How This CFO Is Building a 7-Figure Firm With Only 12 Clients | @Keepwhatyouearn

People will always counter me and say, oh, well, at your price, I could hire a full time employee. And I said yes. Out of college, not a 15 year season CPA, 5 year CFO. Not with these credentials. You have to look at the value they're getting, number one, in terms of results and in terms of their time savings and their problem being solved. The value of the outputs, not the inputs. Stop valuing stuff based on your effort, value it based on the impact. And then the longer you serve them, the more you understand that impact.

So what you're telling me is if you're really good at what you do and you get good results for your clients, you can charge a lot of money.

I mean, that's pretty much the truth, right?

Shannon, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

So, Shannon, you were recently at one of the Hormozy's workshops out in Las Vegas. What was that like?

Oh, it was awesome. I loved. The best part of that was being in a room with like 50 fellow business owners who were, you know, seven and eight figure, which, you know, I feel like there's an abundance of rooms inviting you in. And I'm seeing online where you can meet like six, maybe seven figure business owners. But to, to be able to interact with folks who are like 10 to 50 million and looking to grow and had high aspirations. Like, I just love being in a room where I'm like, you know, asking all the questions and I'm curious about how they're building it and it's just cool to be in that seat again. And like, they always say, like, we want to be the dumbest person in the room. I go, I like being the poorest person in the room. Sometimes surrounded by those people, just to be able to absorb what they have going on.

Yeah. So like, what was the room like? Like, what kind of other entrepreneurs were in there that you were connecting with?

Oh, it was everything from products to services, Local Las Vegas companies, international. Like, the cool thing is that the Hormosi's brand really extends really far and they attract a unique type of worker, someone with high work ethics, someone with high performance. So it was a great, it was just great company to be in. But it spans so many different industries, which is why it was so fun. Because I think when you're in these like industry conferences or you go to like, I'm a cpa, if I go to a CPA conference, like meeting a bunch of other CPAs, you know, and there's only so much you can talk about. I know, how exciting. But I And even if you go to an industry conference for like construction home services, lawyers, whatever, you, you're going to meet a lot of the same people. But I loved having that, that melting pot of different perspectives and being able to talk to people who had different unique business problems and come from so many different places. So that was a really fun experience.

Yeah, I feel like you can get into these weird bubbles if you only hang out with people in your industry. You know, like I'm in a couple masterminds with other marketing agency owners and it's like, you know, we're kind of talking about the same stuff over and over and over again. And the only interesting insights that we come across are like, stuff that we've learned from our clients who are in all these different industries. Right. Because a lot of us, you know, there's a guy who's working with Grant Cardone, there's a guy who's working with some other like big influencers in the space. And, and so like, you know, getting those takeaways from those way people who are just way beyond us is like super valuable. But the industry stuff, I feel like you kind of grow out of that pretty quickly usually.

Yeah. And you just, you want to get out of your bubble, you have to get out. And it's like we always say with marketing, expanding audience and getting out of the bubble of people who already know you. And it's humbling because even if a lot of people in your space know you or you have built a really good brand, when you break out of that and you meet people who have never heard of you or anything like that, it's a humbling and it reminds you like how like insignificant it really is in the grand scheme of things and how much more networking you can do if you feel like you've tapped out your audience. I'm like, there's always more you can do, but you have to do it intentionally and you have to get out of your comfort zone a little bit.

Yeah, a hundred percent. So like, what were the, what were the presentations like?

So the. It was a two day by the way, and the first day was primarily conceptual lecture, if you will, of, you know, how to build enterprise value in your business now without giving away any of their ip. I can't really talk about it, but a lot of it was really how to build a high value business and scale. And it was a lot of the who, not how, and a lot of the, you know, how to build a team, how to reduce key man risk and how to, how to intentionally Grow who it is you need in your business to unlock that next level of growth. And then the second day was a lot of roundtables with their actual team. So I got to meet Caleb, for example, who does their creative direction. And you get to, as a group, they would go around these, like, roundtable like circuits, like, rotating, and there would be a group of business owners, and the people would go in rounds to different groups every 20, 30 minutes or so, and everyone got to ask a question out of every single person@accentility.com and that was huge because not only did I get to ask a question, but I got to Hear, you know, 12 other questions in my group, um, of that person and how they've built the brand of Alex and Layla, if how they have done things in their business. Super valuable, because even if you went, I'm even thinking of going to it it again because you're gonna have a whole new group of people in there. And even going through that process multiple times a year would be huge for any business owner.

