the bossbabe podcast - 63. Why “Mom Guilt” is Bullsh*t, How to Start + Scale Passive Income Businesses, and Unapologetically Showing Up As Who You Are with Shannan Monson

Episode Date: December 9, 2019

Are you ready to get inspired and feel empowered? This week’s episode with Natalie Ellis, Founder and CEO of BossBabe, and Shannan Monson, Founder of the ICON method, is full of vulnerability, value, and inspiration to help you get into the right mindset for success.  A serial entrepreneur and mother of two, Shannan shares with Natalie the reality of being a working mom with a business of helping other entrepreneurs start and scale their own programs. Challenging the notions of “Mom Guilt”, Shannan sets the record straight on why mothers need to let go of this unfair and limiting mindset in order to become a living example of strength and light for their children. Natalie and Shannan also take us behind-the-scenes on how to earn 6-figures from Instagram regardless of follower count and provide actionable tips for turning your passion into a scalables passive stream of income.  Whether you’re an unapologetically woman with children or not, this episode will surely inspire strive for your dreams. Join the BossBabe Mailing List: https://bossbabe.com/subscribe/   Get 1 free month on PicMonkey + an exclusive set of templates offered by PicMonkey and BossBabe: https://picmonkey.love/bossbabe  ICON Mastermind Enrollment: https://www.theiconmastermind.com/icon-live ICON Mastermind Free Guide: https://theiconmastermind.com/guide

eating dirt initially to be able to grow twice three times five times as quickly if you believe in your vision you can't fail the belief that a woman's worth is only tied to how well she mothers is so sad just really building in me time and deciding what got you here is not what's going to get you there. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, a place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance and learning how to balance it all. This week, I am so excited because we have Shannon Monson on the show. So Shannon is a serial entrepreneur, business strategist, and mother of two who helps female founders turn their expertise into six-figure online programs. Shannon has consulted for

Silicon Valley startups, spoken to entrepreneurs at Harvard's Women in Business Conference, and is the founder of the ICON Method, the complete playbook to create and scale passive income programs with ease. Listen, she is the real deal and she really walks the talk. I got to know Shannon as she was actually a private client of ours in the beginning and since then we've become great friends and are soon actually going to be partnering up together on an event in Atlanta. So make sure you signed up to the Boss Babe mailing list to be the first to know when that happens. The link below is in the show notes. This episode is real, raw and super actionable. Shannon talks about how

mum guilt is bullshit, earning more than her husband, and what it looked like in the early days of building her business. Because I think sometimes we have the idea that things are super easy and you just have this idea and all of a sudden you wake up and you have a successful business. And we all know it doesn't really work like that. We also dive into content creation, passive income, and the financials behind six-figure businesses. There's so much in this interview. You're probably going to listen more than once and chances are you're going to have your notebook out scribbling notes. So please screenshot this episode and share it on your stories. Tell your friends about it because I

know it's going to be so, so valuable. Tag me at IamNatalie and at bossbabe.inc and also tag Shannon at Shannon Munson and also if you love this episode I would love for you to leave us a review it's so helpful for us it helps us get the podcast out there to even more boss babes who need our support so leave a review and if you feel like it share it with your friends too that would mean the absolute world to us and as always feel free to DM me and let me know what you love about the episodes, what you want to see more of. We literally listen to every single thing that you send us. I love DMing back and forth with you all and really getting to know about what would serve you in where you are in your journey. So with that let's just dive straight in. This episode is sponsored by PicMonkey. Using PicMonkey you can create powerful designs

for social media, marketing materials, advertising, and much more. And the reason that we love it so much is because it's easy. You or your team don't need to know how to use Photoshop in order to create really good designs that are on brand. We like to use PicMonkey to design mood boards, but you can also use it to design Pinterest pins, blog images, and Instagram posts. We actually use them to create a mood board for our brand new Instagram account at shopbossbabe.inc and we are really really excited to announce that our listeners can get one free month on PicMonkey and an exclusive set of templates offered by PicMonkey and Boss Babe. So we've got you completely covered if you don't even know

where to start with this. So just go and check them out on pickmonkey.love forward slash boss babe. And that link is below in the show notes too. A boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone

to create her own vision of success. Welcome Shannon to the Boss Babe podcast. I'm so excited to be here. I'm a huge Boss Babe podcast fan so this is an honor. I feel like it's very overdue. I agree with that. So let's just dive right in at the deep end because that's what we love to do. Your story is very, very interesting because I love how transparent and open you are about your story. I think a lot of times we can see success stories on Instagram and it kind of looks like they just had this idea, put up a website and had a million dollar business. And it's just not like that for any of us. An overnight success takes an awful lot of time and it's not so pretty behind the scenes.

And I really admire how open you have been about that. So can we go back to the beginning of your entrepreneurial journey and talk about what that looked like? Yeah, absolutely. So I think this is very interesting. I've listened to a lot of Boss Babe podcasts. I do not feel like I woke up and I was going to be an entrepreneur. It was never my intention or

my plan. So I grew up in the South in the United States and we call it the Bible Belt. It's a very conservative. I didn't see really women working or women having careers. And I did not expect myself to work, which sounds crazy to say now, let alone to be an entrepreneur and build a business. So basically what happened was I was an athlete. I became a personal trainer and a registered dietitian nutritionist. And I was working with people one-on-one in a gym setting. And I did that from the time that I was like 18 all through college and really just working this one-on-one. And I fully expected to just get married and have kids and stay at home like my mom did. And basically that wasn't my reality. After we had a son, I remember sitting with my husband

and he was like, okay, we have to make this work somehow. I can go get a second job at night, like coming up with all these ideas. And I remember thinking, I'm so capable. I'm educated. I have these skills. No, I'm going to carry this burden with you. And I'm going to go get a job. It's not what I had in mind, but I'm going to go get a job. And so my son was literally two weeks old when I went back to work as a personal trainer, which I'm going to go get a job. And so my son was literally two weeks old when I went back to work as a personal trainer, which is just crazy to think about in hindsight. So I squeezed into like real clothes again. I brought my kid with me to the gym and I asked for a job as a personal trainer. And so that was really the start of me deciding that, okay, I'm going to kind of

