Episode 117: The Confident Productive Expert with M. Shannon Hernandez

Minette Riordan: Have you ever said to yourself, I don’t have enough time.

Brad Dobson: I am so overwhelmed.

Minette Riordan: I need more clarity.

Brad Dobson: I don’t know how to do this.

Minette Riordan: My to-do list is miles long.

Brad Dobson: I’m exhausted.

Minette Riordan: There’s got to be a better way.

Brad Dobson: Hi, there. I’m Brad.

Minette Riordan: And I’m Minette. Not only have we said all these things ourselves, but we’ve heard our community of creative entrepreneurs say them over and over again.

Brad Dobson: That’s why we created the Structure and Flow podcast. I’m Structure.

Minette Riordan: And I’m Flow, and this is the productivity podcast for creative entrepreneurs.

Brad Dobson: We believe that doing more and working harder are not the solution to your productivity challenges.

Minette Riordan: We believe in more play, more fun, and more profit. Join us as we explore the interplay between structure and flow so that we can bring more grace and ease to your creative business.
Hey, everybody, and welcome to episode 117 of the Structure and Flow podcast. I’m Dr. Minette Riordan, here with my husband, Brad Dobson. Today, we’re so excited we have a guest. I want to introduce you to somebody that has really kind of rocked my world the last couple of months. It’s been so fun since we met in Denver, and this is the brilliant content marketing strategist and expert, and Shannon, her name, that is. Welcome, Shannon.

Brad Dobson: Hi, Shannon.

Shannon: Hi, thanks so much for having me.

Minette Riordan: No, I’m super excited about this conversation. Shannon and I have some fun stuff to share with you today about a retreat that Shannon is hosting and is being gracious enough to let me come teach creativity at, which is something kind of new for me, so we’re excited to get going in the conversation.

Brad Dobson: The teaching creativity or the creativity?

Minette Riordan: The teaching creativity.

Brad Dobson: I was gonna say …

Minette Riordan: Teach people to make art is a new thing for me. No, teaching is not new for me at all, but we always start with a quote. You want to share the quote?

Brad Dobson: Sure. I think I can even do this one without my glasses.

Minette Riordan: I know. I made it really big for you.

Brad Dobson: This is from Robin Sharma. I know that name. Why do I know that name?

Minette Riordan: ‘Cause she’s a productivity expert.

Brad Dobson: Okay. “Productivity is less about what you do with your time and more about how you run your mind.”

Minette Riordan: And I love this. “Productivity is less about what you do with your time and more about how you run your mind.”

Brad Dobson: Wow.

Minette Riordan: Shannon has been having some great conversations in her marketing for thought leaders Facebook group around the mindset around business and a lot about confidence, but before we even get there, I want to back up and just say a few words about Shannon. In case we didn’t have enough in common, we both share the first name, Mary. We both go by our middle names, Minette and Shannon, and she was a teacher for a long time.

Brad Dobson: Oh.

Minette Riordan: So she comes from an education background, as well, though middle school. I taught high school, so blessings on you for all the hard work that you did, and-

Shannon: I got them ready for you people.

Minette Riordan: Got them ready for me. What she learned was that she really wanted to make a bigger difference in the world. She wanted to be a thought leader, and she started a business, which maybe she’ll tell you about her creative design business that she started and how she came up with this idea of this content personality wheel. As you guys know, I love assessments. I created my own assessments. I’ve taken a lot of them, but this one had a really big impact on me and my business, and I’ll share more about that. But Shannon, I’d love for you to just share, in your own words, a little bit about your journey to how you got to where you are right now in your business.