Yeah. I feel like whenever I'm in those situations where I get to, like, ask a question from somebody who can give me really valuable advice, I never ask the right question. But then inevitably, somebody else always has the same kind of problem that I'm dealing with, and they just frame it so much better and. Yeah, that's so cool.

Yeah. Even their ad buyer, their media buyer was in there too.

Yeah. And I guess you feel like it's a thing that you would go to again, is this like a regular occurrence that you think you're gonna try to get in there like once a year or something?

I mean, well, they. They do offer a variation of it, I think, with multiple visits a year. But I was debating after I came back from it and really digested it and, and started integrating a lot of what I learned into my business, I realized that my team could benefit from this too. So I'm debating going back for another round, but bringing one or two team members with me to sit in the room, ideally in different corners. Right. And let them receive directly what I received. And I think that would make our team stronger because they would understand a lot of what we're implementing and be on the same page with the how and where it comes from.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. No, I was. I was thinking about going later this year. I don't think we're actually going to make it, but whenever I do go, definitely bring in my creative director just because, like, she's so good at asking questions too. Whenever we're Onboarding a new client, doing that kind of discovery phase to. To figure out their messaging and everything. She just question, she asks. I'm like, oh, man, I wish I'd.

Come up with that, even just being in the room with those people, like I said. So I operate as a fractional cfo. One of my jobs is to implement what we're learning in this room for my clients. So I'm also kind of representing my clients in a way, and I want to go to these events for them because I want to walk back with, hey, here's what I learned and here's how we can use it in your business. Right, Because I'm representing you as well in that room. Not only my own business, so. So that's been really cool though, to shed light on, hey, here are some of the things that I've learned or what I've taken away from it. I'm adopting. And I'd like to share with you too, because that's spreading the value and that's adding value to my offer as well. Plus getting in the room with people who are your ideal client as opposed to and hearing what their questions are. Cause I'm half in the room as Shannon, the business owner, absorbing it for my own benefit. And then I'm also listening. This is the marketer in me. I'm also listening to all the other questions and saying, this is what's keeping other business owners up at night. This is the content I need to be producing if I know how to answer those questions. So that's what I'm also generating too. So there's such a multidimensional benefit of that room.

What did you learn about, like, the difference between seven and eight figure entrepreneurs versus like six and maybe like low seven figures from, from being in that room?

Honestly, it's the types of questions they're asking because, like, I could tell who is at what level to some extent, based on like the next question they're asking and how big they're thinking. I just like that, you know, I think the 6 and 7 figure, which I'm in that category by the way, like, I'm probably gonna hit seven figures next year. I'm. I'm just in this position where I'm listening to it and I'm going, okay, the six and seven figure are really thinking about just how to optimize what they have, like how to sell more. Right? How to sell more things, how to make more money. And then I think we're really talking about skills scaling when we're talking to the, the eight figure folks, like, they're saying, okay, I'm making eight figures. How do I exit successfully? How do I turn this into legacy wealth? How do I. Like, it's really the bigger questions about the future as opposed to the questions on the short term of how to make more money now or how to generate more sales or who my next hire is going to be. We'll call it the incremental questions versus the bigger vision questions that are coming up.

Yeah, yeah, that makes a ton of sense because I feel like once you get to maybe like seven or like, you know, maybe a little over a million bucks, million And a half, 2 million, it's like you kind of have to have the basics figured out at that point or else you wouldn't be there in the first place.

Believe it or not, but coming from someone who works with like three to $5 million revenue businesses, a lot of them don't have the basics figured out. At least from like a financial standpoint. Like there's.

Yeah, that makes sense.

They've gotten by making that money, but they may not know how to keep it, hence my whole brand. But they may not know how to keep it or they're not sure how to allocate their resources properly and they're not spending the right time and money on the right things. So they're all, they're doing things moving forward, but not in the right direction. And that's the hard part is getting them to navigate and come back to the optimal road to their destination as opposed to taking all these left hand turns that are taking them way longer than they need to be to get to where they want to go. And so I think that, yeah, I do agree, but it's. Believe it or not, there's a lot more optimization that can happen at that level to set yourself up for success.

Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. And I guess what I was referring to is more like the basics of like how to get clients and the basics of like a proven offer, how to deliver a service that actually like makes people happy, you know?

Totally. Yeah.

From a financial standpoint, I mean, we work with a couple CFO firms similar to yours, and like, it's the same thing with, with all the clients they're trying to reach. It's like they kind of accidentally figured out how to make a million or 2 million bucks a year and they're like, I feel like I'm not making any more than I was making when I was doing 500k a year.

Yeah, you'll appreciate this. I have a $6 million revenue client that doesn't have a CRM.

Wow.

You know what that means? You know what that means?

What does that mean?

