A Personal Note from Orion

What does your dream life look like? Would it involve more travel? More time spent with family, or perhaps time spent finishing writing your book?  Shanda Sumpter lives her dream life – one that involves only working 3 weeks out of the month, spending more time with her family, and coaching entrepreneurs on breaking through financial barriers. In her experience building this dream life, she has overcome many challenges that would stop most people from pursuing their dreams.

Shanda’s secret, however, is perseverance. Never giving up. Following through and committing with every single thing you start, because it is only through that commitment, experiencing the ups and the downs, that you really grow as a person. Building a dream life is not always easy, but when you do get there, it’s absolutely worth it!

 

 

In this Episode

• [02:30] – We hear about the best thing that happened to Shanda this week.
• [02:57] – Shanda introduces herself and explains that she helps people create cash flow–and also how to be generous with that cash flow.
• [04:02] – Humble beginnings and a broken family serve as empowering factors for Shanda, and she gives us some insight into this. We also learn about the value of hard moments in life.
• [06:22] – Joel Osteen’s new book, Think Better, Live Better, can help you get your head in the right space to transform pain into positive change.
• [07:22] – Shanda talks about the difference between intellectually knowing that you should do something versus actually taking your own advice and surrendering into the coaching.
• [08:15] – We learn about the turning point from when Shanda had $500 in an envelope in her closet to when she transformed into the woman she is today. It took the thought of going back to Canada to push her into figuring out a way to change her life (and be able to stay in the U.S.).
• [10:24] – Sometimes an opportunity is present, but we stop short of finding the solution. Shanda gives an example of how showing up and pushing for what you want eventually gets you there.
• [11:22] – Shanda answers Orion’s question of whether showing up and going for what you want is the secret ingredient that makes women successful. She tells us we have to “stop stopping” and gives us an example of a woman who is too hard on herself.
• [12:21] – Shanda tells us what she thinks is the biggest secret to success.
• [13:10] – How do we know whether to keep going or whether to quit (or at least change directions)?
• [13:20] – How can we get over “I’m not good enough”? Shanda reiterates her point again: “Complete what you start.” She then elaborates on how this applies to making money and how that, in turn, means you can make a difference in the world.
• [14:22] – We learn about how important it is to keep your word to yourself by completing what you start. She memorably tells us, “Don’t hit snooze on your life!”
• [15:10] – Does Shanda have any advice about the fact that many people’s self-worth is intimately linked to their income or financial situation?
• [17:19] – Orion asks whether Shanda has any fear of rejection, and Shanda muses over the question. She explains how a fear of rejection has manifested itself in her life.
• [18:09] – She gives advice on how to improve your fear of rejection by giving up the idea of perfection or comparison.
• [19:02] – Shanda offers a new perspective on fears: they’re a sign that you’re stretching outside your comfort zone, so in a way they’re a good thing.
• [19:35] – How does Shanda help people break through their fears about money abundance and achieving goals? (Hint: it’s probably not what you would expect!)
• [21:27] – Shanda gives a compelling example of how endurance running–her answer to the previous question–is a more wide-spread solution among successful people than we may realize. She references the book Living with a SEAL: 31 Days Training with the Toughest Man on the Planet by Jesse Itzler.
• [23:05] – When Orion asks about the fastest way to grow a business, Shanda’s answer is simple: “Build an email list and learn how to sell to it.” Of course, that leads to the question of the best way to build an email list, and Shanda answers in detail.
• [24:24] – Shanda explains a bit about her book Core Calling: How to Build a Business That Gives You a Freedom Lifestyle in 2 Years or Less.
• [25:01] – “Connection is currency,” says Shanda, and this is particularly applicable to email lists. She uses everyday examples from her life to connect with her readers and inspire them to grow.
• [26:12] – Shanda talks about the value of “flextime,” which means she doesn’t work the last week of every month or the month of December. She applies this to the concept of athletes and recovery.
• [29:46] – Flextime has made a huge difference for Shanda, and she explains both the good and the bad of the initial foray into flextime.
• [30:19] – What is Shanda’s success system?
• [30:51] – Where does Shanda draw boundaries in terms of her generosity? She explains that she doesn’t have boundaries.
• [32:18] – How does Shanda’s belief in the Law of Attraction work for her?
• [33:12] – Through the stories of a Porsche and a Facebook team, Shanda explains how you see what you want–and how keeping your eyes on what you want can help you get it.
• [35:40] – Shanda gives another example of how opening someone up to a possibility can lead to positive results, using a story from Wayne Dyer, then relates that to a health situation in her own life.
• [37:08] – Shanda says that “being obsessed with the end result” will lead to positive things happening quite quickly, a concept she illustrates with the story of finding her fiancé and starting a family.
• [38:20] – We hear about the advice and coaching that Shanda got when she was in search of a lasting relationship. By following her coach’s rules, Shanda developed a new understanding of how to approach relationships.
• [39:40] – Shanda creates the success in her company based on three formulas. There are also formulas that make her relationship work. These formulas, and the way you think, have a profound impact on your life.
• [40:29] – Having a baby with someone she’d known for only three months is the craziest thing she’s ever done, Shanda tells us–and it clearly worked well for her!
• [41:13] – Orion asks Shanda her three tips for living a stellar life. The answers include figuring out your finances, taking care of your body, and tithing or giving back.

