EPISODE 128 INTERVIEW WITH KAREN SHANNON: AUTHENTICITY, TRANSPARENCY, AND HEALTHY BOUNDARIES

Erin Marcus:

Hi! I’m Erin Marcus, former corporate executive turned entrepreneur and Founder and CEO of Conquer Your Business. Welcome to the Ready Yet?! Podcast. We’re excited to bring you more than a hundred episodes of interviews and insights designed to help entrepreneurs get the financial and emotional freedom they need in order to build a business and a life they’re proud of.

And we’re live and I’m so excited. So welcome, welcome to this episode of the Ready Yet?! podcast that we’re also live streaming because that’s what we can do now. And I’m really excited to have Karen Shannon with me today because it’s kind of like sister from another mister. Right? We met in a program that we’re both involved in and we’ve just watched each other grow and watched each other’s challenges. And if you were around on her Instagram feed, you saw us acting a fool and sharing the knowledge a couple days ago and we’re continuing that conversation. So, founder of Y Flourish and the Flourishing Female Entrepreneur, why don’t you give everybody a little bit more formal introduction to who you are and what you do? 

Karen Shannon:

I would love to. I was just putting on my super rings. Do you have any of those rituals that you like to do before you get ready? 

Erin Marcus:

Yes. 

Karen Shannon:

Mine was always rings. I don’t know. 

Erin Marcus:

Mine is lip gloss.

Karen Shannon:

Okay. There you go. Much easier to deal with, right? Anyway, so yeah, I’m Karen and I call myself the Experience Rich Coach because I have had four, this is the fifth business and I have sold them each as I’ve grown them as I went along. And I have had so much fun building my empire. My goal is to help other women build their empires. And at this point in my life, I’m not 20 years old, so I’ve seen a lot, done a lot, sold a lot. I came from a nonprofit background, like from my first 10 years of my career is totally nonprofit. So, I do have a heart. Sometimes I think people think we’re in sales and getting people ready for business and we’re just like sort of hard but not brittle. You’re not brittle. We do our businesses a little bit different way. And I think that’s why we have such an affinity for each other. 

Erin Marcus:

Couple things that I’m just going to jump out and say that you’ve already mentioned. So, yes, purpose-driven payday.

Karen Shannon:

Oh, I love that. Did you coin that?

Erin Marcus:

No, I’ve heard it.

Karen Shannon:

Oh, I love that. I’m writing it down right now.

Erin Marcus:

Write it down. Purpose-Driven payday. The more that I put front and center in my world that I volunteered a wildlife rescue and that’s my world, the more I just attract people who also are purpose driven. That doesn’t mean the unfortunate reality of so many people who think if you have a heart driven business, you’re not allowed to make money. The funny example I always use is great. I volunteer on Fridays at a wildlife rescue and over the course of the summer, I take care of a couple hundred baby ducks. It’s a mess. It’s cute. It’s exciting. How many more baby ducks could I help if I had million dollars to give away?

Karen Shannon:

I know. That is the thing. It is about billing a philanthropic silo to a business. Because not only is it giving back in your time and your money, but it also helps you as you all grow, as you all grow your empires and it becomes bigger and bigger. You do need to work with a tax accountant attorney who will help you divert money.

Erin Marcus:

Okay. I love that you said this, and this is the other thing, business minded. Think of it this way, we all have to pay taxes, right? We all pay taxes, that’s fine. We get services in response to those taxes except truthfully live in the State of Illinois, don’t always agree with everything they do, but I wouldn’t agree with everything everybody does in any other state. By having a charitable arm of my business, it gives me a tax deduction. The total amount of money is still the same but now, I have a little bit more of control over where some of that money goes to. 

Karen Shannon:

Uh-hmm, exactly. Yup. 

Erin Marcus:

I’m not trying to avoid sharing and giving in return for the services, but truthfully, if I want a little bit more of my money to go to the causes that mean the most to me. And for me, the second half of that is, I believe true change happens from the ground up, not the top down. And I almost, I’ll say almost, because there’s a few exceptions, I don’t even care what you support. Just make your voice heard, make your money heard, make your participation heard.

