Ep218 Shannon Simmons - Master Your Money Mindset: Profit & Leadership

Shannon Simmons 0:00

The only way that we can change something is to gain awareness around it and shine that light on it and bring it into our awareness more. If you have found yourself avoiding money, chances are there's something there that we really need to look at.

Mike O'Neill 0:18

Welcome to get unstuck and on target. The weekly podcast that offers senior leaders insights and strategies to not only lead with competence and vision, but also to achieve groundbreaking results. I'm your host, Mike O'Neil. I coach top level executives on the power of ethical leadership to forge teams to be as united as they are effective in each episode, join me for insightful conversations with leaders just like you providing practical advice to help you get unstuck and propel you and your company forward. Let's get started.

Mike O'Neill 1:00

Most leaders focus on strategy and vision, but true leadership clarity shows up in how we make decisions about money. As an executive coach, I've seen how our mindset around money can quietly shape everything from team morale to long term growth. Today's guest, Shannon Simmons is a financial coach and a certified profit first professional who helps business owners face their finances head on and turn money into a tool for freedom, not fear. We explore the emotional weight that leaders often carry, be it guilt, shame, scarcity, and how those beliefs can quietly limit your leadership and stall your growth. Shannon shares practical tools and powerful mindset shifts that help owners take control, build consistent profits and finally, pay themselves without burnout. If you've ever avoided a bank statement felt guilty about being profitable or stressed about payroll, this conversation is for you. Let's get into it. My guest today is Shannon Simmons, a certified profit first professional and financial coach for business owners who want more than just balance sheets. They want freedom. With over a decade of experience and a Master of Accountancy, Shannon reached deep expertise in helping entrepreneurs take control of their cash flow, maximize profits and build businesses that support their ideal lifestyles. She's also a certified QuickBooks Pro advisor, and has worked with countless of small businesses, helping them navigate the often overwhelming world of money management. Welcome Shannon.

Shannon Simmons 2:44

Hi, Mike. I'm super excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Mike O'Neill 2:48

You know we were talking as to what you might spend some time sharing your expertise on, and we kind of settled on the topic of our relationships with money. And I just thought this would be a great topic, because this could very well apply in both a business and personal setting. And so you know that the folks who are listening in are leaders, but we talk a lot about on this podcast, about clarity and leadership, but for many leaders, it seems to me that money is oftentimes the least clear and the most avoided topic. Jana, this is what you do when you work with business owners. What do you notice about people and their relationships with with money, and why does that relationship matter so much for leaders?

Shannon Simmons 3:43

Yeah, Mike, you're so right. People tend to avoid it at all costs. And you know, as with most things in life, when we avoid things, they really don't get better, right? They just tend to go in the same way they were going. And we hope that they will, but they don't get better on their own. And so I think that's just really why it's so important to understand, like, anytime we shine light on something that we've been avoiding, that we're not excited about, like, we tend to find things that we're not happy about, and they aren't going the way that they need to. But really the only way that we can change something is to gain awareness around it and shine that light on it and bring it into our awareness more. And so if you have found yourself avoiding money, chances are there's something there that we really need to look at. And yeah, I've been doing this for 16 years now, and we've seen lots of different stories and lots of different scenarios in that time. But a lot of times we avoid money because something in our relationship in our past isn't what we wanted it to be with money, and there's some emotion attached around it. You know? Guilt, shame, embarrassment, those are the common, big ones. But fear, there's lots of them. And you know, again, if we don't shine a light and start to see where that came from and how we can shift it, we just keep going down that same path, and money never gets better. So money is just one of those things. It's I like to say, death, sex and money are the three things we don't like to talk about in the world, and I definitely have a mission of changing that so that we can just talk about money and really make it a positive thing that is feeding us and nourishing us rather than scaring us and holding us back.

