.png)
Powerful Women Rising - A Business Podcast for Female Entrepreneurs
Welcome to Powerful Women Rising, the no-nonsense, laugh-out-loud podcast for heart-centered female entrepreneurs ready to make an impact (and a profit) while staying true to themselves!
Forget cookie-cutter, one size fits all advice. Each episode provides customizable advice and strategies to help you grow and scale your business - from leveraging authentic connections to mastering the art of marketing without feeling like a salesy weirdo. Plus, you'll hear insightful interviews with experts who shed light on those sneaky blind spots in your businessand dish out practical, no-BS advice for making more money in a way that feels good.
Tune in and transform the way you do business – because when women rise together, the sky's the limit!
Powerful Women Rising - A Business Podcast for Female Entrepreneurs
Stop Struggling With Content: Build a Messaging Ecosystem That Works w/M. Shannon Hernandez
What if marketing didn't feel like a chore?
In this episode, I’m joined by messaging strategist and email marketing rebel M. Shannon Hernandez, who is flipping the script on everything you think you know about how to communicate with your audience.
Shannon is co-founder of the Joyful Business Revolution, and she’s here to help you stop screaming into the social media void and start building a real, connected community through your email list.
No more random posts.
No more “wtf do I even write?” panic.
Just clear, value-driven messaging that feels good and drives results.
We talk about:
- The difference between messaging strategy and copywriting - and why most people are focused on the wrong one
- The six types of content in Shannon’s Profit-Driven Messaging Ecosystem and how to use them
- How to simplify your entire marketing plan to just one social platform + email (yes, really)
- The most common email mistakes heart-centered entrepreneurs make and how to fix them
If you’ve ever dreaded writing your newsletter or felt like “good marketing” requires sacrificing your time, energy or soul, Shannon is here to give you permission to market in a way that feels like YOU - joyful, human, and wildly effective.
Links & References:
- Trying to grow your list, increase your visibility or make new connections? Join us at the next PWR Virtual Speed Networking Event!
- For faster business growth through networking, strategy and accountability, check out the Powerful Women Rising Business Growth Community!
- Grab Shannon's 65 Story Marketing Ideas to Grow Your Community and Business at joyfulbusinessrevolution.com
- Connect with Shannon on LinkedIn!
Connect with Your Host!
Melissa Snow is a Business Relationship Strategist dedicated to empowering women in entrepreneurship. She founded the Powerful Women Rising Community, which provides female business owners with essential support and resources for business growth.
Melissa's other mission is to revolutionize networking, promoting authenticity and genuine connections over sleazy sales tactics. She runs an incredible monthly Virtual Speed Networking Event which you can attend once at no cost using the code FIRSTTIME
She lives in Colorado Springs with two dogs, her soul cat Giorgio and any number of foster kittens. She loves iced coffee, Taylor Swift, and Threads.
Hello, m Shannon Hernandez, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, so excited to be here. Yes, I'm so excited to have you and I always love it when I have a guest who I connected with through networking, because then I get to prove a point to everyone who listens to the podcast that networking actually does work.
Speaker 2:It works, if you work it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely it does. It does. So you and I have a mutual friend, a fabulous woman, Becky Claybaugh. She's been a guest on the podcast before and she introduced us. She told me that you would be a fantastic guest, and so I'm so excited to talk to you today. So, before we dive in, tell everybody a little bit about you and about what you do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so first of all, I think everyone should know that I am obsessed with joy and I love helping people find their unique flavor of joy, whether that's in life or in marketing, and just really my big mission in the world is to make the world a more joyful place, so I think that's really important Outside of like the joy work, so to speak. I'm an email marketing and messaging strategist and I help established business owners really step into that next level of marketing and their messaging and that thought leadership that's going to help them convey the depth that they're known for, the body of work or works that they're known for, and keep everything cohesive, tied with a really great messaging strategy.
Speaker 1:Love that. So just in case anyone else is wondering this what's the difference between what you do as an email marketing strategist and a messaging expert versus like a copywriter?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So there could certainly be layovers, because my background is in conversion copy. But when I focus solely on conversion copy or copywriting, it was like, hey, I need a five sequence email sequence for this launch that's coming up. Or hey, five sequence email sequence for this launch that's coming up. Or hey, redo my home page. All of which are very important things. But as a messaging strategist, I actually take in a client and I look at everything. I look at their LinkedIn, I look at their Instagram, I look at the books they've published or where they're headed in their business, where we can sort of like up level the entire messaging experience. So it's cohesive all the way across and it's one of my most favorite things to do with people.
