Fear, politics, and lemon bathing costumes: Interview with Sharon McMahon of @sharonsayso

Creative Counsel Episode 63: Fear, Politics, and Lemon Bathing Costumes. An interview with Sharon McMahon of Sharon Says So.

Welcome to Creative Counsel with Brittany Rettell. I'm your host Brittany, an attorney for creatives who believes in solid contracts and cute office supplies, and who wants to empower you to be a more confident business owner. Whether you're a creative, influencer, maker, artist, shop owner, or content creator, you are not just a blank. You are a real bona fide business owner. So let's help you own your business and get you legally legit with Brit. Hello, listeners, and welcome back.

Thanks so much for joining us if you've been here before. And if you're new to the podcast, welcome. We are so happy to have you here. So I wanted to give a brief intro before we get into this amazing episode that I did with Sharon McMahon. Now, if you're not familiar or haven't been following Sharon online, she is incredible. She's bright and clever. She knows a little something about everything and a lot of things about entrepreneurship, about constitutional law, about civics and government, and about all kinds of mammals, including whales. So Sharon McMahon started out her adult life as a government teacher before leaving to pursue her side hustle full-time. After she built a 7-figure business and sold it in the knitting and yarn space, she became one of her region's most successful photographers and has gone on to coach entrepreneurs via her coaching program, Master's Level Collective. When she's not answering all of Instagram's questions about government and civics, she's likely trapped under a snoring Labrador reading a book. I just completely adored, and it was really trying not to be a fangirl over this conversation. I discovered Sharon a couple of weeks ago, so I'm a recent addition to her fan club, and the only thing I'm mad about is that I haven't known about her sooner and been following her and consuming her content. She has done an amazing job, especially this year, with walking people through what is going on in the news. She is great about teaching about media literacy, about being a fair and, you know, a good critic in terms of news information and what you're getting, about being able to engage in difficult conversations without being difficult. And I especially find her a really great resource in talking about entrepreneurship. She's obviously super well qualified, having been in the product space and been a service provider for many, many years and built up both different kinds of businesses and now coaches a lot and helps other entrepreneurs. And especially in this conversation, we touch on some of that expertise, but also kind of big picture things like motherhood and business and fear and imposter syndrome and dealing with hard subjects and not letting it harden you. So without further ado, I can't wait to share this conversation with you with Sharon.

Hello everybody, and welcome back. I am so excited to have our guest today. If you guys get to know and love her, if you haven't had the honor yet, I, this has probably been the most exciting person that I've gotten DMs yet about talking with her today. So not, not to build her up too much, but I know you're going to love her. Um, welcome to the podcast, Sharon. McMahon.

Thank you, I'm excited to be here with you. Thanks.

Awesome, of course. Um, so I wanted to, you kind of just spend a little bit about your, uh, expertise, um, kind of as a serial entrepreneur, because I love seeing, you know, it's always cool to hear about people's business stories and where they got started. Um, and I think especially for you, you know, you talk about in such glowing terms of, you know, how your husband's supportive of this, but, you know, some of these can turn out, you know, into kind of little cottage dreams that turn into a big thing. And so I'd love for you to kind of start with your experience there and then I've got another, you know, amazing, great things that you can speak to about your stuff that you do in politics and online. And you're just, you're just a hilarious, talented person. And so I'm excited for all of that goodness that we get to have out.

Thank you. Okay. So I never, you know, like I've been an entrepreneur since I was 10, you know, like some people are just born with it and I never had it.

Maybe it's Maybelline.

Yeah. So maybe it's Maybelline. Never know. Hard to say. I, when I was 10, I started making bookmarks and then selling them door to door. And I did it without even asking my mom. And I made $50 one weekend as a 10-year-old and came home with $50. And my mom was like, and where is this from?

You know, like, where is this? What kid were you beating up at school to get this money? Right.

A 10-year-old comes home with $50. That's a lot of money for a 10-year-old. And I explained that I had made these bookmarks and sold them door to door, 2 for $1. So I mean, when a kid comes to your door asking, you know, like, do you want to buy these? They're 50 cents or 2 for a dollar. My great deal of 50 cents or 2 for a dollar.

Amazing promotion. Yeah, kind of winning that you get in Sharon's mastermind right here.

This is—

you guys can't— you can't pay for this business wisdom, guys.

So anyway, of course, you give it— you give a kid at the door a dollar. You know what I mean? Like, you absolutely do. Anyway, so I went on to become a teacher. I didn't— I don't know if I just never thought about becoming an entrepreneur professionally. I don't, I don't remember having those thoughts in college. I was either like, I wanted to be a physician or I wanted to be a teacher. And I ended up going into being a social studies teacher. I taught government and law for a long time in several different states and really, really found a passion for that topic, which I still absolutely have. I am very passionate about Government education, helping people understand how government actually impacts their daily life. It's— I absolutely love it. While I was a teacher, started having kids and started a little side hustle in my, in my kitchen and started selling hand-dyed yarn that I made in literally in my kitchen, tiny, tiny kitchen and tiny, tiny, probably an 800-square-foot house. In suburban Washington, D.C. You know, like you couldn't even fit 2 people in this kitchen, right? And this was even before Etsy made it easy to sell things online. I had to have a graphic designer friend make me a little website, and I started selling yarn, which then eventually— to make a long story short, I eventually ended up building up into this pretty big yarn business, had a bunch of employees and a studio. I ended up moving my own business across the country back to my hometown and worked at it full time for many years, had 10 employees, traveled around the country and did tons of teaching and workshops related to, you know, this kind of creative business. And then a number of years ago, sold it and started working in photography full time. And since then, I, you know, Again, hate to ramble, but been a photographer for a long time and now I do mostly coaching other entrepreneurs and how to have successful businesses because truly most creative entrepreneurs, that is what they're lacking. They understand how to be a good graphic designer. They understand how to be a good photographer, how to be good at what service they're offering. Right, but they don't understand how to be a good business person, right?

And it's a separate skill set that I think sometimes creative entrepreneurs attach a bunch of shame to, which keeps them, you know, from feverishly looking at stuff and conflict, you know, conflicting advice in Facebook groups or whatnot.

100%, you totally hit the nail on the head.

And it's like, you know what, that you don't, you don't have to be. You're, you're amazing at balloons or doing cakes or throwing parties or doing website designing or branding or whatnot. You know, you don't know what you don't know. And so why, why attach a whole bunch of judgment or layer on top of that? Yeah, I feel like I say that a ton to people. They feel bad that they don't know legal stuff. And I'm like, not only is this like a tiny, boring for most people subset of the administrative part of your business, but I totally get how this doesn't immediately move your business forward. So like, let's, let's just take the shame off it right now. And let's just move forward, you know, right?