take this seriously and really go all in. And if you're a personal trainer and if there's somebody listening in like health and wellness, you are an entrepreneur. If you get a job, it's as an independent contractor, you've got to go find your own clients. So I was kind of thrown into entrepreneurship in that way because it was the job and the path that I wanted to follow. So I really didn't intend to grow a business as an entrepreneur. And it's just kind of how I got thrown in and how I got started. That's incredible. That must have been a big toll on your body two weeks after giving birth to get back into the gym. It's insane. I was so young. I was like, I was maybe 23, I think when I had my son. So I was young. And you know, there's things that you just do out of survival, right? I look at a lot of people's

dream businesses on Instagram. And I think sometimes it looks like, wow, they had this big vision. They had this big dream and they just went after it. That might be true for some people, but I find more often than not, it's really like decisions out of survival. Like I was just purely trying to survive. I didn't think about, can my body handle this right now? It was like, we have groceries we need to pay and rent we have to make. And so I have to do what it takes to survive really. And I did that for a long time.

And really that is what made me think, okay, if I'm going to be doing this, I'm an all or nothing person. Like if I'm going to be in, I'm going to be all in. If I'm going to be gone from my kid, if I'm going to be working these crazy hours teaching 4am weight loss classes and going back to the gym at night, I'm going to make it count and it's going to be worth it. And that's when I really started to see, oh, there's people using Instagram to make money. And that's interesting. I'm interested in that. How are they doing that? What does that look like? And that was really my entry and segue into entrepreneurship and online entrepreneurship. So what did that look like going from being a personal trainer to an online

entrepreneur? So I had absolutely no clue what I was doing. So if you're listening right now, and you're like, I don't know what this looks like. I literally just threw spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks. So I knew there were people making money on Instagram. I didn't know how I didn't know what it looked like. But I thought, hey, if they can do it, so can I. And so I just started posting to Instagram and just sharing things on Instagram that I was also talking about with my clients in one-on-one sessions. So if I would get out of a one-on-one session with a client and we talked about like menu planning and how to choose the right foods at the grocery store, I would turn that into a post. These are the three things I'm looking for at the

grocery store and I would just slap it up on Instagram. Honestly, you could scroll back to the beginning of my feed. It's pretty sloppy. And I look back and I'm like, wow, I can't believe people followed for that. But I was providing value. I just focused on how can I help people. I wasn't focused on what it looked like or what hashtags I was using. I just purely thought, okay, somebody paid me for this in a one-on-one session. It was helpful. It was useful. That's something I can share on Instagram and just started organically growing a following that way. And then I thought people are already paying me to make meal plans in the one-on-one sessions. Maybe I'll just make a meal plan, put it up on, I think I use like a Squarespace website, just a really simple digital download. And I posted

about it in my Instagram feed and I had sales. And that was the moment for me that everything changed. I was like, wow, these are people I've never met in real life. I didn't have to sit on sales, like sit through sales. What did you call them? Discovery calls or it was in person. So what would that even be? I can't even remember. I don't know, but time consuming. Exactly. Time consuming. These are people I didn't know. I didn't know their names. I'd never talked to and they were just putting money in my bank account. And I thought, well, that's really cool. And if this is what I can do with the extra 30 minutes a day, two hours a day that I was doing right now, what if I really went all in on this? And that's really cool. And if this is what I can do with, you know, the extra 30 minutes a day, two hours a day that I was doing right now, what if I really went all in on this? And that's when

I decided this is the thing that I'm going to do. I love that. And a lot of content creators say the exact same thing in a sense of I was putting out there what I thought would help people and what they wanted to know it wasn't. I was sharing what I cared about and what I wanted to post. It was very much, no, I have that other person in mind and I have in mind that I really want to help them. And that's what I think attracts people to other people. They start following you because they're getting so much value and you're sharing from that place and just kind of seeing what works. So I love that. And I know, you know, there's a lot of glamour online about having six figure businesses. And a lot of people think, well, if I have a six figure business, thature business, that just means I'm completely replacing my six-figure salary at a job. And it's not really

that simple. And I know you said the first year your company made 200K, you actually paid yourself 30K. Can you speak a little bit about that? Yeah. It's crazy because from the outside, people see your following growing. They see you posting about launches. They see you talking about how excited you are about your launch. And so from the outside, it's really easy to be like, wow, that person's made it. And I remember sitting down at that first year and really deciding, okay, what are my goals and vision for the company? And I knew that if I wanted to grow as quickly as I wanted to, I needed to bring on people to help me with video creation. I needed to bring on people to help me with the backend. So I started hiring these freelancers so that I could grow in the direction I wanted to at the same time knowing that if I was bringing in

$10,000 a month or $15,000 a month and the freelancers cost six and Facebook ads cost two or whatever, realizing that there really wasn't anything left over for me. And so I sat down and I said, okay, what is the bare minimum that I can pay myself? And still, I don't know if comfortable is the word that I would use because I was fully supporting my family of four at the time on that $30,000 salary. So it wasn't comfortable by any means, but what can I do to get by knowing that I'm playing the long game here? And so I paid myself about $2,000 a month for almost 18 months when my business was getting started because I knew that long-term I could get to where I wanted to go a lot faster if I brought people in sooner.