Karen Shannon:

You know, it’s interesting because I have a few different degrees and one of them is in community psychology. And that’s all about normative culture, which is about looking at what are the norms that you have in whatever your environment is, whether you’re looking at your business or your family, your relationship. What are the norms? What are the norms, the kinds of behaviors that are working and the kinds of behaviors that don’t? And I look at that you–

Erin Marcus:

You must be having a field day right now.

Karen Shannon:

Yes. And I think about that in business all the time because while things are built from the bottom up, like sort of grassroots, I mean, I worked with Boys and Girls Clubs of America. I had been to the Boys and Girls Clubs in Chicago many times.

Erin Marcus:

That’s awesome. One of my clients is really involved with them here in Chicago. That’s awesome.

Karen Shannon:

Oh, that’s cool. They have a program called Smart Moves, which I actually wrote. I wrote that probably about 20 years ago and they still use that as their prevention curriculum. But anyway, shift to where we are now and I look at as you’re doing your business, we all have in our head that a business has to be done a certain way. And I think what I love most about you, Erin, because you talk the way I speak about things is that your business is the culture, the norms that you decide it is. You make the money, you decide you’re going to make. You have the people around you that you decide to pull in. And we all go through this thing where we hire people and they don’t work out. And a lot of times, like I have always found, because I’ve had huge staff in different positions and I’ve had like a small group of staff in a group. And actually the smaller staff is harder because it’s so hands on compared to large staff. 

Erin Marcus:

The boundaries aren’t so clear.

Karen Shannon:

I know. I don’t want to be friends. In fact, it’s really interesting. I was working with a retailer who is building and just exploding their business and they had hired some people to work with them and kept wondering why do they have so many problems with staff? I’m like, they are not your friends. When you are the head of your own company, they are your colleagues. They are people you want to bring up and help. But at the end of the day, we’re the friends, the colleagues that are at your same level that you can talk to. You can’t talk to your staff about it. You can if you want, but it gets messy. You got people care for that.

Erin Marcus:

Right. And in my world, we’re pretty transparent with each other. But I am always still aware who hears what and how am I showing up as the leader.

Karen Shannon:

That’s key. That is key. You set the tone. We set the tone.

Erin Marcus:

You’re going to laugh. So, you know what I always think of when I think about this? 

Karen Shannon:

What? 

Erin Marcus:

Did you see that Harrison Ford, and was it Anne Heche movie? Six days, seven nights where they get–

Karen Shannon:

No.

Erin Marcus:

Okay. So, bottom line, they’re in a little plane crash, they’re lost on an island. There’s pirates coming after them and she’s all manic and crazy and he’s kind of trying to reassure her that it’s all going to be okay. And she’s like, “Well, how could you say that?” And he goes, “Because no good can come basically of the captain running around with his hair on fire going, we’re all going to die.” You have to remember that in your business. The business will not benefit if the leader of the business is running around with their hair on fire screaming, ‘We’re all going to die.’

Karen Shannon:

You start doing that death spiral when you do that stuff because staff won’t respect you. And that’s the biggest thing.

Erin Marcus;

I’d love to hear your input then, because I’m good at that part. But at the same time, you want to be transparent, authentic, honest. You lying to the team, how many businesses have you seen go down in flames because they weren’t at least slightly honest or transparent with the challenges? And the reason I say this is because sometimes as the leader, we think we’re responsible for a million different things and a hundred percent of everything. When truth is, if you were a little bit honest and transparent, the solution might be right in front of you.