It works because I'm like, I'm like, okay, so raw. Like, raw mark. Like, there's no marketing. There's not. Like you are making 6 million without intentionally trying through a CRM. And I'm like, imagine what you're going to do with a CRM.

Yeah, like.

Like, I don't look at that as bad. I'm just like, oh, man, buckle up. Once we get you. Once we get you on the CRM, I can't wait to see what happens.

You know, it's. I. I kind of look at clients the same way because I, you know, most of the people coming to me, they're doing maybe a million to a million and a half. They just kind of accidentally got there through, like, they did a good job with their first few clients, and now they get a ton of referrals and they're sitting here, they feel like they've got just a bigger mess. They had a mess before, they grew the mess, and now it's just this big mess. And they're just sitting there like, I don't even know where to start figuring this out. So coming from your standpoint, because it sounds like a lot of your clients come to you that same way, just from a financial standpoint, how do you kind of like, narrow their focus down and start cleaning up that mess?

So I look at it this way because there's a lot of. A lot of business owners look at the numbers from the details up that they try to figure out how to speak the language by learning the vocabulary and learning, like, how to read a P. L Down to the. Like I say close to the decimal point. They always stay close to the decimal point of like, what's this $200 charge? Or this $100 thing or whatever. I go, forget that, Forget that. Let's just like, let's talk about what makes a healthy business, what makes a high value business. And we actually go through five things with every client. It's a framework that we use, which I'll share with you because it's like, this is not a kept secret. And like any accountant listening to this is gonna be like, obviously this is what you go through. Gross profitability, operating profit. So, AKA gross profitability at the core. Is what you're selling profitable? Are you selling for something more than what you. What it costs you? Because if that's not true, we're done. We got to Work on that first, like, are you just making profit on the product? Second is operating. Are you running a profitable business? Third is cash flow. Are you taking out more than you can create from the business? Right. That you can generate? Fourth is customer value. This is where people like you come in. Where I'm like, do we have a high customer ltv? Do we have a low cac? You know, do we, are we reselling? Are we upselling? Are we, are we getting referrals? Are we maximizing our client base and being able to sell effectively so we can put more money in that machine that is already profitable and cash flowing? And then fifth and finally is tax savings. And there's a reason for that. That's the fifth course, the dessert. Everybody always wants to start there, but I'm like, if you don't make money, you don't have a tax problem. Not yet. Not really. So we always want to make sure that we are optimizing those first four and focusing mostly on those before we really go into any heavy tax saving strategies. Because we want to make sure that we have enough clay to work with. So we work through those. That framework is what guides our. And we actually teach this to our clients. We say, these are the five steps. This is what you should be paying attention to. Because if all of this is working, you have a high value business.

So, like, because I think a lot of business owners, they've got their technical expertise, right? And you know, it's a lot of times it's kind of hard to communicate that to clients in a way that really makes sense to them. So, like, how did you start coming up with this framework and this way of communicating it that, I mean, it seems like it really clicks for your clients.

Yeah, it's more about distilling it down to what do they have to worry about? Like, if they. I think of this as my own. The way I came up with this is I'm a business owner myself and I thought about, what do I look at for my own business? How do I check my own vital signs, if you will. If I had a health scorecard, what would be on that for me? And I thought about, I really want to give them three or four things that if they just obsessed over those three or four things. Ish. That we would be great, you know, if we could just get to a point where gross. Gross margin is solid. Operating margin, solid. Cool, let's move on to cash flow. Cool. Let's move on to customer value and really crank up that. I kind of went through this Hierarchy of health check, like the layers, you know, to see what is the problem. So we could identify. It's kind of what. What the hormozies do, which is the theory of constraints. Finding the constraint in the business. I go through these five steps to figure out where's the constraint, you know, where is the problem? Because typically customers will come to me, as they will with any service provider, when there is a problem. I feel like people aren't hiring a CFO for funsies. You know, maybe, maybe if someone told them they needed. They needed that for whatever reason. But typically there's a symptom somewhere of I'm not paying myself enough. I paid a huge tax bill. Like, there's always something that happens in real life that makes you go, I need Shannon. Right? And I always go, okay, well, what was that? And it was probably caused by one of those five things, or one of those five things could solve the problem. And I just kind of figured out the common denominators of the biggest pain points for clients and said, it's going to be one of these five problems. Let's just go through the motions of step by step figuring out which one it is and then attacking it.

There's something interesting that I've noticed with your business because I think you have a very small cap on the number of clients you deal with, right? Seven at a time, 12 at a time. So with that cap, is that something you see yourself keeping long term and just kind of like upgrading the level of clients to where you can charge more? Or is that something you see hiring other CFOs at a certain point?