Mike O'Neill 5:36

Now, Shannon, you just mentioned some of the things that you see over and over again, that actually feeds very nicely to the kind of next question I was going to ask, and that is, there's a lot of stereotyping about how these things kind of get established. Does it go back to the childhood does this attitude go back to early career, past mistakes? But you mentioned by name, guilt, shame and embarrassment. Those are three words. I'm not sure I would immediately thought of what is about that that you just see over and over again, particularly when it comes to leaders and making money. And what is it about how those three things factor into your work with clients? Yeah,

Shannon Simmons 6:21

um, it does, you know, like, like you said, Mike, it does. Who knows where it comes from. It can come from a lot of things. It can come from the piling yawn of all of those things, right? Something happens when we're really young, and then it just keeps, we keep avoiding it, and so keep things keep coming up and adding on to it. But People tell me all the time, well, I've made bad decisions in the past, and that's just to me, that's like they feel guilty for some decision that they have made in the past, right? Whatever it is, whether it's about how they've spent money with their business, that they can't do something with their kids, or because they did something with their kids, they can't do something in their business, there's guilt associated with that, and that's just holding them back from the next best decision, right? And moving past that. And yes, I did it. Now, what am I going to do for the next decision? And shame is really just kind of the same. It's another level to me, of guilt, right? I now I've made so many bad decisions that I feel like I'm a bad person, and I'm bad with money. We hear that one all the time. Well, I'm just bad with money. Well, are you or have you not been taught how to deal with money, like as business owners, as leaders, there's no money management course, even for accountants. Hello, I'm an accountant, right? I have never been taught how to manage my own cash as a business owner, I've had to learn that on my own through books and whatever. So accountants aren't taught. I tell people all the time, we can analyze the hell out of anybody else's business, but we can't necessarily run our own money in our own business, and so there's nothing like it doesn't make you a bad person, but we live with that shame because we don't, we can't open our minds to the fact that there's other situations, other possibilities out there, ways that we can again shift, that we're not a bad person. We just don't know what we don't know. You learn it. So that just holds people back in those stories that we have, and doesn't help us with the next decision that we have to make around money.

Mike O'Neill 8:20

Jenny, you know, some folks are listening to our conversation. Some are actually watching it. For those watching over your shoulder, is kind of a collage. Let me describe it. You don't mind it looks as if it's members of the family, and it's a nice assortment. But in for us, looking in the lower right hand corner of this collage is it looks like it's the book profit first. And it just strikes me as I love the almost, the the how do you say it juxtaposition of profit first and family and people. People might think that those are incongruent. When you started with guilt, that was kind of one of the questions I was going to ask. And as that is, business owners, business leaders, you're striving for profitability. But when it works, how can you how can you have profit? And if by chance, you experience guilt from that. How do you work with your folks who might be dealing with that?

Shannon Simmons 9:25

Yeah, for sure, there's definitely a lot of thoughts around money's bad, right? Money is evil. And we hear that like, I equate that to a lot of times we hear that with massive companies, right? Like fortune, 500 companies. Fortune, 50 companies where CEOs are taking home maybe unreasonable salaries. I have yet to meet a small business owner who's taking home an unreasonable salary, right? And so we go into business like we go into business for many, many different reasons, but part of. That is to make a living for ourselves. We still have a family, two kids that we have to support, and we have goals and dreams. And so it takes profitability in order to make those things happen, but also, and maybe even more importantly, in order to serve your clients, your members, your students, whoever you're serving in your business, in order to serve them well, and for as long as you want to serve them, you also have to be profitable. Because when you're not profitable and you have that guilt or shame or whatever it is, fear, scarcity, all the things on your mind are you giving your clients, your best self every single day. And so that's really where we start to say, like, it does matter to it matters to your team. If you have a team of people, like, what's it like when you go into a meeting and you know you're you've just been looking at your financial reports, and they're not what they you want them to be, and then you go into a meeting and try to be the best leader that you can be. You're coming in with this shadow over you, and so we just we work with our clients in a lot of different ways to shift that perspective so that it can be a more positive, healthy, strong relationship with money, even if the profitability isn't exactly where you want it to be. How can you see the next steps going forward so that you can be the best leader to get you where you need to be, to get your family the things that they want, that you want to be able to do for them, for yourself now and in the future.

Mike O'Neill 11:34

I love how you express that. Shannon, you know that sometime back I spent time in corporate HR. I went to work for small, family owned businesses that kept growing, and as they grew, two of them became publicly held companies where they have to release their financials. So what was a kind of a closely guarded bit of information is for the world to read about, and we kind of struggle with that. And that is, when the company is profitable, the question is, well, is the company profitable at the employees expense? And the thought really is, if the company is not profitable, it cannot reinvest in itself. It cannot reinvest its employees. Pay them competitive pay, offer benefits that meet the needs of the family, et cetera. And I found myself way back trying to kind of downplay profit being a bad word, that profitability means that we can do more for do you work primarily with small business owners? Is that correct?