You don't need to sitting here feeling bad about what you don't know is not useful in any way. And people have a lot of issues asking. This is something that I've discovered, especially solo entrepreneurs have a lot of issues asking people for money. Have you noticed this?

Oh, yes. There's a lot tied up into pricing. And it's usually—

there's some—

it's like that iceberg picture of the mindset work that has to come in before. Because what really scares, especially women, not to paint with a broad brushstroke here, for people with the uterus. But what happens is that we're tying this all up into our value and we're having some imposter syndrome issues and we're not confident in putting out and like, this is what our price is and I'm real and take me seriously at this price.

Yeah. Yes. And also we're, there's this a little bit of cultural conditioning that you're supposed to be nice and you're supposed to be like, don't draw too much attention to yourself. Cause that makes you full of yourself. Don't be that person. Nobody likes the girl who's too full of herself. Right? Like, that's kind of the position that—

who does she think she is? And you better not think who she is, you know, and be that girl, right?

She is. Yes. And so that's, I'll think, a lot of where that mindset of, I don't want to ask for too much money because then people will think I'm full of myself, right?

As if, you know, we're— as if anyone, you know, accidentally booked a photography session and was like, I was coerced and she told me that she had sessions for Easter and I just, I didn't know what to do. So I bought them. Like never have, has that actually happened? You know, people are adults and they make their own choices with their money. It's fine.

No one held a gun to her head and forced you to take her newborn's pictures.

No. You know, like cuddled up in the knit with the mermaid hat. Like haven't, haven't seen it. You know, I know that, you know, we've got a lot of semantic overload and what fascism looks like nowadays, but I don't think we can throw that in it.

That's true. Very true.

Totally true. Well, I love that. And I mean, and you can hear, you know, how much of like your mindset work, because as you've talked about kind of the work and how your wisdom has changed into how you mentor and you, I love your discussion of like, look, what you need is maybe not another course. Tell me a little bit about that and how you kind of, not to throw any shade around course creators. No, guys, courses are awesome and they totally have their place. Yes, but here's an important but.

I, and I have taken many courses and benefited from many courses. This is no shade to courses whatsoever. My, what I have been noticing though is that people use education as a means to procrastinate. They, it is the most noble form of procrastination. I still need to learn how to be a CPA before I can be a photographer.

I must seek out more credentials from the Betty of choices before I may sit down at the feast with my fathers and be, you know, hold my head high.

For sure. Yes. And so we procrastinate by— we never actually do anything because we're too busy learning everything. When— and again, I'm an educator. I truly love to learn things. No shade about learning.

Yeah.

It's, it's just that there needs to be a balance between actually learning and doing. Can you imagine a physician who just sat and watched videos? You know, like, I bought a course and I watched the suturing video and we should be good to go. You know, like, no, actually you do need to do things. You cannot just absorb. You actually need to do.

Yeah, that's not how osmosis works.

So yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's, there's a big lack of options for people who want to have friends that run businesses. They want to actually be held accountable for doing something and not just consuming more information. We can read a million books about how to lose weight, but at some point you actually need to not eat Cheetos, right? You know what I mean? Like at some point you actually need to do the work.

Yeah. The rubber meets the road at some point and you need to, You need to, you know, you need to pony up and face, you know, the Pressfield resistance. And right. And, and know that it's going to be there and that's okay. And you should expect that. That doesn't mean it's a no, that doesn't mean you're not capable. That doesn't mean you can learn. And I've loved, and I've, I've started trying to implement this, not that I'm great at it yet, is try to have just-in-time learning where you just consume what you need for just the next thing in your business.

So 100%.

That means you don't take a course on Pinterest if you're not really going to sit down and do Pinterest next, you know?

That's right. I was just in a— I was in a mentor group earlier today where I was telling somebody that very thing, where they were feeling very overwhelmed about running a Facebook ad campaign, and they were like, I don't know how to install a pixel. I don't know how to do retargeting, A/B split testing, you know, like they— and so the fact that they didn't know how to do everything was keeping them from doing anything. Yes. And so I 100% agree with you. Like, let's actually just learn one skill today. Let's learn how to go into Facebook Ads Manager and see what the options are. We've learned one skill. And then when the next— when we need to know the next skill, we can add to our skill set. We don't need to know everything there is to know on a topic before actually taking action in our business, right?

We need to channel some more Marc Anthony in our lives. Tell me, baby girl, what you need to know. And it just needs to be the next thing. That's it. You know, let his smooth Latin music and hips guide you to the next useful step and not something where you're going to get shiny object syndrome.

100%. I totally agree with you. We're on the same page because I think it's, it's hard.

And I think, you know, you hit the nail on the head in that entrepreneurs are usually multi-passionate people. That's a word we see thrown around a lot. They're there. They've got a lot of energy, enthusiasm. Otherwise, they would have chosen something else. Okay, because this, this crucible of learning a business is the ultimate self-development course. You know, it's going to require a lot of you. Um, but there's that, that challenge to that is making sure that you're committed and that you have accountability and you follow through on the execution.

Yes, that's where most entrepreneurs are lacking. It's not in the knowledge, it's in the application. They, they actually— if you sat somebody down and said, what do you think you need to do to improve your business. They could probably tell you what they actually need to do. They're just not doing it.

Yeah.

And going back to my silly diet analogy, if you want to lose 20 pounds, if I sat you down, Brittany, and was like, what do you think you need to do to lose 20 pounds? You would say like eat better, like eat better and move more, right?

And probably drink more water. Yeah.

You already know that.

Yeah.

So the problem is not in the knowing, it's in the doing.

And that is that on a Pinterest graphic. Okay.

That not in the knowing, it's in the doing. You already know, you probably already know what you need to do unless you're like truly brand, brand, brand, brand new and you've never taken any courses or never had any education. But if you have taken courses and you understand, you know, like you have done a lot of work, you need to just do stuff. This is another thing that I tell people a lot that was a lesson that I really needed to learn because again, I am naturally a learner personality. And constantly seeking to learn new things is clarity doesn't come from thought. You cannot think your way out of a paper bag. You actually need to do something.

You're going to need some scissors. Okay.

Yeah. You're going to need to actually like unfold the paper bag. You cannot think your way to clarity. You actually need to take some action, get some data, get some feedback on that action that you took. And then if it's the wrong action, that's actually incredible.

Incredibly useful. Yeah, super, super useful information because like fail fast. Whoops, that product didn't hit, that thing, that offering was off. But now, but now we know and it's good to know.

And I can close that door of like my audience did not respond to that. So now I know like actually what my audience really loves is when I do this other thing over here that I didn't even know that I should be doing. And you don't know that until you actually try it. And so learners tend to really want to, you know, absorb and aggregate all this information, categorize it, figure out like, okay, note cards, flashcards, uh, organize the paper paragraphs 1 through Z. And that is not actually how business works. You cannot think your way into a successful business. You actually have to do things and you actually have to be willing to try and fail because that is much more useful than just continuing to think about it and not doing anything.

