 Hi everybody. I'm Ginny Schuster with Ginny Panore and the name of my series is Who Do You Know? And today I have Simba on. I am so excited to have her on. We met through LinkedIn and have had a great chat. When as I learn about her business, she's been in business for 30 years and has a very interesting story on intuition. I was reading and I'm all about intuition, but you can't always make money that way. Which is something that she's learned and she's going to share with us how you take it to the next level. So good morning, Simba. How are you today? Good morning, Ginny. I'm doing great. And thank you so much for inviting me on the show. It's a delight to be here. Oh, it is so fun. So give us some of your background. I love to hear people's story on how they got into business. Wow. So I started my career as a journalist. I worked for newspapers and magazines and then quickly realized that I was not that deadline driven. You know, when I worked at a daily paper in Indianapolis, we had seven deadlines every day and that was just a bit too much for me. And quickly got myself into marketing and working for agencies and really loved hearing the story of the business and hearing the story of the customer. And then translating the business story into something that the customer could understand and want and need and connecting them together. So I started in high tech. I lived in California. I was there for the whole dot com thing, which was so much fun. Oh my gosh. You know, I started working with big companies that people recognize like Hewlett-Packard and IBM and Apple. But then as people left those companies and started their own little startups, often they would take me with them. And so I got to work with lots of little startups here, these people's dreams. And that was the thing that really attracted me the most was, you know, people sitting around the kitchen table late at night. Lots of coffee saying, how are we going to make this happen? How are we going to turn this idea? I've got a gut instinct that this is going to work or I've got an intuitive thought that this is going to work. How are we going to make this work? And I loved interviewing them and then capturing their ideas and turning it into sales material and presentations and business strategies and all that stuff. It was really, really fun. And then I got sick. And yeah, I was just working too many hours having just a little too much fun and developed endometriosis, which is very difficult reproductive disorder for women. And so I had some treatments and I thought, well, I'll be back in a couple of weeks. Oh, I'll be back in a couple of months. Oh, I'm not coming back and had to take some time off to heal myself and to recover. And in that process, that's when I went back to my first love, which is music. And I learned to play healing harp. And so I played for myself initially and then I started playing for other people and because I'm just a compulsive business builder, I started a studio and I started teaching other people how to do this as well. And when COVID hit, my studio took a hit as well because a lot of teaching is done in person and we couldn't meet in person anymore. And so I thought, well, it's time to bring out the business side of me again. It's time to help all these other businesses who are suffering through COVID the same way I am. Trying to refresh their image, rebrand themselves, figure out how to get themselves online, how to reach audiences that they've never reached before. And so I started, I kind of combined my musical background with conducting the music with my ability to help people understand what they're doing and how they're doing it and turn it into profits. And so that's how I created, you know, conducting your purpose into pitch-perfect profits. I love it. I don't know any people who play the harp. Yeah, I usually, when I introduce myself, I say, hi, I play the harp and then I stop because no one has ever met a harpist before that I know of unless they're a harpist themselves. So yeah, but the harp has particular healing qualities to it. And if your viewers and listeners want to hear some of my music, I have a podcast that's available. Lots of places where podcasts are called relaxing harp music. So if you're needing some relaxing harp music to get to sleep or to concentrate on your work, you can find me there and find the music that I record and put out to the world just as a gift to the world. Oh, it sounds lovely. How did you get into it? You know, since there aren't that many harpists around, I'm just curious, did someone introduce it to you when you were a kid or the idea or you heard a harpist and said, oh, that sounds great. Well, I grew up in a musical family. My grandmother was the church organist and pianist. My parents were singers and they took us regularly to music. I grew up in Colorado and one day they took us to hear the symphony and the harpist had a solo and she was out in front on the stage and we were sitting really close. I was about six years old, so close we could hear her dress and she played something that was so transformative for me. I could like I could feel it on my skin. It was like I could taste the music. It was so powerful. And I looked at my parents and I said, that's what I want to do. And they said, okay. And they took me to meet her, the principal harpist of the Denver Symphony Orchestra at her house and she let me touch her harps. Oh, it was so fantastic and wonderful. But then she said, as so many