Fly Flamingo Fly
Nobody has ever mistaken a flamingo for another bird. It’s unique, distinct, and it stands out in a crowd. 🦩
The key to building a successful business is to be the flamingo, and this is exactly what Megan Shallow has done with her company BNL Social. She lives a life full of connection, love, prosperity, and joy, all while running a successful business.
Luckily, she’s decided to share her secrets only with you, dear podcast listeners. Each week, you’ll gain valuable life lessons from Megan, digital marketing and social media education sessions, inspirational business hits, and small business owner interviews. Stick around and learn what it takes to truly be the flamingo in your world and start shining like the bright beautiful soul you are, right now.
As always, if you gained something from this episode, share it with a friend, and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts.
Fly Flamingo Fly
Scaling The Human Way: How Prioritizing Connection Over Consistency on Social Media Grew My Company in the Rise of AI
Start the year with a bold recalibration. Trade shiny optics for a strong heartbeat.
In this solo episode, Megan returns to the mic to share the real story behind BNL’s biggest year yet. It wasn’t built by posting more, but by rebuilding from the inside out. The focus is energy, team safety, rooted systems, and a founder voice that refuses to be automated.
The truth?
AI can churn content at scale, but it can’t feel your season, know your nervous system, or honour your values. That gap, that sacred pause, is where human strategy lives. 🦄
We walk through the parts most leaders edit out: choosing stability over spectacle, ending misaligned dynamics, receiving support without shame, and trusting the quiet work that powers real profit. Megan unpacks what “consistency” really means when it’s redefined as inner alignment, team coherence, and intuitive leadership, not just a content calendar.
This episode is a blueprint for the entrepreneur who’s done with performance and ready for presence. You’ll hear how documenting instinct created freedom, why community, not dashboards, is the engine of our growth, and how social media can be a space for real resonance, not just reach.
Looking forward, BNL Media Consulting is scaling through connection, not dilution.
Expect:
→ A spacious podcast cadence
→ Conversations that come from timing, not pressure
→ A path to 7 figures built on depth, clarity, and soul
Because in the age of AI, being human is your edge.
Let’s grow like that.
And if you are interested in learning more about Living In Balance Seminars, which was given a shout out in today's episode, check out -> www.libseminars.com ⬅️
If this resonates, follow the show, share it with someone recalibrating, and leave a quick review to help other heart-led leaders find their way back to center. 💞
For more social media and business conversations from yours truly (Megan Shallow) you can find me over on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn. 🦩
And of course if you ever need support with your social media presence you can find all the things at BNL Media Consulting. 🦄
Welcome back to your first solo episode by yours truly, your host, Megan Shallow. And it's 2026. And with that is coming a whole new year, but also a whole year of reflection of 2025. I don't honestly know where to begin, but I do know that this year really is about me coming back to this place of sharing my voice the way that I would like to, in a place where I swear I am in a social media realm right now where my battle of my expertise is coming up against AI. The one thing AI can never do is intuitively know where your business wants to go because of what is in alignment with your gifts and talents. If I wanted to build a social media management agency today, I am sure I could put a prompt into Chat GPT, Gemini, all of the other platforms that have unique names that bamboozle me. They feel like I had someone tell me, like, you're talking to you about your ChatGPT like it's a pet. And that's what it feels like. But with the shifts that are coming in the online world in general and social media, there has been a lot of moments here in 2025 where I have been pushed to almost think less and feel more. AI is it's causing us to actually not have to think so hard, which for me, I mean, as an intuitive person, I'm here for. I'd rather not have to use my analytical brain when I really want to stay in my intuition. But one thing that it's lost is I've noticed my for many clients, they're showing me what AI is telling them to do. And my gut instinct from doing this industry for so many years is telling me something very, very different. And the one thing that I've noticed with the rise of AI everywhere is that the one thing that it forgets is it always forgets about community. It forgets about the heartbeat of every business, and the heartbeat of that business is always the founder. And the founder sometimes doesn't even know consciously what that heartbeat is. So when ChatGPT comes in and tells them an answer, they think that's their answer and usually it's not. And that's where that's where I come in. 2025. The year I barely showed up on camera consistently, the year that I really focused on communicating and building connection within the BNL team and trying to so hard to pass along wisdom that cannot be written down and cannot be put into an SOP from memory, anyways. Everything I say over the last year has been, oh, yes, that's something that I would usually do. Can you please put that in the SOP document? And slow and steadily our SOPs, which are very important as you scale a business, um, very hard to do. And Trat GPT would never be able to come up with the things that I have been able to pull