So I see it as. It could be either. Right now we're very happy. We actually haven't hit capacity just yet. We have a couple more we can bring on, and I actually have someone I have hired to help me service them. But the, the core of it was that we wanted to feel like there was an intimate relationship and that it was like a. I compare it very often to a restaurant and I said, if I were running this. I also read Unreasonable Hospitality in conjunction with this thought. And I. It really solidified it for me. That was. I want to have one of those boutique restaurants that have like eight tables. And I'm okay with you having to book a reservation and being super exclusive and hard to get into. I'm okay with that. I'm also, I'm also okay with serving three things on the menu that we can, we can cook to perfection. I am not looking to bust down the door and open up the number of tables, because I feel like I'll lose the intimacy and I'll lose the control and I'll lose the, the ability to serve at the level we want to. Now is that a mindset thing? Maybe. But for now that's where I feel comfortable and that's what I want to build and prove that it works with eight tables before we expand to 16. I want to prove that the model is working and humming and cash flowing and everything's great. And then we can multiply if we want to. But the other thing is we can expand the offering to say we have 12 that are at this elite level in first class cabin. Can I create a version of this, which I am actually in the process of doing, that is accessible to all, where they can get the value out of my CFO scorecard, my CFO report, um, and be able to ask me questions and be able to come through and, and get that support without a huge monthly bill where I could do a one to many version of the offer, which is what we're pursuing right now. So if people want to work with me, but they're not at that level where they're making like three plus million a year, we have an option that's more of a membership style, that is more scalable and is probably easier to service long term than adding more and more CFO clients to the roster.

Yeah, I love that. I want to get into the membership thing in a moment here, but like, what do you think it is or what have you done with your service to make it that super premium, super intimate thing where you can justify charging what you would need to charge to only take eight clients or only take 12 clients.

Yeah. And it's funny because it's like justify. And I'm like, this is a steal. Because if it sounds so funny, the mindset has changed. Like I, yes, my mindset used to be like, oh my God, how am I going to justify charging this much money? But you have to look at it as the value they're getting, number one, in terms of results and in terms of their time savings and their problem being solved. We talk about this all the time. The value of the outputs, not the inputs. Stop valuing stuff based on your effort. Value it based on the impact it's making to the client, number one, number two. And then the longer you serve them, the more you understand that impact and you can really see it and how grateful they are and it's so cool. The other thing that we, we look at is I really thought about this And I actually, it was at the hormones event I met someone who said, this is how I would articulate your value. Shannon. You, plus your other CPA that works with you, plus your bookkeeper who has a master's, plus this person. This person. How much would it cost a company to hire all of you as their accounting department full time? And I was like $650,000, maybe 500,000 on a bargain, you know, and. And she was like, yeah, you're a steal at a fraction of that. You know, if you're like a tenth of that, that's huge. Because they're not gonna. Because people will always counter me and say, oh, well, at your price, I could hire a full time employee. And I said yes. Out of college, not a 15 year season CPA, five year CFO, you know, not with these credentials and definitely not to create the efficiency that we create. So I think that's where my confidence comes from, is just knowing that we bring a certain degree of value and I know that we're going to serve them at that high level. And I'm perfectly comfortable charging what we're charging because I know we're worth it.

So what you're telling me is if you're really good at what you do and you get good results for your clients, you can charge a lot of money.

I mean, that's pretty much the truth, right? Like, that's revolutionary. I know it's like that. That's, you know, earth shattering right there. You know, put that in the quote book. But no, it's, it's. You have to be. Not to quote Hormozi more. But I just love when he says confidence comes from just like it being undeniable that you are who you say.

You are and build an undeniable stack of evidence.

Exactly. And that's the thing is like, I wasn't always this way. I had to overcome my own mindset blocks. I was charging $250 a month like the rest of people. Like I was. I kept going up and up and up as my confidence grew. Because my confidence grew by simply serving and realizing what we were actually doing. And it becoming undeniable that I had evidence that I could generate these results for clients. And now I'm at a point where I'm increasing my prices again because I realized that a people will pay it for what we're giving because it is a high impact activity. And the client testimonials are coming in and they're really. It's shocking to me because they're saying things like you are essential and like we, we are used to arguing why we are a luxury. Right. But these clients are saying, you are fundamentally essential to my business. Like I couldn't, I don't see myself growing as a company without you. And I'm going, how do I bottle that up and explain that to people? Right. That's the hard part is kind of like translate that when I'm selling the services. But testimonials are huge.