About Today’s Show

‏‏Hello and welcome to Stellar Life. I’m your host Orion Talmay and today I have Shanda Sumpter. She is the founder of HeartCore Business. She has a bestselling book called Core Calling: How to Build A Business That Gives You A Freedom Lifestyle In Two Years or Less. Shanda is a nationally recognized business coach, author and speaker. Man, she’s a gem. She’s going to give you so many tips and tools. This was an incredible interview. We talked about how to get over the fear of success, get over the fear of not good enough, how to create all those money-making strategies. You can create a freedom lifestyle where you can take amazing amounts of vacation time. I’m sure you want that. Shanda is very, very special. I really encourage you to take notes and listen very well to this episode. Before we go on to the episode, ladies, please join me on my Facebook group www.facebook.com/groups/stellarlife and if you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, review, share it with somebody you love. I will highly appreciate it and also contact me, leave me a comment. You can find my information on www.stellarlifepodcast.com. Come, say hi. I would love to meet you virtually and maybe one day in person. Now, onto the show. Hello Shanda and welcome to Stellar Life. How are you doing today?

‏‏I am doing fantastic. Good to be here with you.

‏‏Alright. What’s the best thing that happened to you this week?

‏‏It was actually this morning. I brought my son who is 20 months old, he’s under two years, and I took him to his first day of Montessori school and then I picked him up and I cried. It was so wonderful.

‏‏That’s amazing.

‏‏Yeah, it was great.

‏‏Let’s start by you sharing a little bit about yourself. Who are you? What do you do? And how do you help the world?

‏‏My name is Shanda Sumpter and I am a business coach. I run a company called HeartCore Business. I really help entrepreneurs or people who want to create a hobby as a business to be able to get it off the ground and really build an email list and learn how to sell to that email list so that they have a really good cash flow. But I think what’s most interesting is once I help people create that monthly cash flow, I actually teach them how to be really generous with it. My motivation isn’t just straight forward as people might think because I have an invested interest in helping them become financially free because I really think the world is a better place when we’re actually more generous with our money.

The world is a better place when we’re actually more generous with our money. Click To Tweet

‏‏That’s the core of abundance. You don’t just hold it, you let it go and so it’s a free flowing energy.

‏‏Yeah, it is. It’s beautiful.

‏‏You had humble beginnings, right?

‏‏Just very humble.

‏‏You weren’t always that successful leader. What was your journey like?

‏‏There’s just so many journeys within it but my journey, I think, most interesting to most people is the fact that I come from humble beginnings but I also come from a broken family. I don’t mean that from a victim standpoint, I actually mean that from an empowering standpoint. My mother and father divorced when I was really in my mother’s tummy. Through that, I didn’t meet my dad until I was in grade six. There was a lot of limiting beliefs that I’ve had to overcome about my worthiness as I’ve grown myself as a business coach. When I finally met my dad in grade six, we became great friends and we’re very close today but in grade 10 and 11, I moved in with him to get a better education at the Waldorf School. And why this is relevant is because I got to see both sides of the tracks. I made a choice at a very young age that I wanted to be on the side of the tracks that had financial freedom. I made that decision. I started going after it by going after high-powered jobs and working myself into the ground. Every time I got there or got to this place of autonomy and financial freedom, I’d realized that it just wasn’t it. It just wasn’t it. Part of that was my mindset and part of that was because I was choosing pass and life that really were authentic to me. I’ve been so broke it hurts. I have been in situations where I have $500 in an envelope hiding in my closet. I’ve also been in the high awareness moments where I realized if I could just have a job that I would be so grateful and that I would work harder than anybody else to climb to the top of the ladder. What I’ve realized is over the years of my life and now coaching well over 2,000 people that hard moments in life are actually a prerequisite for freedom and success. It sounds weird but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I don’t know if I’d make it if it would have been all easy.

‏‏I can see that. In my life too, the most painful things I had to go through were catalyst for big change.

‏‏It is if you’ve got the right head around it. Joel Osteen has a new book called Think Better, Live Better. I was just telling my clients earlier on today I was like, “I don’t care if you’re Christian, you believe in God or whatever your belief system is. None of that matters. How you feel, none of that matters. What matters is that you go read this book and get your head straight because that’s the piece. The problems are never going to end. They’re just never going to end. They’re never going to end so why complain about them because there’s just going to be another one lined up next. What if you just started solving them and then see what your life starts to look like. It’s fascinating that where you don’t want to go or where you don’t feel like going tends to be as you said the catalyst. It truly is. People hear this all the time but if they actually just took the coaching instead of hearing the lesson constantly in their life and they actually just took the coaching, they’d find that life would get a heck of alot more fun.