Speaker 1:I love that. That is brilliant and it's so important because that's one of the things that I talk about when I'm talking about networking and we talk about authenticity and people think like, oh, just be myself, that's authenticity. And it is Also of the things I talk about too is like, if I hear you speak at a conference and then I look at your Facebook page and then I look at your website and then I look at your Instagram, I shouldn't feel like I'm looking at four different people, right, like sometimes we use one in a more personal way or we, you know, tweak the way that we engage on different platforms. But it sounds like what you do really is help make sure that all of the places we're connecting with people, which is networking we are doing it in a consistent way and the way, the intentional way right, sometimes we're consistent but not intentional, so I love that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it can even go a little deeper, you know.
Speaker 2:So, like I have a client right now, I have several clients right now, but one in particular she is trying to break off the personal brand now, which is a speaking brand and soon to be author brand, from the company she's built.
Speaker 2:And this is an interesting place. I mean, I was here a few years ago, right, like when I rebranded to Joyful Business Revolution. The company became a voice, and then I have my speaking and author brand and that kind of has its own vibe and voice, and so there's a lot to consider in that particular situation. Right, building brand voice playbooks for people so that if they do bring on a copywriter, the copywriter has one central location to look at everything and say, oh, these are the words we don't use, oh, this is the tone that the person or the brand takes, oh, these are the words that are like our pillars and building out messaging pillars for people, so they know always what to talk about, or at least always what to tie everything back in to, because that's how you get known for what you do right, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I love that so much. So today we're talking specifically about email marketing, and I think this is a great topic because we hear a lot, especially recently, like you don't own your audience on social media. Right, you do own your audience in your email, and so that makes it really important. But one of the things that you talk about a lot is how you have an ability to connect with your audience in email marketing in a different way than you do maybe on, like, other social media platforms. So tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so. First, I think I'm going to run a campaign called Make Email Fun Again, because I think people need to just have a lot more freaking fun with their email audience. I think a lot of the reasons email has gotten like a bad rep, so to speak, is people only use it to try and sell something, and we know that's not going to work. That wouldn't work if you walked into a networking event either and tried to sell something right Like. It just doesn't work for us relationship driven people.
Speaker 2:So I really had to reframe how I think about my email, first as a community, and that was the biggest step. That made the connection feel very different. And in a community, you want two-way conversation, right? So you will often get emails from me where I say, hey, what do you think about this? I have this idea and it's just two-way conversation that just goes back and forth, and that feels really good to me. The other reason I love email marketing is, I believe, when it's done right and to me that means it's fun, it's focused, you have a plan, it's regular, right, you're having fun with the people on your email list and you're really building that trust and that connection when that's done right. You can step away from the social media hamster wheel and go live your life outside of being like an influencer or social media star.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which turns out is not all of our aspirations. Absolutely, we are not all on the influencer train. I love that because I, you know, in the Powerful Women, rising Business, growth community, I have so many women and we have this conversation so often when they're like I know I need to be on social media more, I know I need to be on Instagram, I know I need to do LinkedIn. I know I need to do, and I'm always like do you though? Yeah, do you. And there's so many messages out there of like this is what you have to be doing, and I love it when I get to talk to somebody who is like actually, you don't have to do that that way, you can do it this way.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. One of the things we teach here at Joyful Business Revolution is one social media platform yes, I said one plus your email is all you will ever need, honestly, but whether you choose whatever for social media or whatever for email, you have to have that relationship-driven content right and the messaging strategy and kind of the plan and the roadmap to help you achieve your goals. So I want to encourage you, Melissa, to tell all your people they can just let all of them go, accept their favorite and let's do it really well with an email list.
Speaker 1:Yes, all right, you heard it here first.
Speaker 1:Actually, you probably heard it here for the 105th time, but there it is for you in case you missed it the first 104. So I want to go back to what you said about thinking of your email list as a community, because that really struck me and I've never thought of my email list that way. But as soon as you said that, I was like, oh, I love that, like I wanted to just get off this call and go email my list right now. So what recommendations or what tips do you have for people who are listening to this and they have struggled with email marketing because they feel like, does anyone even read their emails anymore? Or like I feel like every time I email somebody I'm being salesy, or like I feel like every time I email somebody I'm being salesy. If they want to shift that perspective to a place of building relationships with their email list and really thinking of it as a community, what are some things that they can start doing today or start thinking about differently to kind of shift that?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I think you know this is sometimes. This is a hard question and I have to have hard, hard conversations with people when they come into my world, because a lot of the times the people who tell me I never read my email and I'm like, OK, we got to get this energy cleaned up, Like, if you're actually wanting to use email as one of the main revenue drivers in your business, maybe you should get your email cleaned up and read the ones that pertain to you and take the rest off your list right. So that's always a tough conversation to have because we will often see the very objections that we give is because of something that we believe or do or value or don't value or what that is. So once we get past the cleanup the energetic cleanup part and we develop a fun way to build connection and converse with your audience, you can share stories, you can share resources. I mean, there's so many ways. Honestly, we could do 52 podcasts on 52 different things you could do in your email.
