A journey into accidental entrepre-neurship with Shanna Skidmore

Tiffany Sauder:

Hey, it's Tiffany. If you've been listening to the show for a while, I'm feeling this pull away from social media and towards real connection, and that's exactly why I started my newsletter. It's a place for us to connect authentically without having to jump through algorithms. I usually share a little bit about what's going on in my life, my family, practical tips for two career homes, and just generally things that are inspiring me. I'd love for you to join me so we can create this little online space and we can lean into all of the ands in our lives together. You can sign up at the link in our show notes. Enjoy this episode.

I'm a small town kid born with a big city spirit. I choose to play a lot of awesome roles in life, mom, wife, entrepreneur, CEO, board member, investor, and mentor. 17 years ago I founded a marketing consultancy, and, ever since, my husband, JR, and I have been building our careers and our family on the exact same timeline. Yep, that means four kids, three businesses, two careers, all building towards one life we love. When I discovered that I could purposefully embrace all of these ands in my life, it unlocked my world, and I want that for you too. I'm Tiffany Sauder, and this is Scared Confident.

I was introduced to Shanna Skidmore through a mutual acquaintance that we both have, totally wild. They were like, "You guys need to know each other. You are a lot the same," and they weren't wrong. Shanna and I both have finance backgrounds, we both have found ourselves in creative industries helping creative people get the most out of their talents and also learn the context of business. Really wild, I think there's 12 of us who do that in the world. And I was also on Shanna's podcast, it's called Consider The Wildflowers. If you want to hear my conversation with her in her podcast, go check that out, Consider The Wildflowers.

Shanna and I talk about her journey of really being an accidental entrepreneur, it was not something that she pictured in her life. And she's got a small child, a two-year-old, her husband works with her. And really when your hobby becomes a business, and then your business becomes the thing that is supporting your family, what a journey. And Shanna shared really vulnerably what that's been like for her and her journey in accidental entrepreneurship.

We both have finance backgrounds and have found ourselves working in a finance capacity, but in a very creative space. So just to give a quick, "Hey, here's who I am and here's what my business looks like," and then we'll start digging into it together.

Shanna Skidmore:

Hey, I'm Shanna Skidmore. I am a former Fortune 100 financial advisor, and then I worked in corporate finance, I was on the private equity shark tank route. And when I went into investment banking, I was told I would be on the road four days a week every single week and I just thought, that's so crazy. I lived in Atlanta at the time, I was like, "People are flying from Atlanta to New York, and New York consultants are flying from New York to Atlanta. I just feel like why do I have to be on the road all the time?" And my husband was going back to school for a degree in airspace engineering, and I just was like, "I want to get out of the money world for a little bit." I have a degree in art, psychology, and finance.

I always say I just felt like a misfit puzzle, couldn't figure out how all those things fit together, but now it's exactly what I do. And so I wanted to get out from crunching the numbers and I knew I didn't want to be on the road four days a week for the life that I wanted, and so I just thought, well, I'm going to quit all of this and go do floral design. And I had done flowers for my own wedding, I grew up in the garden with my grandmother, and I had been working when I worked in finance for a startup fashion designer, and that's where I realized people can be great at their craft but not know how to run a business, and that is my gift. Like you talked about, Tiffany, before, I see patterns, I understand what makes a business work, the numbers just click in my brain, and I knew there was something there, but I didn't know how to turn that into a business.

So at the time, I just wanted a break from the business world for a little bit to figure out what I want to do, so I quit finance completely, left, went and did floral design. I did two events with a big floral designer out of Atlanta, Georgia, I knew this is not what I'm going to do with my life, but the same exact thing happened that was happening with my fashion designer, this floral designer was great at her craft, she was making so much money, but didn't know how to manage any of it or how to keep it in her pocket, she wasn't even paying herself. And she was a former professional ballerina and nobody had ever taught her about business, and she just said, "Shanna, will you stay on and help me run my business?" And I said, "I don't have a job, so that'd be great."