‏‏What do you mean by taking the coaching?

‏‏A lot of people know this stuff. You know what I mean? They’re like, “I know the hard thing or whatever I resist, I should step into. I know. I know I should do it.” But they don’t actually. There are people out there who are actually teaching this but they’re still not doing it. It’s like you’re going to keep getting the same message until you take action. If you’re stuck at a certain point in your life to live that extraordinarily awesome life, you’re just going to have to surrender into that coaching.

‏‏And take action and face the fears and do them anyway.

‏‏Yeah, that’s a great book.

‏‏What was your turning point of having that envelope with $500 in your bedroom. Where was it? In your closet.

‏‏Yup.

‏‏And into making a lot of money?

‏‏Things got so bad to the point where I thought I was going to have to go back to Canada. I’m Canadian. I was going to school and basically I was looking at the fact that I was going to have to go back to Canada. It’s amazing how resourceful we get when things start to get tough. I always say if things aren’t changing, you haven’t hit your bottom yet. I know it’s hard to believe but if things aren’t changing, you haven’t hit your bottom yet. For me, the thought of going back to Canada was an absolute no way. It was a non-negotiable for me. I wanted to always live in America and be in America. My turning point was figuring out a way to stay here. Although my dad is American and my mom’s Canadian and I was born on Canada, I had to overcome a lot to be able to get a citizenship here.

‏‏Wow.

‏‏Which I did. So basically, the crazy moment was there ended up being an immigration seminar at my school, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. There was an immigration lawyer doing a talk and what’s crazy and this is what I find in life is that opportunity was always there for me. It’s not like this was the first time this guy ever taught there. That opportunity was always there for me. When things started getting so bad that it was like, “I’m going to graduate. I’m going to have to go home.” And the fear got strong enough, I ran right into that attorney and I walked right into that seminar and he was in the middle of talking, I raised my hand and I said, “What if my mom’s Canadian, my dad’s an American, I was born in Canada?” And he said, “You’re already American.” I said, “No, I’m not. INS.” It’s not like I didn’t put any effort. I went to the INS three or four times. They told me I could be 60 before I get my American citizenship. I told him that and he said, “Well, they’re wrong. All you have to do is fill out a passport form. Give some identification of your parent’s marriage, the birth certificates, and mail it in, and you’re American.” Here’s the tipping moment for everybody to just really hear for you to take in is yes, that opportunity was always there but I kept stopping short of the solution. And so, it truly became a tipping point for me because what I realized is that if I just went further than I normally go, that I will hit a solution. Even my son getting into Montessori school, we put him in a year and a half ago which is two months after he was born, I put him on the list to get into the Montessori school. They were telling me, “He didn’t make it in. He didn’t make it in. He didn’t make it in.” I just kept showing up. Until finally, they let me in. Now, they just told me he probably can’t be in his playmates classroom and as we walked out I looked at my nanny and went, “That’s my next project.” You just got to keep going until you get what you want.

‏‏You were talking about showing up and going for what you want. Do you think this is the secret ingredient that makes women successful?

‏‏It’s not stopping. If you can control what’s happening in your mind, when I use the word control I mean if you can manage and throw out the labels that have any sort of limitation on what you’re doing. Was it hard to build a business? Yes. But was it worth it? Yes. Instead of like, “It’s hard. It’s hard. It’s hard.” You have to stop stopping. People stop way too soon. I had a woman that was just upset. She was just crying on a call. I asked her, “How long have you had your business?” She goes, “A year and a half.” I go, “A year and a half? And you’re financially taking care of yourself, been travelling around the world. Why are you so hard on yourself?” A year and a half. I said at three years is where most people want to quit. You’re not even close to your hardest moments yet.

‏‏That’s a great perspective.

‏‏Yeah. It’s just that you can’t fail if you don’t quit. Here’s what I think the biggest secret is, always complete what you start. And if you haven’t hit your goal or whatever you intended to reach, if you haven’t hit it yet, that means you don’t stop. Once you hit it, then you can tell me you don’t want it anymore. My experience is that people change their mind to suit their comfort zone. If you’d stop doing that and you make a commitment to yourself that you always complete what you start, then you will find a very different reality in your life by completing what you start because most people don’t want to give up what they achieved. They just don’t. It’s just in the process they’ve made up all these stories along the way that have made it grueling.

‏‏When do we know when it’s an illusion and just staying in our comfort zone or when it is time to quit or shift or change directions?

‏‏You complete what you start. That’s it. It’s really that simple. You complete what you start.