Yeah, and staying in the safer but feels like you said that faux productivity of the analysis paralysis. No, I'm researching the right podcast mic. I, because I have to have the right one to launch the podcast.

Yes. And then which platform should I distribute on? You know, like, I have a spreadsheet. You know what I mean?

Like, let me, let me take some more answers, guys. You know, jury's out. Anyone will probably do, you know, will probably do the job just fine. And when it doesn't work, then you find the new one. There's no magic bullet. There's no software out there that's going to fulfill all your needs. Okay, this is not— it's not Matthew McConaughey. I don't know what to tell you.

Who apparently wants to run for governor of Texas.

You know what, stranger things have happened. So I—

wouldn't surprise me at this point.

No, it would not surprise me at this point. So I wanted to ask you, because you reminded me in talking about, you know, being brave and putting yourself out there. I love your advice about dealing with fear and criticism, because I think that is something, especially as people maybe are new business owners and/or they're trying to kind of elevate and maybe personalize their brand, and that means they got to show up on camera, people are going to see their face. Some of that is kind of required for a lot of people who are navigating expanding their reach. How can people do that when they're afraid of showing up and think that they're going to get negative DMs?

Well, you know, like my friend I have a friend whose phrase is, when that happens, when somebody sends you a negative DM, I'll get back to your question in a second, but when someone sends you a negative DM, you just bless and release. And the real, the way that you do that is you say goodbye and then you press block. In a pleasant tone of voice. Goodbye, block.

I think the voice really, I think it really does it there. You know, I imagine it's like some like fish, you know, catch and release. You see them and you know, and you just simply, this Yukon Mariette does not spark joy, so I'm gonna block them.

I just, I politely and kindly press the block button. I wish you good luck in your departure from my life.

Godspeed.

Yes, godspeed. So yes, okay, but here's the thing. People that I've discovered is that people are not actually so much afraid to fail they're more afraid to have other people watch them fail. And that is really like, um, when I, when I really kind of, when that hit home for me, I was like, oh, oh, oh, I don't like it, I don't like it, run away, that hurts because that's what's the truest true there.

Yeah, people are afraid of not even the failure but of the public, of the, you know, what is your sister, what is your, you know, snarky girl from high school going to see when you go?

Yeah. You know, what is my high school bully going to be saying about me behind my back? You know, like, I don't know if I'm mentally prepared for that.

I don't know if we processed all of that quite yet. A little bit of a nerd in high school. I did debate. I think you can probably relate.

Yeah. Yes. Yes. And let me tell you, now that as a successful business owner in my hometown, It does amuse me that all of the girls that were mean to me in high school try to come to me as a client, and they try to act like we were friends back then.

Do you like that? Is there a little part of you that wants to be like Wreck-It Ralph, where she's like, "Um, and all of them will be executed!" Like, you know, just a little bit of groveling. Like, you know, I'm not saying you're a petty person, but like, come on, there's some karma. There's some karma there that needs to be satisfied. Satisfied.

Yeah. Let's turn it around. So it, it really does come down to people. You're afraid that people will watch you fail. And I always, you know, like I always start with, okay, what is the worst that can happen from this scenario? Let's say I launch this product or this service and nobody buys it. What is the worst that could happen if nobody buys it? Let me tell you, I mean, people know this intellectually, feeling it is a different thing. Nobody actually is watching you that closely. Nobody is—

you're not that big of a deal.

No, you're not that important to them. Um, they care about themselves and they're not tracking you with a spreadsheet to be like, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh, Brittany, what were your sales quarter 2? Okay, I see, uh, fail, failure. You know what I mean? Like, that's not a thing anybody is actually doing. And so, you know, the feelings of failure might be there, but the judgment from other people seeing you fail is actually not real. So the, you know, asking yourself, what is the actual worst thing that could happen? And am I willing to risk the actual worst thing? That's the decision point right there. Am I willing to risk the actual worst thing that could happen, which is like somebody doesn't buy my whatever, right?

You launch and there's crickets. And like, you know, allow yourself to really entertain that. What, what does that look like? I get, I order 1,000 of them. No sales. Well, you know, Merry Christmas everyone, that's what you're getting this year.

This is a big growth opportunity for me to figure out how to actually sell this product, you know. But, but the idea that somebody— that there is some kind of judgment police over your shoulder evaluating your every move, that is not based in reality.

It's not a thing. Yeah, no.

As my friend— I have a life coach friend named Jamie who says What else could be true? Like, what other things could be as true, if not more true than that?

Let's try that on a little bit. Let's Brooke Castillo a little bit more of like, what else? And try on some other thoughts that may be, you know, those truer truths there. So I think that's really sound advice. Yeah. So, and I mean, I think that you've done a great job in curating your community online. If you've seen like tremendous growth this year, like incredible, like, which is, I mean, not surprising because you're hilarious. Like people should have been there all along the way, but you know, that's, that's their journey. We're not going to judge them. No. Um, but I think you've done a great job of curating, um, a good group along, especially since you talk the P word, you talk about politics. So can we talk about that, about how you have brought and dared, and this is a question that I got from one of my audience members was ask her, How did she get to be so brave to actually talk about politics on social media in the year of our Lord 2020?

It shall now hereby be known only as the year of our Lord 2020. Yes. Yeah, I mean, what a— we're all going to look back on 2020 and be like, what in the actual was that? What actually— what was that? So here's the thing is that The world doesn't need a lot more hateful, divisive rhetoric right now. And it is, it is, you know, like, as a debate person, I bet you relate to this, Brittany, that you are excellent at actually understanding the viewpoints of two opposing sides, because that is your goal as a debater, is to hold those both in your hands and be like, oh, that's interesting.

Yeah.

Yes. To be able to be like, I see what I see, what the arguments are for point A. I get it. I fully understand it. And the same for point B. I see what the arguments are. And so, you know, it was one of those things where I had this kind of unique knowledge set of understanding actually how the government of the United States works, because I spent my whole adult life studying it. And I don't know. I don't know what it really was that possessed me to just be like, okay guys, Electoral College. Do you remember how it works? Let's talk about it.

Schoolhouse Rock, guys. Let's go. Yeah, let's go.

Do you guys remember? Let's do a refresher. Okay, refresher. And it really started with little things like that, that, you know, the Electoral College, how it works. It's not really that political. It's just kind of factual. You know what I mean? And then that just kind of grew from little. I saw how much people were interested in like, actually, you should just ask Sharon. Sheri might know the answer to that. And I saw how hungry people were for fact-based information and not infotainment. Fact-based information is hard to come by. And frankly, people don't know what they don't know. And that is, again, it's all of humanity is that way. It's not casting aspersions on anyone's intelligence or character. It's just we don't know what we don't know. Like, I don't know what I don't know about being a lawyer. I don't know. I don't— because I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know what I don't know.

