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From Corporate Dropout to 6-Figure CEO: How Shan Thomas Built on Her Own Terms · Do Small Business Like a Big Boss Podcast

• Aisha Massengill: Leverage your strengths, but also leverage your corporate track record in when you're selling. Hey, I have I have done this, this, and this. And here's how I can help you. And I've also told clients when they're first getting started to do a couple of warm market leads for free for you know, just to get your teeth wet, just to get a testimonial or a nominal fee. You can charge a half fee, ⁓ but not too low if you're gonna charge, especially, you know, people don't charge them too low. I've lost so many deals. by undercharging less than just trying to get any little money that was the lesson because it doesn't sound credible if you're offering something of value and you're trying to undercut it's it's not sometimes it's not believable Welcome to Do Small Business Like a Big Boss, where we explore the real stories, hard-earned lessons, and game-changing strategies of entrepreneurs who've moved beyond the side hustle and build businesses that scale with confidence. This show is proudly sponsored by Project Icon. I'm your host, Aisha Jorge Massingill, your small business legal guy. Let's dive in. Hey bosses. Welcome to the latest edition of Do Small Business Like a Big Boss. I am your host, Aisha Jorge Massingill, your small business legal guide. And today I am excited to welcome Sean Thomas to the show. Sean is a business strategist and owner of multiple businesses who helps professional service owners get their lives back while making money and maintaining their peace. Welcome, Sean. Thank you. Thank you, Aisha, for having me. Well, you know, I always have this plan about like tell me where it started, blah, blah, blah. But I'm gonna come back to that later. Right now I just wanna know, you have what I understand to be three different businesses going on at the same time. Like what's a day like for you when you're trying to effectively manage all of these endeavors? Well, it's all to g it's all together. So I don't consider it to be separate businesses. One of the businesses that it looks like is a business on LinkedIn is my event. So in Atlanta, ⁓ orchestrated and started a movement Called Entrepreneur Her. Entrepreneur Her was something that I did after networking tons and tons and tons of events around Atlanta and I kept hearing the exact same thing. So as a business owner, you find a need, you feel a need. So that's what I did. I still have a community of amazing women that are successful and we still, you know, we still are part of that community, but I no longer do the event of entrepreneur her. My main business is credible visibility media. Where I work with local brick and mortar small businesses. And well, it's not all local, because they're all over. I have clients international. I have clients all over up there with you in New York and Miami. All over ⁓ my favorite clients in Seattle. But yes, I would. Now the truth is out. Everybody's the favorite. Everybody's the favorite. It's like having kids, right? Like who's the favorite? That's right. Everybody's the favorite. Everybody's the favorite. ⁓ But ⁓ I I have a client in Seattle that has a special part of my heart 'cause she's changed my life. She's my life coach as well as a client. And I literally have been highly impacted by her and her work, which I did not believe in in the beginning, but she came to me. People come to me to make money, right? I have a specialty of making sure that you focus on the thing that matters first, which is revenue and profit. And my business has evolved over the years based on that one fact. So that's what I'm doing right now. I am going to start back up with doing some events, but for the most part, all of it's encompassed under the one umbrella of the media company. Okay. Awesome. So, but you also did have this corporate career that you were in logistics and supply chain, ⁓ some other things. Tell me about what caused you to make that leap into entrepreneurship. I never, ever, ever wanted to be an entrepreneur. I it's because if you don't kill, you don't eat. And I wanted to eat every day. So I grew up in the era I'm I'm Gen X. So I grew up in an era, right. I grew up in an era where you were told what to do and you did what you were told. That's no longer the case these days, but I grew up in the era where we were told I'm in Atlanta, I'm a s a true ATL E N. And all of my teachers, I was I'm a product of Atlanta Public Schools, all of my teachers were HBCU graduates and they care deeply about us. So in growing up in this environment in the Start of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King. I mean, all the history that we had in growing up in the 80s and 90s, I knew who I was. I know every Langston Hughes poem ever written. I was very, very familiar with Maya Angelou and Pearl Klege and all the things because it's in our culture, right? So all of my teachers told me. Go to school, get good grades. And then once you finish high school, top of class, you go to college and you finish college so you can come out and you can get a good government job. And that was the model. So I did what they told me. I went to school, I got my degree, and I started the corporate client. And my intent, because the way that we chose careers, coming from a poor background, the way that we chose careers is We chose careers that were going to be based on