music teachers said back in the day, you have to learn piano first. Oh. Yeah, that's what I said. No, I'm six. I'm busy. I got stopped I do. I want to do this as opposed to this. Right. Had they told me that there is a harp inside every piano, all those strings inside the piano is literally called the harp of the piano. I probably would have stuck with it. But I did play for a little bit, but I didn't stick with it. And I left music for 27 years. And then when I got sick, I was working with an energy worker or a raking master. And she said, and this is what I this is my message I want to give your listeners today is to go back to your childhood and find the thing that gave you joy and do that. And for me, that was I didn't know what that was at first. I thought, what is that? So I walked around in my life like Dr. Seuss, like, are you my purpose? Are you my purpose? Are you my purpose? And then I had a moment. This is now about 15 years ago where I opened a Christmas catalog. There was a picture of a harp and I had this moment where I remembered this whole story I just told you about being six. And I'm like, I'm a grown up. I learned piano and there's no one to stop me now. So I ordered a harp on Amazon, which I don't recommend, but I did. I will steer your listeners to different harps and different paths, but there wasn't anybody to tell me what to do. So I just did it. And I started playing and within maybe three or four months I realized I really didn't know what I was doing and I needed a teacher. And there wasn't anybody who lived near me and I was living in Hawaii at the time. And so I Googled around. Googling wasn't even a verb back then, right? It was 15 years ago. I searched on Alta Vista. And I talked to probably a dozen teachers before I found one who was courageous enough to give me lessons online. And so for three years on Skype, because Zoom hadn't been invented yet, I showed up for my lesson and I practiced like I was 30 years behind. And because she was the only one who said yes, I learned what she taught and what she taught was healing harp. And so that's how I learned to, it was sort of like divine intervention. Like all of this came together that I didn't really know I needed that until I got into it. And then I was like, oh, I am definitely in the right place. And blessings to all those other teachers. I'm glad they said no. Because the one who said yes was the one that I needed. And that's how I learned to play. That's so true. You talk about intuitive. When you're on the right track, it seems as though more and more doors open for you. That's right. And Joseph Campbell would say, when you're on the right track, doors will open for you that will open for no one else. And so you have to be on the lookout for that. Yeah. It's not just any old ordinary door. It's your door. And then you have to have a very specific step for that. And it may have been there before, but you didn't notice it before. Right. You don't see it. Or in my case sometimes I'm pushing on the door that says pull. Oh, you meant pull. It spelled out P-U-L-L. Arrow pointing to a pole. Even with bright, shiny lights, sometimes I still miss it. Well, I love what you put about intuitive. I can definitely associate with that. So let's carry on to some of the things that you have put here. I was reading on LinkedIn, you talk about intuitive ideas. And from there, how do you work with your clients to build the business that they don't realize that they need to set up in a certain way? And what is that certain way? Yeah. Thanks for asking that. So it's really four steps that I teach people. I try to keep it really simple so that they can just follow along on the steps and do one step and then the next and then the next and the next. And the first step is to develop what I call a conductor's mindset. You want to be the conductor of your own business. You want to be the conductor of everything that's going on. You become the leader of your business. And so you have to get yourself into a leadership mindset. And that means being self-reliant so that you're trusting your own gut that you're going the right way. It means that you have to be selfless. You have to be willing to give to the people that you love. And you need to be really, really clear that your idea is yours and that it's coming from within you. It's not something that somebody told you you should do, but that it's something that you're really developing from within you. And I'm just going to pull my notes over here so that I make sure that I cover the steps in the right order. And then the next thing that I find most people who run from their gut tend to skip this step, but you need to really understand time management and organization. Because intuition definitely will tell you, okay, do this now. Now do this. Now do this. But in business, business runs on systems. And so you need to understand how to automate that gut feeling so that it shows up when you need it, not just like, whew, what should I do today? But that you have your schedule set out, that you have little mini goals that you're meeting every day that are helping you move the business forward. And so I teach the tools and I work with each person individually because everybody's got a different sense of how time works for them. And so maybe they need a calendar, or maybe they need a to-do list, or maybe they need to set timers on their phone, or maybe they need to work with Alexa if they've got an Alexa in their house. There are different