You're pretty darn close though. I mean, honestly, I think that your, your knowledge of con law could put, in fact, even probably a lot of my classmates and colleagues to shame. So, well, I—

that is what I studied in grad school, is con law. So I did never study the practice of law. That was never my goal. But it was the study of law is, is my personal interest. Um, So anyway, it's just that people also don't have the stomach for it. We have so many bad emotions surrounding politics right now. So they, they get the idea that you would Google for like, who is Sidney Powell? And then you'd be like, ah, I don't want to know. Ah, I can't handle it.

And you can't just get a straight answer because you're literally never gonna find like a Wikipedia entry for that. It's gonna be like Oh, well, I will tell you this. And again, it's all masquerading, but it's infotainment. It's got someone's spin and someone's agenda, and we're not developing our skills as critical media consumers.

So much. Yes, it's so hard to know where to look for information. Like, can somebody— this is what I've discovered— people just want to ask a question and be given a straight answer. Can you just tell me who she is, please? Like, in in 4 sentences? Can you just tell me what— can you tell me actually what— why aren't there jury trials in all levels of courts? Can you just tell me, please? You know what I mean? Because the info— information, even though it absolutely exists online, the, the amount of feelings people have tied up in even performing a Google search and sifting through what return— what the returns are, it's too much. So then people remain ignorant because of the feelings associated with actually looking for the information.

Yeah, we all say, I don't like politics, or I'm not into politics, it's too divisive, I can't handle the conflict, which I can understand at a level, but also everything is political. So to say that you're not in political thing, it's like, well, I bet you care about how you get healthcare and how you drive on the roads and what your kids learn in school. And, you know, what taxes you pay every year. I actually bet you do care about all those things. So you do care about politics. We're just not engaging in any kind of discussion which would allow us to learn more and actually hold our representatives accountable.

Holding representatives accountable. What does that mean?

That sounds like some nonsense, right?

That is ridiculous.

So, I mean, if people aren't familiar, what I love about your account is that you I think do a wonderful job of being really neutral and fact-based is that people in reading the answers— and you're amazing, and I'm sure spent lots of time in putting together the— from the questions that you get, um, but you don't— in reading those, you don't get a sense of how you voted, which is amazing, you know, to the fact of even addressing politics or what your own personal political beliefs or nuances may or may not be.

So yeah, I try to be, you know, like, this is how I was in the classroom too. I, I try to be the teacher that I would want my kids to have had. To say like, here's this side and here's this side. What are your thoughts about it? That is what I would want for my children. I would not want my children to be indoctrinated with somebody else's viewpoint. I want them to learn the critical thinking skills because what happens once they leave that person's classroom? So that's always my goal is to, you know, like sometimes you do have to call a spade a spade. Sometimes you have to be like, nope, that is not real. Don't believe that.

Don't even think that's a conspiracy theory, please. C, point A that I just covered about conspiracy theories.

That's right. Don't even— we're not talking about that because that's fake. That's 100% fake. But otherwise, you know, like your view on topic A, you know, your view on how much should we be spending on, you know, road construction, like that, there's a range of nuance there. We can have it. You can have a valid viewpoint at either end of the spectrum. But the fact that, you know, like you can't say there are no roads, that's fake. We're not talking about that. You know what I mean?

So let's stay grounded in reality. So, and I think that's especially important for us to, as one of the things that you talk about is that we cannot work for each other's mutual destruction. So talk a little bit more about what that means in terms of demonizing an opposing political party and why that's such a dangerous practice we really need to get better at.

So the bottom line is that one political party is bad for all of us, even if it's the political party you agree with. It is so dangerous to have only one political party. I mean, that is every authoritarian government that's ever existed.

North Korea, you know?

Exactly. That is— that's Nazism. That's monarchy. That is Stalinist Russia. They all had one political party, OK?

And guess what? They won every year.

They won it with 120% of the vote every single time. Weird. It seems like, yeah, but my preferred party is so fantastic, and it really wants to work for wonderful things. And that's what you say now.

Right.

And that is, you know, that's probably what all those people said then too. The opposing side serves as a very, very, very important check on the power, the overreaching power of the, you know, party in leadership. If you have no check on their power, the power is absolutely corrupting.

Right.

And it serves as a check on the corruption of power, the corrupting force of power, which is endemic to human nature, guys.

This is 100% what happens. This— that point is actually not debatable. So don't us on this. This is what happens when people get power and they're working for their own self-interest. And so you have to believe in the power of plurality, in the marketplace of ideas, in people being able to voice and the minority to be heard.

You know, I completely agree with you. And, you know, we've had these kind of conversations in the past, and that's one of the reasons that I like you so much is that we really are of similar minds in that regard. We may not agree on everything politically. I don't even know. But, but we have a very similar worldview in that it is important for us to have more than one idea, more than one person in power. That, that idea of same thinking is very dangerous because it allows us to quickly be led astray down the garden path into somewhere where we turn around and we're like, oh my gosh, how did we get here?

And that, and that's how is because we don't have, and we're not hearing other voices. So, and in an age when I think people are trying to be more thoughtful and intentional about making sure that we're hearing different perspectives, I don't think we need to have any irrational fear from hearing and what hearing and understanding really means. It doesn't mean that their guy is right. It doesn't mean that you're an idiot. It doesn't mean a lot of other loaded things that we might tie to that. It just means that this is a rational human being in front of you who's come to their valued opinion. Isn't that interesting?

And I also really feel like you're, you know, like if you're using your critical thinking skills, your opinions, your viewpoints, should stand up to scrutiny. The idea that your viewpoints can be corrupted by somebody else's opposing viewpoint, that means that your, your conclusions are on very shaky ground to begin with.

Yeah, so that's built on a house on the sand.

That's right. Your viewpoints should stand up to scrutiny, and you should be able to hear somebody else's, you know, uh, deeply held view without taking it as an assault on what you believe. So it's a practice that we're not seeing in kind of in the United States at all right now. We're definitely firmly, firmly in the camp of you disagree with me and you're— you are— you're a monster. Yeah, you're canceled and you're a monster because you disagree.

And I'm coming after you and I want to know where you work and I want to know what business you own and I'm going to dox you and Yeah, yeah.

It's a dangerous, it's a dangerous game that is being played. It very much is because working for each other's mutual destruction is actually working against the very fabric of the United States of America.

So, so true. So wise. I love your discussion of whataboutism. So I was talking with my husband about this the other night. So and I think people are like, well, what does that mean? Explain a little bit about the one of It's a really common logical fallacy that people fall into this trap, especially when they're, I think, engaging in political discussions with people.