how much they would pay. So everybody in my class came out and we were going to be teachers. We're going to be doctors. We're going to be attorneys. I wanted to go into computer technology because that was up and coming when I graduated in 1992. So I was going to go into computer technology. But I had a problem. I had a problem getting into college ever. Once I did get in. I had already started my corporate climb because I was able to go and I'm smart. So I was able to go and get a entry level position that paid me very, very well. And those transferable skills allowed me to climb into different Fortune 500 companies. Like I've worked for Deloitte and Touche, I've worked for Tom Warner, I've worked for big companies that, you know, were the dream jobs in entry level positions while I was in school. While I figured out a way to go to school. So I got a Dream job of working with Sprint and technology. It was dreamy. And then guess what happened? They done laid you off. What happened? Mm-mm. I was at my desk at Sprint when 9-11 happened. You know, we all those of us who were adults and some children remember exactly where you were. And I was in my my good dream position sitting there. UPS was a client. Like I had these big clients. I was managing all this stuff. And 9-11 happened and the T1s. came down with the buildings and there went a lot of our jobs. Wow. A lot of our jobs went away. ⁓ when and coming from the the era back then, it was so easy to get a job. It was so easy to get a job. And then 911 happened I couldn't get a job. And technology was no longer viable because MCI went out of business. Brent wasn't hiring. ATT wasn't h ATT wasn't hiring. And now I'm three months and I couldn't find any job. Mind you, I literally had, I mean top tier. ⁓ my gosh, that was such a bit pain job. I had to take a job, any job. Because I had kids to kids to raise, newly divorced, kids to raise, and I had to take any job. And I ended up back at a entry-level position as a secretary temporarily for a warehouse. And I wowed them, of course, being the astute worker that I am, I wowed them and was able to again start that ascension. And I started that ascension. I started as a temporary employee. It was supposed to there two weeks. And I wowed them to the point where they were like, we're gonna find a position for you. And they moved me around that warehouse until I, you know, I was stable in the transportation. I was his executive assistant to the transportation coordinator. And every time he got a promotion, he let me take his previous position. So as he climbed, I was able to climb. And that's how I became an executive. inside of logistics. And you know, for the folks listening, one of the keys to success in corporate America is finding that rabbi, that person who is gonna support you and knock doors down and open and shepherd you. As a New Yorker, you know, anytime that someone talks about nine eleven, it it's a very sobering, deep thing. And I wanna just take a moment to pause and say shout out to my man's Todd Isaac, who we lost in the towers, who worked for Canor Fitzgerald. Mm. That being said, when you talked about the poems and stuff, you said Lanksy Hughes, I'm like, hold fast to dreams, because if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly. If you came up, if you're a Gen Xer, you can go through the whole repertoire. Yeah. So you're climbing, climbing is going well. So then what happened next? So one of the blessings of being driven, one of the blessings of being an ambitious woman. Is that things happen fast for you, right? And so I climbed very fast, but I'm young, I'm early 30s, I look like me. And I'm in a male-dominated field that does not look like me at all. Mm-hmm. Right? It does not look like me at all. And this is before we had FaceTimes. It was before it was Google was first coming on where we're still using Next Tale phones and ⁓ Excel spreadsheets to run multi multimillion dollar companies. That's what we're using. So no one knew who I was in my name. Then was Sean Beach. So they thought they were all the emails, they thought they were talking to a man when and then when they came and when when the when management from other companies said I was negotiating deals, I've negotiated billion dollar deals. Being in the transportation industry, the whole game is to get the contracts at the least amount per mile so that you do you have your cost savings in your company and you get your bonus right. And I was a master negotiator. So essentially becoming invaluable is essential inside of corporate America. And as I'm negotiating these deals, by the time that they're coming to sign these deals and we're meeting face to face, it's like, hmm, the the microaggressions are real. My mentor inside of this company was this the man that hired me, right? The one that extending me, helping me extend up. He had the ability to make the decisions who give me those jobs. But once he left the company, it became evident. That this ain't this ain't what they wanted. Me. And there were so many, so many things that happened that really affected my heart. And I ended up leaving that company. Word on the street got around that I was unhappy at this one company. And again, this is before we were leveraging LinkedIn, before we were doing anything. People understood who in the industry was a a a sharpshooter. And word got around and I would get phone calls saying, Hey, we heard you're not happy there. Would you come and do what you did over there