Shannon: Yeah. It’s been a fun journey. I’ve been in business about five years. I was a teacher for 15 years, taught in upper Manhattan and New York City, inner city kids, eighth graders. They were crazy. It was fun. There was never a dull moment, but then I decided I just wasn’t happy with the system and there wasn’t much I could do to change the system, no matter how hard I tried, so I left and I actually started as a writer. I had been teaching reading and writing for all these years, and I could really help people understand you have an idea here. Let’s break it down, and let’s get it into a format. I was prepping them for state writing tests. I came up with all kinds of hacks, and tricks, and ways to get them to score really high so they could apply to a good high school.
Then, so I left teaching and I became a copywriter and a content writer for people in their own businesses. That was a long windy journey. I commanded high prices from the beginning. I think it was like the best thing I’ve ever done in my business, is I don’t listen to what anyone tells me about pricing. I just set my own prices and just sell the shit out of stuff, as I like to say, but the problem was, I was then tied to my computer because it was still just me and I had to do all the writing, and the revisions, and the work, and I would go on family vacations and I’d be like, what the hell? I’m still working. This is the exact same thing as teaching and grading papers, except now I’m writing people’s stuff. I did a pivot about two years in, and I dropped the content copywriting and started teaching people how to market their business in a way that gets attention and gets them clients. That’s what I’ve been doing now for the last three years. It’s been a lot of fun. We have grown really fast, which has brought a lot of income and stress because it’s like now I have 15 people lined up for marketing audits all of a sudden over the last week, and I’m like, ah, how am I gonna get to all these people?

Brad Dobson: That’s a good place to be.

Shannon: It’s a good place to be. It is what I teach people to do. I do have a team of 12 in my brand, so I’m not by myself, but every time … I’m training someone now in sales, so that takes time. Then, of course, when you’re training someone in sales, you have 15 people wanting to talk to somebody who is being trained in sales. It’s a constant cycle of growth and fun. I try to remember to have a lot of fun, even when I’m stressed out, but the wheel has been a game changer for people around the world. I know that’s what you want to probably talk about next.

Minette Riordan: We could talk about a lot of things. This is a podcast about structure, and flow, and productivity. The reason you’ve been able to grow so fast, I’ve heard you say this multiple times, is not only are you organized, but you invested in help from the beginning. You knew this wasn’t something you could grow alone and you couldn’t have the creative space to come up with the content wheel, content personality wheel, until you had support that you needed. There’s so many ways we could go in this conversation, but yeah. Let’s talk about the content personality system that you’ve created because I do think it, in and of itself, I’ve been talking a lot today, can you tell, is a way to work smart, which is what we talk about a lot, how to work smarter, not harder. This is the way to work smart and get more clients. So, tell us more.

Shannon: Yeah. The content personality wheel was born one night after a conversation. It was a string of conversations. It’s like the one that broke the camel’s back was a lady that called me and she was crying in my ear. She actually called for a consultation. She wanted to … She didn’t want to. She was being forced to write a book by her coach. She was in a program and it was a year-long program, and they were at the point where they would be locked in a hotel in San Diego for three days in a room and she was to come out with a manuscript. She was sobbing hysterically in my ear, and this was not the first time that I had heard, “My coach is making me do a video. My coach is making me do a podcast.” The next content thing, people were calling because they were being forced, really, what I call forced out of alignment.
And so, I guided her, lovingly. We cried together, that lady and I. It was a very sad call, but I guided her, lovingly, through that conversation. I told her I was not gonna give her a topic for her book, that she should not be writing a book if she didn’t want to write a book, and that she should probably fire the coach because no one should force you into those situations where you don’t feel good about yourself. So anyway, she left. I don’t know what she decided to do. I couldn’t help her, but I laid in bed that night and I thought, there’s got to be a way that I can help people understand the person they are right now today. You’re not broken, you don’t need fixed, and you don’t need to be forced out of alignment. How can I help them see what type of content is good for them right now? That was when the wheel was born. I did not sleep. I got up. I sketched it. It’s like a divine thing.

Minette Riordan: Download, total download, yeah.

Shannon: Yeah, sketched the wheel. The sketch everyone sees now is the original sketch. Nothing has changed. Within a week, I had a six module course put together for it. My brain was just on fire. It has been instrumental, not only in growing my own business, but helping people understand that in five minutes, you can take a quiz, and it will spit out to you the top two content personalities that you should focus on right now so that you can feel comfortable in your marketing, and get clients, and get money, and have a lot of fun.

Minette Riordan: Will you just name what the content personalities are for people who are listening?

Shannon: Sure, there’s five. It’s video, audio, live in person, visual, and written.

Minette Riordan: So simple, you guys. I mean, this is not rocket science at all, and yet it’s as brilliant as rocket science because that piece about alignment is so important. It’s what reminded me … I’m spending so much time making video and where I’m happiest is writing. I’ve been spending so much time behind my computer and the second place I’m happiest is live in front of people. My top two are written and live events, and I haven’t been doing that, and it’s been having an impact on our sales, totally.