And that's something that I think, in hindsight, was probably one of the smartest things I did, just eating dirt initially to be able to grow twice, three times, five times as quickly. And that's something that I think a lot of people aren't willing to eat dirt. They want the immediate ROI. They want the trips to Paris right away, the shiny Instagram account, all those things right away. And even at that time, I don't know if I'd shared that at the time, I think people would have thought it was crazy. I remember telling people kind of quietly in conversation, maybe like a year or two after and they're like, what? Why would you do that? And looking back, I think it's one of the smartest things I did. Yeah, I fully agree with you. And it's a big mistake that I do see a lot of entrepreneurs making in that whatever comes in will go straight back out. And then they're not

having that money to reinvest. And it's a decision that Danielle and I made was to take a salary. And that salary is not changing depending on our revenue that comes in. Because the more revenue, we know we've got more money to reinvest. And I think it's a really smart decision to decide to invest in your business and to get really, really smart with money. And even beyond that, I think a lot of people underestimate the costs that come at the end of the year, taxes, things like that, and don't set aside money to be able to pay that. So yes, it might look glamorous from the outside

and you're making all of these sales, but then actually when you come to pay your bills at the end of the year, you might end up being really stretched again and you get on that hamster wheel of just trying to make enough money to pay the bills and the bills are going up and it can be really, really difficult.

But can we go back to something you said? You said you were fully supporting your family financially. That must have been a really stressful time to be in. Yeah, it's interesting because I didn't really know any difference. So my husband and I got married really young. We had kids really young and he immediately went back to school to become a doctor. So he was in four years of medical school while I was starting my business. And at the time, I remember every single investment I made back in my business. And even he would sit next to me and tell you this, I'll tell you in confidence, but he would really push back. If you spend $2,000 this month on your business, that's money our family can't have. If you open this brick and mortar shop, which I did at the time, that's this X amount

a month less that you're paying yourself. And I really just had to say, listen, we are building our long-term future. If you don't think like an entrepreneur, your brain doesn't think that way. And so there were definitely times, especially that it was a big friction in our marriage that rather than paying myself a salary of $100,000, which would have been so helpful, we could have taken out less loans, all these things, being able to push back and really say, hey, I'm building the future. And my sister actually is, she's a financial analyst in DC. And I remember talking to her about it and she was like, no, you would never pay yourself the entire profits of the business. That doesn't even make sense. You're making smart decisions, really being super supportive of me. So I think that's interesting to note too. And my husband

is so supportive. He's incredible. But if you're in a position where maybe you're an entrepreneur and you want to pay yourself the bare minimum and reinvest in the company and maybe your partner or your family members, your friends are like, that's crazy. Why are you doing that? Just really being able to just stay true to yourself and know that if you believe in your vision, you can't fail. You can't fail because you're going to pivot and you're going to pivot and you're going to keep making it work until you get to where you want to go. And so I think as long as you have that really strong vision and stay true to it, those investments will always pay out 100 times over. Yeah, I fully agree with you. And I've pivoted so many times in my career so far, and I don't

expect that I will stop doing that. And I think one thing that you mentioned, which I think is really important is that we can't expect everyone else around us to get it especially if they're not entrepreneurs they might look at our business from the outside and in hindsight have all these great ideas about how we should be doing it but if they're not entrepreneurs they're generally not going to get it and it's being okay with that is really interesting and just kind of staying in your own lane and what's really coming through is how much you believed in yourself and what you were doing. Where did that come from? Did you always have that? Did you listen to podcasts or read certain books that helped you formulate that? Where did it come from? I think my parents did an excellent job in raising us. I have four sisters and we're all very strong-willed women. And I

think we were just really raised to be confident and believe in ourselves. And my parents really instilled in us that if you put your head down, you can accomplish anything. That being said, I grew up, my dad was an entrepreneur. So it never really occurred to me that it was different at the time. But I remember, entrepreneurship is really sexy right now. It didn't used to be sexy. I remember telling people that my dad owned his own business and people would say like, oh, I'm so sorry. Or they would think that he was out of work or that it was... And it was, I it was like, I remember it being, it wasn't an attractive thing, right? Like I remember years where things were amazing and years where we couldn't afford Christmases. So I grew up being okay with that up and down.

I think I was just really okay with risk because I'd seen it work out. And just, you know, my dad had always believed that if you do the right thing, you work hard, you're good to people, just kind of like, it'll come back around to you tenfold. And so I think I really believed even if my first idea failed and my second idea failed and my 50th and 40, you know, 49th idea failed. I think I really believed as long as I got back up, it would work because I'd seen that modeled for me. Yeah.

When I was in university, entrepreneurship was really not cool. I was weird for being so obsessed with it. It just wasn't a thing. And now it really is. And it's so great to see that shift because with entrepreneurship, it's very difficult and it's not for everyone. But if it is for you and you really get stuck into it, there's so much magic that you can create. And you're the picture of that. Like you've really been able to build an amazing business with a lot of leverage that you're not having to sacrifice time with your kids. And I'm lucky

enough to know you now that I can really see that you live by those values. It's not just a cute Instagram post. Like I truly see you being able to show up and do that. And I find it so admirable as someone that doesn't have kids yet. I look to people like you, like, yeah, that's how I want to be when I have kids too. But one thing you say is you can have it all, but you can't have it all right now. Can you explain what you mean by that? Yes. So I think a lot of times we have these big visions of things we want. So something that's really important to me, I've got two young kids. I have a seven-year-old and a five-year-old, and my family is the most important thing to me, which I think a lot of people that are listening

to this can resonate with. And I get to spend a lot of time with them now. I get to be a chaperone on field trips and take random times off and took them out of school for a week and went to Disney and just do all these things that I absolutely never could have done when my job was being a personal trainer and showing up at the gym at certain set hours. And if I took a week off work, I would lose a ton of revenue. So I have a lot of freedom in my business right now, but I couldn't have had that if I wasn't willing to put in the work to set up the systems, to create the passive income streams, to really, we talked about eating dirt and just like really putting in the hours day in, day out without any real ROI to show for it until it happened for me. So I think sometimes we have,