over here? And we'll give you 10,000 a year more? Yes. So I would jump from company to company. That happened to me three times. I worked in logistics as a logistics executive multiple times. And every time I went to another company, it was like the same thing. It was all of this aggression and just disrespect. And it just got to the point where I was really tired. But the straw that broke the camel's back. I don't care how effective I was, how much transformation I brought, how much intelligence and thought and change management that I implemented at organizations. It came down to ethics and morals. So the very last job that I had, I remember it specifically the day that I quit because I was called in the office again. After 9-11, transportation changed. It became illegal to not have specific Processes in place to make sure that no tr no 18 wheeler had a bomb on it, right? So we had specific things that were legally our responsibility. And this one company trying to make fast money was, you know, usurping those legalities. And I had already put in those processes. To make a long story short, I had already created all of the SOPs and all of the systems, trained all the people. And ⁓ there was a meeting called and one of our clients was on the phone. He the first thing first thing my president said was, You're gonna be in the meeting. You're gonna acknowledge that you're here, but you can't say anything. So I'm at the I'm at the board meeting, you know, with the phone in the middle, everybody's on the speaker phone. I'm in this, I'm in this meeting and I don't know what's happening, but then I hear the client on the phone say, Sh is Sean there? And I say, Yes, I'm here. And he said, Sean, I am so disappointed in you. Thought you were I remember girl, I remember this. It was so devastating. He said, I thought you were smarter than this. And I'm like, what is happening? Come to find out the company had done something when I left. The company had done something illegal and there had been there's a missing truck. There's a truck we cannot find. They did not adhere to any of the protocols. We don't have any note. We don't have anything. There's thousands of products on this truck, and now it's missing. And I'm over the department. He's been told that this is my fault. But it's not. I can't say anything. I work here. The client, it yeah, I can't tell him that this like I can't say anything. So I had to sit there. And so my president is holding my hand and he was like, you know, ⁓ Dave, I'm sorry this happened. I'm going to handle it here. There will be there will be repercussions. I'm gonna talk to Sean. And I just got thrown under the proverbial truck. And I was just like, and so he said, Okay, Sean, once the meeting was over, I was like, What happened? So they told me, ⁓ you know, we did it anyway, but it's okay. We just need you to sign this paperwork. And so I was asked to sign a false document, accepting responsibility. There was no not gonna be any repercussions for real. This was just for show to client. I was asked to sign a ⁓ false document to admit to wrongdoings that I did not do, to apologize to this client and you know, sign this document. And I just went to my office and I almost cried. And I was just like, Lord, why does this keep happening? I'm a woman of faith. And I said a prayer in my beautiful all glass window office. And I was just like, I've dreamed to be here. I've worked to be here. And here is what's happened. It keeps happening to me. ⁓ and I just said, I can't, I don't think I should, I don't think you want me here to abandon my morals to not believe in the word that you have set forth for me. And I have to have faith that there is more to me than. for me than this. And I quit that day with no plan. I had four kids at home. I was raising newly again, newly divorced. All the things, the house note, the big truck note, I had all the things and I walked out that day and I've never been back. And God, it's faithful. The highest I made, I quit in 2008. The highest I made was 125,000. 124,000 a year is my salary back in twenty two thousand and eight. And I promise you, 2009 I made 125,000. I've never made less than what I made. A year at those jobs. It's only gone up. God is so faithful. But I'm promise you, I didn't have a plan. I didn't know what I was gonna do. I never wanted to be an entrepreneur. Growing up in the projects here of Atlanta, baby, I needed a guarantee check. But when these people asked me to lie, to go against my morals and integrity, to not be ethical, it just did something to my soul. And I tell people all the time that there are so many illnesses that have come out of just. That, you know, that that stress that corporate puts on you, the things you have to swallow, the smiles you have to fake, the tears you have to hold back, all of and this was before there was all this online support groups. I didn't have mentors. My mentor was a man. There was no one to ask how to navigate these spaces back then. You know, we we weren't in check. groups and social media. We didn't have all that. We were just trying I'm just trying to navigate, be a good employee. I show up every day. I stay late. I do all the things that are still happening today. And this still happens, right? I'm the I was the most educated in every every sense of the world. I was more overeduced than every president, vice president. You know, the boss that I'm telling you about that hired me was a paramedic. He didn't even go to college. Yet