Karen Shannon:

Being a fantastic leader, being a leader in the true sense is not divisible about are you transparent. There’s things to be transparent about that you–I guess, I’d have to hear more about this whole transparency the way you are discussing it. Because for me, I am very straightforward with my clients. I was the woman in college that when we had to do our first personality test going for a psychology degree, the instructor said, “Okay. Somebody here scored really high on the to be a flight attendant.” And I don’t want to know who it is. It was me. Because I really love helping people. I really want to serve and help people. But I do have, and I did get this from working in commercial real estate, I learned how to have boundaries and how to be assertive and do what I needed to do to get something done for somebody because I was representing them. I feel the same way as a leader with my business in coaching or I’m really going to coaching, consulting, mentoring. There’s like different hats we wear depending on what people need. But when we talk about transparency, transparency is a word that I don’t take lightly and I know you don’t either. But to be transparent, because business is tough this month, yes, we are going to have to do more lead gen to make money. To me, that’s being transparent and not covering it up. But am I going to tell them that I didn’t sleep last night because I’m worried about something. 

Erin Marcus:

Right. That’s unloading, right? And I think that’s exactly the balance. 

Karen Shannon:

That’s a good definition. That’s a good division.

Erin Marcus:

And so, my focus is so heavy in marketing, and this is how I describe it, don’t share the trials and tribulations of it until you’ve gone through it. Because otherwise, you’re doing what I call Woe is me marketing. Right? Buy my widget because I need you to help me.

Karen Shannon:

Oh, yeah. No. 

Erin Marcus:

Right? And where I see this happening is in that direct marketing world where they’re literally texting you saying, ‘I need to make my goal.’ Well, what does it have to do with me?

Karen Shannon:

I know. 

Erin Marcus:

So, there’s this fine line, whether it’s leadership, whether marketing between lying, the influencer version of lying. The other end of the spectrum to me is what I call woe is me marketing. And somewhere in the middle there is authenticity, transparency, healthy boundaries, and all the good words.

Karen Shannon:

Well, it’s interesting that you say that. I guess as you were saying that, and I’m such a visual person, that’s why I’m always looking up. If you are into neurolinguistic programming at all, which I was so into early on in my career as a therapist, I was like so into it. So, I’m always looking up. So, if I’m doing that, it’s not a space time. 

Erin Marcus:

I’m reading it in my head. No, I hundred percent agree.

Karen Shannon:

Yes. What you’re talking about, there is a phrase that I have to say, I have never liked this phrase and it has been around since man and woman was born. Right? But the fake it ‘till you make it. I couldn’t stand that. I never liked it. I didn’t like it when I was 15 and running my first daycare in my parents’ backyard who shut me down very quickly. So like, we don’t have insurance for you to do daycare here. To somebody who said to me, just fake it till you make it. I’m like, “No. I will find a mentor to lead me through something, but I’m not going to fake it till I make it.” I mean–

Erin Marcus:

And there’s a difference between and the phrase that I use now to replace that is act as if. Act as if. It’s less about lying and more about aspiration. 

Karen Shannon:

I can see that. I usually will tell people, just be your authentic self. And I guess, not using that phrase, but always saying, think as if I really like that. 

Erin Marcus:

Well, and here’s why. The problem with completely dumping the concept of fake it till you make it or dumping the concept of act as if is the truth of the matter is people draw really hard boundaries and think they don’t know how to do something. Because if they haven’t done something in that very specific way to that very specific person, they’re like, I don’t know how to do that. When the truth of the matter is you have the skills, and at least I know for the people you work with, the people I work with, they have the integrity that they’re not going to do a bad job. So, they don’t need to go to their prospect and say, “Well, I’ve done all this over here, but I haven’t done it over here so I can’t help you.” When the truth of the matter is they will never show up and not do a good job because it’s not who they are. So, act as if it helps you tap into the transferrable skills that you might be ignoring.

Karen Shannon:

A client brought up something like the first time somebody was bringing up because I was never a huge Pinterest person. Because when I did, they didn’t really serve or lend itself to being in that Pinterest area. One of my clients really had it in her head that she wanted to really do Pinterest. And I said, “Listen, I don’t do it. I can find an expert to come in and talk to the group, but I need to find out how many people in here are really interested in Pinterest.” And so, no one else was. So, I said to her, “I’ll tell you what, I’m going to give you a month away from my program. That money, I want you to hire the best Pinterest coach. Coach you can for that month, with the understanding that you’re coming back here, but I want you to go learn it.” And I wanted her, because I knew she was still building her business that wouldn’t really have the funds to do it. So, I said, “You take what you would pay me and go do that.” She’ll be a forever client because I just feel like that’s where you come up with creative ways to help still serve people without, you know, could I have faked it and said, “Oh, yeah, looked it up.” 