Well, you know all about this as a debater, Brittany. So often, just to use kind of a non-political example here, somebody is on trial for murder and they killed their mother. And instead of just saying, this person, has killed their mother and it must be dealt with. What about ism is this chorus over here saying, yeah, but what about this guy who killed 4 people? What about him? What about this situation over here? What about this person that knocked over my Christmas inflatables?

What does that got to do with the price of tea in China?

You know, yeah, that actually that we can deal with that all another time. Right now, we're dealing with the guy who allegedly killed his mother. So the idea that you can distract from the issue at hand by continually bringing up, well, what about this? What about this? What about this? What about this? Here's something else that's worse. Here's something else that's worse. Here's another grievance that I have. The idea that you— that that is now where we are with political discourse. Is, what about this? Well, okay, we can talk about that another time. Let's talk about the topic at hand right now. To use it, to use a common example without, you know, giving away, without talking about partisan politics, there's a lot of people who are unhappy with whatever, you know, government policy is. Let's say something that, you know, a current president has done. There's a lot of like, well, I really disagree with this thing, and then an opposing side saying, Yeah, well, what about this thing over here that somebody else did? And those are actually two completely different things that are—

we can— they can both be wrong. We're not going— we're not talking about door number two. We're just— let's just stay on door number one.

Yes, but they're both wrong. Weird.

They can both be wrong. They can both be idiots. They can both be wrong or complete wastes of money.

How about that? Yeah, absolutely. They can both be wrong. So yeah, it is a very, very common logical fallacy that is not productive at all. Nothing productive occurs from whataboutism.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I think it quickly can lead into, you know, ad hominem attacks, which is a fancy way of when you actually— you personalize and you go after someone's character instead of actually just staying on the topic at hand and are like, well, you're an idiot, you know. It's like, well, we weren't talking about whether I'm smart or not. That's actually pretty hard for us to have a discussion about that, you know. There's all different kinds of intelligence. We can nerd out about that, but but let's talk about the issue at hand. And when you notice this, you'll see that politicians and obviously pundits are awful about this.

They're kind of the worst, actually. They're kind of the worst about it. Anytime you see— again, this is true on both sides of the aisle— you have somebody going on a news program, they're like, Brittany, thank you for joining us this morning. And you're like, good morning, Bob. And then they ask you a question. Tell us about X, Y, and Z horrible thing that's happened. You know, yeah, that horrible thing did happen, but really what I have to say is about these other 45 elephants that have been let out of the zoo. Thank you for listening, Bob. Yeah.

You're like, ah, did everyone see that?

What happened?

Like, what?

What's happening? You're not answering any questions. And so that has become the standard, is to just distract from the real question and convert to talking about what you actually want to talk about.

Yeah, to your own prepared talking points on a position that you feel, you know, in a position of strength.

The 45 elephants being let out of the zoo.

Exactly. Which I know your love of, of, you know, land mammals, water mammals is thick.

Yes, mammals in general.

Of all types. But, you know, we're like, still, what about door number 1? Let's stay on topic. So in the, in the gist of being better, maybe media consumers, I know you've listed before some recommendations that you like of places, I can link them in the show notes. Where do you like to go to maybe get a wide range of news? And, you know, importantly is that, that there's never usually going to be one channel and one medium that's going to—

no, you know, yeah, no, you can't just listen to one news source and expect to truly be an informed consumer of news. And I really do think people, you know, you have to consider your own mental health in this. I'm somebody who can easily read news sources and not be upset by them. I can look at it and be like, well, that's biased, I— but it doesn't ruin my day, you know what I mean? Some people, that truly messes with their mind and they cry and it's very upsetting, and you're, you're of no good to the world if that is where you are.

That's not a place where you can serve and learn.

No, exactly.

Don't, don't—

if it's that upsetting to you, then don't do it. But if you're somebody who's like, actually, I just really want to be informed, what— where can I go to be informed? One of the websites that I recommend all the time is allsides.com. It was started by some friends, one of whom was very conservative, worked in conservative government, another person who was very liberal. And their hashtag or their slogan that they have at the top, whatever it's called, is like, more news, less noise. It's less editorializing and more actual reporting on facts. And they tell you straight up, they'll give you, let's say, a topic. That they were recently covering was the Michael Flynn pardon, Trump pardoning Michael Flynn. They will give you news articles from right-leaning sources about that topic, from center-leaning sources, and from left-leaning sources, and they will clearly identify the bias of each of those news sources.

I love that.

Yeah, so you can, you can say this is a left-leaning article about this, a right-leaning article, and you can quickly skim and see like the different characterizations of the same set of facts. So I love that. I also hope to read things that are from the actual reporters themselves. When you're looking at these big infotainment sites, so much of the reporting is not done by people who actually work for the infotainment sites. It's done by reporters who work for the Associated Press and reporters that work for Reuters, where they have these massive news networks all over the world and they report in with the facts on the ground of what's happening. So I love to look at Reuters and APNews.com because those are the the actual like foot soldiers of the news. Yes, 100%. And their, their goal is to feed facts to, you know, the world media so that it can— they can be reported on. So I actually like reading the person that actually wrote the article and not an infotainment site characterization of those facts.

Correct. Awesome. Yeah. Awesome. I love all of those. So as someone— I did PR communications in my undergrad, and so I had to like do my university newspaper. And I remember like going on the AP wire and doing all that. And like, you get a lot of respect for that process and what that looks like. And you understand that how difficult of a job and what to look for in terms of good news reporting versus not. And it has become, I would say, across the, across the board, more difficult to find good reporting than not.

Yeah, absolutely.

Because it's, it doesn't sell. It's not sensational. It's like, hmm, this is a difficult issue. And there are valid views on both sides. Who wants to click that?

No. Yes, you don't, you don't click on, click here for a very fair and biased analysis of all the possible outcomes of X, Y, and Z topic. You click on like, so-and-so is dead.

You know what I mean? The world is going to end. Here's your packing list. Which Disney princess would you look like, you know, in your go bag? Like, and you're like, huh, no idea. Do you really want to know that? Like, guys, we're— we only have ourselves to blame here. We got to stop clicking on that stuff, you know, if we don't want to see it.

So, right. 25 things to pack for your handbasket to hell.

Swipe up for a link.

That's right. That's right. You can use my Amazon affiliate.

Yeah, give you a special deal. So there'll be some unicorn poop slime that you can get. I love you call that out and you're like, guys, You can do anything they want. And you showed some close-up pictures of literally a plush animal that poops out different colors, accessory unicorn slime. And you're like, this went through how many people? Like, this was in a meeting somewhere. Someone debated the graphics and the text and the market launch strategy.