okay, I want to have time with my family. I want freedom. I want to make a ton of money. I want all these things. And so you write out this dream list. I want to be able to travel, fly first class. You write out this dream list of things that you want and you almost get discouraged because it's so overwhelming. You have to be willing to make the sacrifices upfront to be able to have the things that you want down the line. So what I always say, if you're a big dreamer, you have all these ideas of things that you want, get out a massive piece of paper, a big sticky note, write out all of the dreams and visions and the ideas that you want, and then pick one to focus on at a time. Decide, okay, this is the thing that I'm focusing on. Okay, I want more freedom in my business, so I'm going to focus on transitioning my business model from one-on-one to a passive

income business model. And I'm going to go all in on this this year, and I know it's going to take me twice as much time than my business already takes right now, which is a lot, but that long-term payout means I get what I want. And so just really prioritizing which thing you're going to work on at a time. You can have absolutely everything you want. You just have to work through them one at a time. Yeah, I'm so in agreement with you. And I remember last September was particularly challenging time in business

for me personally, because we were doing events in LA, London and New York. So there's a lot of travel and it was just kind of one after the other while still trying to run a big business behind that. And it was so exhausting because I was trying to have it all at the same time. And I was trying to be the best wife and the best friend and the best CEO and all of the things. And I remember after the second event, just turning to Steven and saying, I cannot keep this up. I need a month where I'm just having grace to

not be the best wife and I can not come home for dinner and I can just really put this time into the business because I know I need it. And then it's going to come back where I'm spending more time between us and less time in business. And I very much live by the thought that you can have harmony, not balance. So things just, you know, one week it might be 80% your time is in the business and the next it might be in marriage or whatever, but it really is hard to have that perfect balance all the time. And I think this is kind of this painted picture that actually isn't reality that you see a lot of the time. But another place that I want to go into is you talk a lot about creating

passive income and there's probably a lot of people listening that are like, I am hustling my ass off to create revenue of three to $4,000 a month. I don't see how I could possibly be creating passive income. What does that look like to create passive income from online product or a digital program? Yeah. So let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know, I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity, which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place. So it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler.

One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students so if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial that's kajabi.com slash boss babe so first of all

I love what you said about harmony and I think that's so true and I think we would all be a lot happier if we were just focused on creating harmony instead of having all the things at the same time. So I love that. In terms of creating, moving from, if you're tussling to make $3,000 to $4,000 into creating a passive income product, I think it actually, the same rules apply, right? You're not going to go from making $3,000 to $4,000 a month to suddenly making $100,000 a month with a passive income, which I know sounds obvious, but I hear a lot of people say like, okay, I just want to launch this product to make $100,000 a month with a passive income, which I know sounds obvious, but I hear a lot of people say like, okay, I just want to launch this product to make $40,000 off of it. It doesn't work that way. So you have to really just break it down and work it back. So what I recommend is

taking what you're already doing and scaling that. So what's already working really well in your one-on-one services and how can you turn it into a still live, but a group program and really make what you're doing more efficient. And then once you have a really good group program running, how can you take that and actually maybe pre-record parts of it and turn it into an online course or take out worksheets that you're using that your people are loving and turn those into digital downloads. So it really is this really natural progression of one step to the next. I think it's overwhelming because we see the end and we're not sure like how, what are the steps to actually get there? So we take our clients through, we call it the four-part icon method, which is ideation, creation, optimization, and niche. So I would start with,

okay, if you have a product that it's already bringing in two to $3,000 a month, what about that is working really well? What are you passionate about? If you could only do one thing for the next six months of the services you're offering, maybe you're a lot of people at that beginning level of business are actually doing like four different offers, right? They're doing so many different specific things. So ask yourself, what do you really love doing? And then how can you turn that into a group program and really scale it from there and just start testing ideas at that low level. Maybe you test an idea and it brings in an extra thousand dollars next month. You're not going to be able to suddenly turn off your one-on-one business model,

but it's going to give you kind of confirmation and we call it market proof that this is a good idea and this is worth running with. And that's how you get that traction to start moving in the direction and really phasing out the one-on-one side of things into that passive income model. I love that. So when you talk about, so you've got the ideation, you come up with the idea, you create it. What is in the optimization and niche stages of that? Yep, absolutely. So backing it up in the ideation stage, we're actually just looking at testing ideas. If you have a bunch of different ideas for a product, write them all down and just start testing them one by one and really ask yourself, what do I enjoy doing? What's fulfilling me? What's profitable? Because you might have some ideas that are really great, but they're not super profitable. What's sustainable?

Once you've landed on an idea that really sticks, that's when I would move into the creation stage. I actually see a lot of people start by pre-recording modules for an online course, and I genuinely think you're wasting your time doing that because you don't have proof if anybody wants it. Rather than starting right now with, okay, I have this idea, I'm going to make a digital download, actually back it up by pre-selling a bunch of different ideas to the audience you already have, even if it's like 400 people or a thousand people. So you can start to figure out, okay, what should I actually be creating? But the benefit of that too, is people have already paid you before you start creating. So they've given you their money. They've told

you that this is something they're interested in. And now you can start pre-recording modules and really creating things. So when you do it in that way, you've actually typically been working on creating your product for almost six months when you're in the ideation and the creation stages and actually getting paid for it the entire time. So now it's time to really scale this up. Now you have a proven product. You know it works. Now when you're spending your time optimizing it, you know that this is just the smartest use of your time because this is what's going to help you get to the next income level. So at the point of optimization, we're really looking at how can you make this product run without you? So you'll go

through every single step in the process and ask, okay, which parts need to run live with me in it? And how can I turn that into a passive model? So for example, if you're doing live coaching sessions, can you pre-record them? If you're sending out meal plans or workout programs or like week by week stuff, can you put it into a digital download and really take yourself out of it? And then also what do you need to, and I know you talk about this a lot, but what steps can you automate? What steps can you delegate and what steps can you delete? And that's how you're going to really create an optimized fully program that now it makes sense to sell 100 times more of them or 20 times more of the 20 times more units because it's fully optimized and running without you. I see a lot of people decide to ramp up the sales of their program, but then they sell 100 units and then all of a sudden they have so much work to do on the back end and so many customers to take care of. And so what you do in the optimization stage is really make sure that you can handle the capacity for two, 10, 20 times more customers before you really ramp it up. In that niche stage, we're usually just looking at

increasing your organic marketing. So growing your Instagram, you do an incredible job with this. I'm such a big fan of the Boss Babe Instagram Growth Accelerator or doing affiliate marketing or ads or just anything to bring more traffic to the proven product you already have. I love that so much. Everything you said, I'm like, yes. What about for that person who did take on too many clients and is drowning behind the scenes and is running this successful business but has burnout? What would you say to them? Is there a next step? So the first thing that I would say is take a deep breath because this is kind of your new normal is having a lot on your plate. And I think sometimes we have this idea of or expectation of perfection. So give yourself the opportunity to take a break.