I had to have a master's degree to take a position that he was giving up. Hello. Mm-hmm. So what did you do? What was the kind so you leave without a plan? What was the first thing you did to get your business off the ground? I used my Rolodex. Back then, you know, we had a real Rolodex. That's right, that's right. Use that little Rolodex girl. I took my Rolodex now. So I started calling. So my idea was I have huge networks in transportation. So my idea was I'll call every one of my connections at these transportation agencies, let them know that I am now a free agent. I'm a broker and I will now represent other Truckers. Owner operators were my heart because they did not have the budget or the wherewithal to fight for themselves. So I was their advocate in every field. I made sure they got paid first and in full versus the the stereotypical, you know, corporate, yeah, we'll pay you in 180 days. Owner operators could not, they couldn't stomach waiting 180 days. So I made sure that all my owner operators were first paid, always on time. if not early. So my my idea was I'll just broker for them. I'll go out and I'll secure contracts for my owner operators and they'll pay me. I mean, if I get five or six of them paying me a thousand dollars a month, I can navigate that and grow that into a a straight brokerage. And I had all the contacts. Whatever. What I found, they didn't have any marketing. No marketing, no way. Most of those drivers were operating from two cell phones. They had a next t two next tails and, you know, Just trying to navigate like this. And I was like, wow, this is crazy. You guys are not even ready. I can't even promote you appropriately because you don't you don't have any infrastructure for me to go and sell for you. I'm an excellent salesperson. I could have negotiated all their deals and just that would have been an ideal business for me. But they didn't have it. And so that's how I got into marketing. I was like, I have to create marketing for these men. But I also found out once I left. They lost a lot of money because nobody was gonna take care of them the way that I took care of them and made sure that they got paid on time. They were now subjected to the hundred and eighty day corporate game that they pay. Corporate doesn't it's just a gain to pay to make sure that you have all of your money in your account as long as possible. Mm-hmm. You really, you know, it's that hundred and eighty day game, if not longer. So they didn't have the infrastructure. A lot of them just could not afford to pay me because they weren't getting paid anymore since I the advocate was no longer there and I I had to find other businesses. So back then w I was now we're getting online. So my first business, my first successful venture was selling websites and SEO services because SEO was new and it was costing a lot of money and I was learning how to do it and I cared about the businesses. So that's how I got started. That's the complete story how we landed here and it's been up ever since. So what I heard what I heard you say was you had to take a leap of faith. You tapped into your Rolodex. But I also saw I think in some of your websites that you also started sc scared, which really resonated with me because, you know, one of the tagli my my tagline of the show is build a dream messy. Build it scared, just don't build it small. So talk to me about what it was like doing it scared, right? Like you got babies, you got four of them. I don't know how old they were at that time, but you got babies that you gotta feed. You've left the security of corporate So how did you navigate through feeling that fear in the beginning? So I'm I'm gonna tell you the truth. I've never failed at anything. And I'm always gonna bet on myself. I know that I'm a I know that I'm a hard worker. I know that I'm freaking brilliant. And there's no task too too high that I can't accomplish. So I just had that level of, you know, faith in self, faith in God. My background is so So many miracles. Like the life, my literal life is a miracle. I'm a two-time cancer survivor. Everything about the journey that I have been on is nothing but miracle after miracle after miracle. So I can bet on myself because I believe that I'm a win in anything. So then that's just my idea. And the babies were young. My oldest back then when I quit was 14. She was going to t to high school. So I had a 14-year-old, a 13, a 12-year-old. a 10 year old and I raised my nephew. So my nephew was eight. So I had these little steps step children. Mm-hmm. And ⁓ yeah, we got we gotta pay this mortgage. So luckily though, I had a savings. I made enough money to have a savings. So the year f my year of trying to figure it out, that year of 2009, of really just trying to figure it out, ⁓ it wasn't hard. And then, you know, back then I had all the c I had a coach. I had name brand stuff. I had the boots. I had the jacket. I had all the name brand stuff. My daughter was coming online. So she sold a lot of things on eBay, bringing that I mean that paid the mortgage for a couple of months, just getting rid of all the name all the luxury. I didn't need sell all the suits. I guess the suits sold the suits. So I had ability to bring in some money to support myself, but I also knew that I could sell. So once I figure it out what what was selling right now, what was what was marketable. what people needed at the moment, it was it was up from there. But it really was a lot of faith. So you mentioned the sales, ⁓ and that being a big part of I think your the business the way you're coaching folks as well. What do you think are are the key components of making a good salesperson? A good listener really is all about sales is sales is nothing but service. So when you hear how you can help people The ability to translate. I hear your problem and here's my solution for your problem and here's how much it costs for me to solve that for you. I have a track record of it. So let me tell you about the other people who had your same problem and how I helped them. And if you need to call them, you can. We can call them right now. I don't have to preface them because they're legitimate. That's how I move. And a lot of people when they're starting out. When I started my business, a lot of, you know, people came to me who were trying to transition out of corporate as well. And so that's my I mean Like literally, you can leverage your credibility and make a consultancy off of the previous work. I love doing that for women. So ⁓ what I do is I tell them, I say, Hey, leverage your strengths, but also leverage your corporate track record in when you're selling. Hey, I have I have done this, this, and this. And here's how I can help you. And I've also told clients when they're first getting started to do a cup of warm market leads for free for you know, just to get your teeth wet, just to get a testimonial or a nominal fee. You can charge a half fee, but not too low. If you don't charge, especially, you know, people don't charge them too low. I've lost so many deals by undercharging, ⁓ just trying to get any little money. That was a lesson because it doesn't sound credible. If you're offering something of value and you're trying to undercut, it's it's not. sometimes it's not believable. Yeah. ⁓ I always say that, you know, one of my mentors talks about people who pay pay attention. Mm-hmm. Right. And so if everything is free and I I've had to make that adjustment in my own business. Like I don't do free consultations anymore because it's like you get people who just want to gobble up your time and and they're not serious. They're not serious people. And our time is too busy and it's limited. Right. And so how you price your services and not just giving everything away, sometimes you have to take that take that step. But I would imagine as you're coming out, someone who has a logistics background and ⁓ has different frameworks, what are some of the kind of structures and frameworks that you bring into a lot of the work today that you think like a an entrepreneur would really benefit from? Structures and so the main thing for me is again revenue generation. Most times the the main focus that when I work with clients is what's your what's your profit strategy? Like what are your what's for sale and why is it for sale? And then what is the the elevation? You know, in the online market they talk about funnels. Well we've been doing that in the small business world forever. Like what's our primary offer? What's our secondary offer? What's our low end offer that if you can't afford any of these things, we can at least do this for you. So for example, have a landscaper Who, yes, he can build retaining walls. He can completely redo and redesign everything, build you a fountain in the front yard. But that's his primary offer. That's the thing that he loves to do. But at the end of the day, if all you want him to do is cut the grass, we got you that, that too. So we have tiers of service offerings. And ⁓ I think that every business should have levels and tiers so that you don't, you literally don't lose any money. Can come and for me, my high t my high tiered offer is for me to literally become your strategist. Come into your business, become your fractional COO. I love operations. That's important. But the operations is where the structure happens. So having having that as a a a long-term play is great. But at the end of the day, if all you need is if all you can afford or you really could help with your budget is a strategy. Then I'm gonna make sure that you have everything you need to know and you can refer back to my strategy calls, it will last you for two years of ideas, just getting things straight in you know in your mind of what to work on, what to focus on. So I think that that's the thing. Having a profit map. How do we make money? What's for sale? What is the market saying? And then just not pulling numbers out of the sky. Do the research. Mm-hmm. I know we got AI now, but AI don't know. And I ⁓ it is regurgitating information that is online that might or might not be true. Right. So you really have to do your do your market research. So I have a philosophical question for you. And I asked this of my own coaches because you get a lot of advice about niching down and being really focused on your ideal client. But you just talked about something really important, having an offering for folks in like different stages. So as someone who is deep into sales and marketing, How do you define your messaging so that you're still hitting that main person that you want to hit, but still maybe make yourself available to the people on the front end? This is a perfect question. I get this all the time. You focus on, so I have a analogy around a bullseye, right? You focus on your perfect ideal bullseye client. And there's always those rings of peripheral, right? So even if they're not the bullseye, you only talk to the problem, the literal, not the problem, but the solution. You