Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon, and today I am being joined by an award winning, high performance, trauma informed coach and trainer. She's also an Amazon bestselling author, TEDx speaker, and she's joining us today. We're going to be talking about podcasting and how to guest on podcasts. And so I'm going to welcome Kimberly Spencer. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for having me, Shauna Lynn. I'm so excited.

listening to your episode all on visibility, on visioning before this, like as prep, which is like one of the number one things that I recommend. If you go on a show, just like listen while you're doing your makeup. But I was listening and I was like, oh, we are going to vibe because our coaching styles are like, I'm like visualization. So cool. We're both runners, like love your episodes. Yeah.

I didn't realize you're a runner as well. Yeah. And you know what? It's funny. The visualization episode, I just felt a calling to do it because so many people talk about the whole I'm just seeing so much on Instagram and so much about this whole manifestation. like, manifestation isn't just think about something and it comes to you. So I did the whole episode like you got to have some there's some science to this. This is a very real thing. You got to add some action to it as well. So I wanted to make it a little bit more.

than just the 30 second reel you see on Instagram that shows all the fancy jets and luxury hotels and everything else. So, okay, let's go back to though, because I wanna talk a little bit about you've got a ton of experience in communications and in speaking, and you are the CEO of a company called Communication Queens, where you actually help people with podcast guessing. Am I getting that correct? Yeah, so we started out as doing a done for you agency of the end to end booking and all that.

The skills that got you into your business are not the same skills that are going to help you lead in. Today, we're exploring that critical gap between being great at what you do and being great at running the business that actually does the things that you do. Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And today I'm going to be sharing some practical strategies to help you to bridge

the leadership gap without losing you, without losing your authentic voice and without losing the passion that got you started in the first place. In fact, I'm going to help you to actually reignite that passion. We're going to cover four critical mindset shifts that you need to make in order to be a thriving leader and be able to embrace that leadership CEO role to be able to move your business forward. So let me start by just talking briefly about

the accidental CEO because I've spoken about it previously on the show. But if you're just joining us for the first time, I want to make sure that you know exactly what we're talking about when I refer to my accidental CEOs. This is a very endearing term that I like to use for my passion driven entrepreneurs who followed more passion than plan. Here's the thing. You woke up one day, maybe not one day. Maybe this was coming for some time, but essentially you had this passion. You had this drive. You had this calling. You had this thing that you were really, really good at.

and you knew you were great at it and you knew you could help other people. Maybe you're fulfilling a gap that you are seeing in the world today where you're like, you know, no one else is filling this gap and I can serve these people and you followed that passion with so much of who you are with all that you had. But here's the challenge. You don't necessarily have all of the business tools in your tool belt that you actually need in order to ensure that you are moving this business forward.

You love the doing. You love doing the things that you do that you're so great at. But some of the business stuff often ends up getting a little bit lost in in all of this because we've got a lot of passion. You've got a lot of passion for what you do.

Shauna Lynn Simon (00:02)

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And today I am being joined by Dr. Laura Sicola And you are going to love this woman. Let me tell you, she is all about leadership, communication and influence. And she's a speaker. She's an author. She's hosted her own podcast as well. And she helps to transform executives into confident and inspiring leaders.

And she's actually got a linguistic background. So she comes from the academics of this, but she now applies it to corporate leadership. And she's trained and coach executives at Fortune 500 companies. And she has a TED Talk that you're going to want to check out, a TEDx Talk called Want to Sound Like a Leader? Start by Saying Your Name Right. That has nearly 7 million views. And we're going to dig into that in a little bit as well to find out exactly what that's all about. So Dr. Laura, welcome. Thank you so much, Shauna Lynn. It's great to be here.

I can't wait to dive into some of this stuff because we talked a little bit pre-recording today about ⁓ our audience here and they're what I affectionately call our accidental CEOs who follow more passion than plan. And one of the things that we often find our accidental CEOs are struggling with is sort of this imposter syndrome. And I think a lot of that just comes with not being able to express themselves properly. They started off with this great passion, like I have this amazing thing.

that is going to benefit so many people, but then they lack with the actual communication of it. tell us a little bit about some of the things that you work on with leaders in helping them with their communication skills. What do you find are some of the biggest things that people are struggling with when it comes to communication? It's interesting that you mentioned that the audience, everybody out there, they're accidental CEOs because for the last 17 years or so, I've referred to myself as an accidental entrepreneur and a recovering academic.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon, and I have the incredible Jazzy Luchini joining us today. She is not only is she a virtual assistant who's just like rocking it in the VA world, but she actually is now teaching aspiring VAs how to build this massive business through virtual assistants. And I got to tell you, I've listened to you in the community and I probably with the number one question that I get from this audience is,