Shannon Simmons 12:47

Yeah, primarily, that's that's right

Mike O'Neill 12:49

for those who have not read the book, profit first. How do you if someone says, Well, what is that book and you have, you try to summarize it. What are the key things that you hope people would hear to say, You know what? Maybe I should go get that book. Maybe I should learn a little more from Shannon what all that means. Yeah,

Shannon Simmons 13:09

for sure. So the easiest way that I describe it is, most of us have heard of the envelope system. I grew up with the envelope system. I think Dave Ramsey has popularized the envelope system, but my grandma was using it. So I know it was around before Dave Ramsey created it, but we've all heard of that. So what Mike Michalowicz, the author of profit, first did is, I say he modernized it and he applied it to business, the envelope system. So instead of having multiple envelopes that we carry around in our wallet or purse. We have bank accounts now that we do that with because as businesses, we don't pay cash most of the time. We do it all electronically. So we have bank accounts where we can do that. And then, like I said, the envelope system, the only way I knew of it was for personal finances, you know, for your groceries and your gas and your car and things like that. And so now the Profit First Book has brought that into business, where you have five different bank accounts for your business, because most businesses are operating off of one bank account. And I think the key principle of Profit First is it's called Parkinson's Law, and it says that the more of a resource we have, the more of that resource we will spend. So the more money you have, the more you will spend. If this month you have $10,000 in revenue, you will run your business off of $10,000 in revenue. And last, next month you have 12,000 all of a sudden, if you don't do anything differently, most business owners will spend $12,000 in their business just because they have more to spend. And that's true for time. That's true for money in your business. It's true for in your personal life, everywhere. And so by having these five bank accounts, we take a little bit of that money off the top. And we can't spend all of it in our business, so we have a little bit for profit before we spend anything in operating expenses. We get to pay ourselves as the owners of our business, we get to pay our team, and we get to save for taxes, because when you're profitable, you will pay taxes, and we want to make sure that you're taking care of that. So that's that's the gist of profit first. And like I said, I think the key factor, and the key thing to remember is that if you don't do something different, most of us will spend everything we have, and then we don't have any profit left at the end of the day.

Mike O'Neill 15:35

Yeah, you're describing this. And I'll go back to my days when I was working with organizations that had a C suite, and it seemed to me what was very, very common, those who were earning the most money were doing the worst job in managing that money. They're the ones who are having foreclosures. They're the ones having these, these issues. And so it really just reinforces kind of, you know, what you said, Could we go back to, I love this, applying the envelope system, modernizing it to, you know, owning a business, running a business and the like. But you mentioned that a lot of times business owners fail to even pay themselves and fail to reinvest in the business. What have you found when you begin working with clients and they begin to embrace these ideas, when they begin to see what is it you're talking about and act on that? What does that do for them in terms of their their mental attitude towards money, towards the business. What have you seen any changes that result from that?

Shannon Simmons 16:49

Yeah, so many changes that result from that. So many people. So many people come to us. We do get people who are typically profitable at some level, not the level they want to be, and they aren't paying themselves as as the owner of the business. They're not taking home. They might be paying themselves, but they're not it's not consistent. It will be like, you know, when they have that, you know, I just used an example of a $10,000 month and a $12,000 month, let's say one month, then they get $20,000 well, then they'll pay themselves $5,000 and they have a great month, and they'll pay themselves, but then the next month is they're back to that 10,000 and they're like, Oh, I can't take anything. So they pay themselves, as an owner, extremely inconsistently. And we all know that that's not how our personal bills work, right? They're not inconsistent. They don't come when we have money. They come every single month. And so there's just, there's so much frustration, and just like the peace of mind is so missing, they don't have confidence that they can make good money decisions, good business decisions, and they're just stressed out all the time about money because, like, maybe the business is profitable, maybe the business is taking care of itself, but the family isn't taken care of, and that weighs on business owners a lot. And so I think that's the first change that we see with most of our clients, because we figure out, okay, let's like we might have the $20,000 month and the $10,000 months, but how can we make it so that you're taking $3,000 every month, and you don't have $5,000 one month and zero the next. Like, let's even it out and put you on a salary, kind of like you had a job. And just that stability, that consistency, brings so much peace of mind, because you know what to expect in those areas. And once we have that kind of baseline established, then we can talk about, okay, what's the next goal in your business? You want to hire somebody? How do we do that? You know, whatever the growth pattern is that they want, we can figure out how to do it. But without that stability in their personal life, they're just constantly, like all over the place, trying to figure out how to take care of home and and they can't. So that's the first thing we do. That's the first that's the first win we see for most of our clients. Well, let's continue that

Mike O'Neill 19:05

kind of line of conversation. That first win. If that's the case, where do you find you most often go to next?