‏‏How can we get over, “I am not good enough.”?

‏‏Complete what you start. It’s my answer for everything. I teach business and so worthiness conversations are a huge piece. If you’re not making insane money, there is something in a worthiness conversation. You can justify it. You can definitely protect it and fight for that limitation but the truth is that you can be a Joel Osteen and make $40 million a year, meaning that you could be spiritual and make money. You can be a parent and make money. My point is that you can have as much money as you want. Trust me, when I tithed $10,000 to Joel Osteen or I tithed $15,000 to human trafficking or whatever that looks like, you do become more generous when you have more money. You can make a bigger difference in this world. You just can. Stop justifying anything less than more than what you need.

‏‏Right.

‏‏Right. Worthiness conversations are something I face a lot. It comes down to the fact that of course you don’t think you’re worthy if you don’t keep your word to yourself. Because you’re breaking your integrity and when you break your integrity by not completing what you start, it’s a deeply ingrained thing that says I am not good enough. You have got to start saying, “Okay, I’m going to lose 10lbs.” You don’t stop until you lose 10lbs. “I’m going to go to the gym tomorrow.” Don’t hit snooze on your life.

‏‏Wow, that’s a tweetable thing. Don’t hit snooze on your life. I love that.

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏That’s tweetable. Lovely. I know that a lot of people have their self-worth connected to their money. They have money, they feel amazing. They don’t have money, the feel like they’re not worthy.

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏Any advice around that?

‏‏That’s a tough one. I just found myself in a conversation the other day where I made a comment about the size of our email list and I walked away and I was like, “Why did I feel like I needed to somehow justify who I am?” I think sometimes when we get fearful, the stuff like that comes to the surface and instead of making it wrong, make it an opportunity to say, “What was really happening there?” Don’t make it about the money. In the bible, money is written about 2,000 times. To give you an idea, faith and prayer is spoken about under 500 times.

‏‏No way.

‏‏Yeah. There’s definitely something in our lifetime that has to do with really mastering this thing of money. It’s like, “Don’t make it about the money.” It has nothing to do with the money. It’s providing an opportunity. It’s a tool for you in life. If you’re afraid to give it, whatever. I guess I’m just saying don’t judge yourself around it. It’s okay if you’ve got situations come up that show you that you’re feeling unworthy. Instead of giving it a lot of power, just be like, “I know that situation is going to come up again soon because it just came up now. It’s going to come up again soon so instead next time, I’m going to walk through that very differently and I’m not going to bring up my email list or my money,” or you know what I mean. I’m not going to play into that. I’m going to see how it unfolds and how I’m actually safe in that moment without having to connect myself to any income.

‏‏Life will give you more of those situations until you will change your way and your story and learn the lesson.

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏It’s going to show up again and again.

‏‏ It just does. That’s why I say if you’re stuck, I guarantee you’re stuck because you’re still not completing what you start.

‏‏Wow. How do you deal with rejection? Do you have any fear of rejection?

‏‏I used to. I must on some level because I just used my email list the other day to qualify my power. I must have something still at some level. I think again when it comes to stretching yourself, when you’re stretching yourself, you come up with a different set of limitations so I used to have rejection, used to be very, very apparent in my life. I used to rush through everything so that I would never get intimate with anything so that I never could fail. That was my fear of rejection. It was this hurried energy. I get irritated when somebody tried to explain something to me because I just want to move but that was my fear of intimacy, it really came down to fear of rejection. I think it’s still there on some level. I just think you get better.

‏‏How do I get better?

‏‏First off, know that there’s always room for improvement and growth. It’s not about getting rid of all your limitations, it’s about evolving through it. I think if you can give up this idea of perfection or comparison, I think that what you can do is find it interesting. Whatever your next vision, intention, goal is, it’s bigger than you are today. It’s natural to me or at least it seems very logical to me that some of my same limitations are going to show up again. And if they’re not showing up, rest assured that you’re operating in your comfort zone.

Whatever your next vision, intention, goal is, it’s bigger than you are today. Click To Tweet

‏‏Wow. Yup. That’s true. Like you said, it’s never going to get easier, it’s that your mindset is getting stronger and you can deal with things in a different level.

‏‏Yeah. That’s exactly it. That’s the perfect way of saying it. That’s exactly it. People are making things up about themselves and strengthening these limiting beliefs. These limiting beliefs are actually a celebration that you’re stretching so instead of getting down on yourself, be like, “I’m a freaking rockstar. I’m stretching right now. This is awesome. This means I’m creating a whole new reality for myself because this pain is coming up again.”

‏‏Right. How do you specifically help people break through their fears and limited thinking around money abundance and going for their goals?

‏‏You’re never going to believe this. I actually put them in endurance races.

‏‏Really?