apart and create and strategize and create systems for for every single client in so many different niches. And with that, has caused me to feel like I don't know what to say, which is why I haven't been consistent on social media. I had a stint where I had some very strong opinions about a few different things, and I really loved showing up for that. But when it came to general social media guidance, strategy advice, and you know, the typical social media management kind of script, it just wasn't quite aligning. I went intuitive, and in the midst of all of that, my team held down the four and created some awesome content as well. But for me, 2025 was the year that I did not show up consistently. However, and this is this is the thing that I always really need to drive home and always drive home to my clients. Every single time we did show up online and did have internal marketing moving, we showed up speaking our truth. Um, and we showed up as authentic as we possibly could. And I showed up authentically as much as I could when I was able to. And BL had the biggest year that we've ever had. And it goes against all of the rules and all of the things that I continue to have to battle on the day-to-day with clients, especially with social media, consistency is so important. It is the foundation. But the first thing that has to be consistent is showing up in my life, in your life, and showing up consistently for your team before focusing on showing up consistently out in the world. And that is what my 2025 was. It was learning how to show up consistently for myself as myself, um, which I would say the last nine years has been a identity like confusion of like who I am versus the version of BL and the unicorn tights wearing gal versus the one that really just wants to hang out in her long blue coat in the woods with no makeup on at all times. And I will not lie that the Taylor Swift launch and everything that Taylor Swift did in this last year really inspired how that can be both. And 2026 is the year that I can start flexing that muscle again and showing up as, well, your chief social media officer. Um, it's a term that I'm not gonna drop. It's the term that is going to be launched in the TEDx that is uh hovering and coming around at some point in the new year here. But first, it's really about that connection to your own life and to your business before focusing on social media and chasing more money and doing all of the things. Um, when you have that foundation of connection with those that are supporting you both personally and professionally, that will allow you to then scale online. And what I do notice is that a lot of people do it backwards. They focus on the outside world first, make sure everything looks the part, make sure everything on the outside is perfect, make sure all of the social media is perfect, make sure that everything looks in alignment, that you are an awesome brand and all of that. But then behind closed doors, your life doesn't feel like the life that you want, and and your business is maybe not doing so hot. But from the outside looking in, it looks like it's doing great. And that's how I navigated the first nine years of my business. From the outside looking in, everyone thought I was really successful. Everyone thought my life was so cool. Everyone, everyone on the outside kept giving me feedback of how amazing things had been, how amazing I had like all of the magic that I had created, the team that I had, the there was an assumption that everything was going like super perfectly fine. And when I closed my laptop, that world wasn't true. BNL had was not had never really done amazingly well. It had grown, but profit was not something that was there. The security and stability in my business, providing that for me, was not there. It has only just arrived in 2025, and I can't believe that I lived in a world where that wasn't something straight out of the gate, but it was my story and it has helped so many. And I was pretty disconnected and pretty lonely for most of that time. And 2025 was the year that I really flipped that. I stopped showing up in places that I didn't feel in alignment or didn't feel like I could be my true self. Relationships ended, both in whatever capacity, friendship, dating, all of that. Those dynamics ended or, you know, slowly came to a close in 2025 when, you know, it just wasn't, there wasn't not an actual connection and a place of like giving and receiving in balance. And I finally, after two years of really taking responsibility for the life that I wanted and the security and stability that I knew I needed in order to become the leader of BNL and the leader of this industry in the way that I truly want to be, I lived with my parents for two years. And that felt like something I couldn't share necessarily on social media because that's not what people talk about. They don't talk about that. They talk about the mansions that they own or the cars that they've bought or the milestones, the financial milestones of the aesthetics of the outs, you know, the external. Um, and for me, I was in a place where I was receiving support from two parents who absolutely loved me and wanted me to win. And for that I am so grateful. And of my sister had a baby, I became an auntie, and none of that I really wanted to put out online, not too much, um, because it was very intimate and it was very, it was the opposite of what the stories that are told out there of like how to build a successful business. And I just 2025 was the year that I finally came to a place where after a lot of after building that security and stability for myself and for my staff, because when BL wasn't in that place, my staff also did not feel safe. The transition was pretty