Can You Start a Business Debt Free? These Besties Did! - feat. Shana & Vanessa S4E55

Discover the unexpected journey of two best friends turned financial coaches who went from being firefighters, construction workers, and pest control workers to successful entrepreneurs. What started as a $307 paycheck for a whole month turned into a debt-free business journey full of mistakes, learning, and triumphs. Learn how they navigated financial coaching, entrepreneurship, and the importance of taking action. Tune in to their story on the Discovering Your Calling podcast and get ready to be inspired to take the first step in your own entrepreneurial journey.

"Give yourself permission to be a beginner and just do something different. The next step that you take may not have anything to do with what you're doing five years from now. But that first step is so pivotal that it changes the trajectory. "- Shana

Meet Shana and Vanessa, the dynamic duo behind Financial Coaching for Women. As best friends turned business partners, they bring a unique blend of personal connection and financial expertise to the table. With a solid five years of experience and training from the esteemed Dave Ramsey, they have honed their skills in crafting customized budgets and establishing efficient financial systems. Their approach is all about breaking down the barriers and stigma associated with money talk, offering a judgment-free, practical, and simplified way to manage finances. Their journey from friendship to business success is not only inspiring but also a testament to the power of collaboration and shared passion.

Connect with Shana & Vanessa:
Website: myidealbalance.com
Free offer:  49 Smart Money Moves
Financial Coaching for Women Podcast

Transcript

00:00:00
Our guests today are Shana and Vanessa. And they are best friends, business partners, and financial coaches known for creating a friend zone to talk about money and budgets. Backed by five years of hands on experience as financial coaches and training by Dave Ramsey, Shana and Vanessa have guided thousands of people all over the world, crafted what feels like 1 million budgets and honed their own unique systems. Their advice stands out because it's non judgmental, straightforward, and breaks down complex financial concepts into simple, actionable steps that automate your finances. And what's cool about our conversation today is you will hear all of that come through in this team.

00:00:41
And we talked a lot about entrepreneurship and how to start a business without debt. Who's excited about that? Let's dive into this conversation today.

00:00:55
Welcome to the discovering your calling podcast. I'm your host, Sheri Miter. I'm here to help you unleash your strengths and get clarity on your calling. I believe when you find your purpose in life, fulfillment, joy and success will follow. If you're ready, pop in those earbuds, hit that follow button, and join me on this journey toward discovering your calling.

00:01:19
Welcome to the discovering your calling podcast. Shana and Vanessa, I am really, really thrilled to have this conversation. As we were just talking earlier, it's been a long time since I had anybody on, if ever, talking about money, and that is not my forte. I wish it was. So I'm really excited to hear what you have to share.

00:01:42
But before we jump into that, I know you have a unique story, so if you want to just say hello first and kind of give a quick introduction, and then we'll go back to the story that brought you together. Well, first of all, I want to say that we're not surprised that you haven't had somebody on to talk about money because it seems to be a little taboo. And kind of our mission is to take the shame out of that, the whole talk, the whole money seeing conversation scene. So that is definitely not surprising to us. I'm Shana.

00:02:10
And I'm Vanessa. And our podcast is financial coaching for women. So our goal is to help people learn how to manage their money, learn how to organize, how to systemize their finances. We have a lot of people that come to us and say, I have a lot of money, but I have nothing thing to show for it. And it goes out just as fast as it comes in.

00:02:26
Right? So we are really trying to help them change that. Yep. I love that. I love your mission, and it is something that I think is taboo and I don't know I'm sure there's a whole psychology behind why, but there's so many things.

00:02:40
But we're going to break that today and we'll dive into that. But I also know you guys have a unique story of just how your business started. And one of the things I love to do on this show is just share other success stories of where somebody started and how they grew their business so that somebody can be inspired and maybe hear the things that could have stopped you or the fears or the doubts that we all have as we're building a business, starting it, building it, through it, it never goes away. Just inspire people. And you promised me that it was going to be a little funny, too.

00:03:18
Yeah, I'll go in how we met. Go ahead. Oh, I was just gonna say before I jump in, though, because I know Shana did do her, has done her strengths in the past. So I thought it would be kind of fun just to mention briefly your top five. And I'm just going to share the one, you know, the one liner description of it so that myself and you guys and the listeners can kind of pick the clues up as we go along.

00:03:42
Like, oh, yeah, there's Shana's communication. There's Shana's activator. I think it's just going to be. And Shada, you can't help it. Like, the things with strengths, it's how you naturally think, feel and behave.

00:03:52
So we can't not express. Oh, I know. Yeah. I may not. I may not have felt ever as seen as I, as I did feel when I read these and I didn't even know some of these words and I was like, oh, yeah, this is so.

00:04:05
Totally makes sense. So, yeah, my number, do you guys want me to list them or. We're going to go one for one. Let's do one. One for one.

00:04:12
So. Well, the number one thing that I have is communication. My number one strength, supposedly. Like, I'm actually very good with writing and different stuff, but sometimes actually communicating with humans doesn't. Isn't as good.