Shannon Simmons 19:17

Yeah. So a lot of people also come to us with a lot of debt. So they might currently be be profitable, but they haven't been profitable in the past, and so they have a lot of debt. And so that's the second place that we tend to focus a lot is, and that's another one, right? Like, we didn't talk about that earlier, when we were talking about emotions, but there's a lot of emotions wrapped up in debt, and a lot of thoughts around debt is bad and you shouldn't have debt, and should, just as an indicator to me, of some other emotion going on, right? But so we work to like, how can we get you profitable so that we can get you out of that debt? Because the reality is, when you're already in debt, it is hard to grow, because usually takes either. More debt or more kind, more some more investment in some way, shape or form, in order to grow. And if you're already struggling to pay debt, then it's hard to invest in the next thing too. So a lot of times we do work on debt next and lots of fun success stories, I mean, people paying off six figures in debt in 18 months, just by taking a little bit of profit off the top and not being allowed to be enticed by every shiny object that gets dropped into their inbox. Because those are numerous, right?

Mike O'Neill 20:35

You know that combination of money management to focus on improve profitability, and what to do with that profit, to, in this case, to reduce debt. It would seem to me all too often that debt may feel overwhelming. 100%

Shannon Simmons 20:56

Yeah, yeah, it does. It just it leaves people feeling like, I'll never be out of it, right? They they just don't see there's no light at the end of the tunnel. There's no way out. And so, yeah, we put together a plan. One of the things we do once we get to that point is, like, how long is it going to take if we continue at this level of business, or at the level you even think you want to achieve, achieve? How much can we put towards debt so that we can pay that off? And then it gives people like, oh, it can be done in six months, or even if it's five years, right, like they know when that is. And we can kind of put the measuring stick out and know where we are on that plan, and give, give some, erase, some of that overwhelm for them.

Mike O'Neill 21:40

You know, as I'm listening to you, what kind of strikes me is that it may be a long road to get out of debt, but consistent work towards it over time. Seems to me so much that we've discussed here can almost be that the habits, the patterns that we do when people begin to see that debt shrink, does that fuel them to even, perhaps even accelerate that? Oh,

Shannon Simmons 22:16

yeah for sure. And the way we do it, it does it just naturally, does x get faster and faster the way, the longer you get you go with it. But yeah, people do start to get excited about it. And so I will say too, one of the things we do with debt payment is we make sure that we are celebrating your success as you make progress. And so we don't ever put 100% of the profit towards debt. We always put, like we put 45% typically towards debt. 5% is fun money for the owner, and then once you get to the debt payoff, you get 50% of that as fun money. So there's a huge incentive there to get debt paid off, right? Because you can tell how much you're paying towards debt, and know that you're going to get that as fun money. But because it's 45% your business is growing all the time, and it's a percentage, we are always putting more and more towards debt, but not stopping to celebrate as we go. I

Mike O'Neill 23:19

love this. I was not aware that was one of the kind of the principles, and that is that 5% it seems as if, in the business world, it's all work, no play. And business owners, particular might be the last to celebrate anything. And what I heard you describe is you don't wait till it's paid off. You basically celebrate those wins as they occur. And you see just what that can actually do this is, I love this. Yeah,

Shannon Simmons 23:57

yeah. It's so important to celebrate those small wins. I'm such a huge fan of those little celebrations. And you know, sometimes it's as small as my first profit distribution was taking my kids. This was 15 years ago, so they were four and five years old, taking them for ice cream, you know what I mean? And like letting that be from the business, and it was a business celebration, rather than most mom and dad buying ice cream, right? And now, I mean, 15 years later, we're taking vacations and buying cars and things like that. So it's grown a lot, but it's fun to look back and see where we were. That's a celebration in and of itself. And yeah, just stopping to celebrate every single quarter is super important.

Mike O'Neill 24:39

I know we just talked about wins, but sometimes, as our listeners know, we get stuck. And in keeping with the theme of the podcast, can you share a story that might come to mind of someone who is stuck, maybe because of their relationship with money and what helped them turn that corner?

