted my gut as much as I should have, or my experience as much as I should have, because someone was saying something that like, man, that sounds really good. Sounds like they really know more than I do. They've done this more than I have. And I should really listen to them. And I should really pay attention to them. And you should, absolutely. I believe in frameworks. I've used frameworks. I teach frameworks.

I filled a lot of my work around helping businesses understand the patterns, the priorities, the decision points, and the pieces that need to be considered to grow. And there's frameworks around all of that. So this is not about throwing structure out the window. Structure is incredibly valuable. A good framework can help you see what you're missing and it can help you to understand what needs to happen next and stop making every decision from scratch. But a framework is not meant to replace your own judgment, it's meant to support it. So that framework is intended to give you the map.

Your business gives us the terrain. Again, you've already got information that has led you to where you are today. Doesn't mean that you're not still learning things, but a strategy is what happens when we understand both the framework and our own companies, our own businesses, strengths and terrain, and the history of what we've already built. And so this is how I approach things with my clients.

Naturally, I'm bringing my own experience, my own expertise to the table. I'm not showing up empty handed and say, let's just see what happens. You I wonder what we should do today. No, of course I'm bringing some structure, but I'm also bringing a whole lot of curiosity. I'm digging into their business. are, you know, it's getting one of my clients. There are certainly times where I've given them examples from my own business, from clients, businesses of things that have worked, but they're intended as more of an inspiration. Don't get me wrong. There are certain things that

Shauna Lynn Simon (23:11.052)

I have proven that this works. you do it, can pretty much guarantee it's going to work. But if your business is so dramatically different from mine, there's other modifications that we need to make for this to work. So we're essentially trying to fit a square peg into a round hole at the end of the day, and that's not going to work very well. So I bring the frameworks, bring the strategy, I bring the inspiration, I bring the patterns that I've seen over years of working with business owners. And I bring what I've learned from building my own business, from making my own mistakes. But then we have to translate that.

because what worked for me is not automatically the exact thing that's going to work for you. So this is again, where conversation and dialogue is happening. And I've spoken about this on the podcast before as well, that I've had, I have a lot of people on this podcast, various different coaches and such, and some leave with more curiosity than others. Some come in, you know, just like guns a blazer. They're like, I know everything that needs to be done. Let me just tell you all of the smart things that I know.

There are other people though who lead with more of a curiosity. And I think that's the key. If the person who's yelling all the things, the loudest person in the room, isn't stopping to say that they can learn a thing or two, I would definitely take pause with them. Because I can tell you that I am asking questions. I am curious. I am learning about your specific business to ensure that the framework that we're applying

is going to make sense. And if it's not, how do we adapt it? If you've ever gone to the gym and worked with a personal trainer and had anything that, so for me, for example, I have a very rare back condition called spondylolisthesis. And while I don't let it limit me a whole heck of a lot, there are certain exercises I just am not allowed to do. It's not even whether or not I can, I could probably do them if I try to, but it's incredibly dangerous for me to do them. So when I go to the gym, if I'm working with a trainer,

Sometimes there's certain exercises, like maybe I'm doing a bootcamp class or something, and there's certain exercises where I can't do them, I'm gonna ask them to modify them for me. Every good trainer, every good coach should be able to modify things to make them fit you and your model. And so the same thing goes for business as it does in personal life. So I want you to learn through the filter of your own business. This is one of the most powerful shifts that you can make. So instead of asking,

Shauna Lynn Simon (25:38.306)

When you see someone out there teaching the latest hack or trend or strategy out there, instead of asking, whoa, should I be doing this? I want you to reframe that and start asking yourself, how would this work here? Not in someone else's business, not in someone else's brand here in your life, in this business with my clients, with my capacity, with my team, with my values at my stage of growth, how does this actually work?

that question changes everything. Instead of saying, oh, should I be doing this? Ask yourself, how would this work if I were to do this? And that helps you to understand whether or not it makes sense for you. Instead of just blindly copying, you're now translating that. So for example, maybe someone teaches you that you need to post short form video every single day. So this is your TikTok, your YouTube shorts, your Instagram reels, whatever.