And I started working with her, just revamped the inside of her business completely, created business systems, financial practices, and her business was so big in the Atlanta area that people just started noticing and they were like, "Shanna, can you help me with this and that?" And that's how the business began. And it truly was such a God opportunity and a God moment where I just got to realize I am a champion for entrepreneurship and I'm gifted with a brain that understands how business works and can see problems or areas that aren't working and how to fix it, and so I just started this consulting company and it just completely took off. I work primarily with female owned small businesses, usually in the five million or less in revenue, 30 or less employees, and that's my sweet spot in helping people turn their dreams into reality. And my role I feel like is really to equip business owners on understanding the ins and outs of their business so that then they can hire people to do it.

I always tell people, "I don't want you to be the CFO of your business, you need to be the CEO, but you need to understand marketing metrics, financial metrics, how to read data so that you can make strategic backed decisions." And now I primarily teach through my online courses how to do that, because the business grew really fast and I didn't want to build an agency model, again, because I want to keep as much flexibility as I can. And so my husband and I sat down in 2016, recorded my processes, because I was like, "I'm just saying the same thing over and over and over again. What if I could just record this and create almost a business course that I wish they taught in art schools and every technical field, anybody who wants to be an entrepreneur?" That's what I did. And that became our first course called the Blueprint Model, and it's just fundamentals of running a business. So now we have thousands of students all over the world. I've spoken internationally, and the start to [inaudible 00:06:48] business.

Tiffany Sauder:

That's awesome. So I also work around a lot of creative people and there can be this fear wall that's pretty significant with money and relationship with it and letting you into the mess, what does that look like and how do you build trust? Or how do you get them to just even intellectually submit themselves to the course? Because thinking you know better when you're in a train wreck of a situation does not work.

Shanna Skidmore:

We primarily work with people at two places in their business. First, it's literally people who have a dream and do not know how to turn it into reality. So they're at the very beginning, I call them dreamers, haven't even started their business, they're still working, they're nine to five or in their professional career, but they have this dream and they want to turn into rallies. So some people are at that place, they're like, "I just want to know how to avoid all of the pitfalls from the beginning," and so we have a lot of students in that place. So that's first. I would say that's about 25% of who we work with. They are truly in the first year or haven't even started. 75% though, so it has to hurt enough that you're willing to seek help, they're not making money, they're not paying themselves, they're running themselves ragged, or they're making a lot of money and working extremely hard but aren't seeing enough at the end of the day to feel like it's worth all their hard work.

And so I always say, "I want to help people when they're first getting started." I'm like, "I wish everyone would take this program or work with me in the very beginning, because it would get up and running so much faster and make money so much faster with these key principles." But usually it's about it hurts enough that you're willing to ask for help. And I think I'm so grateful that I've worked with a lot of companies and a lot of big names in the industry that say, "Shanna won't judge you. She's not going to make you feel silly." And a lot of small businesses are run by female entrepreneurs, not that we don't have men in our audience as well, but the finance industry is primarily men. And I know a lot of people we work with feel talked down to in the finance industry, I think people are kind and don't mean to do that, but they don't feel like they can go to a CPA, or there's people who use words mitigate and that makes them feel less than.

And I think I have this beautiful way of bridging the two, the finance world that uses words like mitigate and lets you know what that means, and then entrepreneur space, like, "I'm just great at my craft and I just need help." So I think I hope I'm somebody that can pull those barriers down. And I always say, "I have a finance background. I had to sign things about confidentiality. I'm like a lockbox. I have heard everything. You cannot surprise me." And I think that puts people at ease, because, I always say, numbers tell a story. And when you know how to read that story, it empowers you to make better decisions in your business.

And if you can just look at the numbers instead of a judgment upon you, I did this well, I did this not well, and instead just be like, "This is a story. What is it telling me? Is it telling me my price isn't right? My offer isn't good? I need more marketing?" If I can empower entrepreneurs to know how to read that story and to know how to change the story to the direction they want to go in, that means I've done my job really well and I hope I'm a safe place that people can say, "Hey, I haven't paid my taxes in three years. Is the IRS going to come get me?" I'm like, "Let's talk about that."

Tiffany Sauder:

Yes, let's talk about that.

Shanna Skidmore:

Let's make a plan, because...

Tiffany Sauder:

Let's let them know that we know before they know.

Shanna Skidmore:

Because that happens. We don't know what you don't know. And I think so often I hear from so many entrepreneurs, "Is the IRS going to hunt me down?" I'm like, "It's not likely, but let's figure out why they would."

Tiffany Sauder:

So you're living a parallel entrepreneurial journey to your clients.