How do I get some support with X, Y, or Z? And X, or Z usually falls into VA. And there's a lot of confusion out there, I think, as to what a virtual assistant can and cannot do. So Jazzy is here and she is going to help to clear all of that up for us and probably answer all of your questions and solve all your problems, right? No big deal. Exactly. Exactly. That's what I'm here for. That is pretty much what we expect a virtual assistant to do, though, right? Like that is your goal is to make someone else's life easier.

Am I right? Exactly. I like to say that we're like a business bestie.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. I am so happy that you are hearing that you're joining me today. Have you ever caught yourself saying, I'll believe it when I see it? Well, what if I told you that science actually says you've got it backwards? It's a matter of you'll actually see it when you believe it. I hear a lot of things and I've had a lot of conversations that's come up on some of my podcasts in, you know, with some of my recent guests. And we've talked about something that

kind of comes across a little bit woo woo for lack of a better term for it. And that is things like visualization and manifestation. And I want you to stick with me on this one because I want to dive into this a little bit. There is actually a great deal of science behind this. And if you know me, you know that I am all about data driven insights and data driven ⁓ ideologies and theories. And I'm not into things that are necessarily a little bit too abstract to be

to be tangible. And so this is something that is backed up by science. And I want to explain sort of the difference between the woo woo part of it and the actual science part of it. So stick with me in this episode. We're going to dive into this a little bit. But first, I want to talk about how a softball game when I was visiting my nieces inspired today's episode because it kind of shifted my perspective a little bit when I was thinking about, you know, how we think about and

and talk about and visualize our business success and why some of the world's top performers, know, Olympic athletes, professional athletes, Fortune 500 CEOs, why do they swear by this visualization of manifestation type of practices? So let me bring you back to the softball game. I was visiting with my nieces out in California and I was at a softball game and I'm listening to the coaches as each batter is going up to hit the coaches saying saying their name.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And today I am being joined by Tamika Carlton. She is a powerhouse entrepreneur. She's a relationship expert and she's actually the host of the Real Connect podcast. And she is on a mission to transform the way that people are building meaningful connections, both personally and professionally.

And as the CEO and founder of Couples Experience, she's changing lives through inclusive and luxurious retreats and a thriving community that's dedicated to strengthening connections. She's been featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show, on the Hello7 podcast, the Success Journey podcast, Authority magazine. I mean, this woman knows her stuff. So I'm going to stop talking about her and say welcome to Tamika. Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here.

I'm so excited to have you on here. You know, I talk about relationships often and anytime I speak with, especially any of my clients when they're struggling a little bit in terms of getting new clients, I'm often saying, well, what are you doing? Well, I'm posting on social media. Well, what else are you doing? Well, I'm doing, you know, they're doing all these things. Like, well, have you done any direct outreach? What does that mean? Right. Yeah. No joke.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business Podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon, and today I've got a super fun conversation. I am being joined by Amber Briggle and she is the CEO of B-Well Enterprises, which is also the home to Soma Massage Therapy and incredible massage therapy businesses she has built. And she is working now towards bringing a new level of massage therapy across the globe in a franchise way.

She is the epitome of the accidental CEOs that we talk about on this show. And so I really wanted to welcome her on here to be able to share her story because it's powerful. You're going to love it. And we're to be digging into, you know, how some challenges can turn into these growth opportunities, which is exactly what she's done. And you're going to be blown away when you hear what she has done with everything that she's been thrown at, that's been thrown at her. So, Amber, welcome. Shauna Lynn, I'm really excited about this conversation. Thanks so much for having me.