Instead of immediately thinking, I guess I need to become a daily TikTok person. You can ask, well, what's the principle behind this advice? Why are they saying I need to post short form video every day? Maybe the principle is consistency. Is the consistency just so I get into the habit of it? And is it about feeding the algorithm? Is it about general visibility? Is it about helping your audience hear the same message repeatedly? Maybe it's about building more familiarity, more trust.

Great, now how do you apply that principle in a way that actually fits for you? So maybe for you, instead of doing short form video every day, you're doing a weekly podcast. Maybe it's a strong email every week. Maybe it's about speaking in more rooms. Maybe it's about some strategic partnerships. Maybe it's about just having more touch points for the partners that are referring you, as opposed to trying to connect.

with an invisible audience online. And don't get me wrong, you might have a powerful online audience that you actually want to do the short form video. So I'm not saying don't do it. I'm saying you've got to figure out what's the principle behind this? Why are we suggesting doing this? And is it about just building some awareness? Is it about actually promoting sales? And how can we apply that strategy without necessarily having to do the exact same?

Shauna Lynn Simon (27:56.13)

thing because I got to tell you there's a lot of clients that I work with that short form videos are not necessarily going to make or break them. It's not their strength and it's something they agonize over and that that energy that they're exerting to try to fit into that mold is taking them away from the things that they already do powerfully well. So figure out how these things work for you. Extract the principle and then adapt it to the business that you're actually building. Building your skills should

make you more powerful in your own business. So we want skill building. That's definitely something that's essential, but we don't want to be disconnecting ourselves from the business as we're building those skills. So if you're learning sales, the goal is not to sound like someone else on a sales call. Trust me when I say that everyone has a formula for a business coach on a sales call. And I followed some of them and then I threw them all out because first of all,

I don't like thinking of a call as a sales call. Now that said, if you're booking a coaching assessment call with me, you are coming to me, expecting me to share with you ways that I may be able to help you. So it is technically a sales call, but I don't want to go into that feeling like I have to sell you something because maybe this isn't the right fit. So it's going to be more of like a fit call. We're going to decide whether or not it makes the most sense for us to work together.

And I'm going to spend a lot of that call asking questions. If I spent the entire time just spewing all the things that I do that are amazing, that you can benefit from, you're probably not going to feel all that connected to me. Now there are a lot of techniques like forward pacing someone. How would that make you feel? if, what made you decide to change now? What would happen if you didn't change anything? How would it look 12 months from now? And these are strategies that really do work, but I got to tell you, it's not my style.

and I tried them and they didn't quite work for me. So instead I developed my own framework and my own style. Could I teach each other coaches? Absolutely. Would it work for them? Probably. But I'm not entering every sales conversation with the idea like I need to close this sale. And if that was the case, I might approach a little bit differently. But instead I just have a genuine desire to help people. And to be perfectly honest, I can only take on so many one-on-one clients at a time. So the biggest thing I'm usually looking for is

Shauna Lynn Simon (30:18.09)

would you make a great candidate for the Real Women Real Business Mastery program? Would a group coaching setting be the right place for you where you've got that community, you've got the training to fall back on at any time that you want 24-7, you've got your Ask Shauna Lynn GPT that you can ask questions to 24-7, but then you also get those group calls where we can dig into things a little bit further. If that is not you, if you're looking for someone that's more of a one-on-one, someone that you have access to regularly on like...

every single day, direct access to them, that you're gonna dig in deep onto specific areas of your business. If that's more what you're looking for, then, well, I don't have capacity right now anyway. So that we're not honestly gonna be the right fit. Most of the time I do find the group coaching program is incredibly valuable, but that's not necessarily always the case. And I'm sorry, I'm getting sidetracked a little bit, talking a little bit too much about my own sales process. That wasn't the point of this. The point is that you wanna ensure that if, so if you're learning sales,

that the goal is to sound like yourself on a sales call. The idea is that you want to become clearer. You want to be more confident. You want to be more useful. You want the information to become more useful in the conversation that you're already having. So you want to be more productive in the calls that you're having. So if you're learning marketing, the goal is not to copy someone else's voice. We all know our audiences are different. We need our own messaging. We need our own brand voice. And if we're trying to be someone else,

Here's the problem, if you're trying to be someone else online, when someone meets you in person, if you can't perfectly replicate that voice, so if you're using AI to make you sound quirkier, more clever than you actually are, and then people actually meet you, and you sound completely different, there's gonna be a disconnect there. So we need to make sure that we're maintaining who you are. So if you're learning marketing messaging, the goal is not to take someone else's voice and their messaging, it's to make it your own.