powerful. And now I have moved. Um, I am back living in on my own in my own apartment in beautiful North Vancouver. And BL is growing quite rapidly. And it feels safe to come back and start talking about the journey as we as I navigate from this place of with a strong foundation for me and for my team. And the one lesson that I've learned throughout all of this is that connection and communication that's authentic and vulnerable is what gets you to the other side of what you really truly want. And for that lesson, these last nine years were totally worth it. And that has impacted every area of my life. And it's impacted me as a leader. And I honestly do not know what the next year brings, but I do know that it's more human than ever before. And that's really exciting. And so, what's next in 2026? I don't even know where I'm going with this, but thank you for staying along for the ride. Um, I haven't done a free flow consciousness episode in a long time. What's next is taking this foundation and scaling it up and bringing it out. So now that the connection within BL and within my personal life is just so strong, I feel confident enough to bring that journey back online. And first it starts with the podcast because this is the place where I feel like I can share everything and it is it is my place for my voice. We will have guests, but it'll be very intuitively driven, um, not scheduled. And as always, because for those that know me, um, know that as soon as I feel like there's a schedule, I will do nothing. So there will not be a schedule or a strategy to this podcast, but rather a very intuitive, guided uh drop of episodes, which I know for me will I am feeling into ideally weekly by the end of the year. But it's a muscle that will continue to stretch as we go. And the purpose of Fly Flamingo Fly will be and always will be to support entrepreneurs to take ownership of their business and their social media and to not drop the ball because your dreams are too big to not be seen. And it's why I've chosen the flamingo. The flamingo is the one that stands out amongst the crowd, and every single person that listens to this podcast is the flamingo in their own life, industry, business, or even if you are like work in a company, you are probably an entrepreneur and you still stand out amongst the masses. And so I want to thank you all for listening and continuing to support me throughout all of this time. I BL just hit a milestone, a very big financial milestone, and we are heading towards a seven-figure milestone in 2026. It will just be a measure of how deeply connected we all are together and how deeply connected the team is, and how deeply connected I am with my life as well as my team is with their lives. And the measure of that will on the outside will be that seven-figure milestone. And I can't, could not have done it alone. And one thing that I am supporting all that are deciding to jump into a world that is driven so much by AI is to really hold that human connection and continue to intuitively decide which direction you want to take your business, your marketing, and the life that you are building. And this is something that I continue to learn and be guided on within like the living and balance space. My mentors, I swear, um, if you are a woman in business listening and you are scaling something purpose-driven and it's uh it's a business that has got its own wings and you just feel like you're along for the ride sometimes. This space has been the game changer for me. And so I always have to give credit where credit is due. But if I were to leave with one theme for 2026, it would be stop focusing on the external and start focusing on the internal. And you will find so much more joy and results than you do if you keep focusing on followers, likes, views, engagement, all of that scape crap that is very important in marketing, but it is not important in deciding the success of your company. What is important is how deeply how connected you are to the work that you're doing and the people that are helping you. So that is the wisdom that I got from 2025. And I am so excited to see what 2026 brings. And I shall leave you with that. It has been a ride and an emotional one, but a really good one. And I couldn't have done it without all of the people in my life. And for those that are listening, you know who you are. And here's to a really awesome new year where enter our own era of showing up true to what we believe in and not feeling scared to share our opinions on what really matters most. And with that, I shall leave you until next time, which I'm really excited to continue to find the rhythm. And as Fly Flamingo Fly continues to grow, I always love to hear if you want to leave a review or a comment or share, share anything that you felt inspired to talk about or any results that you've seen from a random thing that I have said. Because normally after I'm done these episodes, I can't remember what I've said at all. But I uh I really hope something resonated for you. And I'm looking forward to continuing to share the journey that is BL as we go from being a quarter of a million, no, quarter, a half a million uh valued revenue, like annual revenue of 500,000 a year to 1 million a year. And that is the purpose of this podcast moving forward is to share how we get to that milestone. And now I shall leave you with that. So wherever you are, if you're walking, chilling on the couch, waking up, about to go to bed, I wish you the best of luck as you continue on your journey. If you are an aspiring entrepreneur, take the leap and fly. If you are an entrepreneur right now, just continue to be the flamming go. Do everything in your power to be different. It is worth it. And I love you. Until next time.