We were lucky to catch up with Shannon Wenzel recently and have shared our conversation below.

Shannon, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you happier as a business owner? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job?

As a veteran homeschooling mom to five children, I have OFTEN considered what it might be like if we had decided to send them all to school and I went back to the career I was planning during law school. But I have already been a full time working parent, a part time working parent, a stay at home parent, and a homeschooling mama with no income. I know that coming home every night and hearing about all the fun my kiddo had with the nanny when I got to see her very little during her waking hours didn’t feel aligned with my priorities. And I learned that being a parent without my own income and career ALSO didn’t feel aligned with who I am. Building a business in a non-traditional industry has allowed me to spend the last 15 years homeschooling a big family while also growing something substantial that brings me great joy. I don’t take that for granted. Doing it all at once may require sacrifices on my part, but those sacrifices have allowed me to have both a career and a life in line with my priorities.

Shannon, 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?

I was someone who thought the entire social sales industry was tacky. I believed the women in it were undereducated, lonely, and being scammed. I feel terrible about that now, but that is what I really felt. I hadn’t ever seen it be done in a way that I wanted to be part of. What opened the door for me was using some products as a favor to a friend, and those products turned out to be so much better than “the best” I was buying from a traditional store. Once I saw that accessible clean nutrition and healthy living education was truly changing families’ health, I was more open to the idea of sharing what I was already using and loving in my own life. In the meantime, I met people in Arbonne who impressed me. What they were doing with their influence to impact their communities is something I could respect and became a business I could see myself in. Over the past 10 years, the advent of social media and the influencer movement have transformed how we run our business, and that has been a gamechanger to be able to form relationships with people anywhere in the world.

Clients generally come to me when they are discouraged about an aspect of their health-their weight, feeling exhausted, bloated, and just defeated. Oftentimes they are being told it is normal to feel like they do. Being able to coach and guide them through lifestyle changes that leave them empowered to take control of four foundational aspects of our health-blood sugar, gut health, inflammation, and hormones-is among my greatest joys.

As a business mentor, seeing other women start to believe in themselves and become confident while they build an income will never get old to me. Each success is a celebration.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

There have been so many pivots in my 10 years of business. The biggest key has been to remain open and curious so that you can keep growing and evolving as the world changes, because it will keep doing that!

When I started in this industry, most people were building their business through in home events. While I enjoyed meeting so many people, there were real limitations to that method. It was time-consuming, not attractive to many clients, and it required that we ask someone to do us a favor in order to run our businesses. I decided to take my team in another direction. We didn’t know much about using social media for business purposes yet, and many people weren’t yet familiar with how influencers were making an income, but we did already know that social media was allowing us to be sharing with thousands of people we may never meet or see in person. That was a gamechanger for my team. The ability to leverage quick informational webinars and to showcase how our products and programs can fuel a healthy lifestyle for those who were looking for what we offer absolutely exploded our sales. It also made the business side much more accessible for many more people who were interested in adding an income to their lives, but not in old style network marketing.

There is another shift happening even now, as people want to move off social media and onto other platforms. Courses and email funnels are more important than they have ever been. Clients are looking for as much information and education as you can offer them before they decide to work with you, and if you are willing to create that, you will be rewarded. No more gatekeeping-we are sharing all our best NOW.

The pivots will keep coming. What is most essential as a business owner is to keep learning and shifting as needed to stay relevant.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

As a leader, I quickly had to learn that my goals are not everyone’s goals. I thought everyone coming into the business would want to earn career-level income, get the Mercedes Award, be the best, and that they would want to work their guts out to get there.

Very early on I discovered that wasn’t the case. Many people start a business in this industry with a goal of earning more like $500/month, not hitting the top of the company. They have no desire to grow beyond that, even if I see a vision for them that is more. I needed to start mentoring people to their own goals and desires, not just to keep growing because they can. The amount of work required to hit their own goals feels right to them-more than that feels useless and like hustle culture. It has completely changed how I run our team.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://shannonsaysso.ck.page/aa29b9f2f6
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shannon_says_so/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sodellwenzel
• Other: Free self-paced nutrition masterclass at website