‏‏Yes. I do. I put them in endurance races. I now have a division where we actually train entrepreneurs to train for half marathons and triathlons but that evolved out of the fact that I was on the side putting my clients that I was having a really hard time breaking their habits. They would come to me just in tears and they would be like, “Oh my god, I cannot figure out why I can’t get myself to do what you told me to do.” Or, “I did it but it’s not working.” Or, “I can’t keep consistency.” Or, “I keep procrastinating and I don’t know why I do this. I think I need a deeper why, Shanda.” No, honestly there’s nothing wrong with you. We just need to change your habits.” Jim Rohn, I read this quote with him this morning. What I started doing was I started taking these people that I couldn’t break them through financial ceilings. There were people that I couldn’t get past $4,000 or $5,000 a month but they really, really wanted it. I started putting them in 10k and half marathons. And inside of 6 to 10 months, they were creating extraordinary incomes. One woman created $100,000 income inside of nine months and then her girlfriend who’s in our endurance program created $100,000 the next month.

‏‏What? Amazing.

‏‏Yeah. These are both women that I couldn’t get past the $3,000 and $5,000 a month mark.

‏‏Wow.

‏‏Yeah, endurance training. Now that you’ve heard it, if you start to pay attention, you’ll see that a lot of the top CEOs and top executives are doing some sort of endurance training. You know Sara Blakely? She owns that company called Spanx.

‏‏Oh, yes, yes, yes.

‏‏That’s like a billion-dollar company. Her husband hired a Navy SEAL to live with them for 30 days to train him in endurance running. At the end of the book, I recommend everybody read the book, it’s called Living with a SEAL: 31 Days Training with the Toughest Man on the Planet. It’s so worth the read. It’s so entertaining because every chapter is his workout with SEAL. It’s so motivating but in the end he said I’ve never had a bigger capacity to work. I’ve never made more money and I’ve never been a quicker decision maker. Your brain on endurance, it’s like a gas on rocket fuel or a car on rocket fuel. It’s awesome.

‏‏I totally agree with you. I did the Tough Mudder, have you heard of it?

‏‏Yeah, actually my friend owns Spartan race, Joe De Sena. A very similar style racing.

‏‏Yes, I did the Tough Mudder and I walked on fire three times and I broke an air on my neck and I walked on glass. I’m like, “How many more of these do I have to do to do to really break through and get to my biggest vision?”

‏‏I’m going to tell you, it’s getting into endurance training and never getting out.

‏‏That’s a good metaphor for life.

‏‏Yup.

‏‏What’s the fastest way to grow a business?

‏‏Build an email list and learn how to sell to it.

‏‏Got it.

‏‏That’s very simple.

‏‏Best way to build an email list?

‏‏Personally, I like interviews. I call it a reporter model. I wrote about it in my book called Core Calling. Basically, I do this something called a reporter model where you operate like Oprah. Imagine finding your Oprah where you come up with a theme show and you interview a series of people and then they all email their email list and share this amazing show that you do. We’ve just found that doing that, our average client for the first time usually builds 2,000 to 3,500 for the first list build we have many people who build 8,000, 9,000 people on their first list build. And to give you an idea, I’m spending right now $3 a lead for cold traffic on Facebook to build an email list. A 3,000-person list is a very, very expensive list build on Facebook. I recommend that. I think word of mouth traffic is, and if I’m confusing people you can always read about it in my book and that’s not a plug for my book, it’s just really about building an email list. It really is.

‏‏Yeah. Can you mention the name of your book?

‏‏Yeah. It’s called Core Calling. It’s about how to be financially free in two years or less. It really comes down to your email list and learning how to sell to it. We built a multiple seven figure company just on sending out emails to my email list. We hit the seven figures in three years. I find that we grow entrepreneurs really quickly into that nice monthly cash flow because of the fact that we focus on those two things. Build the email list and then sell to it.

‏‏Right. Is there a specific way that you specifically communicate with your list?

‏‏Yeah. We get really transparent with our email list. Connection is currency so I say things like use your life to connect. For instance, say I go out for a run and I wanted to quit on myself on the run or say I saw somebody running in front of me and I paced myself with that person and end up running a faster run than I normally do and surprise myself. I use my life to share maybe about that run to inspire people not to run but to actually inspire them to look at are you building your business at a speed that you think is normal when if you actually got inside a community of people who were building inside of two years to financial freedom you could actually grow so much faster. Then here’s how you do it. I use my life lessons to bridge inspiration and motivation that’s real. I think you can’t fake energy. When you’re having a breakthrough in your own life, if you could share that with your email list, you’re going to find that the connection is so much better than the perfect marketing message.

‏‏Do you have a specific method of networking?