Brad Dobson: How do we align that when … We get the output from this quiz, wonderful. It probably told us what we knew in our guts, anyways, but we still need to do those other things. I understand, some people, they don’t want to be on video because they just have a lot of self-confidence issues and that type of stuff, but it’s almost unavoidable that in our business, we … For us, personally, we do video. We have to have video. So, how do you align that?

Minette Riordan: That’s a great question.

Shannon: Brad, I’m taking you down.

Brad Dobson: Okay.

Shannon: Are you ready?

Minette Riordan: Yah.

Shannon: You do not have to do anything you don’t want to frickin’ do in your business. I don’t care. If you think you need to go do video and video is number four or five on the list, your videos are gonna suck. The energy is gonna suck. The whole thing is gonna suck and no one’s gonna buy your stuff.

Brad Dobson: Well, so, if I’ve got someone maybe beside me who is really good live on stage, but isn’t as happy on video, you know, really, they’re the same thing, just you need more practice on the video than you do ad libbing it. So, what’s wrong with getting more practice and becoming better at one of those things that isn’t necessarily at the top of your list?

Shannon: Well, you can get more practice. I always say, the wheel is a tool. I really encourage people to take the quiz at least twice a year, and they do. They check in because as you get more comfortable with things, your results will change. I think that’s an amazing tool, right? Quit using a screwdriver if you really need a hammer. It’s simple here, but as far as your question was how can you get better, I don’t even really teach people to come out of their top two to begin with because it’s not where their energy is. It’s not where their heart is. Someone like Minette who is really great at live in person and she can stand on a stage, she’s got the audience there, the lights are on, she’s got the spotlight on her, that’s very different than talking to a cold camera. No one’s behind it. You know you’re talking to yourself in the end.

Brad Dobson: Gotcha.

Shannon: You just know it, but the energy of it is different. For people, my top two content personalities are live in person and video, and so I can rock a video. I can turn that video on and I can talk. I don’t need a script. I know right to the point. I got my teaching points, and I am off and going. When I fell away from video, because I’m also an author and I love to write, my sales plummeted. Now, writing is number three and it’s very high up there, but my energy and my essence and the people who buy from me, I can go live. Every time I go live on Facebook, even without a call to action, somebody contacts me to buy something.

Brad Dobson: Gotcha.

Shannon: That is the power of staying in your content personality.

Brad Dobson: I see, I see. No, that makes sense.

Minette Riordan: And so when Shannon and I had this conversation about live events and it’s not always possible to do live events in front of an audience, Zoom counts. For me, I’m just as happy creating live events on Zoom, and Shannon does, as well. We both do tons of live events [crosstalk 00:13:40].

Brad Dobson: Live videos.

Minette Riordan: It’s live and the connection with our audience is what feeds me, personally.

Brad Dobson: I see.

Minette Riordan: And so, just learning to know that, but when you give people permission to stand in their gifts, and to use their gifts, and to believe that they’re gifts can bring them money, everything changes, which leads me into this idea of how knowing your content personality improves productivity. So, talk a little bit about what your clients have been able to let go of because of this.

Shannon: Yeah. There’s a lot of things here. I had somebody call me. She had been trying to write a book for seven years. She wanted a book. I was like, “Whoa, you are persistent.” She’s like, “I hate it. Every time I sit down to write, I frickin’ hate it.” I’m like, “What’s your content personality?” She said audio and something else. I said, “Pick up your phone and dictate the book. Send it off to transcribe and get an editor involved.” Within eight weeks, she came back in my inbox and she said, “I have a book and I’m using it now for my business.” Eight weeks was way more productive for her than actually seven years of trying to write the book.

Minette Riordan: That’s a great example.

Shannon: And it’s also the confidence, right? She would beat herself up every day. She wanted a book. She didn’t want to write a book. She couldn’t, probably, write a book. I mean, I’m not saying she’s a bad writer, but it takes a lot of discipline to write a book. We’ve done it, right? It’s not just like you just … Even if you’re a great writer, writing a book takes discipline and you’ve got to be driven to do it. Can you imagine someone sitting down for seven years every week and trying to write a book and what it would do to the confidence?