Shanna Skidmore:

Mm-hmm.

Tiffany Sauder:

Go listen to Shanna's podcast.

Shanna Skidmore:

Consider The Wildflowers.

Tiffany Sauder:

Yes, Consider The Wildflowers. We just did a conversation of my path and story, and now we're jumping on Scared Confident to hear her story. And I was sharing with you how my upbringing and my past and what I saw really played a big role in me imagining what my adult life was going to look like. So what did it look like for you? You talked about as a little girl being in the garden with your grandma, but did you see entrepreneurship? Did you see the path that you're on?

Shanna Skidmore:

No, that's so interesting that you said that. I always said I wanted to be the CFO of a company. I wanted to wear black power suits and high heels until I did that, and then I got bunions, and so now I have to wear flats all the time. And no, I wanted to be the CFO. I thrive as the second in command. I'm a very friendly person, but I'm actually extremely introverted, I was always a shy child, and I like being behind the scenes. I'd never imagined myself as a CEO, but finance is absolutely my God-given gift. I always tell people, I joke when little kids played house, I played bank. I wanted to be the bank teller, I liked doing the cash, I worked in a bank in high school, finance has always been in my blood, I was always great at math, all those things, but I took every art class I ever could, I've always loved art, and I never knew how all these things went together.

So when I went to college, I had declared my major as psychology, I thought I wanted to be a psychologist for children who come from divorced homes. I come from a divorced home, I was really passionate about working with kids through that dynamic, and I had to take a basic accounting class for just general curriculum, and I was really good at it. I don't know if somebody advised me or I don't know how it came to be. Actually, I added on a second major of business with a finance emphasis because I just thought, well, that can't be bad. And then, of course, I took every art class I ever could, so I ended up with an art degree as well.

So when I was a junior in college, so I was getting all these majors, I still thought I was going either the psychology... I didn't actually really know. I was taking on a lot of different internships, I was interested in maybe occupational therapy, so I was shadowing all these people. And I ended up getting a accounting internship at a construction company and I worked directly under the CFO, and that's where I realized I love business, I love the ins and outs of business, I love entrepreneurship. I just got really excited about it, and so my next internship as a senior was then for a financial advising firm. And I guess I'm a big advocate now of internships because I never would've known what I wanted to do until I got in the weeds and was doing it. And so right after college, I just went that finance path and I did that for five years.

And what I recognize now looking back is 99% of my clients were all females, because I worked in finance, I was the only female, and they felt comfortable with me and most of them owned a business. I worked with a lot of medical practices, and that's where I met my husband, his first degree was in marketing, and I met my husband there. So when we moved for my husband to go back to school, I got offered a corporate finance position, I say for private equity firms, so it was Shark Tank but not Shark Tank. And so just one step led to the other. And I always encourage people that if you don't know what you want to do, like me, I had no idea, I was interested and curious about all thing, just take the next step, what's the next door that's opening, and get curious and pursue those curiosities. And through all of this time, I realized how passionate I am about entrepreneurship, but I still, Tiffany, never thought I would have my own company.

So like I mentioned before, I was going private equity, I wanted the black power suits, the three inch high heels. I had worked in finance, at this point, seven years, I loved it. I thrive on the busy, the I have an appointment on the calendar, I loved that. So my husband went back to school for engineering and I just was like, "I just need to figure out a way to pay the bills." So when I started my consulting company, I truly thought it would just pay the bills for a few years while he got his second degree, and God really blessed it and it took off. And a lot of people, I think, are accidental entrepreneurs, but I truly just did not expect it to grow the way that it did, and I'm so glad, because now, it's so funny, anytime somebody's like, "Oh man, I've always wanted to open a restaurant." I'm like, "Okay, let's do it. Let's make the plan."

I'm a champion for entrepreneurship. I love it. So that's my journey in business. I never thought I'd be a business owner and here I am 10 years later and I couldn't imagine anything else.

Tiffany Sauder:

What did your mom do when you were growing up?