00:04:23
But getting across ideas is definitely my thing. Yeah. And like the Gallup one liner definition, just as people exceptionally talented and communication theme generally find it easy to put their thoughts into words, they are good conversationalists and presenters. That's very, very true about Jaina. Yeah.

00:04:42
Yeah. My degree's in journalism, so we're not, none of us are surprised. My next one was activator, which I was. I was really happy to find that out because it made a lot of sense for me, too. Yep.

00:04:53
And that's the cool thing, I think, with strengths is that it was like, oh, that makes sense. That's why I love this. This is why I do that. It just kind of normalizes what the way we are. So people exceptionally talented in the activator theme can make things happen by turning thoughts into action.

00:05:09
They want to do things now rather than simply talk about them. And, you know, I'm curious, like I said, as we go through the story to see where that has played, you know, if that was the reason. Because without activators in our lives, sometimes we can come up with a lot of great ideas, but they never get into action, they never formulate, so. Absolutely. Yeah.

00:05:30
You hear that a lot in life is people, they think about a lot of stuff, and then they just don't do anything about it. Right. And so her gift is to put that into play. Like, let's, like, actually make this happen. Yes, absolutely.

00:05:42
Another one that I did know I already had. This was positivity, for better or worse. Maybe too much sometimes, but I'm always going to look on the bright side. Yeah. Yeah.

00:05:52
And, you know, people with high positivity have a contagious enthusiasm. They are upbeat and can get others excited about what they are going to do. Yeah. My. My life motto is I'm so excited, and my family will.

00:06:09
Will attest to that. So. I love it. I love it. All right.

00:06:13
And the next one is. Oh, yeah. So. And I also have input. Vanessa loves this input.

00:06:19
Send her about 30,000. I listen to 30 podcasts a day, and I send them to her. And I'm like, you don't have to listen to this one. But. And I really have, over the years since we've been business partners and we're best friends, is I try to be careful about the ones I sent.

00:06:31
Like, this is the one. Don't send ten. Send one. Send one. And I love to read.

00:06:36
I love to all the things absorb, and I actually feel like I know it's dopamine. I feel weird if I'm not doing that. So. Yeah, and you explained input beautifully, but just for the, you know, anybody listening wants a little more information. It's just they are characterized.

00:06:52
I'm sorry, wrong one. Have a need to collect an archive. They may accumulate information, ideas, artifacts, or even relationships. So, yes, they are the ones that have that file, that are. They're your friends that are always sending you something to read, something to listen to.

00:07:09
Yeah. Yes, that's me. Yeah. So. And she's like, my.

00:07:12
My own encyclopedia. I'm a curator. I'm a curator, yes. You don't have to do anything. Just.

00:07:17
Just look and read what I send you. It's so much easier. And then the last one I have is woo, which I didn't even know what this was until I, you know, when I read strings finder, which was winning over others or winning others over, whichever way it goes, and. Yeah. So I'm sure they can define it better.

00:07:32
But, yeah, the winning others over is because it's not like the woo woo today. We think it's more this, you know, not spiritual, I guess, realm, but, yeah, winning others over is what it is. They love the challenge of meeting new people and winning them over. They derive satisfaction from breaking the ice and making a connection with someone. My husband's high, and I always say he wants everybody to like him.

00:07:54
He wants to be friends with everybody and everybody's good friend. My mom said she'll tell you the number one thing she told me growing up was, not everyone has to be your friend. I'm like, mom, but are you sure? Yeah, but they do. They do, right?

00:08:06
But they really do. Yeah. So when Shana asked me, she's like, can you send me your strength finders? I was like, girl, I took that test so long ago, and I don't have the results, but it's so interesting because we do have. There are certain things about us that are exactly the same, and there are certain things about us that are very, very different on purpose.

00:08:22
And that's why I really, you know, when we were brought together to do this business, it so works because we are telepathically. Telepathically connected in so many ways and in other ways, it's so different, but that's what makes it work so well, and that's needed. Like, you want. You want to share. Share enough to where there's.

00:08:38
You're all on the same page all the time, but be able to. With the stuff that you don't share, be able to compliment, because if. If she collected things the way I did, we would not. She would. We wouldn't have any Google Drive space left, so.

00:08:49
Or you get stuck in just collecting ideas and you don't implement, you know? So. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good advice. That I think it is.

00:08:57
And that's why I think having the strengths. And you can always go back, Vanessa. I have the report. I know I have it. I just have to find it.

00:09:04
Yeah, yeah. If you go to Gallup, like Gallup.com and anybody listening that is in that, because I hear that all the time, like, I know I took it, but I have no idea. You can go in and if you remember the email you took it under, you can do that and then do the password. If you don't, just tell Gallup. They'll help you find it.

00:09:22
Wow, that's nice. Yeah. Honestly, to plug that, they have so many different reports that they. I don't know if you get them off or whichever, but it's. It really helps.