I am super excited about this as well because you just have such a fabulous and unique story. And so in our pre-interview, we did talk a little bit about how, you know, we're all over talking about COVID, but you said something that I really wanted to repeat here because it was so profound. And you said, you know, as much as we all want to just move on and forget about COVID, small businesses have not forgotten. And I, and I love that. So tell me a little bit about your

your journey. We've talked about you're you are an accidental CEO yourself. And so tell us a little bit about what's brought you to where you are today. Yeah, absolutely. I will try and keep this very brief because it all happened over two decades ago. But I did go to a really fancy four year school and basically graduated with a degree where I had no clue how to use it. And I'm sure a lot of your listeners can probably relate to. I ended up kind of bouncing around, working at a dead end job.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business Podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon, and in today's episode, I'm going to be sharing with you my proven system for helping you to manage your clients' expectations. This is something that has transformed my own businesses from that constant stress to more predictable success. And I've had various guests on this podcast over the last year and a bit that I've talked about how important

client expectations and managing those expectations is to the success of that experience, that overall client experience. So stay tuned until the end of this as well, because I'm going to be sharing with you a framework that you can actually implement immediately. OK, so early on in my home staging business, I worked with a contractor and I want to say that in my opinion, he was out to get me. I really thought that he was

constantly just trying to find ways to make up his own policies. He had no respect for me. And I don't think I'm entirely wrong in that thinking. However, as I started working through this project with him, and once the project was completed, he said something to me that had me rethinking my entire outlook on him the entire time. So let me recap this for you a little bit. So he was an investor and he was flipping a property.

and brought my company in to stage it for him. And we would show up the day before the staging to kind of check things out and things as simple as like there weren't any mirrors hung up in the bathroom. The place was a mess. And so of course I contacted him and said, you know, just want to make sure that you understand it needs to be stage ready. And here's what that looks like. And he assured me, yep, absolutely. It's going to be stage ready, no problem. And sure enough, the next day I showed up with my crew and

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon, and I am here with a fantastic and entertaining guest today. So Holly Oldham, or also known as Holly Oldham, not Newham. And she is with Pause Reflect Move Forward, and she is a freelance writer and author, comedic poet, a solopreneur. She is a mom of four. She is a grandparent. She has lived a life, let me tell you, and she has done it all.

And a big part of this has been actually centered around having a cleaning business. And that's one of the reasons why I'm so excited to bring her on here because she has such a unique story to tell. And I can't wait for her to share it with you all today. So Holly, welcome. Hi, Hi, Sean and Lynn. Thank you so much for having me. Just like we were talking about earlier, just past daylight savings time and we have extra daylight and

One of the things that I like to do is I'm a daily beach cleaner for the last four and a half years. So when it was darker in the evening, because I'm not going, I'm in Florida, so I'm not going to be in direct sunlight. So I'm either there first thing in the morning or the latter part of the day. And now I get to, you know, we had this extra hour or so of daylight. So should I run later on jobs or if I have other things going on, I can still go to the beach and, you know, keep it here. So when you guys come down and visit, it's nice and clean.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. And today we've got a lovely Earth Day episode for you because we're to be talking about sustainability. I've got Cailyn Poschner from Habitat Design Co. She's an architectural designer in Canada and she's going to be talking about sustainable design and architecture. And she's got an architectural design firm that actually focuses on creating those beautiful and functional homes that are also sustainable. And

She's got a lot of great knowledge that she can really dig into for us about what qualifies as sustainability, how to incorporate that into your design. think a lot of people think they've got to compromise function and style in order to get that sustainability. And she's here to prove that that is absolutely not true. So Kaylin, welcome. Thank you so much for having me, Shauna I'm really excited to be here today. I am super excited to dive into this because you have...

white the resume in all honesty about like the different certifications that you have in your just your level of understanding about design and sustainability. And it's something that I've always been very interested in. But I'll admit as an interior designer myself as well, it's not something that I'm overly comfortable. My clients come to me and they say like, I want to incorporate sustainability. I'm like, okay. Like I know some basics about, you know, obviously like we've all heard about paints and VOCs and things like that. but

That's kind of where it ends.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon, and thank you so much for joining me today. I have a very fun conversation for us today. And fun might not be the first thing you think of based on what I'm going to start off with here. But the reason why I say this is fun is because this is going to change your business today. So if you ever thought that maybe your business looks successful on paper, but feel a little bit like it's crushing you.

