Have you ever had something really stressful or bad happen, only for you to realize it actually was the best thing that could have happened? I’m willing to be you have. We’ve all had those moments. And This is exactly what happened to me during my 5-week podcasting hiatus. Today, I’m going to share with you what’s happened in my life over the past 5 weeks and how a super stressful situation turned into the best possible scenario. And maybe, just maybe even turn it into a little lesson about how the universe works.
“Sometimes when something really undesirable, stressful, bad happens, it is on the path to getting to the good, the better situation.” – Shawn Mynar
“What’s really going on is just part of the experience, it’s just one thing that is happening in this grand scheme of life that is getting you to what you desire.” – Shawn Mynar
“The universe is always working for you.” – Shawn Mynar
“The things that didn’t work, the pivots, the ‘failures’ all of these things, looking back at them now, every single one of them happened in order for me to get where I needed to go. They were all part of my journey that got me what I wanted.” – Shawn Mynar
“Having that unshakeable confidence, that unshakeable knowing that even though you can’t feel it or see it or experience it yet, it still is there, it still is on it’s way.” – Shawn Mynar
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
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Have you ever had something really stressful or kind of bad happen only for you to realize after the fact that it actually was the best thing that could have happened? I’m willing to bet you have because we’ve all had those moments. This is exactly what happened to me during my five week podcasting hiatus that I am now coming out of. And today, I want to share with you what’s been going on in my life over the past five weeks, and how a super stressful situation turned into the best possible scenario. And maybe, maybe I can find some sort of lesson in this about how the universe works and how we can apply this to our businesses. So let’s dive in.
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Hey, there, I’m Shawn Mynar, and this is unstuck entrepreneur. I’m a former nutritionist who turned a struggling stressful nutrition practice into a thriving, Freedom filled online business way work from home in my sweatpants while reaching and helping 1000s of people all at the same time. Now I’m obsessed with showing other heart centered coaches, practitioners and solopreneurs how to build a business and life they love. Consider this podcast your safe space to learn both the inner work and practical strategies required to build the impactful profitable business of your dreams, no hustle, grind, or long hours required. That’s right hustle culture, not welcome here. Let’s get into today’s session.
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Hey, hey there, friends. Welcome back to the unstuck entrepreneur podcast. So happy to have you here grateful for your support of the show. And I’m back after five weeks that honestly went by extremely fast. As I think you all know, I took five weeks off of podcasting entirely, creating new shows for you, and instead replayed some past episodes that were best of episodes. But now I’m back, I’m refreshed, I’m ready, we have a whole new batch of podcast episodes to go, we’ve got a lot to talk about. And starting with today’s episode, which is something I don’t do a lot of here on the show, which is just basically sharing a personal story. But there is, as always a bigger lesson to it. And I think something that we should all be thinking about when it comes to our life and also more specifically our business because that’s what we talk about around here. But wanted to bring this story to the show, to be totally honest, because I just have yet to have found a place where I can just share this whole story. It’s a long one. There’s a lot of nooks and crannies to the story. And it just doesn’t make for a good Instagram story. Like no one wants to flip through 75 slides of me talking. That’s not what we do over on Instagram, is it. So bringing it to the show, because you guys are my people, you guys will understand at minimum, you’ll get a good story out of this. You’ll know what’s going on with me. And we’ll also get into that lesson that I think is really important for us all to consider. All right, what’s happened over the past five weeks in my life. I can tell you that. Five weeks ago, when I last was on this Mike did not remotely expect for what happened to have happened. And to be honest, I probably wouldn’t share this story. I mean, it’s not that big of a deal. Except that it is almost unbelievable how everything lined up perfectly in our favor. Even though it was like total disaster, terrible situation super stressful, not at all what we expected or wanted to happen. But I just have to share it because of all of the things lining up that so clearly show how the universe is always working in our favor. Even when it doesn’t seem like it even though it seems like things are going all wrong. So here’s a little backstory before we get into what’s happened over the past five weeks. If you’ve been following along on my journey for a while and specifically my health journey. I’ve been basically an open book about my health and the struggles I’ve had with my health since gosh, probably when I started my business so 2013 been a super open book. I have blog posts, I have podcast episodes going back seven almost eight years now sharing about my health stuff. So a lot of you probably already know this story, but for those that don’t I have in the past gotten very very sick from living
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You’re in a home that had a toxic mold. In 2013, there was a really bad flood here in Boulder, Colorado where I live. And the house that I was living in at that time flooded along with like the vast majority of houses in Boulder like it was really bad. And it was a house I was renting, I actually was, had the basement bedroom, I was living with two other girls, I had the basement bedroom. And that’s what was flooded. So I moved out of the basement for a while they remediated. And because of just the sheer number of people that needed help, and just not having enough people to do that work. It wasn’t remediated properly, it was the left kind of unattended and wet for a while. And so naturally mold forums, even when you do think that you remediate correctly. And so in 2014, about probably three or four months after that whole process, I started getting really sick, super random symptoms, nothing made sense. I was eating really well, I was working out really well, I was doing all the things I was already very, very interested in holistic health. So I was already doing all these things. And just, I was developing autoimmune diseases, I was gaining a bunch of weight, I had brain fog, I had joint pain, just the worst fatigue ever. And so all these things were happening. And it didn’t make sense, I finally found out in 2015, that it was from living in toxic mold. And more importantly, again, this is 2015. So this is two years after that flood. And after all this started and there was a bunch of me going to doctors and doing all these things and trying all these tests and trying to figure it out. Finally, I found a doctor who figured it out. More importantly, they figured out that I have what is known as chronic inflammatory response syndrome. And that it comes from having this basically genetic trait where my body can’t properly detox from bio toxins, which are things like mold. And so instead of it being, you know, the majority of humans, they get exposed to mold, maybe they have a mold, allergy, maybe they their body just doesn’t like that situation. And they start sneezing or coughing or wheezing or having these kinds of symptoms, I didn’t have any of that, as I explained, my symptoms were very random. But the vast majority of people, they remove themselves from that situation, their bodies detox, and they go back to normal, they don’t feel sick anymore. My body and about 25% of population who have this genetic trait,