00:09:32
It really does give you a lot of information to really work with. It's not just like a personality test buy, you know, or whatever. No, it's so much more. And especially, like, it's great as individuals, for sure, but definitely when you're in any type of relationship, whether it be work, personal, whatever, knowing each other's strengths and respecting them, which I love to hear, you know, Vanessa's opinion on Shana. Like, I can hear the respect there, like, and sometimes we can get annoyed with each other's strengths.

00:10:02
But there's. As long as there's that, there is that some level of respect, then it becomes a beautiful partnership that you understand why they're doing that thing rather than getting that they're doing that. And the self awareness is really important, too. Like, so me knowing after so many years together to. That she doesn't want to be an activator.

00:10:21
She would like to think about it for a second. Shana, like, think we. It's okay if we pause, think, pray, reflect, make a plan, and then go. So that's where, like, especially as a partnership. So, you know, jumping into our story, we heard, you know, a lot of people were like, partnerships are a bad idea.

00:10:39
Don't do that. That's not a great plan. But this has all been paid by God. So we. We know that he has walked through this all with us, but believe us, we are.

00:10:48
I'm an only child. She has one older brother. We have learned a lot about being women, being friends, being business partners, being strong women. Yeah. Very strong type a personalities, each of us.

00:11:00
And so bringing that into a business took. Had a learning curve a little bit. Yeah. Because all. And, you know, to some of the.

00:11:07
Some of the audience and the fears and stuff, entrepreneurship is quite a ride. It is so good, you know, if you want to grow as a human, become an entrepreneur, because you will have no choice. But so doing that, like, all of the highs and lows of entrepreneurship, but then also the good thing is having a partner to do that with is really great. But then sometimes having a partner to do that with can be very can be challenging in some ways. And so we've been able to grow.

00:11:30
Through that as well. Yeah. It can definitely make you grow in areas that you didn't think you had to grow. And it, you know, like me pulling her out of her comfort zone and vice versa, it really allows us to just level up together along the way. And it's.

00:11:43
It's been a really awesome journey. Yeah, I love that. To level up together. What a beautiful thing. And to have a partner that does that for you.

00:11:52
Yeah. And that wants to. I. We've heard a lot of different partnership where one person has a lot of ideas and wants to keep moving and one person's ready to keep. Keep right here.

00:12:00
And like I said, God did this. So we don't take any credit, but we're right here. Like, you know, Dave Ramsey, who, by the way, we've been trained by Dave Ramsey. We are financial coaches, all of that kind of stuff. He says thoroughbreds run with thoroughbreds.

00:12:11
And that's where, I mean, not to. Not to call ourselves horses, but that's what we feel like we're, we're. We're challenging each other and trying to run. We're running at the same pace, which is really fun and awesome. But let's go back to where it all started, Sheri, because.

00:12:25
Yes, I was going to say, yeah, I want to hear the story of how did this all come together? That is such a fun. It's a fun story. Okay. So our boys were in VPK together and they were four years old and Shana had just moved into town.

00:12:36
I have lived here since I was seven, but I started working out at the YMCA and we were in a workout class together. And she said, anyone go to a church? I need a church to go to. I just moved here and I said, hey, I just went to a new church. Come with me next week.

00:12:49
And literally our friendship blossomed from there. And I'm not going to miss the part. No, no. I have a new part because just to give you a glimpse, if we're trying to preview and if you're trying to think about Clifton strengths finders, I think within two weeks of joining the church, we had signed up to lead. Be the leader.

00:13:05
Lead a group together. Lead a group. So our kids became instant Ben's friends. Yeah. So a little foreshadowing that, you know, that was the first, you know, month of being friends.

00:13:16
We're going to conquer the world together. So, you know, as our friendship blossoms, she gave me a book that was called Total Money makeover by Dave Ramsey. And she said, hey, I, my husband and I read this. He said, we're doing it all. So here, do you want to read it?

00:13:29
I love finances. I'm very financially wired. And so it was really interesting to me and let me go back and say, I don't love to read. Okay. I was that kid in school that struggled with reading.

00:13:37
I didn't love to read it and, like, anything to do with it. So I think I gobbled this book up in a week. It was really awesome for me. So I took that, and I took a vacation with my kids to Portugal with my grandmother for three months. And she said, you know, come be here.

00:13:52
You're never going to do this again. I quit my job. I went. We had such a wonderful time, and it really allowed me to figure out who I was and what I wanted in life and what was important to me. And at the time, we were living like the Vanessa, or we were trying to keep up with the Vanessa.

00:14:03
We bought the big house. We got married, bought the big house, bought all the things that rooms to go, bed, bath and beyond. We loaded up our credit cards. We had a car payment. It was just.

00:14:10
It was a lot. Right? And so, anyways, that took reading. That book changed my life. Yeah.

00:14:15
And I want to pause Vanessa to say, the house that her and the two kids stayed in with grandma, was it one room? It was a little bitty. We were just upstairs, basically in a studio. So people hear her say something like, I went to Portugal with my grandparents, and you're like, hair flip, you know? But really, she was living the size.