So if you are overwhelmed with delivery, I would ask yourself, how can you actually step out? Like what can you say no to? There's probably a lot of things. Obviously, if you promise certain deliverables in your product, you need to do them, but there's probably a lot of other things on your plate that you can say no to right now so that you can have that moment and rest. And I think you are such a great example of this, of just really building in me time and deciding what got you here is not what's going to get you there. So if you continue to run at this pace, you will burn out. And foundationally, you need to change your systems. And so that's something that I'm always looking at. How can you stop, take a deep breath, treat yourself to some self-care, and then foundationally, what are the systems that are broken that are putting you in this just like

exhausted, burnt out state and how can we fix those? Yeah, I love that so much. And especially what got you here is not going to get you there. And I speak to a lot of entrepreneurs who talk about in the beginning, the crazy hustle that they did, you know, getting up at crazy hours and working so much and getting themselves to a point of burnout, and then their business gets to a certain level, and then they're able to step back. And I think there's something to it. I think in the beginning, your business probably does require you to work a bit more than you would like to and doing a lot more. And then at some point, you're going to get enough traction that you can delegate enough to step back and start to really breathe. But I love the idea of how can you do that from the beginning and still find time for self-care even when you're in that building phase? I think it can be really, really difficult. Yeah. I mean, your business will die. Like if you die, your business will die. If you burn out, your business is dead. And I can really speak to this on a personal level. Two years ago in November, everything was running amazing. We were just really selling a ton of units of our programs and really unexpectedly, my dad passed away and he was really young and it just, I mean,

completely shook everybody. And I was completely forced to stop. I mean, I couldn't get out of bed, couldn't work for weeks at a time. And that was so illuminating to me, obviously, like on the worst side of things possible. I would never want anybody to learn this lesson this way, but I just realized I can't continue to run at this level. And if I don't let go of certain things and trust people to step in, then what happens when something happens to me or something happens to one of my kids? I'm not building a business by being the only one that can do everything all the time. So true. And it sometimes does take a bit of a shock or wake-up call to realize that there's other ways of doing things. And it's not always just about what we

can contribute, but how we can start to delegate that out and leverage it. Because I feel the the same I don't want my business to revolve around me having to be on all the time I want to take vacations I want to be able to spend time switched off and with that it's about accepting support and setting up systems yeah you're not doing anybody any favors by requiring you to show up at a hundred percent all the time or their life goes to crap I think about this with my kids and my husband all the time like I'm very to crap. I think about this with my kids and my husband all the time. I'm very open about communicating like, listen, I'm having a bad day. I need space. I need you to tell my husband, I need you to take the kids tonight. I need a moment. And I feel like your business is the same way. If your business is only good, if you're operating at 100%,

then something is seriously broken, right? Because you can't expect that just to put so much on everybody else for the times that you're operating at 90% and 80% and 70%. And so I think giving yourself the space to really say, okay, how can I make sure this runs really smoothly, no matter what is actually a benefit to the people that work under you, the customers you serve, you're really making sure that everybody's getting served the best possible way. So true. And I'm pretty sure I've kind of heard you say before that you don't believe in mom guilt. Is that right? No, I think. How passionate do you want me to get right now? Pretty passionate. Okay. Yeah. I think mom guilt is bullshit. I think that it is internalized this belief that

women should stay small and should be the only ones taking care of the children. I told you I grew up in a very conservative religious environment. And the belief that a woman's worth is only tied to how well she mothers is so sad. Women have so much to offer the world and so many beautiful talents and gifts to bring to businesses and bring to their communities and to make the world a better place. And if we say your role is only in the home and every time you're not in the home, you are doing a disservice to the world as a whole. It's just such a lost opportunity for the world to not have your talents. Your kids need to see you be an example of strength and passion and drive just as much as they need you to be there, like kissing their boo-boos and making dinner for them and putting meals on the table. And if you believe your worth is only tied to how clean your house is and who's in car line for your kids, you're not doing anybody in any service. And it's really just playing to that stereotype that a woman's worth is how skinny she is and how clean her house is and how well-kept she is and how much makeup she's wearing. And you have so much more to bring to the world than that. I could not agree more. I don't have kids, but when I do, I don't want to

feel like mom guilt comes with that territory. And you see it so much online and you've just got to question it. Why is that such a thing? Why is there no one talking about dad guilt? Why just women? And it really sucks. And I think opening up this conversation to say, no, it doesn't have to be this way. And actually it's bullshit is really important. It's bullshit. And people ask me all the time, like, how do you balance work and motherhood? How do you balance work and motherhood? My husband is an OBGYN resident. So he delivers babies. He literally, he's on call all the time. He works overnight shifts, like his schedule's insane. And he's an incredible father and he's such a good man. Nobody ever asks him how he balances work and family life.

It's just not a question. And I think there's times that he wishes he could spend more time with the kids. Absolutely. But he doesn't think he's a bad dad because he works. And so I struggled with this a lot at the beginning. And I had people kind of shame me for working both within my family and community and friend group. And why would you even want that?