have to know your ideal client's problem so that you can have a specific solution. And you speak to the solution that you provide, not the benefits and the features and talking about what they don't have. It is here's the solution to your problem. Here's the solution that I provide. And that solution It's going to speak and you when you explain your solution, it will hit all of the outer rings from the bullseye. It'll speak to the the entirety of the market and not just, you know, the simplicity. Most people, most people focus on the things that don't matter. And it's a lot of fluffiness going on. It's a lot of fluffiness going on. Now, inside of my business, I literally most of the time I'm operating as a fractional COO. I do not market with that. I market with if you want to make money, you want to talk to me. If you're a business, if you're a small or medium-sized business, if you service-based business, I specialize in service-based businesses. And you want to make more money in your business, I'll help you find the profit in your business. You want to talk to me. That's it. And that encompasses all of the components. Now there's some specific criteria, but if you want to make money, you want to talk to me. Now there's some criteria for my ideal client, because the problem is they want to make more money. But if you are a ⁓ I've met people who have three separate lanes of what they do. They might be a realtor, but they're a dental hygienist and they have a painting company that they do on the weekends with their husband. If you are a service-based business and you want to make money, you talk to me. But that's not my ideal. They're in one of the peripheral rings of my ⁓ my actual offer and that bullseye further away from the bullseye, but the message speaks still speaks to them. Does that make sense? Yes. And so it it it triggers me to something else that I seen you talk about the idea of clarity and confidence. How are some of the ways that you help entrepreneurs who are struggling with getting the clarity and the confidence that they need, particularly around this area of how they're speaking to their ideal client or customer, how do you work through that with them? ⁓ my goodness. ⁓ my goodness. ⁓ you're so good. I have I had this process. So credible visibility came about Because that's that's what people needed. It's like you're already credible in your field. I only work with people who have been in business for at least three years, not the newbies. You've been in business three years or you have experience in doing what you want to do as a consultant for multiple years. Right. Because you got what? Track record and you have receipts. So I have a process that pulls it out of them. I have a complete Signature process that pulls out their credibility in such a way that gives them specific language. I don't make it up for them. We don't go to Chat GPT. It is where I listen to I ask questions. I listen to what they say. And together we create their own complete bespoke signature framework that is only theirs and that speaks to probably who they were about five, 10 years ago and solves the problem. Because nine nine times out of it, it is true. That your most ideal customer is the one that you, you know, you used to be that you saw for yourself. Right. And I I mean to to together, ⁓ I have this three by three framework. Believe that, you know, you know, I'm faith based, ⁓ three is an important number. But it's easy to remember. Like when you have a five tiered, seven step, seventeen step. No, we got a three by three, and you can remember it. But it gives my clients ⁓ a level of specificity. That separates them in the market. And it actually makes them feel confident because it's their words. It's their words. And a lot of us, especially us ambitious, really, really ⁓ high visionary women specifically. I work with a few good men, but women, women specifically, it's like we so discount our receipts. We discount our accolades. We forget about the mountains that we've climbed. And so when I can pull that out, it automatically gives you confidence because it's like, ⁓ my goodness, I did I did do that. Yeah. You know? Whereas I'm telling you for sure, the men I don't have this problem with. They're they're amazing just because they're amazing. Yes. That is true. Not that they're amazing because they're amazing, but that that's a a s ⁓ mental block, I think, that that's a lot of women have. So you just shared with me kind of some of the inputs in your process. On the back end, how does somebody know that their their offer is positioned right or wrong? You know, if you're just starting to build an offer, some of it is like hey, you gotta have patience to let it cook. But at what point are you like, Ooh, nobody's eating what you're cooking, like your cooking is no good. There's so much generic th it's just too much generalities. My thing is I tell clients to do this thing called brain dump, right? All of first of all, all of your strengths, right? In in ⁓ In corporate, we do the SWOT analysis and they tell you, you know, you go to the the yearly review and it's like, ⁓ list all your weaknesses and all your strengths. And always the strengths are shorter than the weaknesses, and we gotta work on our weaknesses. I say forget everything but your strengths. Don't work on anything. Focus on your strengths. Focus only on your strengths. We call I call them in my my ⁓ process our tags, our talents, our assets, our gifts, and our