Shanna Skidmore:

My mom was mostly a stay-at-home mom. Her education background is in education, she was a teacher, and so when we were little, she did a lot of substitute teaching. She only had a full-time teaching job for maybe a year or two, but she was mostly stay-at-home mom, my dad was an electrician, and then my stepdad was a car mechanic. So my grandmother, who I love, I grew up in the garden with her, my grandmother was my best friend, and now I know, as an adult I can look back, my grandmother was the entrepreneur in our family. She was a seamstress, she made wedding dresses and she made high end window curtains. And so I didn't have entrepreneurs in my life, Kyle did, my husband, his dad is an entrepreneur and owns his own business, but I didn't have that model for me.

Tiffany Sauder:

When you would lay in bed as a little girl and think of your future, what was in it?

Shanna Skidmore:

That's such a good question. I wanted to be a mom, which is so funny because for the first probably 10 years of Kyle and I's marriage we didn't even talk about kids or think that we would have kids, but I guess I wanted to be a mom, I wanted to go on mission trips, impact the world in big ways, but I didn't have a career in mind.

Tiffany Sauder:

Well, I asked the question simply because I don't know that I ever pictured myself with a business, and in the same way it was one thing led to another and it just seemed like the right next choice. And I tell people, I didn't know that I knew what my future... I couldn't have explained it, but I knew what I wanted it to feel like, this sense of urgency, and it to be busy, and this idea of relevance and exploring, all of that, that's what I knew I wanted it to feel like. And so I was attracted to things I think based on that versus I want to be a ballerina or these really specific I wanted to be a teacher, these things in your head. So I was just curious.

Shanna Skidmore:

Honestly, I struggled for a very long time because I was curious about so many things, I could see so many paths that would work, but like you said, I think walking the path made me realize what I did not want. I did not want to be traveling four days a week, that did not make me feel important. Or I didn't feel the need to prove myself. And then working in finance, especially in such a male dominated industry, I was taught a lot of things that I realize now weren't success for me. I didn't need to walk on the stage and get all these awards. I'm a high achiever, so sometimes I feel like, am I not ambitious by saying that? But I knew what I valued was being able to control my time. I wanted to be able to meet Kyle at the gym at four o'clock and do a workout.

That was success for me, having a career that allowed me time freedom. And that's why I think now I'm so passionate. I think we're such kindred spirits about designing a business around the life you want, and that's the beauty of entrepreneurship, nobody else gets to do that, but we do. And there was these messages that were given to me as I was working in finance that my convictions were so different. It was like, "I don't need that to feel successful." I had a business mentor tell me, "If you say you don't want to make more money, you're just lying to yourself." And I'm like, "Well, yes and no, because if making more money means sacrificing more of my time, then time is my motivator." And now something I teach to all my students, I have this framework about defining success, and I call it the four core motivators, time impact, challenge, or creative expression.

And so I believe people now I think talk a lot more about defining success and building a business model around that. That's what I talk about all the time. But I'm like, "Success feels like such a big term. If I can boil that down into, okay, one of these four motivators, then that gives me a framework for how to build a business." I'm very time motivated, so that means I build a business very differently. Instead of building an agency, I created courses. That was strategic to make sure that I hold onto my time. Somebody who's challenge motivated might want to build the big team and walk on the stage and get the Inc. 5,000 award. Those are different. And so if you're trying to build a business base on somebody else's success model, it's going to make you feel terrible, and so I just got these messages, I think, from the finance world, and that's when I really started to think differently about building a business.

Tiffany Sauder:

I think that's so powerful. I know in my own journey of defining success, you do try on other people's stories to say, "Does that make me excited at the end? Does that give me energy? Is that what I'm working towards?" I had to almost put myself in these little vignettes and live it out in my head.

Shanna Skidmore:

And sometimes you have to live it out in real life to be like, "Oh man, that didn't work." I always joke, I'm like, and I truly believe this, "I can teach anyone to make a million dollars hands down, I can do it, but what I want is to make sure you're happy when you get there." And to me, that's so much more about knowing what success looks like to you, getting intentional with what you want in your life and your family and all those things, because there's so many ways to build a business that can work. And I love that so many more people now are talking about business and defining success, but I think it is a little scary sometimes, people think they can follow a path just like someone else, and it's like, "No, the beautiful thing is business can be built thousands of different ways. We get to decide how we want to build it."

A business can be successful in so many ways, and that's why I want to teach these fundamentals of business, profitability, pricing models, time management, operational charts. If you can get that foundation right, you can build any business in any way.