And I had to step back and ask myself, why is it bad for me to support my family financially? But when my husband does it, it's like celebrated. If nobody else can do this in my life, like what my family situation was at the time was if I didn't pay the bills, they didn't get paid. We would have been living off of food stamps or WIC or which is totally fine. And I appreciate that because the amount that you get for med school loans is really not enough to feed a family of four. So I had to really ask myself, why do I feel guilty for things that my husband would never feel guilt for? And that's when I realized and stepped out of it and said, this is just completely culture that makes me feel ashamed of providing for my family, of doing all these incredible,

giving my kids these incredible opportunities. They go to private school and they've been to Broadway shows and they go on trips and they have all these amazing opportunities to learn and be educated that I know is pouring into them as a human and that they will then turn around and pour into the world. Why do I feel guilty for that? Yes, all the yeses. There's so many women listening to this just like, yes, I can feel it. So yeah, the reason I know that is because you shared it on your Instagram and you share so much realness on your Instagram, like we were talking about in the beginning. So we have to get into content creation because you really, really are the queen of that. And before we do, I just want to celebrate

you for what you've been able to create online because I know people with hundreds and hundreds of thousands of followers that don't have the same amount of raving fans that you do. And what I mean by that is I can rarely be at an event, an event that we're hosting where someone doesn't come up and say, I found you on Shannon's page or I know Shannon. I follow Shannon too. I love when you talk about her on your page. People are obsessed with you. You have so many raving fans who love what you stand for, who love your brand, who would jump at the chance to work with you. And you're really a symbol of being able to create a million dollar company without millions of followers. You have 27,000 followers. Some of your posts have upwards of 3,000 likes. You are seriously slaying

it and you're so authentic in the way you do it. So I just want to shout you out for that. What are your secrets? Just tell us everything. Thank you. That is the ultimate compliment from the Instagram queen herself. My biggest secret is just showing up. And I know it sounds like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I genuinely show up and I don't care what other people think. And I think being able to show up, even a couple of years ago, I might've been embarrassed to share about mom guilt on my page because I have a lot of friends that are stay-at-home moms. My sister's a stay-at-home mom. There's no shame in that. And there've been these subjects that are a little bit touchy that maybe in the past I would have been afraid to share about, but just being

afraid, not like you say, unapologetically show up as you are. So I could talk about content creation until I'm blue in the face. But I think my secret is turning around my camera and talking to friends on Instagram stories. And when I'm going through things with my husband, I talk about it. And when I'm going through things with my business, I talk about it. And just even the other day, I had just stuff blow up at work and it was not a good day. And I wasn't going to show up on Instagram. And I thought, no, you know what? People need to see that this is part of it too. And I just turned around my camera and I said, here's what's happening. Obviously not the best day. I'm not complaining, but this is real life.

And here's what I'm doing. This is my takeaways. These are the things I'm implementing. And I think that because of that, my followers feel such a real connection with me. And I feel a real connection with them. I send them voice memos and I know them by name. And if you comment consistently and you engage on my page, girl, I know you. Hey. And I think just really having that personal connection and treating them like they are your friends because it's social. People don't come to Instagram really to learn and be smarter. There's so many books. There's so many books and so many different opportunities for that. They're looking for human connection. And so I think just sharing vulnerably, even the parts of your story that are hard to share. I think you've brought up all the hardest parts of my story today that

were the most uncomfortable and the hardest to share. And those are the things people resonate with. Yeah, I love that. So, so true. So for those people listening who are like, yeah, I get it, but I don't even know what to say. I'm not confident on camera. I don't know what my caption should be. What are your tips on creating content? Absolutely. So I love to start with a hook. So start with by asking a question or maybe saying something a little bit controversial and really telling your story through the lens of your followers. So when I'm thinking through my story and I always brainstorm on a separate notes app, I'm thinking through, okay, here's what happened to me. So I'm going to give you an example. When I started out earning my husband, we got in a lot of, I don't know if fights is the right word, but it just caused a lot of tension in our marriage. And it was this really hard time for me. So I journaled

a lot about it when it happened. And then about three, four months later, I looked back and I was like, okay, this is a story that's relatable. I am not the only one that's been through this or is going to go through this. How can I tell this story in a way that's relatable? So I started with a hook, something like I make more money than my husband and I was afraid he'd leave me for it. That's catchy. You're like, oh, I want to hear more and hit the dot, dot, dot. So start with the hook and then immediately make it about them. So you want to turn around and say, maybe you are worried about growing your business because you're afraid that you'll be less lovable or you'll be seen as

like a bitch, right? That's the label that we give greedy women, right? Who make a lot of money. So kind of relating it back to them and the feelings that they might be feeling. And so maybe these are things people tell you in DMs. They say like, hey, I'm just worried about this. So bring it back to them and then turn it into like your main portion should really be some sort of teaching or content. So like here's the things that I did, step one, step two, step three, or here's the transformation that I did and here's how you can do it too. And then end it with a call to action. So the call to action could be, is this something that you've experienced? Like tell me about an experience below. You want to make sure that you're making it easy for them to comment. So that might be the sort of thing people DM you about,

but they're really not going to tell you about their marriage troubles in your public Instagram comments. But you can just do something like double tap if you agree that, you know, being ambitious doesn't make you less lovable. And so just making it an opportunity to end with a call to action. So that's kind of my flow for creating content. That is genius. I hope everyone listening has got their notebooks out and is writing all of that down because that is 100% the key to having really engaging content. And probably by the time this podcast is out, Instagram will have taken away the likes feature. And so that's even more important.

So how are you really cultivating that social interaction with your audience? I think is super, super powerful. So okay, one thing that I do know, because we work together, so I get a real insight into the brain of Shannon. Oh dear. You get so much shit done. Like, it's kind of insane how much you get done. We can just float an idea or say, this would be cool if you did this, or what about this? And you'll come back the next day with the entire thing done. And it's mind blowing and also amazing. What are your secrets to getting shit done? Amazing. Well, thank you for asking that.