Okay. Yes. Like, you can actually do anything. This is a product that is sold in Target. Like, it is a llama that spits real water. You know, like it's a llama toy that makes a horrible noise and then spits water at you. Like, actually, I'm pretty sure you can go ahead and launch your graphic design business.

Yeah, I think you should, you should come at that from a position of strength and power. I think you should listen to some Katy Perry or like Elizabeth Gilbert or something, and then you should move forward with confidence on that idea.

Oh my gosh, worse and weirder things have occurred than you just like launching your business.

Seriously.

Um, so bringing that back to business, so, um, it's— I think it's awesome that you have the perspective of having different businesses. Like, you had a product one and having a service-based business. Um, what were some things that you, you know, learned from them, or things that, you know, when people ask you, oh, I'd love to hear more about, like, you know, what was it like, your perspective, um, what do you, like, feel like the things you keep on saying over and over, you know, that you learned from running those businesses?

What was hard? What was great?

Yeah.

Well, it keeps coming back to people do business with people they know, like, and trust. You know, like that old business adage of I would rather just call somebody I know than to do all this research and to like make all these spreadsheets and all this market analysis. Like I would actually rather just call somebody I like. And then because I trust them, because I like them, because I trust them, and they're going to just do a good job because I like them. You know what I mean? So you must give people the opportunity to get to know you, because if they cannot get to know you, they cannot get to trust you. And if you don't have a company that has, you know, a million-dollar R&D budget and a million-dollar ad spend where you can really launch this product into the world, you're not Tesla. You know what I mean?

I guess.

I guess if you're not Tesla. Here's some ideas if you're not Tesla. It really does come down to, as a small entrepreneur, people have to get to know you and like you. And you know, like that was how I found you on Instagram. I don't even remember how I clicked on your Instagram profile, but I remember being like, oh, this girl knows what she is doing. Like she knows what she's talking about. And I say that as a very, very critical consumer who like, I know some things about the legal system. Thank you.

Yes. But I mean, obviously I like pink and I'm a lawyer, so like I piqued your interest, you know? So, but like, what is, is there anything of substance behind that?

That's the question. Yes. Are you just cute or, you know, like I, that's just not going to do it for me. There's a lot of cute people in the world. So the idea that I had to like get to know you a little bit via your social media profile and be like, oh, you know what, these posts Oh, she's actually bringing a lot of value to the table. That I, you know, like I, people make a snap judgment very quickly on whether or not they think they might like somebody. And then you've got to give them a chance to actually develop that trust with you of, I would actually trust this person's contracts. I would actually trust this person's advice. I would trust them to redesign my website.

I would trust them to take a picture of my newborn or, you know, or to even coach me in my business, you know, to give some perspective, because I'm trying to develop. I love one of the other things that you've mentioned is that, that customer, that client experience of like surprise and delight. I stalked you on another podcast where you were talking about in your photography business of like you have little snacks out for people, you want to make sure everyone's comfortable, you have, you know, even be careful about dietary restrictions. I think that's such a smart idea in terms of, like you said, it's making sure that people have have the kind of experience that they're going to talk about later on.

Yes, you want to give them the chance to become a brand evangelist for you. And that is not that kind of brand evangelism where they're like, it's, it's not just like, yeah, we used Brittany, she was fine. That's not what you're looking for. What you're looking for is like, if you go to anyone other than Brittany, you are a psychopath.

You are an idiot. You must not care about your business baby at all.

Yeah. You don't care about your children? No, you know what I'm saying? Like, you want it to be such an unequivocal recommend of like, you must go to Sharon, you have to go to Brittany. And the way that that kind of brand evangelism occurs is that the customer has to have a chance to bond with you in some way. They have to get to know you and like you. And it is—

it—

part of that is the surprise and delight with the client experience of How can I make this so fun for you? How can I make this so that you leave here being like, oh my gosh, I just love her so much? It has to be genuine, has to be authentic. People can smell fake nice. It has to be something that somebody actually will leave, walk away feeling like, dang, okay. And you would be surprised at even just like the small touches that, that makes such a huge difference for people. It doesn't mean you have to buy them a car. It can just be—

we're not Oprah here, guys, we're talking about reality.

Yeah, it's just like, she bought it, like, she bought us gluten-free muffins because she knows I can't eat gluten, you know? Just that— I can't tell you, like, the number of times people have been touched by the fact that I, I ask about their food allergies and then don't put out food that they can't have. Just somebody giving a crap. Matters to somebody.

It does.

So it really does. Just like, give, give a time. They put this on a shirt, Brittany. Just give a crap about your clients.

Give a crap. That's a new, that's a new joint Etsy project for us right there. Okay, we got— I—

we could, we could, we could spin up a whole product line.

I'll trademark that right away. Yeah, we'll, we'll get that done. So, um, I did want to touch, because we— I think in one of our DM conversations we were talking about lessons learned in terms of getting stuff in writing and about working with partners and how sometimes that is, that is loaded and intense, but how important that is. Because here's the thing, guys, like we talked about, if something were easy, everyone would do it, you know. And there's, there's sometimes there's mindset and fear that comes into it, why we don't do the things that we know we should do. What role has sometimes legal on maybe some of those not so sexy and fun parts of your business played in making sure that things are the way they're supposed to be?

Yes. Well, I've had two separate business partnerships, and this is the advice that I give to anybody who is thinking about having— going into business with a partner is to 100% of the time, like, this is not— this is non-negotiable, my opinion, to have legal paperwork drawn up in advance, at the beginning of the process, when you guys are both excited and getting along.

Honeymoon phase. Yep. Now's the time.

Yes.

Kissy faces.

Yeah. Yes. Because now you can agree. Right now, during this honeymoon phase, you can easily agree on terms of like, okay, what if one of us wants out? What's the strategy? Like, do we have to have a buyout? Do you walk away? Like, what's the strategy here?

Can you also start another yarn company, or is that a no-go?

Yep, exactly. Talk about all of that in advance during the honeymoon phase, and you will never be sorry. There is nobody who comes back to you, I would imagine, and says, I am so sorry we got this done in writing, drawn up legally in advance. No, that's not a one people ever, ever, ever have, versus lawsuits that happen versus all of the bad blood that happens versus people who don't speak to siblings, parents, and best friends that they—

those relationships went down over business difficulties. And yes, because they didn't get their business prenup, they had an ugly business divorce. It got ugly.

That is a great way of saying that you will never ever be sorry that you hired— you paid the money to have this done the right way at the beginning. Do it, do it the right way from the beginning. Or you will do it the wrong way and be sorry later.

There's no one, no one is getting out of this. I can, I can assure you that because life happens, you know, and people's dreams change and people have babies and they move and there's health challenges and, you know, you thought it was going to be A, but really it's G is, is what the product is.