Yeah, I love testimonials. It's funny that you bring up this mindset thing too, because I went through like a, like a, I don't know, quarter life crisis a little bit late maybe at the beginning of this year because we had some things within our business where we, we shifted around our offer, we shifted around our team, we shifted around the market that we serve. Essentially required a ground up rebuild of about 80% of the business. And that put me in this position in like January, February, March, where I'm sitting here, I'm like, what am I even doing here, man? It's just one of those things where you have this insurmountable amount of work ahead of you and you don't have any dopamine or any affirmation from it until you all the way at the top. And I can tell you now, 10, 11 months later, we're in a great position to kill it in 2025. But it did not feel that way for about eight or nine months. We had, I mean, we're net positive for the year, but we had about four or five months where we were net negative, meaning I was putting money back into the business. But now that I've been through that and now that I've seen, okay, like this is what building a business looks like. Yeah, I never had to deal with that before because I've only been doing this for three years. You know there's going to come a period at some point when that's going to be a two or three year season, I'm sure. But I think now, now having gone through that on the short term, I think that was super valuable just from like a personal development standpoint.

Oh, the sooner you can go through those, the better because there's less at stake than if you did that eight years in. It would be a much harder decision to make that call because burning down a bigger building is harder. And even if it's 80% of it, but one. And you also have all this, this, I don't know what it's called. There's a bias where I've Spent all this time, I've done all this thing, I have to see it through. If I give up now, I have wasted all of my time. And that is very difficult, especially for, I want to say, for accountants, especially because I feel like we tie so much to our, like the effort we put in that. We take so much pride in it and we attach ourselves to our work. And then I built this business and the idea of burning it down means I'm a failure. It means I did something wrong. There's a lot of ego work that has to happen there. So for anyone to go through that, I. Kudos. Yeah.

Yeah. It's given me a lot more, I think, empathy for other people who are going through that at the same time too, because a lot of our clients come to us at kind of at that stage. Like they've, like I said, they had a mess, they grew the mess. Now they're sitting on top of a bigger mess and it's time to clean it up. And it's like, there's going to be a lot of work and you're probably not going to see those insane Instagramable results until next year. But I promise you, when you get there, it's going to be worth it.

Yeah. The way I articulate it to clients, same thing with their finances. Right. Is like, we're not going to magically come up with some, we're not going to have some magic pill that next week I'm going to tell you, oh, this will solve all your problems and immediately it will be recovered. No, because people will say, first of all, I do basically a month to month. Well, it's quarter by quarter, but we have a monthly fee and if somebody, they're like, oh well if I am not happy, can I quit in a month? And I'm like, look, when you work with a personal trainer, you don't quit after one session because the burpees didn't work. You don't have abs after two weeks. Right. Like it doesn't work that way. It is a gradual habit building process. So we ask that you stick with us for three months before you draw a conclusion that it something didn't work. Because we need to get up to speed on your business. We need to be investing a lot of time on that. And that's a big part of it too is articulating like how long you'll, how long it will be before you see any extreme results. We try to decrease time to value as much as we can. Right. And get them value quickly in terms of a Cash flow forecast and getting into the. The top. Whenever we do a sales process, by the way, we go through what is the top priority? First order of action. Like, I think about first executive action on day one, since we're in a political season, right? Like, what's my first executive action on day one? What can we unfold first before we even go clean up the books, before we do anything else that's going to take longer. I think a lot of accountants in particular want to go clean everything up and bring it where it's pretty and then go do the work. Like, what can I do even if it's not pretty? Like, what could I do to just help them win tomorrow and not worry about that just yet, just so I can get them a quick win? That's not understood enough that, like, quick wins go a really long way if you can just help them with something in the. In the immediate so that they're not regretting their investment and they really trust you.

So there's a question that I love asking other entrepreneurs, especially people who are a little bit ahead of me, maybe. So, Shannon, what do you think is your competitive edge as an entrepreneur? What makes you you?

It's going to sound funny, but my metaphors and analogies, because the teacher in me. I wanted to be a Spanish teacher growing up. I speak Spanish fluently. I. It was my favorite subject in school. And as a true millennial, the question we were asked was like, what do you want to be when you grow up? And they'd ask you what your favorite subject was. I was like, Spanish. They're like, that's not really a career, though. So the closest thing I could find was Spanish teacher. I said, I guess that's what I have to be if Spanish is my favorite, right? Then I also liked math, science, and so on. Anyway, I. I've always found a way because I learned this stuff about business and money and accounting from my dad, who's a cpa. I learned when I was a kid. I got my first stock certificate when I was 12, and he explained to me what that was. I had. I worked for him a little bit when I was younger. I worked at McDonald's at age 14 and had to do inventory and all this crazy stuff that, like, looking back, I'm going, I was so young, but learned so much. I've always loved business. And I think that because I was so young when I learned some of these concepts, I can then relay how I learned them or I can simplify them down because I think they are so simple. The thing that I think makes me unique is that I have a unique skill and talent. And I only know this cause people have told me this. But I do believe it now that like I acknowledge it and say, yeah, I'm pretty good at making things simple that should be complex, like explaining things in a way that's very relatable through real life examples without just teaching vocabulary and jargon.