ways of doing it, but you need to have that because the intuition, it shows up infrequently and business runs on a clock. So we need to need to understand that business runs on a clock. Yeah. Then the third thing I work with them after we kind of really have set the mindset and set the tools in place for time management and organization is to actually build the roadmap. How are we going to get what are your goals? How are we going to get from here to there? So we're here. We're at the kitchen table. We've got the coffee. We're really excited. This is super cool. Wow. I can just see this being so successful. How are we going to get from here to there? Like you want to drive from here to California? Are you just going to get in your car like bushwhack across? No. There are roads that are already right. You could, but you're going to tear up your car. You're not going to make it. It's going to be a really uncomfortable trip and possibly very expensive and you might make stops along the way that you didn't intend. And so we're going to build a roadmap that fits you, that fits your style. It fits your intuition. If you're a blue roads driver, you like to take the back roads and you don't mind it taking a little bit longer and it's more beautiful, great. We're going to set up your roadmap that's going to look like that. If you're more like me, I'm a foot on the gas girl. I want the interstate because I want to get to there now. Yeah, exactly. I'm going to help someone build a roadmap that's got that kind of quality to it. And then there are checkpoints along the way and the road map. So, you know, be sure and stop here, be sure and stop here, check this, check this along the way. And then when you get to that, the next goal then we'll stop and we'll check and we'll rebuild the roadmap. I made it to San Francisco. Now I want to go to LA. So don't keep driving west. It's going to be awfully wet. Unless you've got Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for a car. You're going to redevelop the plan and say, okay, how has it changed? How have your perfect customers changed? And they will. Who you're serving changes as your business changes. And maybe just slight adjustments. But you know, we've heard this metaphor and it's totally true. You can turn just a little bit, but as you keep traveling off this way, you're going to get further and further out. But that first tiny little turn can look so tiny. It's almost like, why bother? But bother. Do bother because it's going to take you as you travel further down the road, it's going to take you further, further in a different direction. And I'm going to help make sure that's the direction you really want to go in. So that's the third step is building that roadmap. And then the fourth step is so important in business in general, is to make your existing customers happy. Because I know you know, Jenny, that it's 90% of your expenses bringing in a new customer and 10% to keep a customer happy. So I call that the encore. Encore, encore. How do you keep doing on course and keeping those customers loving your music and coming back to your show? And so we talk about serving those customers first, not last. You know, just because they're there doesn't mean that they're not as important. In fact, they're more important and really taking care of them. Right. Loving them up and giving them special stuff. And this is something that's sort of, this is like a little tiny pet peeve of mine. But a lot of websites, after you've signed up with them, it's a subscription service that you belong to, say the login button is so tiny up in the upper left, you know, up here, hunting all over, trying to log in. You're like, I am your customer. Make it easy for me. It should be a big giant button that says, welcome back. I'm so glad login here. You're so right. I just went to a website and come to find out the login place for the customers was down at the bottom. And I saw the login place up here. And so my email address didn't work. The password didn't work. Oh, well, oh, maybe you're a distributor and you should go to the bottom. I don't think that's a wise idea. Yeah, who's going to see that? And so all the way down. Yeah. So I, I, yeah. So I really, if you have a website, love your customers who are already there, make it super easy for them to come back and, and to buy more from you and interact with you more and be, and feel comfortable recommending you because it's so easy to work with you. And I, the last thing I would say in that category, and this comes from a woman that I worked with out in California. She said, be a pleasure to work with. Oh, how nice. So simple. Yeah. Pleasure to work with. Oh, I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Excellent advice. So Simba, give us an idea of the clientele that you have. Are they, is there an age group or is there a certain type of person that you enjoy working with? I work a lot with women that have businesses where they are usually managing other people and managing, you know, managing large customers themselves. So it could be a consulting business, a lot of actually quite a few consulting businesses that I work with, but I also work with high tech people. You know, if you've got a high tech product, I love working with engineers. And just recently I started working with a landscape business out in California. They do organic landscaping and they want to teach people how to turn their backyards into edible gardens. And I mean, talk about it, right? Isn't