00:14:34
Of my living room, a small, very. Family oriented, downsized life over there. And then, so when you come back to the America sized house, that's kind of the way that that all went down. Yeah. And so I will tell you, I came back and my suitcases stayed packed for, like, three months, and I told my husband, why do we have all this stuff?

00:14:50
What is all of this? Why do, what do we need it for? And, you know, we came back down, downsize. We sold the house, and we moved into our little, I call it my little bungalow. It brings me so much joy.

00:15:00
And we were happy. And three years later, we paid it off. So it's mortgage free and debt free at 31. And, you know, God gave me this vision and said, you're going to start your business mortgage free and debt free. And at that time, I was 28.

00:15:12
And I remember laughing, going, how do you do that? I'm literally a child, and you're giving me this vision, and I don't know how to. I don't know how that all works. And we'll come to find out. It was just math.

00:15:23
I love math. So I thought, I can do. I can conquer this. I can do this. So we did the thing.

00:15:28
We paid it off. And I remember walking around my house, and I was a really. I was in a really dark place with work, and I remember, you know, walking around my house. I was crying a lot during that time. And I had my palms up and I said, okay, God, I did the thing.

00:15:38
I'm an a plus student. What am I supposed to do with this? And literally that week, Shana texted me and she said, I'm moving back home because they had moved away during that time. They were military. And she said, I need you to get your financial coaching certification, and we're going to do this thing together.

00:15:52
And I thought, okay, God, that is a very clear sign. It's the only one. I like shippers. Yes. I can do that.

00:15:59
Right? So that is how our business started in 2019. Wow. I love that. And I love the downsides piece because I was just having a conversation with somebody recently.

00:16:10
It seems to be a thing that's at least in my life. I feel like it's more and more prevalent. And I know for my husband and I, I mean, we just. We did the ultimate downsize. We moved onto a 42 foot boat and lived for seven months, so.

00:16:24
And I can't imagine now going back, like, we've been looking at houses and I'm looking at, like, these ginormous walk in closets and it like, oh, I don't want that. Like, it makes me sick to my stomach almost to think, like, I don't want that because I know what happens when you have it. You fill it with the stomach. Like you said. That's our joy.

00:16:46
It really does. You know, when people ask me, you know, when my husband shared the story at work with other men, they were like, no, you should take that money and put it in investment. You can make so much more and long term. And for me, for us, it wasn't about the money. It was about security.

00:17:00
It was about knowing that if we paid off the house, nobody could ever take that from us. As long as you pay property taxes, right, it's yours forever. And for us, it was literally about knowing that that house was going to be ours and nothing, nothing, no one could ever come and take it away. Foreclosure, none of that stuff. So.

00:17:17
And I love knowing, like, we had the big house my husband was literally working. We were house poor. So we were, whether it was me cleaning all the time or putting stuff away, taking care of it, the electricity bill, the mortgage, all of that, it was, I really felt like we were house poor and I wanted to break free from that. I wanted him at any point to know that he could walk away from his job and we would be okay. Wow, what a gift.

00:17:38
What a gift to give somebody, to know that, to have that freedom, to live that way. It takes so much stress off of the way we think we need to live, right? Society to live. Our journey was maybe the opposite. So we both joined the air force when we were 18, and we were immediately solvent and told where to live.

00:18:00
Right? So we were financially secure and told where to live. Now, there's a lot of mistakes that every young person can make with debt, but we never, we didn't ever buy a house until we were in our thirties and we knew where we were going to be and all that kind of stuff. But we did watch other people do that. We did watch all of our friends get all these mortgages and then trying to figure out when the housing bubble bust and all of this, and we were over here living in a quadplex, you know, with our kids, you know, and just, just living.

00:18:25
We never had a lot of debt. We did have vehicle debt, but we never, we always lived within our means. And so when, when she says, my husband said, well, we already do this. And I was like, yeah, but we have a car payment. But really, we, we had a different journey.

00:18:40
We had to figure out how to stop spending. Like, yes, you're not going, you're living under your means, you're not going into debt, but you can do more. You can be better with your money and you can feel better about it. And especially, really, God got us ready for when we were going to make more money because he's not going to give us more money to manage if we can't do a great job with it right now. And when or, and then also in our marriage, we went from two incomes to one, which I know a lot of people, a lot of people, when they are thinking about leaving a job or whatever, that's one of the struggles.

00:19:08
It's like, well, how am I going to live out of a one income? And it can be really scary. And that's what, when we've been talking lately about throwing a temper tantrum, I threw a temper tantrum when I thought my, my dream or I thought my life plan was to be in the military for 20 years, like everyone had done before me and be this amazing person. And that was that. Retired from the military, and God said, oh, no, you're getting out to have your family, and your going to be at home with your family.

00:19:33
And I said, what are you talking about? That sounds like the worst nightmare for 18 year old Shana. Right? And so I threw a little fit, but I did it anyway. And then, of course, you know, everything was amazing.

00:19:43
God laid all of it out, and everything just continued to. I grew so much as a human, and that. But that income break, there was moments where, you know, I remember my husband, he had a tdy, so he had to go to Hawaii. So. Sorry, he had to go to Hawaii.