I think I've always been a go-getter, but I will say that becoming a mother really forced me to prioritize. So for example, in the early days, I couldn't afford childcare. I literally had the like two hour time point until my kid woke up from a nap and that was the amount of time I had to work. And so I got really good at prioritizing what moves the needle. So I've gotten good at looking at my tasks for the day and saying, okay, what is the most important thing to get done? Not necessarily what's the first thing on the to-do list, but what's the most important thing to get done? That being said, one of my favorite things to do is monk mode. Is this something you do? I have it, but I'm not super religious about doing it yet. Okay. I'm very much a creative personality and I don't like schedules and rules and I like

to do what I want to do, but I have a couple of times in my calendar that are blocked off as monk mode. So what that means is I go completely offline. I go on airplane mode. My sisters will tell you I am the worst at responding to texts ever. And so I'm fully offline and I decide, okay, this is the project that's going to move the needle the most. And I'm going to work on it for five uninterrupted hours. And so I think that is really the key to getting stuff done because a lot of times I know if you've got your inbox open and somebody emails and then, oh, I got to respond to that. And you see an Instagram notification pop up and you're like, oh, got to respond to that. And you just get really pulled in all these different directions. And there's so much research around

task switching and how much time it takes your brain to move from one thing to the next. So I am just super religious about my boundaries. And when I'm working on a project, I'm going to finish that whole thing start to finish in the time slot that I have. Otherwise, it's really not even worth starting because you just end up getting 20 minute chunks done in different projects and being really frustrated that your to-do list is just growing. So true. Yeah. I have it sometimes scheduled into my calendar and don't honor it. So I know I get to get better at that. So this is going to be the kick that I needed because it can be really hard to not get distracted by new things that come in or FOMO or this event or those different things when you know you've got

something to focus on so I definitely admire that and I want to get even stronger with my boundaries because I think they're so incredibly important. So okay you have consulted for Silicon Valley startups, spoken to entrepreneurs at Harvard's Women in Business Conference, and you're a serial entrepreneur. You have a lot to share. And I've seen the results that you get for clients. It is absolutely phenomenal. So we have to talk about your program with Icon Mastermind. The results that you get for clients is absolutely mind blowing. And I know you've been doing this for such a long time that this playbook is so robust. So can you talk a little bit about what you do within the program? Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. Yes, this is my baby. I believe so strongly in helping women create more

spaciousness and ease and freedom in your business. And so what I've done is I've taken everything I've learned in the past several years of creating all different kinds of passive income programs, and I've put it into one playbook. So it's everything that you need to create and scale passive income programs with ease. So whether that's an online course or digital download or a high ticket mastermind or a membership, honestly, most of our clients have a combination of all of the above. So if you have this vision for having a passive income business and really an online business model, this is the place to start. So it's a 90-day mastermind. I really believe in the power of bringing together a lot of really strong women and the power of community. So rather than just kind of learning from an expert, we bring together

a community of high-level entrepreneurs. So not to brag, but the women we work with are really, really cool. And they're just down to earth, running really high-level entrepreneurs. So not to brag, but the women we work with are really, really cool. And they're just down to earth, running really high-level businesses and want to support each other going through the same goal of creating passive income programs. So we bring women together for a really small, intimate cohort for 90 days. And we just sprint, accelerate through everything that you need to start and scale passive income programs. So it's a really amazing opportunity. If you're sitting there and you're like, okay, I've been growing my audience for years. I just don't have a product yet. Or maybe you are just starting growing your audience,

but you've been running a business for a long time and you're really ready to transition from one-on-one to group or scalable programs. This is the perfect place to start. So what we do is we'll take you through the ideation stage where you're going to actually test your ideas, decide what's going to be the most profitable for you. The creation stage, how do you actually decide what's the best way to deliver this product? Is it a digital download? Is it a membership? What does your product suite look like and how do you create it in a way that gives you that freedom and that spaciousness that you crave? And then also giving you all of the resources to optimize it and niche down so that you have not just one six-figure

product, but you can actually rinse and repeat this entire process, have a full suite of products and a business model that you are just obsessed with running. And is there anyone that would not be a good fit for it? Yeah, absolutely. So if you are just getting started in business, you know, at that just starting to get $2,000 to $3,000 of revenue a month, I do think you need to have a really strong understanding of who your ideal client is. So if you're just getting started, I fully recommend just focusing on growing your one-on-one programs and growing your online audience. Because at that point, you really don't have enough data or information to figure out what is that idea that's going to really have that income potential for you. So if you're just getting started in business, I mean, I know BossFu has some amazing programs for that startup to six figures mark

with a society and also IGA for Instagram growth. But we really work with established entrepreneurs, you've been in business a couple years, you have an online audience, whether it's small and engaged of 5,000 or 200,000 plus, but you're really ready to go all in on transitioning from that fully booked one-on-one model or influencer model with ads and sponsored posts to the passive income model with your own products and services. And what about for someone listening who might have kind of one-to-one practice and they're fully maxed out and they're overwhelmed. So the idea of creating something else is just terrifying them and they don't even to your relationships? If you don't make a change right now, you're going to burn out. Your revenue is going to suffer and your relationships suffer. And that's something I can really relate to. When I was in that one-on-one model as a personal trainer and nutritionist, just being so burnt out, exhausted all the time, not getting my own workouts in,

you have to make a change right now to get to where you want to go. That being said, there's so many things we can do in your business right now to make it run smoother. I know it's hard to see when you haven't run a business at a bigger level, but there's so many things we can do to optimize your current practice. And that is always my first thing. Okay. Very first thing we're going to do in our one-on-one strategy session is figure out how we can run the business you're already running more efficiently to free up that time and space for you to start focusing on that next level and what that's going to look like for you. I absolutely love how excited you got saying that. You're like, let's do it. You get it though. It's so easy. It's not easy. When you're in the moment, it feels so overwhelming. But when someone has done it before, I mean, there's a client we worked