Shannon Simmons 24:57

Yeah, for sure. I. I would say, a lot of times business owners and their relationship with money becomes really evident to me when we start to talk about payroll and teams and the way that they approach payroll, right? And so I would say one of my most recent stories with a client who I would say was pretty stuck, really dreaded payroll, and was, was maybe struggling even to make payroll happen financially every single month, had a decent size payroll, and struggled to do it. And just, really, just dreaded the task, because it was, it was part of that overwhelm. I mean, there's so many things that get wrapped up in that, right? And I one of the things we do with our clients is we talk about values and how your money can support your values, and how important that is. And when we started to look at his values, he had a value of generosity, and he felt like his. He thought he had a value of generosity, let's put it that way, and he thought his payroll was kind of supporting that value. And when we started talking about it, I was like, that, it's not really resonating for me. I'm kind of wanting to dig into that. So we dug into it a lot. And finally, when he came back to it, he was like, No, it's really about gratitude. If I could approach payroll from an attitude of gratitude rather than generosity, which is not a huge shift, there's not a huge difference between generosity and gratitude, but for him, it was huge. He was able to come at that from an attitude of gratitude and being grateful for the people who he was paying and that he was able to pay them, and grateful for the members that they were supporting in his yoga studio, and just all the things, it really just shifted his whole attitude and his relationship with money. Then he felt like money was now supporting his value of gratitude rather than generosity. And so it's just sometimes it's really semantics, but the emotions behind that were huge for him. And so he's actually been able to redo the his payroll structure, and so now it's more supportive for him, and he's really moving forward in a different payroll structure, a different team structure and everything just because of that shift in defining values around money.

Mike O'Neill 27:17

That's a great example in the form of a final takeaway, Shannon, let me ask if there are folks listening today and they're realizing that their money mindset might be holding them back. Can you suggest maybe one small, but powerful step they could take this week to begin shifting that? Yeah,

Shannon Simmons 27:39

one of the first things we do with our clients when it comes to money mindset is to have them keep what I call a money tracker or a money journal. Mike, one of the things that I found we talked about how Profit First needed to be modernized and brought into bank accounts, but that puts us so out of touch with our money we don't hold money in our hands anymore. Money is so automatic. We don't realize when we're getting paid from our clients sometimes, because it just happens in our bank accounts. We don't realize when we're paying bills, because it just happens in our bank accounts. And maybe we pay our credit card bill once a month, and we might look at what's on there, and we might not look what's on there. We're just really out of touch with how often money is actually affecting us. And so I just tell people, keep money journal for a week and really write down all the times you spend or receive money. And you'll be you'll be amazed. And then you can start to take that a little bit further and really thinking about, like, how is that affecting you? But the first thing you have to do is just become aware of how often you're actually interacting with money on a regular basis.

Mike O'Neill 28:49

Fantastic way to kind of leave us with in closing, I want to invite our listeners to reflect on if today's conversation hit home. Here's my challenge. Take 10 minutes this week to reflect on one belief that you've been carrying about money, whether it's fear, guilt or avoidance, then challenge it like we've learned from Shannon in my coaching work, I've seen it again and again, and that is the relationships with money can either fuel your leadership, or it can limit it. So whether you reach out someone like Shannon or just take that first step on your own, what matters is shifting your relationship from fear to freedom. Shannon, thank you again for such a really thoughtful and generous conversation. But before we go, where can people find you or learn more about your work?

Shannon Simmons 29:44

Yeah, so the business name is fit for profit. We're on all the socials the it's fit the number four and then profit. Or our website is fit F, O, R, profit.com, so any of those places would be great to connect. We will include.

Mike O'Neill 29:59

That in the show notes and to everyone who's tuning in, whether you're watching or you're listening, I hope that this episode with Shannon has helped you find ways to get unstuck and on target. Thank you for joining us for this episode of get unstuck and on target, I hope you gain insights to help you lead with confidence and drive your organization forward. Remember, at bench builders, we're committed to your success, your leadership excellence and your strategic growth. If you've enjoyed our conversation today, please leave a review rate and subscribe to keep up with our latest episodes, this show really grows when listeners like you share it with others. Who do you know, who needs to hear what we talked about today? Until next time, I encourage you to stay focused on the target and continue to break new ground on your leadership path. You

Speaker 1 31:08

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