‏‏Yes. It’s something called flextime. The last week of every month for the last I don’t know, I think three or four years, I have not worked the last week of the month and it’s called flextime so that means that there’s no appointments. I don’t do any staff calls, I don’t manage the team, I don’t work with clients. It’s my family time. It’s my personal time. It’s also my running my errand time. Even though I have a team of people who help me in my personal life, there’s just things that you do on your own. Did that make sense?

‏‏Yeah, it does make sense. I don’t know how you do it but it make sense. You work for three weeks and then you take the fourth week off.

‏‏Yup. And then I take the month of December off too.

‏‏Wow.

‏‏This year, I’m going to work for the first week of December because I’m speaking at Maria Andros’ event and stuff like that. But I normally take off the whole month of December. Next year, I’m changing my flextime to, I’m actually giving up a week of Flextime for each quarter and I’m actually going to take off the last two weeks of every quarter and go somewhere. We were just looking at the fact that I want to go see the Northern Lights and sleep in the igloo hotels. I’m craving more adventure in my life. Flextime is the same mentality as athletes and recovery. Before an athlete does a race, they recover before the race not after. I mean they recover a little bit after but believe it or not, after you do a race like pro athletes, we get trained by pro athletes in our division. They actually have us go for a bike ride or a swim either right after the race or the next day. They don’t have you just sitting on the couch doing nothing. It’s active recovery. But before the race, they actually have you putting your feet up and relaxing. I don’t know why entrepreneurs somehow think that they can work all year and then focus and work really hard for many, many months and then they’ll take a vacation to recover. When they go to take the vacation, they’re so burnt out that they can’t even recover.

‏‏They break down.

‏‏Yeah. I have no tolerance for adrenal fatigue. I know that sounds horrible but I get really, really, really frustrated with people who allow themselves to stay in adrenal fatigue because it’s not about your company, it’s not about you’re working too hard, it’s about the fact that you run a system inside your life that does not allow you to take care of yourself. It’s not about the job. You don’t have to give up the job. All of that stuff is crazy. You just haven’t gotten responsible with how you run things and most of that stress is happening inside your brain and inside your mind. Show me some moment adrenal fatigue and I’ll show you someone who’s chaotic in their brain. I know I could get a lot of angry people with that but I’ve coached adrenal fatigue out of so many entrepreneurs, it’s not even funny. And they love me today because of it. Because I was the first coach that didn’t fall into the category of saying, “Oh my God, are you okay? Take a break.” It’s like, “No, that’s not okay. It’s not okay. What are you avoiding? Why is this okay with you?” And is this going to be another reason why you don’t succeed?” Flextime has you recover like an athlete on a regular basis throughout the year. A lot of people follow my flextime of once a month. You shouldn’t follow my flextime unless you can’t figure out your flextime, maybe try my flextime for a year. When I started flextime, I did three-day work weeks. That’s because I was a workaholic. I went from making $2,000 in year to making $140,000 in a year just by only doing three-day work weeks. And to give you a caveat on that, I got super depressed because I wasn’t working all the time and all my emotional stuff that was underneath the surface that needed to come up and be healed came up and was healed.

‏‏Wow. What would you say is your success system?

‏‏From my life, it’s flextime. For my business, it’s continuously building an email list, the reporter model style, and simply selling to that list through emails without a doubt. And generosity, I am the most generous person you’ll ever meet. If you were to interview any of my clients, if you were to ask me and my friends what is the number one quality that they would say about me, it would be generosity.

‏‏I love it. If you’re very generous and you’ve given so much of yourself, where do you put the boundaries?

‏‏I don’t have boundaries. That’s just not how life works. I have systems inside my life that support my life. For instance, my high-level clients can Voxer me, it’s a walkie talkie app. They can Voxer me instead of me creating private coaching sessions so that they can walkie talkie me when they need advice. The last week of the month is flex week. All my clients know that so they don’t come to me on flex week. It has to be a dire emergency and they know that. If you are doing an event and you made an offer and it fell flat and you’ve got $100,000 on the line for that event, call me. Even if it’s my flextime, I’m here for you. That’s my generosity. But they don’t abuse that. Somebody’s messaging me on my flextime, it’s like, “I just hired somebody and I’m concerned that I might have made the wrong offer.” I would say, “It’s my flex week. I’ll reach back out to you on Monday.” It’s not a boundary, it’s just prioritizing things. I teach people about this is how my life runs and I give them the responsibility to fit their life into my schedule. I don’t try and fit into theirs.

‏‏Do you believe in the law of attraction?

‏‏Totally.

‏‏Okay. How does that work for you? Or how do you work with the law of attraction?