Tiffany Sauder:

So you recently had a baby, you said she's two?

Shanna Skidmore:

She just turned two, yes.

Tiffany Sauder:

We only know girls in the Sauder household, so that's great. So how has that changed or not changed your world, the way you see things, what you're motivated by? Talk to me through that, because it's a big life event.

Shanna Skidmore:

It changed everything. Everything. So I got pregnant with her in 2020 and had her in 2021, and I actually had taken a yearlong sabbatical in 2020. I watched this TED Talk years ago, and it was about the power of time off, and he created a business model where every seventh year he took an entire year long sabbatical. And it was just I loved it, I loved this idea from the get go. So 2020 was my seventh year of business, I took a yearlong sabbatical, everything changed and I got pregnant, and then COVID hit and the market completely changed. And I came back and was like, "Whoa, everything is different."

Tiffany Sauder:

So you didn't have a freak out reflex in April and be like, "I'm rethinking on this yearlong sabbatical thing."?

Shanna Skidmore:

No, I loved it. I loved every minute of it. I needed a break. And Kyle, my husband, was doing full-time engineering at the time, and what Kyle doesn't get enough credit for is he's been the unpaid employee the entire time. He has done all of our production for all of our online courses. So he was doing engineering work, contract engineers, so he was able to have a lot of flexibility, but I needed him so much in the business. So when he went full-time at this new position, I wanted to step back and be like, "What is the model?" I really can't run it without Kyle, and I really don't want to. So I just wanted to take a year, figure it all out, figure out our direction moving forward, and I wanted to get healthy and just we wanted to grow our family.

So after 2020, he decided to leave the engineering world, because just a lot of different factors, but we had our daughter and we started working together, he officially joined the business in 2021, and it changed everything in the best way. I think that so often time constraints in business get a bad rap, and I actually think that's where the magic happens is when you have to get strategic about, like you talk about, the and. How can we grow a business without sacrificing what I want in my life? So it's changed how we've built our offers. We had these courses before, so we were on this trajectory of scalability, but I still was holding onto this need to coach through them and really have that one. I was trying to run a service-based model with a product. And so just shifting that mindset for me of how can we impact more people without it taking more of my time?

And so we've just gotten so much more strategic on the offers we're doing, how we're serving our audience, and I have held tight to I want to work two days a week. That is the season I'm in with Madeline being little, how can we continue to grow this company with me committing two days a week of work? And so it's just been the best. I also think it's been really good for my audience to see me be a mom, because so many of them are running businesses as moms, and so I could talk differently about time management and the fact that, oh, you can't predict when your child's going to get sick, or what do you do when you can't find childcare, or we were on three wait lists for preschool. Navigating the fact that we're trying to still run a big business and make our family income, there's no plan B anymore.

But without sacrificing this time that I know is so fast and fleeting, it changed my mindset, it made me get more strategic, and in the best way, I'm so grateful and I say to all my students and clients all the time, "This was my 10th year in business running it with a tiny human, I'm grateful that I can imagine how challenging it is to run a business from the ground up with littles already in the picture." And I also think too, talking about the fact, and this is why I say we can have the and, we can have business and life, but we can't have it all, there's always a trade-off, and I talked to a lot of my mom friends about, "Yeah, I could grow this business a lot faster if I gave it a lot more time, but it's okay."

Tiffany Sauder:

It's my choice.

Shanna Skidmore:

It's my choice.

Tiffany Sauder:

Yeah, it's my choice.

Shanna Skidmore:

I read this book, it was the Jean Stoffer book, Established Home, it's such a good book. I love interior design, so I'm biased. But she said, "The work will always be there, the babies grow up." And it was just this picture for me of I'm such an achiever, and there are definitely moments where it's like, "Ah, I could do so much more with more time, but I'm grateful that I have the privilege to choose to slow down in this season and think smarter about business so it can grow too."

Tiffany Sauder:

I want to ask you, you had your daughter in year seven, eight of this journey, and today you have the choice of working two days a week, but if it was year two, would the same options be available to you? And sometimes people compare a decision I'm able to make at this place in my journey to a decision that they want to make at a very different place in their journey, and it's like if you could roll back time and see the time choices I made then, that's what allows the different time choices today.