with just a couple of months ago. And I remember the first session, she was like, there is no way. I mean, she was like pulling her hair out I literally she told me she literally ran from the parking lot of her practice to her car to get to like her pick up her kids in time like that is how little free time she had in her schedule and within a week and a half she was telling us like she wasn't working weekends anymore she'd completely reorganized her one-to-one model so really when you understand how to do it and our whole team has so much experience running one-on-one practices, it's just these little things you can implement that are completely game-changing. I love that so much. And it's so true. It sometimes just takes someone else to be able

to step out and take a look at your business and see the blind spots that you're not seeing and just support you through that. I know that's something that we've needed a lot of in our business and throughout our business journey. Do you have any kind of testimonials or client success stories that you think people listening to might relate to if they're kind of on the fence like, oh, is this for me? I'm not really sure. Oh my gosh, I have so many. Where to start? I would say I want to tell you kind of two things that I see happen with our clients. So I'm going to give you one example. One of our clients, Megan, she was a dietitian, so also in the health and wellness space. And she was actually working as a virtual assistant, a bartender, and a one-on-one dietitian. So when you're talking

about that person that's fully maxed out on their time, this was her, right? And she really hustled, started creating programs, launching programs, and it did not stick right away. And I love this story because so often people sell their first thing and they're like, well, I didn't make $10,000. So clearly this just isn't for me. But it's really about just listening, pivoting. Like we talked about at the beginning, listening and pivoting. She just kept implementing, listening to feedback, turning around, doing it again, doing it again. She now runs a multiple six-figure business at a really high level with one program, which is so cool. It's one, I think it's $197 or $249. So she's getting over 100, 150 people that are joining her membership program per month, which is just incredible, insane. And so I think

that really speaks to someone who is, obviously she's not bartending or virtual assisting anymore. She does run the business full-time. She's on maternity leave right now and having a beautiful maternity leave with her new baby. So I think that really speaks to someone who is fully maxed out at capacity. If you commit to this dream, you can do this. There's absolutely no failure that can hold you back. By the same token, I have a lot of clients that I've worked with that were like basically sitting on a gold mine. So if this is you listening, you have 20,000, 100,000, 200,000 followers. You have this community you've been building for a long time, but you've only been doing sponsored posts and ad revenue. These are like some of my absolute favorite clients to

work with because their audience is already asking them like, can I buy from you? Can I buy from you? But a lot of times this person is just a little bit overwhelmed with how to get started. Like what's the product that I should create? And so, you know, I'm thinking of like one client in particular, she has a new passive income program. That's just a digital download. I think it's like a $20 digital download that she's already made $20,000 off in quarter three of this year. In addition to her blogging revenue and her ad revenue, that was just a matter of really having support and accountability and someone to say, Hey, we're going to give you deadlines for what to get done. We're going to walk you through exactly what you need to do. And she just implemented everything. And now this is going to be just

like a massive additional revenue stream for her and her business. That really, the very first time she launched it, it was incredible. I think she made over like $18,000 the first time. Oh my God. It was just insane for like a $20 product. I remember there was one day she told me, she was like, I just did an Insta story and I didn't even mean to promote my product. I was just talking about how I used it and I made $5,000 today. And it's like, what? That's incredible. And so I think if that's you listening, either sense, right? You're super maxed out at capacity and you don't even know how you find time. Or you're like, I think that I'm really

onto something. I just don't know where to start. We see just amazing success with both of those kind of people because it's just a proven method. We've rinsed and repeated this so many times in so many different industries. We've worked with an audition and acting coach, photographers, just so many different business, backend operations, Facebook ad specialists, just so many different service providers that I can say with complete confidence, if you're good at what you do, really good at what you do, you're listening and you're like, I know I can help more people. I just don't know how. We're your people. I can so vouch for that. The work that you do is absolutely incredible. And I've seen so many of your success stories and just, I'm in absolute awe. So for anyone listening, if that does feel like a fit for you, we'll put the

info in the show notes below so you can go and check it out or just drop one of us a DM on Insta and we can direct you the right way. Okay, so I could talk to you all day, but I want to round this off by asking you for someone listening who is really wanting to take the leap into either starting a business or go all in scaling the business that they have. What piece of advice would you give them? I would say believe in yourself. You have everything that you need to be able to do this. Keep your head down. Don't focus on what anybody else is thinking or saying or other people's opinions. Just keep your head down and keep your vision close. You have everything that you need to do this and do it in a way that feels really beautiful and authentic and perfect for you. I love it. I was just about

to say amen, but then my friend Libby shared a post where she said, a woman. And I'm like, a woman. That's how I'm feeling right now. So yes, I love it. And also, I know that you've got an amazing freebie. Where can everyone find that? Yes. Okay. So I have a free guide where I walk you through our entire icon process. So ideation, creation, optimization, niche, all the steps that you need to do to create a successful, scalable, passive income program. And you can find that at theiconmastermind.com slash guide. Love it. Thank you so much. And where can everyone find you on Insta, website, all the things? I'm on Insta. Come hang out. Shannon Monson. It's S-H-A-N-N-A-N-M-O-N-S-O-N. I don't know why, because my parents hate me and stuck two A's in there. I don't know. Sell it, right? You'll find

me. And come send me a DM. I would absolutely love to connect with each one of you. I read all of my DMs. I promise I will do my best to send you a voice memo or a note back. If you loved this podcast, I would absolutely love to connect with you and meet you and hear more about your business. Love it. Thank you. If you loved this episode, please subscribe, download a few more, and please leave us a review. I really want to hear what you enjoyed, what your main takeaways were, and I also want to know what you want to hear us talk about next. To say thanks for leaving us a review, we'll send you a copy of The Boss Babe 25. The Boss Babe 25 is the 25 essential resources you need for personal and professional growth.

It covers everything from our favorite rituals, books, and hacks. If you want a copy, just leave us a review, screenshot it, and send to podcast at bossbabe.com. We will then email you a copy ASAP. And since we love Instagram, you can go to the hashtag The Boss Babe Podcast and find our latest post and leave a question in the comments we love reading through the comments and we'll make sure to answer it on our next podcast