And so yeah, absolutely. Just, just, I, I have never, you know, like one of my early business, business ventures, my partner and I very clearly laid out our agreements. And probably 2 years into the business, I wanted to go in a different direction. And there was no conflict between us. There was no like, I just actually really hate you now, bye. It was just like, I really want to focus on this other thing now. And because we had clearly laid out what would happen, there was no conflict. We already knew how the business was going to be dissolved if one partner wanted out. And it was very easy to just activate that inside instead of fighting about it, instead of arguing over who was going to get what, who's going to get the— who's going to get the trademark, who's going to get the email list. And yes, yes, all of the artwork associated with the business. There was none of that.

It was—

and we're still friends today because we were very easily— it was very easy separation, and I could wish her well and she could wish me well. Exactly.

So, okay, just take it, you know, take out the drama out of the situation. Let's save that for, you know, our, you know, entertainment, you know, on our reality shows. Like, let's keep the drama.

Save it for politics.

That's where it belongs. Exactly. Save it for debates because there's nothing we like to see than, you know, the two elected leaders, you know, of major political parties acting like children on live TV. It gives us, you know, it warms the cockles of our heart.

It's so much joy.

Yeah. It's so good. Okay, I wanted to make sure that people understood how funny you are online. And so I wanted to ask about you share this wonderful story that I saw the other day about your, your daughter and her drinking, because I think, you know, this is the honest and safe place for us to talk about, you know, the realities of motherhood. And you have talked about the dangers of perfectionism. So, so let's hear it, Sharon, about, about the drinking.

What is up with the drinking? Well, my, I have a 13-year-old daughter and she recently had to go to like a sports physical and the doctor, you know, our family doctor did her exam. My husband was the one who took her and did her exam, my husband was out of the room. And then after it was over, the doctor called my husband back in and said, well, she's very healthy, growing fine, etc., etc. I do want to have like a quick chat about something though. And she said, well, Margaret did indicate that she has been using alcohol quite frequently. And again, this is a 13-year-old. And my husband had huge eyes and looked at her and was like, I was like, say what now? You have something you would like to share? She's like, well, I do use alcohol. And the doctor said, it says here that you use alcohol more than 40 times a year. And my husband was like, what? 40 times a year? You are 13 years old. And she was like, Dad, I, I, but that's, I was just trying to tell the truth. And he's like, explain. Explain how you are using alcohol 40 times a year as a 13-year-old living under my roof. Explain. And she said, Dad, you send me to Catholic school. I take communion twice a week. Oh my gosh. She legitimately was like, well, that is alcohol. That is alcohol. That is the truth.

And you are like, um, just trying to keep it together.

Yeah, okay, let's— the doctor really did laugh very hard and she was like, okay, all right, glad we cleared that up. Let us, let's define what actually is alcohol use. Okay, let's talk about this. It is not a sip of wine at a religious service.

That is not what alcohol use is.

Let's—

what the—

good, now we know. Now we're all on the same page in terms of defining the terms. How useful is that?

Oh, okay, it's not alcohol use if I just take a sip of disgusting wine. Okay.

Which, I mean, I don't know how, you know, I mean, I guess, you know, that's, that's just part of like COVID. We're just gonna, you know, agree to not see that, you know, and just push on through, you know, put some, throw some frankincense on there and hope for the best, you know. Bless baby, you know, baby Jesus.

Jesus. Yes, that's right. Yes, it was just like one of those things, like she was so innocent and naive about it that you couldn't be mad. She didn't mean anything by it. She was truly just trying to be honest with you.

But yeah, I love that so much because now you're like, okay, not only are we— you're not doing alcohol, but the fact that you thought that was what we meant by drinking, like, we're good.

Like, you know, I feel like I'm actually doing a pretty good job. If you wanted to be that honest, that level of honesty.

Seriously, like, we're, we're in a good place from all of that. So that's, that, that's so great. So, okay, well, if people— I know I don't want to take too much of your time today, but I mean, I can honestly— we could, we could chat forever, which is like what's great. One last thing I wanted to touch on is actually, I think this is how I found you, is because you posted something amazing that was on your feed that was about motherhood. So I want to read this a little bit, and it says, women throughout the entire course of human history have never spent as much time with their children as we do now. They never had the chance. Subsistence took everything they had. Talk a little bit more about that, because you go on to say that, like, hey, in, you know, you know, if we were at Little House on the Prairie, it'd be like, Laura, here's a pig bladder we got after we slaughtered the pig. You can go use it as a ball.

There's your ball.

If the bladder bursts, it's gone. Good luck. Like that kind of— that's where we used to be. Okay. So, you know, can we, can we give and give a little reassuring context to our sweet, sweet mothers and sisters out there who are feeling overwhelmed with the consciousness of their children in their daily lives? Yes.

Well, you know, mom guilt is very real and we've all experienced it for sure. And I think it's a very common narrative that moms never feel like they're doing enough. And social media has absolutely exacerbated that, Pinterest exacerbates that. Like, I'm not having a $1,400 cake made for my child's birthday.

You know what I mean? Like, the audacity you have, right?

Yes. The comparison is very real. And one of the things that I was just reflecting on was like, you know what? I actually spend far more time with my children today than Ma Ingalls would have 100 years ago. Ma Ingalls planned no birthday parties. Okay. Ma Ingalls—

There were no water bottle wrappers.

Okay. Ma Ingalls gave her children an orange for Christmas.

Okay.

You know, like there was no holiday cheer. It was like, yeah, we're trying not to starve to death over here. And the idea that you, the, there's so much pressure on moms to make the perfect life for their children. Is a very new pressure that has never existed except for probably the last 20 years. The idea that it is your responsibility to make your children's life perfect.

Yeah. Is— and to have that kind of concentrated, curated, experiential parenting where— when so much of it is outside of your control. Because I mean, here's the thing, we've all been there where we're like, and the holidays and we're like, we're, we gotta make the magic. We gotta make the magical, you know, and everyone's out there having the magic and you're like, fricking, I'm here with the tape dispenser that just ran out. Like, I'm gonna tell you, share some words about the magic right here, but you know, people have moods and they have hormones and they go through experiences and you can do and try and curate all the things. And sometimes they still don't like it or they're still ungrateful, you know?

Oh, absolutely. And the, you know, like subsistence, Throughout the entirety of human history, subsistence has, has made life extraordinarily difficult. Your goal was truly to try to keep your children alive. That was it. And even the, even the statistics on that were not that good. The statistics on your children living to even age 5, not that good. Now we have a reasonable expectation that your children can live to adulthood. Now it's a reasonable expectation, and we no longer have to spend our entire day subsisting. It's no longer like, if I don't knit these socks, my children's toes will fall off from frostbite. If I don't spend all this time processing this pig that we slaughtered so that we will have meat for the entire winter, my children literally could die of malnutrition. Now, now we have instead taken upon ourselves this duty to occupy our entire day with creating and curating the perfect life for our children, in which we as mothers spend all of the time— here's this craft project, sort these by color, sort them by alphabet.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's death by sensory bin, you know.