Erin Marcus:

Oh, that’s not faking it. That’s just lying. So, in my background, and this became really obvious to me, and I love this topic. It’s extremely, extremely important to know where your job and expertise ends. And in my last business, I worked with families with aging parents and I was surrounded by subject matter experts. And of course, you start to pick things up. I start to pick up the fact that in older humans, and truthfully in dogs do, but that’s okay, UTIs will manifest as dementia. It’s really weird. Like I learned this. That did not mean I had any business telling one of my clients, “Oh, maybe your mom just has a UTI.” Like I knew I had learned a nugget, but my knowledge wasn’t there. Right? Where does your knowledge end? Where does your job end? And knowing those boundaries and referring people out, whether or not you give them a month off or not, one, it creates the relationship, like you said, with your client who will forever appreciate how you helped her. Two, it creates a relationship with the referral source. Three, it’s the integrity piece. You can tell, and this goes back to something you said when you introduced yourself. I’ve been around the block, I’ve done this, I’ve done this, I’ve done this. And there are so many people out there trying to sell you something they’ve never done or have enough experience with to break down the pieces into how to actually do it. Right? They’re parroting a list of tasks that someone should do. I have an integrity issue with that. You don’t always have to have done the exact thing. So, for example, there’s great basketball coaches out there who’ve never been a basketball star. I get that. But the experience is there.

Karen Shannon:

They studied performance. They studied these different areas that create that business. Right? It’s like even with my clients that work with me, my whole premise and this is why I like the program we’re in for a higher level looking at business and such, we need to all be in a place where we’re constantly learning. That’s how I feel. Constantly learning. And does that mean I’m an expert in everything? No, but I know when I’m not an expert in something and when I need to find help for somebody in that or I know when it’s more of a strategy where I can help think through the strategy. You just have to figure out the tactical piece.

Erin Marcus:

The implementation, right.

Karen Shannon:

You have to go find that. Yeah.

Erin Marcus:

I did. I finally did my strength finders and learner was my second.

Karen Shannon:

Second, yes. I think we were just talking about that last time too. 

Erin Marcus:

I hope you’re enjoying this episode of the Ready Yet?! Podcast. If you’re an entrepreneur or small business owner looking for a proven process to help you get either a specific offer or your entire business past that six-figure mark, join us for Six Steps to Six Figures. An online live event starting on November 28th. We’re going to get right to the point in an hour a day with strategies you can implement immediately for rapid results. Check out conqueryourbusiness.com for more information. See you there. 

So, I want to switch gears a little bit with you because I think the other thing you have that can benefit people is a little bit more of your personal journey. Oh. So I love how you said, I’ve done all these businesses, it’s been fun. I’ve grown them, I’ve sold them. And so many people are like, I’m trying to just do one. Right?

Karen Shannon:

Yes. Listen. Yeah.

Erin Marcus:

So, if we were to lesson people’s learning curves, shorten people’s learning curves, like what have you learned you could either say, do this or don’t do that that could help people? Like you’ve had serial successes, that doesn’t mean you’d have not also had failures. But what’s been some of the keys to it? If you were going to shorten someone’s learning curve and just say, “Just go do this.”

Karen Shannon:

I think it’s digging in and knowing that you truly do have the confidence and the intelligence to do what you want to do unless there’s some other thing you’re dealing with. But for me, what I found is as I made decisions to leave one thing and do another, it was because I felt like I had mastered it. I’m always looking. And it’s probably a problem. I probably should go for trauma fair before, I have no idea. But I’m always looking for something else that will sort of keep me excited and keep me really into it.

Erin Marcus:

There’s truth to that because if you’re not excited about it, there’s not enough motivation to do it when it’s hard.