Because I hear this from entrepreneurs all the time. And in fact, I would say that in my initial coaching assessment calls that I do with clients, this is one of the biggest things that I hear from them is that they're saying, you know, everything just feels heavy. Everything feels hard. I'm overwhelmed. I'm overworked. You so let's say you're hitting your revenue goals. Clients are absolutely loving your work. I think that's one of the biggest things. They're like, listen, like, I know I'm good at what I do because the client's absolutely like are singing your praises about it.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And today I have an extra special guest. And I know I say that sometimes, but honestly, this is one of my favorite guests to have on because we've got a really unique story that we're going to be telling today about how you can be an entrepreneur without actually founding a company yourself. And the person who I'm bringing in is actually someone that I've known for a number of years because she happens to be the chief operating officer at the boxing gym that I go to, which of course is SydFit Canada Corps for anyone who's not familiar, I know I've talked about this or sorry, SydFit Health Centre, SydFit Canada Corps, all the things. And, you know, I've talked about my boxing journey on this podcast previously, I know. So many of you know how active I am. I've got a great running group of ladies that we run with this group of ladies from boxing as well. And so I wanted to bring in Eryn Lobsinger, who is like I said, she's the COO of SydFit.

And she's a mother, she's a foodie, she's all things to Syd and all things to Sydfit Everyone knows her kind of as the person who keeps everything moving. She keeps Syd on track, she keeps all of us on track. And I'm gonna start by welcoming her first of all, and I'll tell you a little bit more about her as well. So Eryn, first of all, welcome. Thank you, Shauna Lynn I'm glad to be here today. I am so excited to have you in here because I think we had a bit of a pre-inter...

pre-conversation before we hit record here talking about this.

Hello and welcome to the one year anniversary episode of the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And whether you're new to the podcast or if you've been following us from the beginning, I just want to say a special thank you for being here with me. This journey has been absolutely incredible and I have my loyal listeners to thank for making this all that it's been. I can honestly say when I first started this podcast,

I couldn't even imagine what it would look like. And a year later, it's hard to believe that we've had the incredible growth that we've had, that I've had the opportunity to have some of the most amazing conversations with so many outstanding female entrepreneurs who are just kicking butt in everything that they're doing. And it's been something that's been more rewarding than I could have even imagined.

And a lot of people will start a podcast and it's, I'm not gonna lie, it's a lot of work. And I'm so thrilled to have made it to this milestone, this one year mark, and not just to have made it here, but to see the podcast really thriving the way that it is. And again, I have each and every one of you to thank for that. So sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, I know that you have a lot of choice when it comes to where you're going to consume your listening.

these days and I am so grateful that you have invited me in to be a part of your journey. I thought for today that a powerful topic that we would cover is about our fear of hearing the word no. We tend to almost protect ourselves from hearing no and that that protection that fear is actually holding us back. And so I want us to start thinking about how do we say yes to hearing no.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And today I'm being joined by Suzanne Peters. So Suzanne is in personal development and entrepreneurship, and she's actually known for being the founder of the Speaker Business Club. This is where she helps women to build profitable speaking businesses. And this is going to be the main topic about what we're talking about today. But Suzanne is also very passionate about

really empowering women. an award winning speaker. She's a best selling author, a business strategist, and she specializes in helping women to take their stories and turn those into thriving businesses. And I gotta say, as someone who's operating a podcast here, I often get people contacting me and saying, I have this amazing story, but I'll admit they're not always packaging it in the best possible way. And Suzanne is an expert who can help you with exactly that.

but she's also the visionary behind the Woman to Woman Network, which is a global platform that's dedicated to helping women to achieve more in life and in success. So Suzanne, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. I am so excited to be here. I can't wait to dive into this because I have to say almost every time I speak, I have someone come up to me at some point afterwards, even like so much as at my dad's celebration of life last year,

One of my brother's friends came up afterwards and said, how exactly do you do that? The whole like getting up in front of people and speaking. I basically tell them all the same thing. I wasn't born with that gene that's supposed to make you scared of speaking in front of people. I have been at events where I've been literally handed a microphone because they don't have an emcee or someone to introduce someone like, hey, can you do it? they just pop a microphone in my hand like, yeah, no problem. I got this. But I know that that's not the norm either. Like not everyone feels that

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And today I'm really excited about the guest that we have on here. Not only is she one of my coaching clients, which always gives me so much glee to be able to feature one of my amazing clients, but she is an absolute powerhouse and she's got an incredible story to tell about. Well, there's a lot of things we're going to be talking about, but one of the big things we're to talk about is what would you do if your business

lost its Google listing. This is huge, right? We rely on this so significantly and this actually happened to her. So we're to talk about how she navigated this. But first, let me introduce you to who we're talking to. We are talking to Theresa Bouchard of TS Staging and Design and she is an absolutely dynamic entrepreneur. So she made a bold career shift after like 30 years in the corporate world. And she, so she did, you know, senior program management in the medical device industry.