‏‏It comes back to when you’re thinking better, life works better. I probably don’t use the word law of attraction very often but I’m speaking into it on a daily basis with my clients and that is their mindset. If you are looking at the problem and you cannot stop looking at the problems in life, if you’re a victim to your relationship, the communication in your relationship, your money issues, your staff problems, if you’re a victim to any of the problems in your life for any extended period of time longer than 30 minutes, then you truly are not setting yourself up to win because your mind is designed to track for a solution. And so, if you’re not open to a solution, then you actually cannot tap into a wonderful, amazing life. It’s like have you ever wanted a new car? If you want a new car like when I wanted a new Porsche Cayenne when I was pregnant, when I was pregnant I was like, “I don’t want the Soccer Mom SUV. I just don’t.” And so I was like, “I want a Porsche Cayenne.” Well then I saw them everywhere. Because I was like, “That’s what I want.” When I wanted a new Facebook team to help me market to cold traffic on Facebook, I was like, “I really want a new Facebook team.” And so, I asked everybody. The problem was always there which was I wasn’t finding the team but I didn’t put my attention on that because it’s only a matter of time until I find the team. All I focused on was the result I wanted which was I really want to find a cold traffic Facebook team. I just said that everywhere. The fact that I wasn’t finding that person from months on end did not discourage me. It just didn’t. I just had my attention on like, “I know there’s a way.” And then I found the best cold traffic Facebook team that came highly referred to me by four people inside of one week.

If you’re a victim to any of the problems in your life for any extended period of time longer than 30 minutes, then you truly are not setting yourself up to win because your mind is designed to track for a solution. Click To Tweet

‏‏Wow.

‏‏A quick other story about a personal situation like that. I have three bulging discs on my back. After I gave birth, I literally got out of bed and I collapsed on the floor twice. I started crying and I said to Ash, I said, “Ash, what type of a life am I going to have? I can’t walk. This is horrible.” I go and I get an MRI. They confirmed I have three bulging discs. I go to see three different sets of doctors and they basically tell me this endurance life that I live is over. I know how that will affect my ability to run my company. I know that stress and overwhelmed is right around the corner. That’s the energy that comes in when you’re not doing endurance training.

‏‏Especially for an athlete.

‏‏Yeah. Anybody. I wasn’t an athlete before. I use endurance training to be a smarter CEO and to grow my capacity to hold more. I said, “I know there is a doctor out there. I just know there is a doctor out there that believes that this could be healed without surgery. I know there is.” Trust me, I had a couple times where I cried on the couch and looked at Ash because I felt like, “Frick, I really hope that I am right on this.” And then I kept thinking about Wayne Dyer. I don’t know if you have ever heard his story about him in an airport and them telling him that he couldn’t get to a place he was speaking and he kept his whole motivation for the woman across the flight attendant looking for flights that were all booked out because his flight was cancelled. His whole motivation was to open her up to the possibility that there was a connecting flight which she did find. I just kept thinking about him and I was like, “There is a way. There is a doctor. There is a doctor who knows how to cure me of this.” Well then, I find Dr. Sarno. His book gets delivered in the mail. I end up talking to a guy who works with him for a long period of time, for an hour and a half on Skype, the next day my pain is less. We are now a year and a half from my pain of my three bulging discs and I ran 10 miles just the other day, two days ago. No pain. None. How does that happen? It’s called knowledge therapy. An hour and a half on Skype with this guy. My point is that is this law of attraction real? Yeah, however you want to classify it, whether it’s spirituality or just the fact that your brain is going to track for a solution. If you cannot manage your brain to be open to the possibility of what you want is absolutely possible and you’re fixated on the end result and knowing that yes you can be frustrated to not have it yet but you cannot put any energy there. You can only focus on the fact that being obsessed with that end result and if you are, it will happen quite quickly. I found my fiancé the same way.

‏‏Tell me about it.

‏‏I was in my late thirties and I was like, “I really want to have a family, have a baby, get married. And I have to make this a priority.” I started realizing that like anything, you probably should have hire a coach because based on results in life I’m not exactly the pinnacle for great relationships ending up a marriage. Instead of me having some ego that all of a sudden I’m going to find him and this next relationship is going to work, or that I’ve only dated men that are not the right men, I just got really real with myself and said I’m going to hire a coach that knows this work better than me, this work of relationships. I hired Cherry Norris and inside of three months, I found Ash. We ended up getting pregnant inside of really three and a half, four months and having our son. Now we’re engaged. We’re getting married next year and we have a phenomenal relationship. But if it wasn’t for her, I can tell you I never would have seen Ash. I would’ve discounted him and I never would’ve ended up in a relationship with him.

‏‏What type of work did she do with you? Was it more connecting to your feminine?

‏‏She just specializes in really working with powerful women who tend to be career driven and helping us stop being the better man in a relationship so that a man can show up and really cherish us. She made me practice with every guy. I wasn’t allowed to say no to someone. Even if I knew he wasn’t my guy, I had to be open to the possibility that he was and I wasn’t allowed to not take another date with him unless I couldn’t stand the way he chewed. It was crazy. And through the process of it, through all the practice, what happened was I started opening up and seeing the individual that was sitting in front of me. I started just following her rules. No sexy time. I just started following the rules of what it would be like for a man to claim me and to take me off the market versus this hot and heavy like, “Okay, I’m crazy about this guy. Let’s go.” You know what I mean?