That's the kind of learning that's going to strengthen the business when you're taking what you're learning, but adapting it to yourself. So if you're learning systems, the goal is not to make your business more complicated. And so if you're someone who resists systems a little bit, then this can be a little bit challenging for you to use someone else's systems. You're going to have to figure out what system works best for you. We have had numerous guests on this podcast that have spoken about creating systems that work when you're neurodivergent.

Shauna Lynn Simon (32:42.968)

for example, and a lot of creatives have a bit of a tendency to lean a little neurodivergent and rebel a little bit against some systems. But the reality is we all need systems and processes and we probably already have them in place and just don't realize them. And so if I try to give you a spreadsheet and tell you I want you to document something every single day on that spreadsheet, but you do not like to live in spreadsheets, you're never gonna do it. So we're gonna need to adapt it to something that makes sense for you.

And I actually, of my one-on-one clients that I am working with right now has one of the calls, she actually said to me, said, I don't want to tell you about how I'm doing something because I'm afraid you're going to make me change it. And that was a little gut wrenching for me because I said, that should never be your fear. And this was relatively early on in our relationship. And I said to her, that should never be your fear with a coach that if you tell them how you do something that they're going to try to scrap it all and change it.

The role of a coach is to help you to, again, lean into your own strengths, to make something that actually works for you. Now, if she told me that what she was doing was something that was costing her all of her profit, okay, well, maybe we need to relook at things, but if that's not the case, that there's a sound strategy behind it, I wanna know what feels comfortable for you so that we can ensure that we are leaning into that more. So maybe we are adapting it a little bit.

If we think there's improvements that can be made, because I mean, let's face it, there can always be improvements made, but you should never fear telling someone how you do things because they're going to tell you to change everything that you're doing. And the problem is sometimes that we might be ignoring what already works because it just feels so simple. It's too obvious. If you've been doing something this way all along, I mean, I absolutely hate the, know, why do you do things that way? Cause that's just how we've always done it. Like,

You do have to have a bit of a critical thinking cap on on these things. And you got to be able to evaluate whether or not the way you've always done things makes sense or if that's just how you're doing things. But if it's feeling a little clunky, like I know some of my processes start to feel clunky after a while. But there's got to be a better way. the infomercials, there's got to be a better way. And sometimes there is. But sometimes we try to overcomplicate things because we just feel like, well, this just seems really too obvious.

Shauna Lynn Simon (34:59.31)

And I see this, this is a pattern I see all the time that we start dismissing what works because it doesn't feel impressive enough. It's not super fancy. It's not using the latest, greatest tool or hack or whatever. You know, let's say like a client says, for example, well, most of my clients come from referrals. And so that's actually a problem. Or I know that when I actually follow up with people, it works. Okay. So let's do more of that. Right. One of the.

I've talked about this on the podcast before as well, but one of the top strategies I give to people when they tell me the phone's not ringing, I'll say, well, who have you reached out to lately? I'll say, well, what do mean? Like, well, who haven't you talked to a little while? Send them an email, pick up the phone, call them. And they'll call me back the next week. Like, my gosh, I just landed two more clients because I just called people. Stop waiting for them to come to you. But like that just seems so simple. Like, but I need to create this clever email or I need to do a reel on my social media. Just pick up the phone and call someone.