but she always had this passion for interior design. And so she transitioned her business to a home staging or transitioned into her own business, should say, into a home staging and design business. And she has built an incredible business and had all these ratings on Google, got herself top of the page on Google, and then lost her Google listings. We're gonna dive into that in just a moment. first of all, welcome Theresa Bouchard.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. Thank you so much for joining me today. I want to talk about something. There's this dangerous myth in entrepreneurship that's probably actually costs you more than you even realize. it's success requires this constant hustle. We live in a stage of this constant hustle culture and that

You know, rest means you're being lazy and it's often associated with that laziness. And if you're not moving all the time, working all the time, if you're not completely exhausted, if you're not working hard enough, then you're lazy. And today I'm going to share why this mindset is actually potentially limiting your business's potential growth. And I know that sounds a little counterintuitive. think you're going to be really pleasantly surprised by some of the insights I'm going to be sharing with you today.

So have you ever noticed that some of your most groundbreaking business solutions or ideas come when you're not actually actively working on them? So they might hit you during, you know, when you're taking a shower. I know for me, that's probably one of my biggest ones. I feel like my mind just completely turns off of whatever, you it's, you're doing something that's very routine and sort of mundane.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon, and I am so excited to have you here. You are going to love today's guest because I am already absolutely enthralled with her. She has so much incredible information to share. Today I'm being joined by Sandra Kokotovic the co-founder and creative director at Snap Advantage. What is Snap Advantage, you might be asking? Well, Sandra is a seasoned fractional CMO.

And so she's got a ton of expertise when it comes to your marketing and your marketing strategies. And she has co-founded Snap Advantage and has pioneered some incredible marketing systems that goes beyond the traditional advertising. I'll be honest, I'm not even going to do her bio justice. So I'm going to let her tell you a little bit about her background and who she is. So Sandra, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me. Hi, thank you so much for having me here.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon, and today I thought it'd be fun to learn a little bit about each other. Don't worry, I'm going to start, but I'll let you know how we can connect so that we can learn a little bit more about each other on a more personal level later in the show. But one of the reasons that I'm doing this today is it is my 47th birthday, the day that this episode is airing, and I thought it'd be kind of a fun thing to share a little bit.

not just about who I am, but what made me who I am. So I'm gonna be sharing today seven things that have shaped who I am today, from band geek to setting things on fire and to answering the question, was I always destined to be a crazy cat lady? So we're gonna dive in here and I wanna show you who I am and how I got here because there's so much about who we are today that

starts at a very young age and then there's other times where things might start later in life and it's interesting to see how all those things meld together to make you the incredible and wonderful person that you are today.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And today we have an extra special guest. We're in for a real treat today, ladies, because if you are hitting a certain age and even if you're not hitting a certain age, there's a lot of things that are really hot topic right now. So joining us today is Dr. Denise Hanscombe and she is a dedicated naturopathic doctor and the co-founder of Abaton Integrative Medicine. And so she's got a lot of expertise in

prenatal and pediatric care, in menopause, perimenopause, environmental medicine, and so much more that I couldn't even list it all. And if anyone knows my story, I have spoken numerous times about my battle years ago with burnout and adrenal fatigue, and my life was saved by a naturopath.

I believe so much in this holistic approach. And that's exactly what Denise is here to talk about. And we've got such a great topic. We're gonna be talking about perimenopause and menopause. And I will admit as someone who is going to be celebrating my 47th trip around the sun in just a week, this is something that I feel like I'm constantly talking about with friends. And we've been doing this for years. Some of my friends have already hit that stage of perimenopause.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And today I am joined by a true powerhouse in the world of marketing and entrepreneurship. I've got Candace Huntly with me today and she is the founder of SongBird Marketing Communications, an award-winning agency that's going to help businesses to find their voice through social media, through public relations, through branding and marketing strategies. And her journey to entrepreneurship has been anything but conventional.

She's actually transformed from a career as a professional singer and actor to becoming a leading voice in the marketing world. So she's got a lot of knowledge when it comes to influencer marketing, organic marketing, and she's got a voice in this space that I think I just thought was so important to bring onto the show and to share with this audience. So Candace, welcome. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to have this chat. Same. And, you know, we connected online and kind of got to chat and I was like, I got to have this girl this woman on my podcast