that a great idea? Like, if you're going to spend all that money on your plants, why not eat them? So this is a young man that I've known for a number of years and he really fits my model really well. He's got this brilliant, intuitive idea. It makes so much sense to eat the things you're growing. But he suffers from disorganization because he's a plant guy. He's much more interested in work playing with. This is true for everybody. They much rather play with their products and their services than deal with the business into things. And he had really outdated scheduling apps, bookkeeping apps, organizational apps. He didn't even know that some of the newer stuff existed. And so when he came to me and he said, God, it's just so hard to schedule my guys. I said, there are apps out there that just directly connect to their phone. You can schedule them. They can clock their time. You can send them to the next job. You don't have to be on the phone with them all the time. He's like, wow, I didn't even know. Because he literally had his head in the weeds in the plants. In the food. In the food. And then he has this, a much bigger idea that is a big technology piece of it. So he's got to get the, this is the reality check when I sit down and I say, okay, you have this really super cool idea. But first we have to do the practical stuff. So let's get the gardening business. Let's get you some high-end clients coming in who can help pay for the research and development of this thing that you really is driving you, that you really love. And once we get those two pieces working hand in hand, then your business is a self-sustaining business. You can continue to hire people and you can continue to develop these new products at the same time. But it really starts with, he had already the right mindset, but this was an organizational time management thing for him. So that's where we started. We really just kind of cruise through step one and went and really dug deep into step two. And then the other steps for him were much easier. Well, when you do that, say you know nothing about that type of business. So do you have to do a bunch of research before you can work with the clients? I do do a bunch of research. I do a bunch of interviewing. And then when I get out of my depth, I bring in other experts to work with me and to work with them. So in this case, I have a friend who's, I'm at in a networking group of Polkadot Powerhouse, who is a bookkeeper who works with landscaping businesses and construction businesses. And so I spent a couple hours talking with her and then just brought her on to help me help this guy. So I don't do all of this myself. I'm the conductor of my own business. And so I have different sections, different parts, different people that play different parts in my own business orchestra, if you will. Like as the conductor, I can't play the clarinets and the bassoons and the basses and the French horns. So my job is to conduct all of them into something that is harmonious and melodious. And everybody enjoys, it's a win-win for everybody. I love it. It's, you know, that comes back to who do you know? It's about the connections and relationships that you're building over time. More doors that open for you. That's right, Jenny. Yep, you said it. Another question is if someone calls you up, you have a counseling with them. What are kind of the steps that go through and the time span that someone can kind of depend on when they first make their call to you? So if I'm understanding your question, so when someone calls me and sets up an appointment, we'll talk for 30 minutes to an hour. I don't try to put a real hard stop on it because a lot of times we kind of get to the conversation and they say, oh yeah, I forgot to tell you the most important thing. Yeah. And so I try to give room for that. And so I'll ask them. We'll start at the beginning. What is your intuition telling you right now? So one of my clients is a very successful digital marketer, but her intuition is telling her, maybe I need to retire. I'm of the age. Do I need to retire? So we explore that for a little bit. Is your intuition telling you that or is that a voice coming from outside? Is that society telling you you need to retire? And as we talked, I said, what do you love about your business? What do you hate about your business? Who are your favorite customers? Who are the ones you really kind of give away to somebody else and not so much? And as I talked with this new client, it turned out she didn't actually want to retire. Oh, really? Wow. But society was saying, you're of the age. Other friends were retiring. They moved to a quieter community outside of California where there were a lot of, and she was starting to feel the pressure from outside of like, well, maybe I should be retiring. And I'm like, that's not what your intuition is saying though, is it? Yeah. You're a foot on the gas girl too. Right? Right. And so as we continued talking, she did sign on with me and as we continued working, we started looking for examples of people who were continuing to work. Like, let's talk about Betty White for a second. Okay. You know, she's, you know, never stopped working. No, you're right. Yeah. She never. Great example. Yeah. Clint Eastwood, it's 91 years old. It's starting a new movie. Yeah. Why not? If that's your personality, if that's your intuition, your intuition is saying, keep going then, keep going. Keep doing it. Right. But we did go through the other