We recently connected with Dana Shannon and have shared our conversation below.

Dana, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

During quarantine in 2020, I was able to start working from home for my 9-5 job. I had a position at a large marketing agency as a Client Services manager where I managed about 25 accounts and client projects. While working from home, I was able to complete all of my full-time work in half the time it normally took because I had very few distractions. I was so much more efficient. Let’s just say, I had plenty of extra time to start thinking if this role and the schedule were going to keep me happy long term. I started journaling and really asking myself if this was my purpose. Is this what I was meant to do?

After reading what felt like 1000 self-development books and podcasts, I wrote down all the skills that I had acquired over the last 12 years of my career. I loved managing projects, providing excellent customer service experiences, and creating strategies with my clients that made their job easier while helping their businesses grow.

Then, I asked myself if I was supporting and investing my time and energy into a specific kind of business, what kind of business would I be proud to work with?

Next, this may sound woo woo but it felt like I made a connection with the universe and it came to me. After seeing my Creative friends and community start businesses of their own, I saw the need for support in the backend in order to help them reach their potential. I needed and wanted to be that support. I felt so connected to the thought of being the person who could be trusted with their business and clients. Creative business owners do not have the time to provide client support, check their systems, and also have enough space to use their creativity long-term and I didn’t want them to think they needed to do it all alone.

While researching, I was trying to find a community that provided a similar service for Creatives but I couldn’t find a thing! I almost thought that it wasn’t going to be possible if no one else was doing this type of work already. Next, I found information about an industry that was offering similar services but not specifically for Creative business owners. I found Sara Wiles, a Virtual Assistant and Online Business Owner Trainer. I joined her Facebook community and learned so much and gained confidence quickly. Some of the members were sweet to offer a virtual coffee chat so that I could ask them questions about how my idea could be sustainable long term and how I could eventually leave my 9-5 job as they did. Things started to feel possible.

Then, I started reaching out to everyone I could in my community and asked if they felt like Creative business owners would see value in someone helping them with customer service support, project management, and system management. Everyone I spoke to said HELL YES.

After reaching out to about 10 friends, previous work colleagues, and creatives that inspired me in my community, I asked to have a 30-minute call with them to begin doing some market research. I would ask specific questions on the call like what their challenges were in their business, what they loved doing, and what they hated doing. It was really common to hear that what they hated doing was the work I LOVED doing. That’s when I knew this support was needed and was going to work. It made me really happy to think that I could make someone’s day better by taking some tasks or strategies off their schedule so they could have more time to think, plan, and create. At that point, almost everyone I had a call with asked for me to reach out to them as soon as I started offering these services because they needed help like this asap!

At this point, I knew I needed to make a game plan on how I could start offering my services and figure out how to set myself up for success and eventually leave my 9-5 so I could serve more Creative businesses.

About 1 week later, I reached back out to two of those business owners, one a hairstylist and another a graphic designer. I couldn’t believe they wanted to start and sign the contract asap and that I was going to get paid for work that brought me joy!

Dana, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Business and project management is the perfect match for me. When I started College I majored in Psychology because I was so curious about what makes people the way they are and I loved learning about positive psychology and its effect on changing our minds for the better. Once my classes started focusing on mental health and the variety of diagnoses out there, I started to think I could potentially have them all and was too scared to learn more so I moved into Business School. I felt this was a safer option where I could still work and learn about people. I still get to use the tools I learned about working with different personality types and am able to absorb what motivates business owners, teams, and clients. It has been a great balance and I learn more every time I work with a new client because no one works the same way.

I started my business to provide support to Creative business owners so that they could focus on the work that lights them up. I manage their client experiences by assisting with client communication, streamlining operation systems, project management, onboarding & offboarding processes, and team management. I am the bridge that connects business owners to their teams by solving internal challenges. Using my background of working with Creatives, I am also a translator between designers and their clients because I understand both of their needs to create great work.

One of my favorite parts of my job is setting up a business owner and their team (whether they have one or not) for success. I do a deep dive into their business, share my recommendations to simplify their operations, and provide those processes to them.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

The most effective strategy for growing my client roster is referrals, 100%. I have an online presence on my website and social media but those are mainly to remind my community that I exist.

I request a referral about 1-2x a year from current or past clients and share a percentage of the sale with them. Reaching out to past coworkers from my 9-5 career has helped as well. You never know who may need your services and support in your community.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

In my first year of being full-time in my business, I learned quickly that I need to be resilient. I was working myself out of a job. I structured my business to keep clients long-term and grow with them as they evolved out of being team of 1. After about 3 months of working with a client and streamlining their services and strategy, there wasn’t much work left for me to do. It was a pro and a con of doing great work! That’s when I had to start rethinking who my ideal client was. I started offering a maintenance package for clients who were a team of 1 after working together for 2-3 months and began working with Agencies because I still could support Creatives, but their work pipelines were more consistent.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.danashannon.co
• Instagram: hello_danabowbana
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/danashannon4555

Image Credits
Jesse Brantman www.jessebrantman.com