Speaker 2:But at the end of the day, when you think of it as a community and you write it as if the one person over there is waiting on the email to land because they cannot wait to read your email. It often takes on a very different energy, much of the same energy that a lot of people put into social posting, right, but the benefit, I believe, of the email list is I don't have to post that much on social anymore, right, and that's one of the reasons that I'm such a proponent of it, plus owning your data. But I don't want to be the influencer, right. That's never why I started this business, yeah, but I don't want to be the influencer, right, that's never why I started this business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I love what you said, too, about the emails that you send asking questions, because I think sometimes we don't we think so much about email marketing being a one way street, right, I'm just sending my broadcast out to all of the people and sometimes, when they reply back, I'm like, oh weird, there's someone out there, what? So, yeah, I love that idea of like remembering that there are people out there that you're talking to and that a lot of them really do want to engage in a conversation with you if you open up that option.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think the other thing too you know the email still, when it's done right, and it's done what I would say ethically and relationship driven, it still outperforms every kind of social media marketing to date. Any study you go show will show that over time, and so people also have to be in it for the long run. Right, and we live in a society where we want everything quick like. We want everything quick Like, we want to see the likes, we want to see the comments. Oh my God, it didn't work. We take it off Y'all.
Speaker 2:That is a mental place that is not healthy, yeah, and so I think part of what email does for me is it keeps my nervous system stable. Yeah, no kidding, which is huge, right, I'm in year 13 of building business. Like, I didn't get to where I got because I was checking likes and comments and freaking out and redoing stuff, and there was a time in my life where that kind of was the trap that I fell in and I didn't like it. I didn't like how I felt, I just didn't like it. And so over the last year, I actually closed down a Facebook group, got everyone who wanted to ever hear from me on social media over to LinkedIn and now I solely use LinkedIn and Facebook, linkedin and email. I'm sorry, that is like happy sauce for me yeah, that's awesome, that's so smart.
Speaker 1:So this is a good question too, because I actually I was just speaking yesterday about networking and we were having this conversation about how there are people who say networking is just making friends, and I'm like networking isn't just making friends. Making friends is making friends right Networking and maybe you will make friends while you're networking you likely will, but it's not just making friends, and I think this is an important part of this. Conversation with email, too is like we're building a community, we're creating relationships, we're having fun, we're having conversations with the people on our email list. But let's also not pretend that we're not trying to build a business. Right, we still need to make sales, we still need to convert to clients. So how do we do that in a way that is ethical and still feels good to us heart-centered entrepreneurs who don't want to feel salesy, but we want to sell things?
Speaker 2:Oh well, we got to sell shit.
Speaker 1:We do. It turns out if you are a business owner, you have to sell shit at some point.
Speaker 2:That's right. Well, you know, I think this goes. This is why I love messaging strategy as opposed to just copywriting. Right? Because as a messaging strategist, I'm really thinking about okay, over 90 days. Let's just say, to keep it, keep it real. Right, what's happening in 90 days in your business? Okay, maybe you're speaking in three places. You are putting out a new resource of some kind and you're gonna enroll in a program. Let's just say that's it right.
Speaker 2:How do we build all of that in to achieve the goals we wanna achieve while using storytelling, helping people with what they need right? Giving them the resources, inviting them into conversations, giving them the opportunity that, if they don't want to hear about the launch, they can click here and not hear any more about it. Like to me, that's one of the best things about emails. We always have this disclaimer when we're gonna enroll into something, and it literally says um, your consent matters to me. If you do not want to hear any more about this, which is happening for the next four weeks, click here.
Speaker 2:And do you know how many people email and say thank you for giving us that option? Yeah, and that's like something so simple that everyone could be doing with their email Right. So how do we build that 90 day strategy that is empathetic, transparent, feels good, is authentic, uses story, sells when we need to sell, shows you as an expert and whatever else we want to achieve? And that's really the playground that I play in, because when you do it well, people are going to be like yes, it's for me, no, it's not, but they're not going to feel sold to the day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what are some tips that you have for how we can show up authentically in our emails? We can build those relationships in our messaging but also still create emails that convert.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I developed something quite a few years back called the profit-driven messaging ecosystem, and this was with a lot of trial and error over the years, as we do as business owners and helping people, and there's six types of messaging in this ecosystem, right, and each type has a particular function. So, for example, connection content shows who we are as humans. Mission-driven content gets people rallied around our mission right. I said at the beginning like I could have told you a million things about email, but I started with joy. Like my mission is joy, right, because people always buy the why before they buy the what or the how. Right, so people want to know this, especially today. They want to know your values, they want to know what you stand for, right.