And I'm again, I'm not saying this is the answer to every business. I'm saying that in a lot of cases, the simple strategy is really the one that actually makes the most sense. So let's talk about some ways that we can create a profitable strategy for you without necessarily having to listen to the loudest strategy that's in the room. So trusting yourself does not mean that you ignore a new strategy. When I say I want you to trust what you already know, I don't mean that you should reject all outside.

input, that would obviously be terrible advice. Listen to the good advice, but we need outside, we definitely need outside perspectives and we need those mentors and coaches, but it shouldn't require you to perform a completely different personality or build a business that only works if you become someone else. So let me give you, let me give a couple of examples here, actually. Let me, let me back up for a moment. Let me give a couple of examples. So the strongest work for me is not about handing clients

a shiny new tactic when I'm working with my coaching clients. It's not about here's a new tactic, here's a new framework. We actually dig into like what's already happening in your business and how do we get more clarity on some of these things? So what's working, what's no longer fitting, where are we overcomplicating things and what needs to be simplified or strengthened? So instead of me throwing like here's 10 new things to do, I'm actually using, usually taking a step back and thinking about like, what can we pull on that's already working?

Shauna Lynn Simon (37:25.964)

I'm not immune to this either. see strategies online. I see what others are doing. Sometimes I wonder like, should I be doing more of this? And like said, I have definitely fallen victim to this. I've spoken openly about working with a business coach who ended up costing me six figures and then some. It was a very expensive mistake because they kept telling me you gotta trust the process. You gotta do it exactly this way. And they had a money back guarantee, but I didn't see a dime of my money.

because they claimed they didn't do it all properly. I didn't do it exactly the way that they said to do it. But, that's not my business. And it really drove me nuts. mean, back when I was running my staging business, some of the most effective strategies that we had were not the flashiest things. They were relationships with real estate agents. They were small little touches that we added to the client experience. They were the way that we built our reputation on integrity and quality.

They were the the workshops that we hosted, consistent communication that we had. didn't have, had a, we had a decent online social media following. We had a really great Google strategy, which I think definitely helped us out a lot as well. But a lot of what we were feeding to Google juice was the fact that people were referring us. And so they're searching for a company and that helps to feed the Google juice, right? And feed the algorithm. So these weren't like overly fancy strategies necessarily.

So we already talked about the practical filter of like, what is the intent behind this? How can I actually apply this? So what is the principle behind the advice? So then I want you to ask yourself, does this fit my business model? So a strategy for selling a $27 digital product may not apply to a high touch service business. I am an online business coach, but I also come from a background of operating a successful home staging business for over 15 years.

as well as an interior design business for over 15 years as well. So I have those more localized businesses. So my online business is very global. I'm working with people across North America and even all over the world for that matter, mostly in North America though. But I am sometimes doing the $27 digital product. But the strategies that I'm using for that are not the same ones that I would use in my interior design business because you wanna make sure that you're catering to who your audience is.

Shauna Lynn Simon (39:51.936)

I've got a more international national audience and that's not going to apply the same way as a local relationship based business might do things. So I had this conversation with clients recently, we're talking about like, what are some things that you can do to kind of make yourself stand out to your clients? And I said, what about just doing a gift just for the sake of doing a gift? And there are things that I might do for my clients, for example, that might be like, here's an audio book that I'm gonna send to you.

And that's a cool gift for me as a business coach to give to someone, but it doesn't really land the same way. If you're a home stage, you're looking to build up your real estate agent relationships, but maybe your city is known for their maple syrup farms and you give them, you gift everyone maple syrup from a local farmer. You know, that's pretty personal, right? What's personal to your local area? What's something that's going to make them feel connected to you? And then I want you to ask yourself when you hear these strategies, does this align with my strengths and my values?

You know, can I execute this in a way that feels natural enough to actually be able to repeat it? Does it support the experience that I want people to have with my brand or does it require me to take on a whole different persona? And then I also want you to ask yourself, this one's really important. What would I need to stop or reduce to make room for this? Because every new strategy ends up having a little bit of a cost, right? So if I add this, do I have to give something up? it time? Is it energy? Is it something about the client experience?