Minette Riordan: Yeah, and-

Shannon: And just the rest of the life, right? If your confidence is affected in one area of your life, it affects the rest of your life. We know this.

Minette Riordan: It does.

Shannon: We’re not like little vacuums here.

Minette Riordan: I’m thinking about some of the conversations I’ve seen in the marketing for thought leaders Facebook group, also, where you’re so encouraging to people. Don’t try to do everything. One of the biggest mistakes that creatives make is that they’re listening to all the advice that’s out there and they’re trying to use all five content personalities at once to market their business instead of staying in their lane and being really focused on what it is that they’re best at.

Brad Dobson: Gotcha, gotcha.

Shannon: Yeah.

Minette Riordan: It’s like the integrating your gifts piece. Brad and I have been talking a lot about making sure that we’re bringing all of our gifts to bear on our business, which for Brad meant bringing programming back. His content personality is programming, right? It’s a really powerful one. We were completely not even building that into the plan, so when you know what your content personality is, I would imagine it also improves productivity. It makes it a lot easier to plan and strategize how you should be spending your time, your marketing dollars, and your marketing energy.

Brad Dobson: Well, it sounds like it’s the difference between seven years and eight weeks, right?

Shannon: Yeah, and also-

Brad Dobson: That’s a big productivity increase.

Shannon: It’s a big productivity increase, and just from a marketing perspective, you all know, you teach this, as well. You’ve got to be consistent, and so if every day you are sitting down to do something you don’t want to do to begin with, one, the energy is off and it’s wonky, and that’s the energy that’s being fed out to your people, but two, your productivity goes down because now you’re fighting. Oh, I’m gonna go live, I’m gonna go live. I mean, somebody posts somewhere … I’ve been busy coaching today, but I saw a post come up like, “I’ve tried to do a video four times now and I’ve been doing this for two hours.” I’m gonna say, what’s your content personality?

Minette Riordan: Yeah, well, it’s like me recording the productive creative video series, trying to use a teleprompter when I should’ve just spoken. As long as I just turn on the video and I just talk, I am fine. It’s when I think that I need to stick to a script that then I get stuck in my head and I start to play those games, and I do 5,000 takes, which then is more editing for Brad.

Brad Dobson: Right.

Minette Riordan: It definitely impacts the productivity where if I stay in my lane, like you said, I just turn on the video and talk, I’m way more comfortable, way more comfortable. I’m curious about the audio personality. In today’s marketplace, video is such a powerful conversation. We know that between YouTube, and Facebook, and Google, so much money is being invested in these live-streaming, and pre-recorded Netflix, another one, video platforms. How can people with audio really market effectively, just with voice, today?

Shannon: Well, podcasts are not dead, clearly.

Brad Dobson: A long way from dead.

Minette Riordan: Amen, sister.

Shannon: Yeah, there’s a lot of … I mean, if you plan a podcast right and you have a great strategy, I think podcasts are still very, very relevant, but one of the things I want to say, I turned my efforts about eight months ago to teaching people how to sell with their content personality. I sell via video. I will record a video and I will pop it into a Facebook message. I’ll be like, “Hey, I’ve got a retreat coming up. Minette and I are doing a retreat. It’s in Pennsylvania. I’m so excited. I’ve been thinking about you. This is why I think it would be good for you,” and their name is throughout the video so they know that the video was made for them. That is huge in sales and building trust and rapport with people.
The same is done with audio. I use an app called Voxer, V-O-X-E-R. It’s like a walkie talkie app, but I use it for selling, and I also use the audio button in Facebook Messenger for selling because if you think about the levels of touch, of email, everyone has 1,000 emails, okay? Email marketing is not dead, but there’s a lot going on in people’s inboxes. If you can send them a private video or a private audio message with their name and they know that you are thinking about them, specifically, it just skyrockets your sells. It’s why I now have all these people sitting ready for consultations throughout September. It’s because I used video, and audio can be used the same way.

Minette Riordan: We love sharing apps and tools, so Voxer is a great one, but there’s another one you introduced me to for video that you love and use all the time.

Shannon: Loom.

Minette Riordan: Yep.