Speaker 2:So there's six types of content and when I design email marketing strategies, we cycle through those six within the goal of what we're trying to get done. One of the six is direct offer content because, as Melissa and I said, we got to sell. We all have bills to pay, but you can imagine if you got a cadence right over 90 days, and one was about your, your mission, and one was about a client story and what they achieved, and one was about something you're excited about, that you're reading, or you spoke at an event or whatever, and then we dropped in a direct offer hey, I've got five spots to do. Whatever. Right Like this is what I'm talking about. It needs to be an ecosystem that's very well balanced.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so smart. And that comes back to the whole planning piece, right? Having an idea of what it looks like in big picture which is a lot about what you do, right, as opposed to copywriting is very like finite and we're just doing this little part. Looking at the big picture, and how is this all going to work together over 90 days or six months, or the course of your business, which I think is, as someone who is trying to be more intentional and more consistent in email marketing, I think is really smart and makes a lot of sense. So this is a completely self-serving question, but maybe you know people probably also want to know the answer. What would you say is one of the biggest mistakes that you see entrepreneurs making in their email marketing?
Speaker 2:Well, I think the biggest one is you invite people to your list and then you don't talk to them regularly. And then it's time to talk to them and you feel really fricking weird. And, by the way, if you've ever done that, you're not alone. This happens to lots of people. The way out of that little bit of a pickle is to be honest and say hey name, I disappeared for two years and here's what's been going on in my life. I'd love to hear from you Tell me something going on in your world. I'd love to hear from you Tell me something going on in your world. So, relationship, right. So that's like a side note to the question.
Speaker 2:After that, the biggest thing I see with people who email regularly is focusing solely on selling without offering the value. Right, and so I love what I call clarity-driven content right, it's content that helps people see exactly where they are in the process, exactly where they are, what their gap is right now, why they can't do the thing they want to do right, and how you do that is you provide education. You give some good stories that are true and give some inspiration to people, because we should be making people feel better when they read our words right, and then your audience starts to look forward to hearing from you. But it's also because you've put your perspective in there and it's not just pitch after pitch after pitch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. Wow, this is really helpful. I feel like sometimes I have a podcast interview that I do and I'm like I'm going to have to listen to this one. I try to make myself listen to all of them, but this one I'm like I might have to listen to this one again with, like a pen and paper, because you're telling me all the something that I personally am trying to be better about and you have something to offer to people to help them with that story marketing, right?
Speaker 2:I do, yeah. So one of the most common questions I get when I speak or when I'm working with clients I just love everyone. If you're listening to this, just raise your hand. If it applies to you, I don't know what to write about. It's a common thing, right?
Speaker 1:And so.
Speaker 2:I and it's crazy to me because, as a messaging strategist like I, don't have enough time to write all the things I want to write for my clients to send out to their list, right.
Speaker 2:So words is definitely my gift. It doesn't mean it has to be your gift, but what I put together is a resource, after being asked this over and over and over again, with 65 curated story marketing ideas. And these are story marketing ideas. They're literally a list of 65. Some of them are meant to grow your relationship and in your community. Some of them are meant to convert prospects to clients. Some of them are to show people more deeper into your mission and to your values and what you stand for. And it's a handy list so that you never have to say I don't know what to write about again. But it also invites you to take the story angle aspect. Also in this guide is a monthly planning template. It helps you organize your story prompts so that you can be a little more organized, and then a story organizer tool that helps you map out how the story is going to flow so it doesn't feel disjointed.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love that. I'm going to go get that right now, actually mostly because I want it and also because I want to be on your email list because it sounds like it's fun. It is fun. You can't be called the joyful business revolution and then not have fun emails.
Speaker 2:So I'm here for it.
Speaker 1:So obviously, if people want to connect with you, they can go and download that 65 story marketing ideas. That's amazing. Where else can they find you? You mentioned LinkedIn. What's the best way for them to connect with you? Learn more about you, find out what you do and how to work with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can come to joyfulbusinessrevolutioncom. You'll be immersed in joy everywhere on the website. And if you do connect on LinkedIn, please connect and send a message with your connection request. Let me know you're coming from Melissa's show and I'd love to talk to you there on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:Awesome, amazing. Thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast. This was a great conversation. I feel like I could have you back and we could split this into like an eight part series, so we might have to do that. That would be so fun, awesome. Thank you so much. Okay, thank you.