strengths, right? Focus on your strengths. Take a list. Other things. Go back to kindergarten. Cause I what I found is, you know, the thing that we were in trouble with, the things that, you know, we got chastised for as children are literally the things that would propel us as adults. The one thing I got trouble in trouble for is as a kid is reading too much. But read by the great lights. I was always buried in a book. I wanted to know everything about everything, if I found anything. And then we had to be, you know, by Harry's readers in Atlanta. With all these H B C U teachers. But I just I divulged information. And back then we had to go to the library. So those are the kind of things that intrigued me as a kid and I got in trouble with. Well, that's what I do now. I'm a consummate researcher. There's probably no question that my clients can ask me about anything that I don't even know about or familiar with or go find it out and tell you tomorrow, right? That's innate. So actually make a list of everything that you're great of, every award. Every ⁓ certificate, every my clients normally forget the magazines they've been in, the newspaper articles that has been written about them, the ⁓ certifications that they've gotten, the awards that they won at work, all of that. So you can look at it. And then what do you want to sell? What what what do you want to sell? Who's selling it right now? What on a high level, right? When I was starting my business as a marketer, I went and researched the McKin McKinley group, right? They're master marketers. They have white papers galore. I divulged that. What are the what are they what is the research saying? I looked at the pew research, right? ⁓ subscribe to all of the high big corporate newsletters. Their boardrooms are open. There is nothing, no real information. All the statistics, all the research and development is open for us to go and divulge. Not, you know, chat GBT. Not if you're gonna use it, use it well. But I would go to the source. The people who are spending millions of dollars in research and development, the people who will have the statistics to say that what's working right now, what has worked, where the market is going, I start there. And then you find out what's being sold for how much. And then you you you know, price pricing is based on the confidence that you have in your sale, right? So pricing is always gonna be subjective. If you have a five thousand dollar offer, But your heart palpitates when you even say that something costs five thousand. You're not ready because it's not gonna come off as confident. So your heart has to be ready. And you know, if a thousand dollars feels good and warm and fuzzy for you, charge a thousand dollars. Do it for three times, get great results, have testimonials, then you double the pricing. You know, when people are unconfident in their offer, especially after we work together, it's like nothing we don't charge anything less than a thousand dollars. I mean, it's a thousand dollars to walk outside in Atlanta. You need a thousand dollars to go. So that's that's marketable. We're gonna come up with an offer that's at least four figures and we'll walk our way up. So we start a thousand dollar offer. Once you do it three times successfully, get three testimonials, we'll double that. Once you do it again three times successfully, get three more testimonials, we double. Until you feel confident enough to where your market and your offer match with the pricing that you're confident enough to sell. And say it with your whole chest and there's no heart palpitations. See, this is bad for me because we're like literally of the same generation. So everything you're saying, like with your sayings and stuff, is like I'm almost I hear myself saying it. 'Cause I I always tell this story about being a young girl growing up in the Bronx and like learning how to play basketball and going to the courts and declaring with confidence I got next. And I would say, being a twelve year old girl who's not tall and being and I say same with my whole chest, I got next. And being able to endure the the funky expressions that you would get. So it's the same thing in business, right? I've been there when I'm saying a number and I'm like, Whoop, I hope they that doesn't scare them off. ⁓ I also s have a saying, and it's not me, it's Robert Frost. It says good fences make good neighbors. Just keep people in and fences keep people out. And so if you price yourself too low, you might be letting some people in that fence that you don't on the other side of that fence don't that you don't want there. And today's price is not tomorrow's price. So like if that person is not going to accept your price, some that's a gift. I have sons and I tell my sons like if that girl said no, that's a gift. She wasn't for you. She was not She wasn't the one for you. She wouldn't. She wanna go on the extravagant date and spend up all the money and then doesn't call back. Like that's a gift. Because you have to make this whole investment chasing this client, this money. They've given you the answer. It's okay to move on. All right, that's today's sermon. Today's sermon for the pod. Tell me the one thing in building your business that you're most proud of. Because I d I do have so I had those four kids back then, but then I started over. So I have a new 15-year-old. She's 15 now. My oldest is almost 34. And I had this a 15-year-old girl. So she's important to me. And it's important for me to be