Karen Shannon:

That’s when you’re just clocking in and clocking out of a job, you’re getting your paycheck and waiting for the weekend. I never wanted to have a life like that. And I think it’s because my mom was a loan officer with the credit union. We were middle class loan officer with the credit union. My father, he owned a Pepsi truck. So, he had his own business then he was an executive with Pepsi. Hated it. And went back to being a boiler maker, which he was when he was a teenager. He did that at age 45 because he hated all the corporate stuff. So, I saw my dad just sort of do these things as he liked them and that was his thing. So, I think that for me, what happened is when I first, I grew up in Buffalo. Here’s the thing. There’s going to be a real aha moment in your life that sort of defines you. What mine was, as I look back, I was in Buffalo and I had been working with the school system there developing a peer counseling program. So, my background really is in psychology and counseling, all that stuff. And it became a program that became like an award-winning thing in New York State. So, Boys and Girls Clubs of America came and asked me, would I want to come and apply that nationally? I had only been out of graduate school for like a year. I was like just trying to figure stuff out and talking to all these like–

Erin Marcus:

What’s this whole adulting thing? 

Karen Shannon:

Yeah. But I moved to New York and when I moved to New York and I saw the different kinds of jobs you could get, the people owning businesses, it just wasn’t like that where I was from. It was more middle class. You were a teacher, you were a policeman, it was that. Nothing wrong with that at all. But when I moved to New York, and I saw there is this whole other world that you can do things. It just made me look at, I could write a play, I could write a novel, I could take over on so many different things happened there. 

Erin Marcus:

That’s right. And I totally agree with you. And I think one of the benefits that I had growing up and it was very blue collar, middle class, but I also grew up with people from 22 different countries.

Karen Shannon:

Oh, yeah.

Erin Marcus:

So, growing up in the public school system in Chicago in the 70s and 80s, during the immigration waves, every year was an influx of people who didn’t speak English, had a completely different culture and we all just figured out how to get along. And you learn people are just people. And then to your point, I followed the path. I followed the path. I got a job, I got the next job. I did good. I got the next job. 

Karen Shannon:

And there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s fine. 

Erin Marcus:

No, but If you don’t have ways to broaden your horizons, you don’t get to know what’s possible.

Karen Shannon:

Right. You don’t know what you don’t know. That’s why I think it’s so important to be, you know, curiosity did not kill the cat. Curiosity gave the cat its nine lives. When you ask what are the biggest things, I get distracted, please pull me back. I love telling stories.

Erin Marcus:

You’re asking the wrong person to help you do that.

Karen Shannon:

If I could say the top three things to consider, like in terms of making change in how you do that without having total angst because I’ll tell you, even when you make a change, it’s like you have the day after I quit a job and I’m starting a business, I do have a little bit of buyer’s remorse. Like, I bought this new life. What the hell am I doing? I always have that moment. I can count on that. But that’s what inspires me. It’s like, okay. I have that sort of day like oh my God. And then I go like, okay, so this is what I’m going to do and then I start putting the pieces in place. So, I think it’s realizing–

Erin Marcus:

You don’t let it stop you. You just have it and you keep going. 

Karen Shannon:

No. You push through it. It’s part of the system. It’s part of my system. I know what I’m like, I know I go through these things.

Erin Marcus:

If I’m nothing, if not self-aware. 

Karen Shannon:

So, I think the biggest thing is to acknowledge that when you make a change in your life and don’t be afraid to make the change. What is the worst thing that happens? You go back to a job or that kind of life. And I say that kind of life, because for me it just sort of kills me. Like, ah, you know? 

Erin Marcus:

You’re not going to die.

Karen Shannon:

No. You’re not going to die. 

Erin Marcus:

I don’t know if you saw, I posted yesterday, I’m obsessed with this concept right now. The difference between scary and dangerous.

Karen Shannon:

Oh, yeah. Right. And how you post, but I get it. 

Erin Marcus:

We do so much every day that’s technically kind of dangerous. And yet, we stop ourselves from doing something that feels scary but doesn’t actually pose a risk.