Shanna Skidmore:

I think that's a great question. So good. So when I started the business, it was fully service-based model, so I was working like a traditional business consultant, going into businesses, helping them clean up the back end of their business, putting financial systems in place. So while I made really good income, it was trading time for money. So I always had to find a way to make more Shanna's, and I could have done that by building an agency, but I chose to do that in 2016, which was our third year in business, by creating an online course. Now, online education is pretty understood, and it was very different back then. Those are the early days of Instagram even. Instagram was not really used for marketing back then. And I believe before anyone scales, they need to have a track record of results.

And today, something I see is people trying to scale really early. And I just think because I already had a track record, I already had a pretty proven model that could be replicated, it was very natural next step for us to create a course for us. And it did really, really well, and it took off really quickly. I think, yes, you can get strategic at any point in your business about creating scalable offers, and I think anyone should, but if you're in a coaching, consulting, service-based model, I feel like there needs to be a track record there before creating a scalable product in this way. So I'm really grateful that we were so far into business. I did a podcast episode with Shay Cochrane and she said, "Build a business you want to have 10 years from now," and I thought that's a mindset I didn't have 10 years ago.

I would've done some things differently, I would've scaled differently, I would've built our marketing a little bit differently, and now I'm glad I have the chance to do that, so much of business is just staying in the game. But I think it's so good for anybody, no matter your stage in business, to think, okay, let's think 10 years from now, let's think 10 years ahead, what business do I want to build, and work towards that. I think it would've been very hard in the early stages of business in my business model to scale to the level I can now.

Tiffany Sauder:

I want to push a little bit into fear. Scared Confident, we talk about fear. Does fear have a loud voice, or has it in your past? And what does it say when it talks to you?

Shanna Skidmore:

Such a good question. Fear I would say doesn't, but imposter syndrome does. So in that way, fear of my work not being good enough, fear of I really have to think about how I'm talking to myself. I am a perfectionist and an achiever, and so I am one or nine, who knows, on the Enneagram, still out for debate, very close, so I have the ability to see my flaws really easily, and so sometimes it's a blessing and a curse, I can see how to improve things really easily. And so for me I can see where fear of my own work not being good enough or seeing, oh, I could make that so much better has held me back from really marketing it like I should.

People say about the Blueprint Model, which is my main signature program, they're like, "Shanna, this changed my life. We're working with it. This changed my life, this changed my life, this changed my life." I hear that all the time. I should be out there like, "Everybody take the Blueprint Model," and they should, it's such a good program, but I still, in my head, I'm like, "But is it good enough? Is it good enough?" And so Tiffany, I shared this with you before, but I truly I have, I call it the sunshine folder, and anytime I hear from students or clients testimonials, this is what happened, I keep that so I can read it to myself. And so I think in that way, the fear of my work not being good enough, that imposter syndrome has really honestly been a detriment to the business growth.

And I am so grateful I have Kyle because my husband, who's now my business partner, which, PS, people don't know this, we worked together first. That's how we met. He's three years younger than me, so I was already working in finance, but people always ask, "What's it like working with your husband?" I'm like, "That's all we've ever known." Of course when he went into engineering, we didn't work together, but that's how we met, and now it's such a natural, we've always had so much fun talking goals together, but Kyle doesn't deal with that. He's like, "Let's grow this. Let's scale it." He doesn't look at, oh, this could be so much better. And so just having to speak truth over myself that this is helping people.

Tiffany Sauder:

How do you notice, bring into consciousness, oh my word, I'm in one of my perfectionist cycles right now? Does something happened in your body or you're like, "Oh, I'm spinning on this thing that I've looked out eight times to ship it."? What are the signs in your space or in your head that you're like, "Ah."?

Shanna Skidmore:

I think too what you asked me before with having Madeline, when I had my daughter and Kyle was working in the business as well, it's like, "This is real. I don't have a backup plan." We had to pay for Madeline's schooling or I have to keep a roof over her head and health insurance, and I think because, as you asked me before, I never set out to be a business owner or an entrepreneur, the business was always this really great perk that paid us a lot of money, but it wasn't the thing that we're doing. So I think having my daughter, having Kyle join the business, it was like, "This is what we're doing. I don't have the choice to question my work. I don't have the choice to second guess whether we need to market this. We have to make sales." And also it made me be like, "I want this for more people. I want more people to have the option and the flexibility that we have. I'm so grateful for that as a new mom."