steps to adjust her business so that it suited where she is in her life now, that she's maybe, instead of going 120, now she's maybe slowing down to 75. Okay. But still going pretty fast. Watch out. She's got stuff to do. But her husband is retiring. And so this was a factor too. A more pressure. Yeah. Or, you know, certainly more information into the decision-making process. And we don't talk about this as much, I think, as we should. I do talk a lot with women about this, like how is your family part of the factor in what you're doing? Because as women, we have all these other roles we play. Men do too. But it's a lot of it's on women to do the cooking and take care of the kids and get them to school and get them to the doctor and all of that stuff. And even when you're older, she still cooks dinner for them and enjoys it. Of course, she's married to the guy she likes him. So she wants to spend time with him. And so is taking on how could you, and what the conversation we're having is, how can you expand your business and still maintain your balance? Yeah. And still maintain a happy marriage, spend time with. So that means, okay, bringing on some more people perhaps to take off some of the workload for her. And so we'll explore these. So again, it's being the leader in your own life, being the leader in your business and saying what as a leader, who do I need to bring in to lead that section so that I don't have to do that and be working 60 hours a week, even though I can. And I do it really well. Right, right. And I love doing it. Boss lady. I do it all. Right? That's part of the time management and the growth that can happen for entrepreneurs who are really, who enjoy being busy, but also need to recognize the balance in their, in their relationships and also for themselves that they're not burning the candle at both ends and then finding themselves sick as I did when I was younger. That really isn't necessary in order to run a successful business. Oh, that's so true. Simber, I really appreciate all of this great information. I think the hard part for an awful lot of people is they discount the value that they bring to life. Meaning that someone such as yourself, an outsider who can give so much value to them and get them to look and see things that they don't see, that it's worth finding someone like you. And so I just want to put out there. I hope that people will comment. They'll like, they'll subscribe to who do you know because Simber, this is super information. And how can people get ahold of you? Oh, people can. The easiest way to reach me is through LinkedIn, Simber or Lily Quinn. And yeah, that's the easiest place to find me. I'm there and or if you're interested in my heart music or you can't find me on LinkedIn, you can just go to my heart page and find me that way. That's Simber.com and download some free relaxing music. That you can use while you're developing your business plan or your time management plans or whatever, but that's the easiest way to reach me. And I would be delighted to talk with anyone out there who is thinking, I've got this idea. I'm not sure how to get there or I've got this idea. And when I sit down and think about how to do it, all of a sudden I feel overwhelmed. The list gets really long. I don't know how to prioritize or I'm afraid I'm going to lose contact with my family because I'm working a bazillion hours. All those fears, they can be managed and dealt with so that you can have the successful business while you have the balance and all of that richness of your life. I also wanted to comment on what you said that we don't value ourselves sometimes. And I think one of my friends from way back said my arms are too short to box with God. And so I took that just a little different direction and I said my arms are too short to hold up my own full-length mirror. Ooh, wow. You can hold up a little mirror and you can see yourself a little bit but someone like me, I'll take the mirror and I'm going to hold it and I'm going to move around a little bit and I say can you see yourself now? Can you see yourself now? Okay, up here, can you see yourself now? Can you see how fabulous you are? How much richness you already bring and we just need to organize it into the business-y things which means time management, structure, daily goals, all of those things. And if you literally get up, dress up, show up and do these little incremental things every day, you have no choice but to be successful. Oh, you're so right. And get over that fear. And the way you get over that fear is by reaching out to someone like Simba. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I'm totally about helping you through that. Over it, around it, under it, dig it, throw it out. However we're going to get out your magic tennis racket. That's right. You can do anything you set your mind to do. That's right. That's right. I just something went by on Facebook the other day. It says if a potato can become vodka, you can become anything too. Oh, wow. Oh, I love that one. That is so cool. Well, thank you, Simba. So much. I really enjoyed it. And I'm sure our listeners will enjoy it too. Hearing all this great information about getting into your own business. If you're a little bit lost and you need a little path, contact Simba. And if you don't want to contact her, contact me. And I'll turn you over to her. You're so sweet, Jenny. Thank you for those kind words. I really appreciate it. That's cool. So fun. Thank you for today. Thank you.