present. Another reason that I started this business was because corporate was pulling me so much further away from being present with my kids. Cause the longer hours, every time you start a new job. They want more. They need more. It's so much more to do. So it's beyond and you're on salary. So you're not paid overtime. You're literally working, working, working. And my babies are important to me. Right. So I needed to be present at home. And so my my hours now. I take my kids. I have always done this. I take them. I don't care if the bus does go to school. I'm dropping everybody off. And I want to be able to pick them up. Right. And I sacrificed that with the older kids because as I started moving from company to company, I no longer could pick them up. And I made that sacrifice but and it hurt my heart. So my biggest flex right now is I work I start my work at ten o'clock because I do have to get my work out in. I drop my baby off at school, at high school, and I I s we say I love you every morning when she gets out of the car and I go work out for an hour and then I start my day at ten o'clock and I end my day at four o'clock because she gets out of school at four thirty. And I don't work after hours and every client there's no weekend work unless you pay me and I agree. But I don't I There's there's nothing. I'm not in checking my email. I don't check my email until I start my computer up at ten o'clock the next day. So I am not on call and I've made all those concessions before. I've always been on and I've charged less than you know, and sculpt gets so far skewed when you do stuff like that. So you get to cho we get to choose the level of clientele that we serve and the the the Flexibility we want to have is. It'll be so much easier to and you know let these people pay me to do nothing but get my hair done every Friday or what all the other people do, right? Or, you know, surf search the internet all day and still make your pay. No. Yeah. My work structured. I care and I I serve my clients at a high capacity, a high level, and they know they can trust me and they respect. I don't have I don't believe in boundaries as much as I believe in managing. My energy and managing the space that is the the respect level. ⁓ All right. Yeah. I love that. My thing is in addition to working out, I have a a lake in my town that I walk every day and it helps me set my mind for the day on what my priorities are and what I want to think about and I get do some of my best thinking there and and that's just super important to me. All right, Sean, we're gonna get you out on the last couple questions here. Ask all my guests the same question. When you hear the phrase, do small business like a big boss, what does it mean to you? It matches my phrase. Do small business like a big business. So don't treat your business as if you're the the corner store. You're on Main Street. The bull is outside of my office, right? Like the bull in on Wall Street. I see that when I walk out of my office, right? Respect me and my intellectual property like you respect anybody else's company because I'm a company. I employ. I have employees. I pay taxes, right? So that's the inner that's the energetics that I give. That and that's a standard. If there's I don't barter, right? I don't barter. I expect that when we start an engagement, that you'll honor your word. Integrity is a is a core value here. I have my core values of my company in front of my computer. Every day I can look at it and that's how I hire. It's it's the gauge that navigates my my business, right? Because remember I told you. the ethics and the morals that were being compromised at these corporations. I don't even want that to be in my atmosphere. So when I hire people, that's the, that's the norm, right? I can see it every day because it stands right here. So that's the the baseline. That's how big business operate. When you go into a company, they tell you, hey, here's what we stand for. Here's what we believe in. And sometimes you have you have to epitomize that. When you go to college, you have to s talk about that. You have to learn that alma mater song. Have your own alma mater song for your company and stand on it. Stand strong on it. So I say that all the time. We help small business do big business because we are big business. That's a bar. You're not the corner store. No. Stop being the corner store. Not that, you know, there's anything wrong that people who've built wonderful businesses, but we're not trying to be the corner star. Right. Sean, where can the people find you and your in your ten thousand businesses? Where's the best place for them to find you out here on the interwebs? Well, I I love the ⁓ the connection on LinkedIn. So on LinkedIn, I am Sean Thomas Biz on LinkedIn. I'm on other platforms, but that is where my my business resides for right now. I am try I'm trying to figure out. all these other social media platforms, but right now LinkedIn. So I'm Sean Thomas Biz on LinkedIn. Awesome. Well thank you so much for your time and your talents today. This has been a phenomenal conversation. I've appreciated getting to know you a little bit. Thank you. This was so fun. All right, bosses, that's all we have time for today. If you've got any value from today's episode, please don't forget to like, rate, and subscribe because it really helps the pod grow. And until next time, just remember, build the dream messy, build the dream scared. But just don't build it small. We'll see you next time.