Karen Shannon:

Right. Right. I like that. I think that’s one of the things. I think the second thing is if you don’t feel like you’ve got the confidence to really make a big change in your life, you need to have people around you that will help you learn how to be more confident because it is there. You just got messages somewhere along the way. It’s there. And don’t let your life be small because you’re keeping it small.

Erin Marcus:

And I love that you said that. I just wrote this for an event that I’m doing tomorrow. We learn to limit ourselves. We learn to not have confidence. And the way you can easily prove this is the entity, the being with the most confidence, demanding the most things, our children. They have no limits on what they demand. 

Karen Shannon:

They didn’t learn to not to do that. 

Erin Marcus:

So, we learn not to do it, which means we can learn to like do it a little bit again.

Karen Shannon:

Exactly. And I think the third thing is to really know that money does a lot. I will say money does a lot to make your life a little easier. But it really does not make everything happy, cheery, Cinderella with the little bird things, it doesn’t. You still have to love what you do because you can be making a ton of–I have friends who did careers because they made so much money, they couldn’t wait to retire. I have friends that have retired at the age of 40 and 50 and they’re like, “Oh, how long do you think you’re going to retire?” And I’m like, from what? My life? This is weird. 

Erin Marcus:

I have the same thing. Like what do you mean retire? Why would I not do what I want to do?

Karen Shannon:

Yes. And you’re going to find, this is probably the fourth thing, you’re going to leave people behind as you go. Because as you grow and as you do your business, your solid friends who understand who you are and what drives you and you understand them and what drives them will be with you all of your life. But there are people, as I became more successful with the things that I’ve done, people don’t like it. It’s a weird thing. You will go through people and not to be afraid of that. It is okay. You will find new tribes as you go that support you.

Erin Marcus:

And what I said to a friend of mine a year ago, a year and a half ago was I’m like, oh my God, I feel like I have no friends because the people who saw me moving past their level of struggle, no longer wanted to talk to me. And the people who really, really made it, I wasn’t good enough. But you go through those phases and I don’t think it has to be traumatic as all that. You don’t have to go through a big verbal blowout breakup, but some of it is not.

Karen Shannon:

You can if you want. You get some kind of weird thing out of that. 

Erin Marcus:

Right. But truthfully, people fall off, new people come in. But what I’ve done with that is try to be massively intentional about the people I’m seeking out. Because on the other end, it just kind of happens natural naturally for me. They come and they go and they come and they go. But who are you actively seeking to be in the room with? It takes a little going back to your confidence, it takes a little bit of confidence. It takes a little bit of pull your up by, put on your big girl panties.

Karen Shannon:

It takes a lot of big girl panties stuff actually.

Erin Marcus:

But walking in a room where you’re the little fish and then just keep walking into those rooms.

Karen Shannon:

Yeah. It’s really interesting because at one point I was telling women I was working with like it doesn’t matter if you’re wearing flats or stilettos. The stilettos are going to get much more attention if you’re walking into a room that way. But when you’re walking up that hill, it doesn’t really matter, whatever is most comfortable to you. What matters to me is going up that hill. And it’s not like a constant, like going uphill to me. It’s like a joyful run up the hill. 

Erin Marcus:

And you get to choose that. You get to choose when you feel about something.

Karen Shannon:

I know. We are so fortunate. Yes. 

Erin Marcus:

You get to choose how you feel. You get to choose your opinion. There’s no default as long as you do it with intention. I had a time in my business, not too long ago, don’t tell anyone that I was completely overwhelmed all the time by my calendar. And I was in absolute reaction mode to how busy I was. And I was letting it do all sorts of terrible things to me. And now, every single day, I look at my calendar and I literally say out loud, ‘Oh my God, this is going to be a great day. Look at all the things I get to do. This is going to be a great day. Look at all the breaks I get to have,’ whatever it is. I tell myself what a great, perfect day it’s going to be every morning as I’m looking at my calendar so that I can choose how I feel going into the day.

Karen Shannon:

You know, Erin, I think the biggest thing you just said now is something I always hit home with my clients and I always want to know what it is they’re doing with it and my friends too, that routine that we set up for ourselves in the morning is gold. And without that morning routine of, look, I know that I need an hour and a half in the mornings to myself. And if I decide to get up late and I’m rushing, it is the worst day. 