Brad Dobson: So-

Shannon: L-O-O-M.

Brad Dobson: Yeah, Loom is incredible. I thought it was fantastic. Just to clarify, you are using Facebook Messenger in the context of … Or I guess you could do it with Loom, as well, via email, but you’re recording … You come up with some sort of script that you then reread for clients that you think you want to target, and then you send that to them individually on Messenger?

Shannon: Yep, here’s a great example. There were people that answered a post, do you want to make $10,000 a month, like I’m gonna teach you how to build out this funnel? At the time, I was just trying to see where my audience was with it, but there was so much interest that I put them all in a Facebook message. There were 21 of them. I put them all in a private Facebook message on Saturday, and I sent an audio clip and I said, “Hey, you answered the call that you want to have a minimum of $10,000 months in your business. If this is for real, if you’re for real, I want you to stick around in this Facebook Messenger. I am putting together a workshop.” I have sold 10 of them at $500 in less than 36 hours.

Brad Dobson: Good stuff.

Shannon: Okay, so I use Messenger. Now, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say you’re not supposed to use Messenger to sell stuff, okay? I do.

Minette Riordan: Well, you’re not, really, right? You’re using it to-

Shannon: I mean, I-

Minette Riordan: You’re using it to create conversations with people.

Shannon: Yeah.

Minette Riordan: But in the conversations, you’re selling.

Shannon: Exactly.

Minette Riordan: So it’s just, to me, it’s part of the relationship building.

Shannon: It is. I spend, oh, my work day, 80% on Facebook, but I’m actually selling and making a lot of money in private messages and getting people in my group, like, onboard with the plan. Brad, you should come to my group. It’s such an amazing group.

Brad Dobson: Oh, cool.

Minette Riordan: It is.

Shannon: We’d love to have you in there.

Minette Riordan: It’s not all women, either. There’s some nice diversity.

Brad Dobson: That’s all right. I’m okay with women.

Shannon: Teaching people how to sell with their content personality has also been a game changer. I love selling. I see it as an invitation. I see it as an opportunity to work with me in some capacity. I think people like the personalized approach of either Loom in the Facebook Messenger or an audio file in the Facebook Messenger.

Minette Riordan: I agree. Having been a recipient of both, myself, I love the personalization of that, and even just the written messages, right? It’s become … I probably spend more time connecting with clients, and colleagues, and scheduling things through Facebook Messenger these days [inaudible 00:22:54] in house between us than I do in my email. I love it. I think it’s a great tool. Where can people go to find out what their content personality is?

Shannon: They can go to mshannonhernandez.com, and they can take the quiz right there on the homepage. It’ll take about five minutes.

Minette Riordan: Yeah, it’s super, super fast, and we’ll make sure we put that link into the show notes, as well, for those of you who are driving and listening. We want to take a few minutes before we close to talk about this amazing retreat that Shannon is hosting in Pennsylvania, and I have the pleasure and honor of going and attending. I’ve never been to Pennsylvania, so I’m super excited.

Brad Dobson: What time of year is it?

Minette Riordan: In fall when all the fall leaves are changing.

Brad Dobson: Oh, nice.

Shannon: Yep.

Minette Riordan: And she has rented this gorgeous lodge in Pennsylvania. It’s gonna be amazing, but tell people a little bit about the competent expert and how you’re really gonna teach all of us how to sell using our content personality.

Shannon: Yeah. This retreat is the confident expert retreat, and it’s all about tapping into your content personality, your top two, and we’re gonna help you understand how to do that. We’re gonna help you to understand how to put a marketing plan together, and we’re gonna have lots of practice time. If you score audio and video, and you’re like, great, now I have no idea what to do with it, no worries, lots of workshop time. We’re gonna have time for you to implement stuff in your business. One of the things, too, that I’m gonna really focus on, this is huge in my world, is priced for profit, that your offers are priced for profit from the beginning so that you’re not like me when I was tied to my computer and doing all this kind of copywriting stuff all hours of the day and night. That was not really priced for profit, even though I had higher prices than a lot of people in the industry. And then, Minette is gonna teach the creativity piece, which is gonna be really fun. We’re gonna weave it in throughout the weekend journey circles, and we’re gonna relate it to your content personalities and your market strategy. I’m really excited to learn from Minette. I think it’s gonna be so much fun to work on [crosstalk 00:25:11]-