00:20:00
And I had to stay in Alaska. In winter with my son, and I couldn't even leave the house, so that was fine. And he had a $100. It was the whole dollars that we could send him there for a month. Yep, a month.

00:20:14
And it was like, good luck. I hope you. So, anyway, so all of this, like, background with finances is coming into play. And then I started to, you know, do this entrepreneurship because I wanted to be able to contribute, be able to use my brain a little differently than just what I was doing with my mom brain. So I went through a series of different entrepreneurial things, we'll put it that way.

00:20:35
And then eventually realize that, you know, a lot of it. A lot of the things that I was doing would really just come back to finances. And for me, the part that I saw that really bothered me and tugged at my heart the most was the relationships, marriage, and money, the difficulty, the friction that could happen. And my husband and I overcame that together, coming from two different lifestyles, two different, you know, when you grow up. We overcame that.

00:21:01
Vanessa has, like. Like she said, she's financially wired. She just thinks in the. In that way. And so it was just, you know, made so much sense for us to come together and do this.

00:21:10
But you better believe, having done our Dave Ramsey journey separately, we got trained by Dave Ramsey separately, and then we brought everything, all of our life experiences, everything together. You better believe we built this business debt free. Yeah, because. And that's what was, like, the whole mission when. When.

00:21:25
As soon as I put my hands up and I said, okay, God, what am I doing? Like, I did the thing, and Shana text me. He said, you're gonna show other people how to do this. And I very clearly remember that line. And I'm like, oh.

00:21:38
Because now I have the experience. I've lived it. I've gone through it. I can now teach it. And so we've done that.

00:21:44
We've taught, built millions of budgets. I had a client, I coached her for four years. I think she paid off four or five mortgages in the time that I. Cause she had rental properties and stuff. It's just watching them succeed, watching the light bulbs go off, showing them another way from all of this, it just really makes it.

00:22:03
It gives me goosebumps every time. It just makes it so worth that. We love it. Right? I love that.

00:22:07
And I want to pause here for a minute before we, because I do want to hear some tips you might have for running a business debt free or starting a business debt free. But I just want to go back to some of your story and just highlight some things that stood out to me that I really want somebody listening right now to that woman that's listening and she's thinking, like, I wish I had that friend text me to say, hey, we're going to start a business. That they could find that calling for themselves. But I love the fact that you, Vanessa, you were open and you kind of turned it to God and just said, you know, show me. And then you were open to your friend texting and just searching that.

00:22:48
And I love to Shana that what you said is that you've tried a lot of other things, and I know we talked about that before we hit record that sometimes for entrepreneurship, the first thing you try isn't the right thing. But you got to just get out there and you got to just try some things and see what sticks and what doesn't, what feels right, what doesn't. Tweak it a little, change it a little, and be willing to just keep finding. Keep searching until it fits. Until it fits.

00:23:13
Yeah. Well, I think something that's important to. So what I was thinking is when you said how fortunate Vanessa was to have somebody text her, nobody has ever texted me. I find that very rude. No, it's just because I have, like, a thousand unread messages.

00:23:27
It's fine. But what I experienced when I moved, the most recent time I moved, I tried to recreate what I had, what God had done in my life, business, personally, whatever, the time before. And now that I've moved so many times, I realize I have to stop expecting that that is not the goal. And so. But what I did notice when we moved is I had a nagging.

00:23:47
I was trying to recreate, do all the same things that worked before, and I just had this pit and this nagging and something didn't feel right. There was a little anxiety. I didn't have peace. And that's called not listening. That's called trying to forge your own way, trying to make your own path and not listening.

00:24:02
Because as soon as I listened, I realized exactly what God, what I was supposed to be doing. And it was again, just like when I was going to be a stay at home mom and I didn't want to do it. And I felt, and I was like, sudden peace. The same thing happened once I listened. I had sudden peace.

00:24:16
Just like Vanessa said. She was crying, she was depressed, and then she, she listened and she found out what she's supposed to do. You're going to show other people how to do this, like that. You have to give space to listen and you're trying to think of, plan it and think it and control it and figure it out yourself, and that's too much for your. For yourself.

00:24:32
You have a lot of other stuff going on you have to worry about, not that. And, you know, I remember thinking in the moment, like God said, I got this. And for me, I see it as a ladder in the clouds, like in the fog, and I can see the next step. Like God is only showing me one step at a time. And that's how I've always seen him show up to me.

00:24:49
It's like, well, I'm only showing you the one that I know that you're ready for. And here's the next step. And then from, and then afterwards, you'll be able to see the whole vision. And I remember we were trying to pay our house off. It was two years of.

00:25:00
I was really stressed out. But he told me that at 28. And while we were in it, I told my husband, this is what we're supposed to do. He's like, but it's really hard. And I'm really, it's really stressful.

00:25:10
And I said, but he just kept telling me, God, hold on. Just wait, just wait. I kept hearing that, just wait. And I'm like, wait and hold on to what? I have nothing left.