And, you know, that can be a hard one because I do believe in the client experience and being able to elevate that the best that we can. And sometimes that requires a bit of a high touch, but we're also only one person. And if we're constantly trading time for money, there's only so much of us to go around. So what is the trade-off of implementing the strategy? What is the trade-off? Is it that I won't be able to rest as much? Is it that I just don't have the capacity? And then ask yourself this final question, ask yourself, do I have evidence?

that this solves an actual problem? Am I adopting this because there's a real gap in my business or because someone made me feel like there was something missing in my business, but there isn't actually something missing? And that question alone can save you from so much unnecessary noise. Now, if you're an "Accidental CEO", there's a really good chance your business was not built from a perfectly polished blueprint because we know it was, and it was built from instinct, talent, hard work.

Shauna Lynn Simon (42:15.32)

from saying yes to a lot of things, not always the right things, but a lot of things from figuring things out, from being good at what you do. But now the business might need something different. Again, going back to that, what got you here won't get you there. But it doesn't mean that we throw out everything that we have built with this business. What do we want to hold on to? What do we need here that can still support the next level and what maybe can't support the next level? What's not scalable?

How might we need to shift our mindset a little bit? I want you to stop giving more authority to the loudest person in the room than you give to the actual evidence you have in your own business about what's been working. I'm gonna give you a little exercise here. I want you to take a look at what's already working in your business. This might take about 20 minutes or so to do, but I'm gonna give you a simple exercise before we wrap up. So I want you to create a few, three lists. We're gonna create three lists in total. The first list I want you to create is about what is already working. What's already working in your business.

Write down the things that are creating results in your business right now. Clients, referrals, offers, content topics, relationships, delivery methods, anything that's actually working. Not talking about what's trendy, impressive, whatever, what is actually working. List number two, this one you're gonna have fun with. What am I doing because I think I should? Be really honest here. What are you maintaining because someone told you that serious business owners do this?

Come here on there's a lot things we've talked about on this podcast that I still want you doing and like, you know, keeping track of your numbers, for example, paying attention to where your numbers are. That is still important. That's never going to go away just because you're like, but Shauna Lynn told me to listen to myself and I don't really like looking at numbers. Okay. That doesn't necessarily fly, but maybe that is an example of something that you are doing that doesn't quite feel right. So we might need to modify it a little bit. So what are you doing because you saw someone else doing it?

What are you doing because you're afraid that if you stop doing it, you're going to miss out on the latest, greatest trend. What are you doing that consistently that feels more performative, know, more disconnected from your actual brand. And now I'm not saying that everything in business should feel easy. I've talked about the S curve and sometimes when we're learning something new, we started the bottom of that S curve. So there's always going to be things that stretch you, but there's a difference between that healthy discomfort and feeling that constant, like this

Shauna Lynn Simon (44:35.298)

doesn't feel like me. feel like I'm living in someone else's skin. I feel like I'm running somebody else's business. And then the third list you're going to create is what deserves more focus. So this is where the strategy starts to come in. Look at what's working. Look at what's training you. And then ask yourself, what would happen if I stopped chasing some of these new things? It gave some more attention to the things that I've already created evidence of working.

That might not sound overly dramatic, but when you look at it on paper and like, really recommend actually writing it down, just don't just gather these lists in your head, but actually write it down. So you're to have three lists. Like I said, the first one is what's already working or maybe it's not what's working currently. What worked in the past? Maybe you're not doing that right now, but what worked in the past? One of the things, for example, for my home staging business was we hosted these home seller workshops and we host them like once a month. We got like 40 or 50 people out to these every single month.

And the only reason why we started slowing down and started doing them every quarter was because I only had so much capacity to do it and take on all the new clients I was getting from them. And when COVID hit, naturally these types of live events weren't gonna fly the same way. And I did try doing a couple of them virtually, but I just didn't feel the same connection. Now, if I still had my home staging business, we're 2026 now, I might consider bringing back the home sellers workshop because it worked really well.

I'd re-imagine it of course, because a few years have passed and things have changed about how we interact with people and what people are looking for in a workshop like this, but it worked really, really well. So how can I bring back that live in-person local vibe of a home sellers workshop? So think about what is it that you're doing? This is your first list, what's already working or what's maybe something that I've done previously that really worked that maybe I'm not doing right now. And then what am I doing right now that I'm doing because I think I should be doing it.