Yeah, that is such a superpower. Because I mean, whether it comes to content and marketing your business, whether that comes to the sales process and kind of pushing someone over that tipping point to get them to buy, whether that comes to the client delivery process, being able to just simplify, simplify, simplify. Especially when you're dealing with numbers. Man, that's so good. I love that.

I just did it to you actually with the Burpees abs. I'm like, well, you go see a trainer, you don't expect to get abs next week. That's how we approach this. And people then go, oh, okay. Because now I've, I've inserted in your head that this is just like that and people understand that. So what I'm trying to do is bridge connections of stuff they're not familiar with, with things they are familiar with and using that as an analogy to link. Like it's kind of like when insert here and people start to really get it and that there's nothing that makes me happier than when that clicks and I can see it in their face.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So something that's been been really big for you in growing your business has been this podcast. Keep what you earn, right?

Yes.

Talk to me a little bit about this because you're actually, last I checked, at least you were doing three episodes a week, is that right?

I've been doing five for the last three years.

Five, Five episodes a week. How on earth do you maintain that level of volume?

So first of all, I'm a verbal processor and I'm not like most accountants. Let me just say that I only get accountants like to talk as much as I do. But I found that the more I could capture what I was seeing through story and through my episodes, even though they're only like 10, 12 minutes. If I had a thought of like, I wish I could broadcast this out to the world like the loudspeaker over your high school, you know, and say like business owners, this is what I'm telling you. I look at it like that and sharing kind of what's working for my clients, what's working for me. A lot of stream of consciousness at this point, but so it's enjoyable for me to record. The other thing is we do repeat episodes. So that is kind of a hack. Like I will go find episodes that did well from two years ago. If they're timeless, I will repeat them because why say the same thing twice? Just replay it. If I still believe that we have guest episodes. We've split up episodes into two parts as well to create more content and also make it more approachable and digestible because we found that people really respond well to these like 20 minute, ish episodes over like an hour, hour and a half. So we're playing around with different variables here, but we have been able to produce five episodes for basically the last almost three years now, at least two years per week. And the solo episodes are just really enjoyable for me to record. So it's a funny question like, how do you do that? I'm like, I just, I do it. It's fun. I can record a few episodes in one day in one sitting and that will serve me for a week or two.

Was there any kind of learning curve when it came to like learning how to talk to the camera versus talking to other people or was it just. Did it just come natural?

Well, that's a good question because I think it was a learning curve. But I didn't. Don't think it took me long to get comfortable. I've spoken in front of groups before. I've done public speaking. I used to teach Zumba. I taught Zumba in front of 500 people. So if, if I can do that. Like, if I can wear like glitter, glittery, glittery leggings and dance around in front of 500 people and like it's fine, you know, like what else could happen? I think I'm pretty fearless when it comes to that because I've been. I fell flat on my face and been embarrassed so many times and like survived. So I always wonder, you know, nothing's going to happen if I f up. But. So I have a little bit of fear there. Like very little fear there. But also I just enjoy being. This is easier for me. The audio I get evenly voice notes to my team. Because I hate typing.

Yeah.

So I will, I will just express it here and have it transcribed. Um, but speaking with the camera or other people, I just pretend I'm talking to someone and leaving a voicemail. I really do. Because it's. That's the best way to create content, by the way, is pretend there is somebody on the other side. Cuz there will be. Even if you don't feel them or you don't see them. There will be a person, one person. So, like, I try not to say hey guys or hey everybody. Like, it's a big announcement. I'm like, there's one person on the other side of that. They're not around other people probably. So make sure that they connect with you. And, and I just appreciate every listener who listens to the show. Sometimes I still can't believe people listen to it, to be honest with you, because that's a hard thing for a podcaster because, like, we don't get to meet, we don't see them. So it's, it's hard to, it's like, oh, I love your show. And I'm like, that's so cool. You've been there. Like, you were there. I didn't see you. So it's fun to, it's fun to know that, that people are actually really enjoying it.

Yeah. I want to double click on what you said about like envisioning another person on the other end watching or listening.

Right.