00:25:18
Like I do with my hands. Yes. Like, I don't know. And then we paid the mortgage off and it was like, you're going to do it. You're going to show other people how to do this.

00:25:25
The whole thing came full circle and he was able to show me the whole vision, but I had to trust him and I had to stop and take the control away because we are, as an entrepreneur, you have a very strong personality. You have these visions, right? And what you want to accomplish and sometimes it's easy to just say, well, I can do this. This is what I'm going to do. This is what I see.

00:25:45
This is right. And so you just have to really allow yourself to back off for a second and just lay it all out for him. Well, and I just want to say, we coach entrepreneurs. Most of the people that we do financial coaching for also happen to have businesses. You attract who you are.

00:25:59
Yeah. And, you know, to Vanessa's point is take that first step. That is what people get in their heads so much about, having to know everything. And if you will just take that first step, there's so much that's going to be revealed from that. First of all, once you take the first step, you'll, you'll figure out the next step.

00:26:14
But I think what's even more important is, you know, I just coached somebody on, she wanted to become a christian life coach, and she's like, well, what certification? What I said, you're going to have a free coaching session and see what's actually, you know, what are your people want? What, how does it make you feel to do this? Do you even like it? Like, do that before you pay for anything?

00:26:32
Before you do anything? And I always remember for me, listening to Lewis Howes, which he has a podcast, kind of a big deal. Yeah. And he has, I mean, other than Joe Rogan, he might be one of the biggest podcasts in the world. And he said he thought he was supposed to do that.

00:26:49
And he didn't go out and buy all this equipment. He didn't go out and, and do all the things. He got a set of headphones and recorded and said, I will know once I take that first step if I should keep taking this step or if I need to pivot this way or that way. And that has always stuck with me. Just take that first step and see what happens.

00:27:04
Yeah. We like to say, like, God can move. He can steer a moved car, but he can't move a parked one. So you have got to be in motion. You have to be doing something.

00:27:13
When I had a couple entrepreneur journeys before I landed on this one, I've come from a line of entrepreneurs. I knew that was somewhere going to fall in line for me. I didn't know in what capacity. Right. But you have to be moving.

00:27:26
And sometimes we like to tell people, when we first started this business, we were a life coaching studio where we did life coaching and health coaching and financial coaching. We did home organization coaching. So we did everything because we thought, well, it doesn't really matter what you need coached in because it's all just coaching in general, which is not wrong. But we realized, and what all of the coaches tried to tell us and we didn't listen, was you need to pick one thing. Pick one thing that you're really good at to focus on, and then you have to see if that works.

00:27:55
And if it doesn't, then you can steer, but you have to be moving. So for us, we finally landed on financial coaching was the thing that, like Shannon said, everything came back to was the main problem of all of it. And so that's what we've honed in on, and that's where our business has truly blossomed from. That's awesome. Yeah.

00:28:10
Great advice. Excellent advice. Yeah. And you have to be. I love the.

00:28:13
You have to be emotion and because you don't see the next step until you take the first step. Right. Yeah. And otherwise we sit and wonder, and that's where stress and anxiety and doubt and fear and all those, you know, the demons start. We start to hear those because we're just sitting and thinking about it, and that's the worst place to be.

00:28:33
We have to get in motion and try something. So, excellent advice. So talk to. Talk to me. Talk to the, you know, people listening that.

00:28:41
How, how did that look then? The practicalities or tips or whatever you can give for that. Somebody's like, maybe they are just starting a business and they're feeling like, well, I have to get the certification. I have to get the fancy website. I have to do all the things right.

00:28:57
How did you do it debt free? I think the first thing, or not the first thing, the first thing that comes to my mind is we tell people all the time, you have to make money before you're allowed to spend money. And that is true in your personal budget. That's true in your business budget. And so for both of us, we had.

00:29:11
We did have an initial investment, we did pay to learn how to do this thing, which, by the way, retrospect, we did not need, by the way, at all. We're thankful, obviously, to be. To have been coached by his program. However, no one has ever asked us for the certification. We've learned more through coaching.

00:29:29
Right? Yeah. Well, we learned everything through coaching. So, anyway, the point is you just have to start. And once you make money, that's the thing.

00:29:37
You want a logo, you want a website, you want the certification, you need this software, you need that. You don't, don't do any of that until you make some money and until you actually, and that's how we teach to budget. However, we have some fun stories about what it means to be on a budget and to stick to a budget and be debt free when it comes to your business. So we. It was really important for us to, like you said, we were financial coaches.

00:29:58
How hypocritical would we be if we were in debt as financial coaches teaching people how to get out of debt? So when we first had our business come together, we sat down and we thought, okay, we have coach. We coach people online, and we have some in person that takes $0, right? So we had income coming in, and from that, we broke it down into a profit first system by Mike Michalowicz. He has a book.

00:30:19
It's really amazing. And it's basically allowing you to put yourself as a priority to get paid and setting your business as a priority to have profit from that. And so from that, you get paid and you break it down into paying yourself. You have what your business expense percentage should be. You have what your tax percentage should be and your profit.