Not because I wanna be doing it, not because I think this is a great idea, but because I feel like, I should be doing this. And then what deserves more focus from you? What's working, what's draining, and then what would happen if you actually started focusing on some of the things that were previously working? And it might not sound like a big dramatic exercise, too. It does take a little bit of time, but your next level may not come from a brand new strategy. It could come from just trusting and strengthening and repeating

Shauna Lynn Simon (46:50.732)

what already works or has worked in the past. So here's what I want you to take away from this episode. I want you to keep learning. I want you to keep getting better and sharpening your skills and exposing yourself to new ideas. I want you to take inspiration from all of these things. And there are going to be some great nuggets out there, but I don't want you to confuse someone else's confidence for your instruction manual. You are allowed to filter this. You are allowed to adapt it. You are allowed to say, I was pretty smart, but maybe it's not for me right now or

That sounds pretty fantastic, but I think in order to fit into my business, it needs a few tweaks to it. So you're allowed to take the principle from these things and leave the performance part of it behind. The goal is to not abandon what you already know is true because you have your strengths, your values, your brand, your clients, all those things really matter. And chances are that if you've had some success in your business, you probably wouldn't be where you are today if you haven't had some success.

You might be feeling that things are a little bit slow right now and nothing's working. So I want you to look back at what did you do that worked previously? And maybe you'll say like, I used to get a lot of referrals and I don't seem to be getting any referrals anymore. I'm willing to bet that as much as you probably just kind of like hope that all those referrals would show up, there were things that you actually did that encouraged them, whether you knew that you were doing that or not. So what were you doing previously that was really working for you? Now, if this is something, if you're...

Craving some more support with this, going back to the group coaching program I was talking about earlier, the Real Women Real Business Mastery program. This is exactly the kind of work that we do inside that program. So we look at the business that you've already built. Now the business, someone else told you to build, and I'm not gonna tell you how to build it in a specific way with a specific structure, but I am going to give you frameworks that will help you to be able to work less and do more, be more profitable.

enjoy your business more because what we're going to do is we're going to identify what's energizing you, what's pushing your business forward and what's just draining your energy. So what's actually promoting those revenues, what's actually contributing to that and what's just draining you. And then we're going to help you to prioritize things. And it's amazing how easily you can start dropping things when we reframe how you look at things. So we're going to rewire things a little bit and shift your mindset on things, but we're not going to take away all the things that you're already doing in your business.

Shauna Lynn Simon (49:13.198)

We use strategy, frameworks and proven principles, but we apply them to your actual business, your strengths, your capacity, your clients, your goals and your whole way of working. Because you don't need another borrowed blueprint, you need stronger decisions for the business that you actually want to lead. Alright, well, thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. I know it was a little bit of a longer one, but I hope that you heard me. I want you to continue to learn. I want you to continue to listen to the gurus, because there are some great ones out there and they've got some great things to say, but I want you

to filter it through your own business and what actually works for you. Because you know better than anyone else what your business is and what it can and cannot do. And the reality is you can do anything you put your mind to, but you need to trust yourself and your own instincts and fill in the gaps. Hire someone for the things that you can't necessarily do as strong. Like it's not to say that you have to do everything on your own, but that's something you can be leaning into as opposed to just doing the latest marketing trend or hack or whatever is out there. So,

If what we're saying today is resonating with you, first of all, I would love to continue to join you on your journey. Please continue to tune into this podcast, but I'd love for you to explore the Real Women Real Business Mastery program as well. Simply go to aboutshaunalynn.com/coachme and we'll have that link in the show notes for you as well. Don't forget to subscribe to us and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform, wherever you get your podcasts. And as always, the best way that you can continue to show your support, not only for this podcast, but for your fellow women entrepreneurs.

is to share this podcast, share this episode with someone that you know needs to hear this today. If you've got a friend who's been spouting about the latest cool thing that she saw online that she thinks she needs to start trying in her business and all the while you're thinking, doesn't quite sound right, send this episode to her and allow her to be able to apply this filter through her own principles and her own business to the latest trick or hack that she just learned. And until next time, keep thriving.