Erin Marcus:

No, I understand.

Karen Shannon:

I mean, I don’t have children. There’s other things that people have to do and I understand that totally. But for me, I’ve this life that I’ve sort created and I’m not saying everything’s perfect, it never is. It’s not like that. But the thing is, there’s so much more good than there is stuff that’s not the perfect thing.

Erin Marcus:

Paying attention. And the way that I describe pretty much everything you’ve talked about as we wrap this up.

Karen Shannon:

Is it time to wrap up already? My goodness.

Erin Marcus:

I mean, you and I could talk. And so, here’s the thing, for those of you who are listening, we talk in circles. We go in a lot of different directions. But if you’re paying attention, there’s all sorts of nuggets in there. And the way that I would wrap this up, and then I want to give you an opportunity to make sure people know how to get ahold of you, the way I wrap it up as I describe it, you cannot live in reaction mode. You cannot live, right? Reaction mode is not a sustainable business model. It’s not a sustainable life model.

Karen Shannon:

It’s exhausting.

Erin Marcus:

It’s exhausting. You feel completely out of control of your world. So, what do you need to do? What can you look at in your space and either choose to have a different perspective or take that other action that gets you out of reaction mode so that you can be more intentional. And it changes everything.

Karen Shannon:

It really does because you know what? It is not going to be perfect every day. I’m not going to have my perfect routine. I try to do it. You try, not even try, but I know I do do it. But you’re right, it is not just reacting. I’m always saying don’t do a knee-jerk reaction. It is like you’ll make the worst decision. It won’t matter.

Erin Marcus:

And don’t not do the thing just because it’s not perfect. I avoided a morning routine because for so long, because I was being inundated with, well your brain waves are this at this time and you have to do this at that time. And I’m like, my life, I don’t have kids, but I had a puppy at the time. My life was ruled for potty training, puppy training. So, I avoided doing–

Karen Shannon:

Oh, you chose that. But that was special to you.

Erin Marcus:

And so, what I finally did was, it doesn’t matter if it’s perfect neuroscience. What matters is that it happens and it gets better and better and better. And I still laugh because to this day, I do my morning routine with the puppy and with the coffee. He’s five now and he’s 75 pounds. But literally, during the commercials of reruns of NCIS Los Angeles.

Karen Shannon:

I love it. 

Erin Marcus:

This is not what they would teach you to do, but it works really freaking well for me.

Karen Shannon:

That’s sets the tone for your day. That’s your love. 

Erin Marcus:

Senseless violence to bring down–an LL Cool J. I mean, it is what it is. Right? All right. So, with that, if people want to continue this conversation with you, learn how you can help them, learn what you do, learn about Karen in general, what’s the easiest way for them to reach out to you?

Karen Shannon:

I think go to my website, Yflourish. So, it’s the letter Yflourish.com And on there, you can get ahold of me. In fact, I’ve just put in a sales audit on that site. And the sales audit, if you guys want it, I would love for you to take a look at it, Erin, see what you think. I’d love your feedback.

Erin Marcus:

I will. 

Karen Shannon:

But it’s really about the behaviors around how to do sales. Like how are you nurturing your clients? It’s about, you’re going to be very surprised with what it looks like. But I would invite everybody to take a look at that because sales are usually the hardest part of our business or my clients’ business, for sure. So, Yflourish.com would be awesome.

Erin Marcus:

Perfect. Thank you for your time, your stories, your insights, your experience, your power rings.

Karen Shannon:

Thank you. My power rings, yes. 

Erin Marcus:

Awesome. Thank you.

Karen Shannon:

Thanks, Erin. 

Erin Marcus:

I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Ready Yet?! podcast. I truly enjoy bringing these stories of success and inspiration to you. Please join us in our mission to empower entrepreneurs to be in charge of their businesses and in charge of their lives. By sharing this with anyone you know who would benefit from our tactical and motivating advice, leaving us a review and letting us know if there are any particular topics you would really appreciate hearing about. See you next time.