It comes out when I'm like, "Well, let's not sell that yet," or I need to perfect that system first, and Kyle's like, "No, we're going to get it out and then you can perfect it later. We're going to test it and see what works." And again, just reading my testimonials, because even with my courses, I'm like, "I could make that better," but I think to myself, what if Tiffany didn't take that program? What if Sarah was still at her nine to five job? What if Grace was still trying to find receipts to file her taxes?

I just think I have given up on the idea of perfect in the best way and know that progress and helping people along the way is truly how I want to impact lives, and I would be doing not only myself, my family, and everyone of my students a disservice by not putting this good workout to the world. So I just truly have to speak truths over myself every day, because it is a mind game for me, but I'm also like, "Wow, I would really like to buy that land, so get out of your own head and get back to work."

Tiffany Sauder:

I appreciate you being so vulnerable with that, because truth pops the fear bubble, and we all have different words for it, but truth pops it. And having other people, when we have the courage to name it, when we have the courage to have tools like you have your sunshine folder, and say, "No, that is not true. I am not going to let you occupy so much space in the way that I see myself, taking ownership of my behavior. That's not what we're going to do. My goals are going to drive what happens. My goals are going to drive the outpouring of my talents. My goals are going to drive the conversations that I have, not this thing I'm operating around." So I think that's really awesome.

I have two parting questions and then we'll wrap here. You've talked about the Blueprint Model, I haven't seen it, but I said if there's one piece of information in the world that you wish everybody in the world knew about the Blueprint Model, something like, "Hey, I teach this, and it's not just about creative entrepreneurs trying to monetize their businesses," what would be one piece that you'd pull from that and say, "This is something everybody needs to know."?

Shanna Skidmore:

I believe that, like I mentioned before, there's a thousand different ways to build a business, but every industry, every business, there are key elements that you have to know to create a profitable business, and they're fundamental truths. For instance, revenue minus expenses equals profit, actually pretty simple. It's not easy, but it's really simple. And that's what my hope with the Blueprint Model was to drill down. I have now worked with, for 15 years, thousands of businesses, so many industries I can't name them, multiple countries, and I call them your six building blocks, if you get these six building blocks in place, you can build any business.

And I wish that everyone would take the Blueprint Model, I truly do, because it empowers the business owner to move on to other things. Great, we're pricing profitably, check. We have our financials setup correctly, great. Moving on. We have a marketing plan in place that's working for now in our goals. When you can drill it down, it actually is pretty simple, there's a lot of moving parts and you can navigate, and that's what I hope with what I teach, is to empower the business owner and these very few things that you have to know. You have to know, like you said, your raw material goods, that's what they cost. And once you know those things, you don't have to worry about the business side of doing business so much.

I think there's so much fear for a lot of entrepreneurs about the business side. I don't know how to do the business side. I always say most people I work with don't want to geek out over their profit and loss statement, but once you know these numbers, you're so empowered. So that's what I hope that I can teach is these simple principles that can be applied to any business. And then the second piece of that you're rare, Tiffany, maybe you and I are rare in the fact that most business owners I work with will have multiple businesses in their lifetime, and so when I see people learning just one path or just one way of I want to build a flower farm. Well, if you can learn these principles first, you can build any business, so you can pivot your business, you can run a different business, and that's what I hope to teach is let's learn the fundamentals first and then learn the specifics later.

Tiffany Sauder:

We will provide a link in the show notes to the Blueprint Model so that if somebody's interested, they can just click and go. Okay, dear 24-year-old self, what advice would you give her?

Shanna Skidmore:

I would just say continue to chase your curiosity.

Tiffany Sauder:

Awesome. I love it. Thanks so much for joining me, Shanna. And we will be sure to leave any contact information in the show notes. And thanks for jumping on with me.

Shanna Skidmore:

This was so fun. Thanks, Tiffany.

Tiffany Sauder:

Thank you for joining me on another episode of Scared Confident. Until next time, keep telling fear, "You will not decide what happens in my life. I will." If you want to get the inside scoop, sign up for my newsletter. We decided to make content for you instead of social media algorithms. The link is waiting for you in show notes, or you can head over to tiffanysauder.com. Thanks for listening.

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