Because like this an exercise we do with all our founders that we work with on a content basis is like we actually create a fictitious person and walk them through a day in their life so that you can actually envision. We've even thought about like doing like an AI avatar for this person just so you can actually have a picture in your head of Mark henderson, who's a 37 year old moving company owner or whatever this person you're talking to on the other side of the camera. Because I will say for me as a, like, I don't identify as an introvert, but it's definitely, it's still difficult even after three plus years of creating content, like sitting in front of the camera myself when I'm not talking to another person. But then I do a podcast like this and it's just like, hey, like I'm just talking with my friend Shannon. Right?

Yeah. You know what? You know what else is? What else, what else I did to overcome that was I had a really hard time recording online courses. Like, I hate that because I hate talking to no one. So what I would do is I actually, and I did this for my first phase of podcast, now that I remember this was I actually invited people into like a live recording. So I would invite people in and say, I will do free Q and A, free whatever. Like just please come and sit there. So I'm talking to people, like, and ask me questions and engage. Like, you know, I, I basically. And at the Membership. We do this too. I would do group calls with the membership and I would take clips of that and turn it into podcasts. So it actually was me talking to people. So you can. You can hear my tonality and you can hear my enthusiasm and you can hear me interact with people. The energy levels. And you knew there were other people in the room. Their voices were not necessarily on recording, but I would be kind of like what Gary Vee did on his podcast for a while. Like, you play the Q and A. And it was great because I would use that. So if you don't like speaking to nobody, then create a room where there's people there, speak to them, record yourself, and cut that content up like you can. You can build it around where you're comfortable.

Well, there was a story I saw. I think it was on Alex Formosi's, like, Instagram or whatever. But he was talking about how when he was doing his presentation style YouTube videos, they tried doing it just like in a studio with Slide deck, whatever going through. But what they realized was his energy levels were so much better if they did it on the stage. They have set up there@acquisite.com HQ with a couple of staff members.

They did it with us.

Yeah.

So when. When the workshops happen, I don't know if this happens every time, but Alex came out and he was like, I know it's over. It's like 6pm But I got to record a keynote. Can a few of you stay? So I'm not talking at nobody. And he said that. He said exactly that. He's like, I can't stand talking at nobody. And it does look better for the camera if there are some humans in the audience. He's like, would a few of you mind staying back? Like, everybody stayed back. I'm sure it was awesome.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so cool. Actually, now that you bring it up, there's this guy Omar, Omar El Takori. I don't know if you know him, but he's a big content guy. I think he's in Vegas too, actually. But whenever he does his solo podcast, he has his producer, Art, sit in with him to basically just like. He calls it, like, advocating for the audience. So whenever Omar's getting a little too heady or a little too much jargon in what he's saying, Art can jump in and be like, explain what that means. Right. I think that's so valuable because sometimes it's hard for us as legitimate experts to be able to simultaneously share our expertise and also have that part of Our brain going, that's like advocating for the audience going, will this click with them? Will this resonate? Will this actually make sense to the person who's listening?

I would. And I would. I did this too when I was creating content. I was in a studio recording my show and I actually asked the camera people, who are business owners themselves for their videography business, right? And I said, I want you guys to ask me questions. I want it. Let's have a conversation. Just please record it. I'm looking, I'm going to look at the camera instead of you over here, but I'm gonna respond to the camera. But can you like, can we just talk about your business and let's just see where this goes. And it's the best content because it's real, it's actual conversation. And I'm like, does that make sense? And they're like, no, actually it doesn't. Can you explain that a different way? And then I'll do that, right?

Yeah.

But you get that instant feedback. The closer you can get to your actual audience. Talking to you during that content creation is like gold because then you'll know it resonates.

What's been the effect this podcast has had on, on your business?

Just like as a whole, I mean, it's been great. A lot of unexpected results. So the original intent of it was honestly the idea. The idea came from a massive FAQ where I could send me talking for 10 minutes instead of a long ass email back. When someone asks a question or a DM or something, I said, this will save me a ton of time if I can bottle up the biggest things people ask me and I can teach it through this mechanism and I can then deploy like, here's 10 minutes of me talking about it. Go listen to that first and let me know if you have more questions. So it was like a time saving tool for me. Then what it turned into was a massive networking tool. Because when you have a stage, when you have a platform, people want to come on your show and you also get better at being on other podcasts. You get better at telling stories, you get better at, at teaching. It just allowed me to put so many reps in of this type of stuff that I found a real enjoyment in it. This is really fun. I really liked it. I did it at first going, I think this is going to be a great tool. I think it'll be great for marketing. I think we can cut up content from it. It'll be a great way for me to dump out what's in My brain into pieces of content, but it turned into a massive networking tool as well, where, you know, I was getting invitations on other people's shows, I was pitching other shows, but it was great because we could swap podcasts, and it's just a great thing to have. Like, it's like having a house that you can invite people over to and then they'll invite you over theirs. And it's great because there's like a relationship there.