00:30:39
And that was what we set our business up from day one, to make sure we always received a paycheck, to make sure we always had enough for expenses, and to make sure that we were always saving for taxes. And it allowed us to grow at the speed that our business did. So if we want more expenses, we have to make more money. Right? And we did.

00:30:57
And so many times we had to. We. Our expense budget did not allow. For many times, we threw temper tantrums. Well, and for example, in the beginning, like Vanessa said, we had a whole studio and we could barely afford the rent.

00:31:11
We could not afford for landscaping, and we could not afford for someone to come get the landscaping. And so we did all the landscaping ourselves, covered in scratches. Covered. And not like, it's not like cute. Little mow the grass.

00:31:24
No. It was, like, overgrown for years. For years. Bushes, trees, bamboo. Just a mess.

00:31:30
Because we had a storefront. Yeah. And then, because we. We couldn't even afford. It was not well in our budget with our expenses were already planned, so we could not go to get a trailer and get dump or have the people come pay.

00:31:43
So we very wisely, very wisely decided to burn it ourselves. And we are very well versed in burning. No, wait, we're not. So we. Although we did.

00:31:55
We did get this. We did get the rules, right? I got the rules. We just broke one. Yeah.

00:32:00
Just little when. And sure enough, the fire department showed up. So. So we're burning everything according to what we thought were the rules. And we're taking.

00:32:08
I'm standing there with a hose to. To make sure this amazing fire that has been gasoline helped along. Okay. But I need to paint the picture there because I am freaking out because I really knew that we were breaking this one rule. But we're like, it's fine.

00:32:19
It's not a big deal. It's okay. And so I. I have this massive pit on my stomach, and I look over at Shana and this massive pit of old leaves and branches on fire, and she's holding the hose with her, like, hip tilted out, and she's like, what? We're basically firefighters.

00:32:34
And I was like, oh, is that. Do we have that new certification? I mean, this is what they do. They want. They monitor it with a.

00:32:40
With a hose, right? So at that time is when the firefighters drove by and I said, oh, they're coming back. They're going to do a nice little u turn and come right back. And I think they had something else to do then. They did come back, but by then we had had it.

00:32:53
We put it all out just in case they came back. And they gave us. They were very sweet. They realized how. How, you know, uneducated we were, and they didn't.

00:33:03
We weren't in trouble or anything. Although our hearts were beating, they were. Laughing outside of our body, stressed out. Yeah, but they were laughing, and they just told us how to do it better next time. And they gave us a pamphlet this time.

00:33:14
It was really great. The next time we did get some help. But anyway, but in the moment, you know, we were so happy to have our business. We were. We had a paycheck from day one, but there were just some.

00:33:23
Some places that we had to be scrappy and sacrificed, including becoming firefighters, in order to keep it going, because you never want your business to become a burden. And that's what we coach people a lot is somehow I have this side hustle that now is taking money away from my personal budget. And that's not. We don't want that. We want you to grow and keep feeling good about everything, about your income, about the expenses that you get to add, because you do need to have expenses as a business.

00:33:49
But we just like you to make some money first. And one of the things we tell people is if your business is not making you money, it's not a business as a hobby. And so what you need to do is make sure you make it profitable. It's your responsibility to make it profitable, because it is so easy to pull and steal from all the money that's in there. It's like, well, I'll just take all the money and reinvest it back and reinvest it back and reinvest it like, it's great, but when are you going to pay yourself?

00:34:11
When are you going to feel like a business owner and get a paycheck from your. From this amazing opportunity that you've been given? Yeah, I love that. And I was just talking to somebody yesterday, another podcast interview, and. And one of her businesses is helping moms get started in a business, and her promise is to make your 1st 100,000 or a thousand.

00:34:33
I mean, not 100,000. I was like, man, sorry, big mistake there. And I said to her, it's like, I love that. Because in the world where we're hearing so much on how to make your six, how to make the hundred thousand, how to make the seven figures, there's huge numbers. And sometimes it is just get your first client who pays you and it doesn't matter, right.

00:34:54
If they're paying you $29, $2,900, it feels so good because now you might as well have long lived business, right? So it's like, celebrate the little things. It doesn't have to be that huge amount, but then it. It's that first step again. Yeah.

00:35:12
Yeah. And to be clear, we. So we. Our first paycheck for a whole month. Combined between the both of us.

00:35:19
Well, I was gonna say you're gonna split. Was $307 for a whole month of basically full time work. $307. We're going to. We're all going out to eat tonight, you know, anyway.

00:35:31
But we were okay with that because we knew in our mind that we are going to grow this debt free on purpose. And we were all in. Right? There was not a toe. Little toe dipping in.

00:35:41
It was all in. We are going to put our heart and soul in this. It will grow. But for both of us, it was like, I would rather have a $307 paycheck than have a $307 credit card bill. Oh, my gosh.