Minette Riordan: I think it’s gonna be a beautiful, beautiful collaboration. I find that the more we add the visual piece, because when people come in with their content personalities, they have different learning styles, right? Shannon and I were both teachers. We know a lot about learning styles. So, part of this is understanding what your own learning style is, as well, and bringing that visual piece helps really cement the learning so that when you get back to the office on the Monday or Tuesday after the retreat, you have a visual reminder and can go back to that moment of, oh yeah, that’s what this was all about, or this was what I needed to learn, or go back to the feeling, that aha, and that feeling of confidence that you felt in the moment at the retreat. We want you to make sure that you’re going home with that confidence intact and not just while you’re there at the retreat.

Shannon: Yeah, that’s really important to both of us, that it’s ingrained.

Brad Dobson: Do we have all the details?

Minette Riordan: We do have all the details.

Brad Dobson: Can we talk about them right now?

Minette Riordan: You want to go ahead and share all the details.

Brad Dobson: So time, and place, and …

Minette Riordan: Yeah, all the [crosstalk 00:26:11].

Brad Dobson: What they take home with them, what the swag is they take home with them.

Shannon: Yeah. Time is October 18-21, 2018. The place is in … I forget the name of the county or the town in Pennsylvania.

Minette Riordan: Perry County, Pennsylvania.

Shannon: Thank you. Perry County, Pennsylvania. My husband will be there teaching yoga and meditation every day for anyone that wants to start their day that way. We have lots of nature time planned, and as Minette and I call it, sisterhood time.

Minette Riordan: Yes.

Shannon: [crosstalk 00:26:50] time. We’ll be cooking meals together and really just doing a lot of collaboration, and confidence building, and just having fun. Business owners need to get back to having a lot of fun in their business. You can get all the information at mshannonhernandez.com/pa-retreat. Grab your spot. Let’s get you registered. Let’s get going. Let’s go into 2019 with an awesome plan and feeling really good about things.

Brad Dobson: If someone signs up, they’re gonna come away with … They’re gonna understand what their …

Minette Riordan: Content personality is.

Brad Dobson: Their content personality is.

Minette Riordan: They’re gonna have their content marketing plan done.

Brad Dobson: Based on that.

Minette Riordan: Based on that content personality.

Brad Dobson: Based on that personality. If I came away as a writer and finger painter, I’m gonna have a plan that says I’m gonna finger paint this much …

Minette Riordan: Yes.

Brad Dobson: In this language, all that type of stuff.

Minette Riordan: Yes.

Brad Dobson: Very cool.

Minette Riordan: Absolutely. I think we could do a whole nother call about this, but the confidence piece is so important. When Shannon and I met in Denver, we were both going through the same thing and noticing with our clients where what was holding them back more than anything was lack of confidence and really believing in themselves, and so our unique productivity style quiz, the content personality quiz, these are both powerful tools for helping you increase your confidence by getting to know yourself and standing in your zone of genius.

Brad Dobson: No doubt, no doubt. That’s a great way to … Yeah, just come away … I see that, too. We’ve had a number of clients where … I think it was especially telling when we talked to them about blogging, about writing. As you know, there’s a lot of people who struggle mightily with writing in the same way they might struggle in terms of getting on camera, and they shut down pretty quick when you talk to them about wanting to have an editorial calendar. Coming away with something that suits them and their unique personality for how they want to put themselves out in the world is gonna make them a lot more productive in their business.

Minette Riordan: I have one last question for you before we close. You have this retreat. You have a Costa Rica retreat. You have a couple of houses that you’re working on. You have a team of 12. You have 15 people lined up to work with you. How do you stay organized?

Brad Dobson: I got an alarm that it’s the middle of the podcast.

Shannon: I love it.

Minette Riordan: How do you stay organized? I know you take time off. You were just in Canada. You had a lovely family vacation this summer with your hubby. How do you stay organized and productive?