There's that analogy again.

Yeah, exactly. I'm like, if I. If I invite the. The cool mom from school over for a glass of wine, she's likely to say yes, but if I invite myself over, that's rude as hell. Yeah, right? So now I have a house I can invite people over to.

Yeah.

And that's fun because it's like, okay, cool. Now this is going to enable me to meet more people because I have a desirable place for them to come to.

Yeah, I think that's such a, like, underrated thing when it comes to podcasting. Because most people when, like, when they think about launching a podcast, like to go in parallel with their business. They're usually thinking about it in terms of, like, how will this grow the business? How will I get. Will I get clients from this?

That too.

This is my, My, you know, nurture, middle of funnel pressure cooker where people just sit in here and get warmed up until they're ready to buy from me.

Right, Totally.

And especially as a marketer myself, like, that's the, The. The first and foremost thing that comes to mind. But, like, having that networking tool. I know, I know a handful of other people who have podcasts, have. Have kind of, you know, confirmed what you just said of. It's. It's so much easier to reach out to someone and, like, ask them on your podcast than it is to ask them for 15 minutes of time to pick their brain. And that way you end up getting so much more time from them, too.

For real. And. And it's. It's kind of like going on a first date. You know, they always say, I assume guys always get this advice. I've seen this on, like, reels and stuff, where they say, oh, just ask her about herself the whole time and the date will go great. Right?

Yeah.

That's kind of what you're doing is if someone comes on your show, let's just say I'm inviting. And this is not always intentional, but this happens to be how it works out. A lot of people on the show, I asked them about themselves for 40 minutes and then we have a few minutes at the end to just kind of, like, shoot the shit. Right? And we're just talking, and then they're like, so what do you do? I've just been. I've been talking about my. My myself this whole time. Like, yeah, I was interviewing you. Like, that was the point. Right. It's like, a great first date because, like, you just told me everything about you. And then they're like, so what do you do, Shannon? Like, I've had a great time with you. I feel bad. I haven't asked anything about you, and I don't know who you are, and I'll tell them what I do. And there have been a few times where people go, oh, my God, that's exactly what I need, or, oh, my God, I know exactly who needs this type of service. And you seem like cool people because we just hung out for the last 40 minutes. It goes a long way, I'll say. In my niche. Because people assume accountants are not fun. Let's be real. Like, nobody wants to hang out with an accountant by choice a lot of the times, just based on that. I've even debated taking CPA off of my description when I'm, like, pitching, because it almost sends me in the other direction of. But I promise I'm cool, right? Like, because if CPA pitches the podcast, I'm generalizing, but if CPA pitches the podcast, the host is going to be like, I don't know if they're going to be a good interview. So I have to make sure that I'm overcompensating in a way, which is why I have the podcast.

Yeah.

Because I said I need to put personality out, like, forefront, and then remind people I even do accounting, because that's really what I have to overcome. I realize what I know, what stereotypes and what things exist there, and I have to, like, over jump that and say, I'm really cool. I'm really informal. I'm going to help you out. I can simplify things. Oh, and I do finance as opposed to leading with CPA credentials and so on. That's going to take away from the relationship part of it. So that's a big part of why we do what we do.

Who are some of the, like, coolest people you've been able to meet or connect with through the podcast?

Oh, man, so many. So many people I've been able to connect with. Like, not through the podcast yet, but I've been connected with Layla Hormozi, and she's, like, one of the coolest people ever. Jasmine Star. I've loved Amy Porterfield. I've loved Porterfield. And then there's just so many. There's so many cool people. I could list off half the guests on my show. They're just really cool. Like, I've really enjoyed every interview to some extent. Some are, like, really fun. Some are unexpected. I've just been so grateful to the opportunities that that's brought me.

Amazing. Well, Shannon, thanks for your time. I really appreciate you coming on here and just sharing everything. Where can people go if they want to. Want to check you out a little bit more?

Obviously. Podcast, keep what you earn. It's on Apple podcasts and Spotify and Amazon. Also, fun fact, if you speak Spanish. We also released Conserva loqueganas, which is my Spanish version of keep what you earn for a few episodes. Yeah, and that has been great to just be able to. I live in Costa Rica, so a lot of my neighbors and my friends here could listen to it. So I wanted to make something that they could also enjoy as business owners, too. So we have a few episodes on that as well.

Amazing. Well, thanks so much, Shannon.