So feel the textures, children. And again, not criticizing No, we're talking about extremes here, guys.

We're talking about like, we, we take an idea and then we ran with it and we ran past the end zone and we went through the tunnel and we are like full past the parking lot.

Yes, we're in the parking lot. Nobody's saying don't enjoy your children. Nobody's saying don't spend time with them. That's not the message. It's just get over the guilt that you must spend 100% of your waking hours creating magic for your children when at no time in human history Has that ever, ever, ever been an expectation?

Yeah, or even a healthy thing for you or your children. You know, we don't need any more snowplow parents to smooth over and create a perfect without, you know, fear of criticism or feeling sad or feeling boredom. You know, in fact, we're doing our children a huge disservice when we're setting up their life like that because we all know that eventually eventually the snowplow will die. That will, that will end. And now our kids are ill-prepared, you know, physically, emotionally, spiritually, you know, ecumenically, all the ways to have a real, you know, varied experience of human life.

So the small amounts of controlled adversity within your children's childhood is actually extraordinarily beneficial to them because real life is full of uncontrolled adversity. And if they have no experience on how to deal with any amount of adversity, if mom has always just fixed it, if mom has made every phone call and fixed every problem you've ever, ever, ever had, then when you have to face real adult uncontrolled adversity, it's— it can be debilitating, right? So control small amounts of controlled adversity, like, listen, it's okay that you're bored. Go ahead and feel those bored feelings.

Just let, let that sink in. Let that percolate and spin around. Welcome to meetings. For the rest of your life. So yeah, here's, here's your training on that. You know, come back with your talking points and we can discuss further.

Yeah, totally. Small amounts of controlled adversity, actually extraordinarily beneficial for our children.

Yeah, totally. That reminds me of Coddling of the American Mind, which is an incredible book that's all about this from two researchers who are like, look, parents, we need to be careful because we're having— we're seeing some of this play out now on college campuses. Focuses on what happens when we engage in this kind of behavior.

So yes, mom, mom is not going to be able to call your boss at age 35 and, and fix it. It's not happening. No, better to learn now when you're young how to deal with problems.

Exactly. All the things. Okay, this is all such wonderful stuff. Okay, if people want to know more about you, because they love you, and I'm so grateful that I can to be the gateway drug from them, from their lives into yours, happily will play that role. Where can they find you? Especially where can they find out working if they are an amazing entrepreneur and they are looking for more of that actual experience, accountability for that personal trainer for their business?

My Instagram account for that is Masters Level Collective. It's @masterslevelcollective. And I also, my personal account is @sharonsaysso.

Because obviously you can see Sharon does say so. She says so.

She says so.

You should just listen. You should be following her for all of her deep dives into political things. You can find out what's actually happening with the election, with, you know, who's going to be probably our next president, what part of this is fact or fiction, where can you find a new full-size, you know, lemon bathing suit. There's also—

I can help you with that.

She can help you with that. She's an aspiring swimsuit model. Like, people are circling the drain on this. Like, they want— and they want part of your swimsuit brand model career.

I did have 3 swimwear companies contact me after that. You didn't? No, I absolutely did. And I was— I looked at my husband. If you missed the story, it's saved in my humor highlights. But I bought this swimsuit that basically looks kind of like a wetsuit, except it's head to toe lemon. It's a print of lemons.

Okay.

And my children are absolutely mortified. And it's the worst possible thing that one could ever imagine. And I— the more my children hated it, the more I loved it.

So more dug in, the more I loved it.

I looked at my husband and I was like, on what planet are no sweater companies contacting me? Because I love sweaters. I live in Minnesota. But 3 swimwear companies want to work with me. On what planet is this a thing? Like, you know, I'm like a mom of 4, real pasty white, not very fit, you know, like absolutely the opposite of any swimwear model you would ever, ever meet. So that amused me. I took up— that I did not accept any of their offers.

I think, I think you characterized it as on the level of like vampire meets—

yeah, it's literally like, is your skin transparent? It kind of is. What is happening? Are those veins?

Are those veins? Like, we— that we— if we went into Stephenie Meyer's back history, like, it's possible that she had an experience with you and you served as the inspiration for her character.

So a little too sparkly in the sunlight. What's happening here? It's, it's the opposite of what anybody would want in a swimwear model.

But, you know, maybe you're fulfilling a really important niche. So I think, I think you should keep your options open, Sharon. So I like that, you know, and don't let fear, perfectionism get the best of you and move forward.

Clarity comes through action.

And maybe lemons.

And lemons. That's a great place to end it.

Thank you so much for joining me today. This was such a treat personally. So if anyone else gets anything out of it, which I know they will, that's awesome. But I would would have done it just for me.

So thanks for having me.

Thanks so much for joining me today. I hope that you enjoyed that conversation. I just love talking to Sharon, and I'm just, I'm just not gonna shut up about it, how great she is and how much you need to be following her and you need to have her in your life. So, and all of, all of her wit and wisdom. So if you are interested in the show notes, I've got lots of the links that Sharon mentioned in here if you're looking for ways that you can kind of uplevel your news information, especially if you're looking for one of the ones and some of the resources she mentioned. I'm gonna have that as well as all the links to her and resources all there here in the show notes, so please go check that out. Um, in addition, if you are interested in, uh, kind of uplevel and get your business legally legit, if you're an entrepreneur and that's something that's been bugging at you and you've been wondering, where do I get started? This is all really overwhelming, or I'm getting conflicting advice in my, you know, Facebook business groups or from Google or my business coach or wherever else, um, I'd love to get you, uh, my free resource, which is the Legally Legit Workbook. Um, so I kind of took my one-page checklist that I've had forever that I've been giving out to folks, and I expanded it because I, I kept on seeing this kind of same spots where people were getting more and more questions. So I have that. Um, please go take a look at that resource. It's completely free. It's just for you. I just want to help, okay? I'm just, I'm just one attorney who really likes pink out there standing in front of entrepreneurs saying, please, can I help you get started and get this stuff taken care of so that you can move forward and do what you do best? So, because there's, there's no shame in here. There's no game. We just all want to do better, okay? And when you know better, you do better. So please check out that link in the resource. If you love the podcast, if you've gotten some out of this episode or any other, I would love to have you leave a review. You can do that in, uh, in iTunes. Um, if you scroll down to the bottom of this page, you'll see a note that you can give me a rating and review. That'd be so appreciated. It helps other people find the podcast and helps them get also free resources that they can to help build their business. Thanks so much for being here. Appreciate your time, and, and I wish you a happy holidays.