00:35:52
Because my business supposedly is doing so well, because I have a website and I have this other service and I have this other thing. We'd rather just have a paycheck and no debt and be growing at the speed of cash than all of that. And I will tell you, we purchased coaching programs we shouldn't have. We bought business cards and flyers and templates that we should not have. Like, we made so many mistakes when our expensive budget allowed for frivolous spending.

00:36:17
We did it. And, you know, but. But that also allowed us to make better decisions later on. Yes, we did learn. We, we really did.

00:36:23
But I just, we have come so far from all of this. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that helps to be a better coach then, because we can save people right time, money, aggravation by learning from the mistakes we've made. So it's like I talked about, that client that we just talked to is like, just start, just get yourself, even if it's a free, the first client, or just get going and see and feel it and be.

00:36:49
Start identifying as a business owner, as a person who has clients, you know, that's what we want for you. Yeah. And I'll also add to that that, you know, yes, we were able and fortunate enough our husbands were funding the bill for our home finances for us to be able to do this. But even if they weren't, even if it was, we had to do this coupled with a job, we would have done it. We would have done the full time job and done this on the side to where, because obviously your full time job or your main income is going to be higher and then this one is going to be lower.

00:37:17
But the goal is to try to get it to surpass. So stay in it, hang in there, and know that you have got to make this short term sacrifice to where you're basically going to be working double to get the one business going, you know, the income increasing in that, so that way it can replace the one that you aren't happy in or the one that you want to get rid of. Right. Great advice. Great advice.

00:37:37
Yes. And it's kind of, it's like doing the paying off the debt. Right, too. It's a short term, short term sacrifice for getting in that spot. Anything else that either of you wanted to share about whether your story being an entrepreneur finances anything else that's on your heart?

00:37:56
For me, I would say don't give up. If you know in your heart that you're supposed to be an entrepreneur, like, I think, I think you just know it. At least I did. But don't stop. I think that a lot of people will give up.

00:38:07
They'll give in. They'll have 1ft in, 1ft out. Oh, and that's one thing I'll add. You know, people ask us, what about your plan b? What if this doesn't work?

00:38:15
And that wasn't an option for us. I didn't want a secret plan b in the background. Like, that wasn't okay for me. The integrity part of that. Like, I just, I never wanted to think that oh, I could just go into this if this doesn't work.

00:38:28
Right. We were all in from the beginning because, one, we knew that this was 100%, the whole way was paved by God. So I would just say if this is what you want, whether you make a million turns along the way and you start with financial coaching and you end with a business investor or whatever, that that path looks like for you, just don't stop. Yeah. And that just makes me think of the phrase, you either win or you learn, and you.

00:38:52
You can't lose if you are taking action. And we have done, like Vanessa mentioned, so many things wrong and so many things that we aren't even doing anymore. And I think, as somebody who is thinking about doing something different, give yourself permission to be a beginner and just do something different. This next, very next step that you take has. May not have anything to do with the five years from now what you're doing.

00:39:15
Right. But that first step is so pivotal that it's going to. It's changes the trajectory. So give yourself permission to do it wrong, to be a beginner, to do it scared and just do something right and just do something and take that. First step and make mistakes and laugh about it along the way.

00:39:29
That's what we did. Or become firefighters. It doesn't matter, whichever. My husband's going to, you know, he's a retired professional firefighter, so. Whoa.

00:39:38
Just tell them. We were also construction workers and pets control workers. Yes. Fine. We did it all.

00:39:45
Well, thank you, ladies, for sharing your story. Your expertise, really love, you know? Right. I'm like, sitting here shaking my head the entire time because it's like, yep. Yes, yes, yes.

00:39:56
Where can the listeners find you? Where can they follow you? Where do they. Where's the best place? Yeah.

00:40:04
So our website is shannonVanessa.com, and our podcast is financial coaching for women. Yeah. And that's the. I would say that's the best place to go and just hear and hear more and hear more of our coaching and see, you know, see if that's something that you want to listen to, because we would love to have you over there. And then from there, you'll hear all the different things that.

00:40:22
That you can get for free about budgeting and all that from us. And we'd love to get to know you. All right, great. And I will put those links in the show notes, and I'll also have the links to, you mentioned two books, the one from Dave Ramsey that kind of started it all. And then the other one of profit first.

00:40:40
So I'll put a link for those two books in the show notes as well. I think they are great, great books. Yeah, they're great. They're great personal friends of ours. No, they're not.

00:40:48
No, they're not. But I don't know. We know all of their sayings. We know all of their mannerisms. We know everything that they think, and we love them.

00:40:56
And we totally agree. Those are great books. All right, well, thank you again for being on the discovering your calling podcast. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you for spending this time with me.

00:41:06
My hope is something you heard today inspires you to take action toward discovering your calling. I just have two favors to ask of you before you go. One, if you found value and enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and you might hear your review read on a future episode. And two, can you share this episode with three friends who will also enjoy it as much as you did? By doing these things, you will help us grow the podcast to make a bigger impact on the world.

00:41:35
And until next week, remember, you've been created to live a life of fulfillment, freedom, purpose, success, and joy.