‏‏Right.

‏‏To give you an idea, there’s three of my other girlfriends inside of ninety days found their husbands.

‏‏Wow, that’s amazing.

‏‏It works when you stop buying into these limiting thoughts about what’s realistic. Realistic is what you say is realistic. The law of attraction 100% works. What’s not working is your mindset. That’s it. There’s not a lot of formulas that make life work. There’s not a lot of formulas that create millions of dollars. Meaning, I have three formulas inside my company that creates millions of dollars and it’s email list, selling and a sales team, and a freedom model that we teach but my point is it’s not a lot. There probably won’t be many more over the lifetime of the growth of my company. In my relationship, there’s a couple formulas that make it work. We’re always so distracted on coming up with figuring out what’s that thing that’s going to fix this problem. The thing you’re looking for is the way you think, that’s the thing.

‏‏That is super powerful.

‏‏It’s true.

‏‏It is. What is the craziest thing you have ever done?

‏‏Probably have a baby with someone I knew for three and a half months.

‏‏Yay.

‏‏Yup. I just knew. I could feel it inside us. I just knew he was it. And then after we had the baby, I had second guesses. Was he it? Thank God for the baby because it had us work through things that I probably never would’ve worked out in a relationship if it wasn’t for that. Either if I would’ve gotten married in the first four months or having the baby either or I needed something to tether my wildness.

‏‏Beautiful. Sounds like you live in a bliss life.

‏‏I truly am. I really am but it hasn’t been without hard work.

‏‏What are your three tips to living a stellar life?

‏‏Figure out your finances. I know money doesn’t make you happy but it definitely provides a better life. It just does. Make sure that you take care of your body. I don’t think it’s okay, anybody who says that you’re overweight or not healthy and feeling good inside your body and that’s okay because it’s not important to you is lying to themselves. The third thing is make sure you’re tithing or giving back. I really believe that people who have some sort of faith in God or the creator of the universe and realizing that they’re not responsible for everything in life and it takes the pressure off and there’s a power to living a faithful life.

‏‏Amazing. I’m sure people are very excited about this interview and they want to know where can they find you.

‏‏Well, you could always find me obviously on Facebook. It’s very easy to find me on HeartCore Business. If you go into Facebook and put HeartCore together and business you’ll find me but you’re always welcome to go to heartcorebusiness.com as well.

‏‏Awesome.

‏‏I’m just always doing Facebook Live so it’s a great way to get connected to me.

‏‏I didn’t know that. I’m going to start following you.

‏‏Yes.

‏‏I really appreciate you for sharing all this great advice and being open and vulnerable and very real. I really like that.

‏‏Thank you.

‏‏Thank you very much listeners. Take care of your mindset. Give back and live a stellar life. Till next time.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

✓ There are wise pieces of advice that we intellectually know but don’t actually follow.

✓ Identify an instance where you aren’t following your own advice, and then resolve to “surrender into the coaching.”

✓ Write down two or three hardships you’ve been through. Then, for each one, write down several ways the hardship has actually led to positive outcomes in your life.

✓ Shanda believes one key to success is to “stop stopping.” Think about something that you’ve given up on recently, whether from frustration, boredom, or a sense that it will never change. How can you keep pushing at this issue until it resolves successfully?

✓ A similar but distinct piece of advice Shanda gives is to “always complete what you start.” Resolve to take a moment today to take one step–no matter how small–toward completing something you’ve started.

✓ Fear–of rejection, of failure–isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it can be a sign that you’re stretching outside of your comfort zone.

✓ “Your brain on endurance [training] is like a car on rocket fuel,” Shanda explains.

✓ Commit to spending a month working on endurance training several times a week to see how much of a difference it can make for you!

✓ Athletes recover before their big events, not afterward, which Shanda relates to the life of an entrepreneur.

✓ Figure out instances in your life where you’re likely to need to recover, and resolve to take enough time off in advance to avoid adrenal fatigue and burnout.

✓ Reevaluate your daily choices based on the concepts of generosity without boundaries and the Law of Attraction. If you fully lived by these ideas, how would your life look different?

✓ Go one step beyond thinking about generosity and actually live it! You may find that it becomes a habit that you don’t want to give up.

✓ Through Shanda’s stories, it’s clear that the willingness to ask for and receive help from experts is a big force behind her success. Consult an expert about a problem in your life that could benefit from his or her insight.

Links and Resources:

About Shanda Sumpter

Shanda Sumpter is the Queen Visionary of HeartCore Business – a training company on the brink of hitting eight figures designed to give entrepreneurs the powerful systems they can use to share their gift and use those gifts to create profitable, sustainable businesses.