Shannon: A couple of things. I’ve learned I’m a paper and pen girl all the way. However, with a team of 12, you can’t do that, so we use Asana, and we use it religiously. Our rule is if it’s not in Asana and it’s not assigned to one person and there’s not a deadline on it, it doesn’t get done, and we all hold each other accountable to it. The other thing I started doing was … I know that this is a podcast, so I’ll try and explain this, but every week on Sunday, I set up a quadrant and I call this the CEO planning system.

Minette Riordan: Nice.

Shannon: The first quadrant is always Millionaire Mondays. It’s what I call my Mondays. It’s where I get my mind wrapped around who I need to follow up with, what I’m selling for the week, what my focus is, my referral network, and anything else that’s relationship-based marketing is always Millionaire Monday, including checking in every week on my financials and that kind of stuff. There’s three boxes left. One box is project number one, and one box is project number two, and I only put the things that need to get done each week in the box for that specific project, and then the last one, it’s a bad word. I don’t know if I’m allowed to say it.

Minette Riordan: You are absolutely allowed to say it.

Shannon: It’s called the BFFD zone. If anyone’s familiar with me, I teach this. Your BFFDs are what’s actually holding you back. It’s where you spend all your time in your business that generates no revenue, and it’s called the Big Fat Fucking Distractions.

Brad Dobson: Nice.

Shannon: Those BFFDs go in this box. I will tell you, for four weeks, the ame ones have carried over because I haven’t had time to get to them, and I’ve made more money in the last four weeks than months prior, months prior. It’s because I’ve ignored this box. It feels good to write it down. I know it probably needs to get done, but it doesn’t matter. Eight weeks later, if it’s still not done and I’m still making a shit ton of money, obviously it wasn’t that important to begin with.

Brad Dobson: Yeah, yeah.

Minette Riordan: I love that, and I love the simplicity of the system, and it looks like there’s no more than five things in each of those boxes. It’s not like you’re overloading those boxes. Her to-do list, for those of you that are listening, is not pages long. All four of those quadrants are on one page, and each one has a few things listed. It’s a great visual if you’re watching on YouTube. If not, super simple, and I love the millionaire mindset that you bring to the whole system of planning and productivity. It’s really powerful.

Brad Dobson: Yeah. I think that if there’s one takeaway from that, for me, and we’ve certainly told ourselves this a lot and told our clients, at the end of the day, you need to sell things.

Minette Riordan: Yes.

Brad Dobson: You need to focus on the things that make you money. It’s very easy to … And we’re certainly guilty of embracing new ideas and new opportunities. Opportunities have killed a lot of businesses. If you have an income stream, you need to ride that.

Shannon: Yeah.

Minette Riordan: Yeah.

Brad Dobson: And develop it.

Minette Riordan: Yeah, absolutely.

Shannon: People think to sell, they need lots of things, like a website page and a whatever. This thing I just sold in 36 hours, I didn’t have a team working on the weekend. I sent them to a PayPal and typed up a paragraph, and that was it. One person said, “Well, I need a sales page and I need an outline.” I said, “Then this isn’t for you. You’re not getting that right now. This is what the program is. If you want it, let me know.” She hasn’t seen that message yet, so … But, you know, you can’t say the wrong thing to the right people. I really believe that, and so all these things you think you need to do and have to sell, you don’t. You need to have a good product, some passion at marketing that goes with your content personality, and a way for people to pay you.

Minette Riordan: Yeah.

Shannon: That’s it.

Minette Riordan: Super simple, super simple. I love it.

Brad Dobson: Cool.

Minette Riordan: M. Shannon Hernandez, you can find her at mshannonhernandez.com to find out more about what she’s up to or marketing for thought leaders on Facebook. You’re brilliant, I love you, and I can’t wait to see you in person in a couple of months.

Brad Dobson: Thanks, Shannon.

Shannon: Thank you so much.

Minette Riordan: All right. We’ll see you next week on episode 118 of Structure and Flow where we’re gonna be talking about workflow, what is workflow, how to improve your workflow. Maybe we’ll have Shannon talk about her quadrant system a little bit. I love that, but when it comes to creatives who are managing multiple projects all at the same time, workflow matters. That’s what we’ll be sharing next time. We’ll see you then.

Brad Dobson: Thanks for listening to Structure and Flow, the productivity podcast for creative entrepreneurs. To find out more about this episode and others, go to pathtoprofitacademy.com and click on the podcast link.