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doesn’t detox doesn’t understand that and instead goes into this hyper inflammatory response that causes all of these kinds of crazy symptoms. That’s just like a few of the many, many, many symptoms that chronic inflammatory response syndrome can cause. And so figured all this out, went through this insane protocol, it took about a little over a year for me to start feeling better. I mean, it was 1000s and 1000s of dollars to heal, because this is not something that’s recognized by, you know, traditional medicine, and so not coming out of my insurance, but instead coming out of my pocket and had to actually go into debt, trying to get better from that, which was right before I created fat burning female project, my first signature program and was able to pay off that debt, which was amazing. But anyway, since finding out about this situation, I have this illness what I am prone to, I have moved four times from mold alone, it is a really big deal. Because if I’m living in mold, I obviously get really sick, like I can’t function kind of sick. And there are a lot of water damaged buildings in this world a lot way more than you think. So it’s really scary. It’s really something that you have to be on top of you have to do the right testing and inspecting. It’s really hard to find a place to live. And it’s really hard to you know, when you’re in this market, which we were in where you have to basically decide if you want to put an offer on a home before you like within 1015 minutes before you even have a chance to like think about it. That made it impossible for us to buy a home because I need to be able to have it mold inspected and I haven’t really inspected well and do all this stuff before I can make that decision and just couldn’t do it. So that was a big
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reason why we were not able to purchase a home, which is actually part of this story. And also important to note, my wife Kristen has this same thing. She has the same genetic trait. And actually she is in the middle of and was doing for about six months, the mold protocol that super like intense, expensive mold protocol to try to get better because she has lived in mold. And finally, finding out that she also has this genetic situation, chronic inflammatory response syndrome. This is why she hasn’t felt like herself in years, and started going through the protocol. So that is the backstory. Now bringing us up a little closer to present day. Also, a lot of you know that we had a whole big living situation fiasco not too long ago. So in 2021, sold our condo because we needed more space, and couldn’t find a place to live. Because partially of that whole situation of needing time to be able to test things and make sure it’s not moldy before we move in. And that was just part of it. There was also like no inventory, it was around that time where like real estate was insane. So we had to move in with my mother in law, which was not great. It was in a different part of the state that we were not big fans of. And also, you’re living with your mother in law, which we had a entire floor to ourselves, it was about the best situation that it could have been for that. But it wasn’t ideal, of course. And we ended up living there for nine months until we could find a place to live back here in Boulder finally found that place had it mold tested. Although we’ll put in parentheses here we were in Costa Rica on our honeymoon, while all of this was happening, but we had tested we moved in, and we spent six months getting settled in. So when we sold the condo, we also sold most of our furniture, either the buyer of the condo, wanted it and sold it to her or sold it to other people. So we were pretty much furniture lists, because again, we were moving in with my mother in law already had all the furniture didn’t have space to store all of our furniture. So we’ve sold almost all of it. So we’re starting from scratch in this new place. And so spent six months like figuring out what furniture we wanted, waiting for it to ship and get here, organizing everything, buying all the decor, like we didn’t have anything, we’re starting from scratch, and it took a while. So when we moved in not too long after we moved in, we noticed that there were some holes that needed to be patched and painted from people that had previously lived there, the landlord didn’t take care of it. That’s no big deal, we can do it. So we asked the landlord about getting some paint, and he said he had some stored in the crawlspace. And to use that, well, we had just organized everything, we had tons of stuff that we were storing over the door to the crawlspace, it was in a storage closet. And we’d already filled that closet with stuff and there were like shelves on top of the crawlspace store because we weren’t planning on accessing it ever. And so just Let’s cover it up. Let’s use that space. And so since we didn’t want to open that door, we and you don’t have to take out all of our stuff from this closet, we asked for the colors. So we could just go get some new paint from the store. Turns out, we go to multiple stores. And this is all over the course of weeks and months to be honest. And nobody offers that color paint and anything less than a gallon. And we don’t need a big gallon. We just need like a sample to paint the patched places this point, which there were actually quite a few especially for moving into a place that that should have been taken care of. But that’s beyond the scope of this story. But not enough that we would need this big amount of paint and we don’t want to bill our landlord for it. We don’t want to pay for ourselves. So we keep putting it off and putting it off and putting it off. And so this repair that should have happened in like March or April. Still hasn’t been done come August. But now we have company coming in. This is August like last month if you’re listening to this remotely close to when it airs. Now we have company coming to stay with us and we don’t want these patches to be unpainted for our company. And also my wife had put like the little blue painters tape like little patches of that so that she could remember where all of the holes were. So we’d been living with like blue painters tape little spots over her entire place for months, and finally decided we should probably take care of that. So we decide we’re just going to have to go into this
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crawlspace for the paint, we have to take everything out of the closet, get into the crawlspace get the paint and paint everything before our company comes.
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Kristen heads into the crawlspace, only to find quite a bit of standing water.
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Concerned, obviously, we text our neighbor, hey, is this normal? Is this ever happened to you, of course, she’s like, No, not normal, you need to get someone out ASAP. So we have the plumber come out a few days later. And he is able to find that the standing water is coming from a pipe where are actually around a pipe that their air conditioning condensation should be going into. But it has been not set up properly from the time that the air conditioner was installed, which was years ago, wasn’t set up properly for it to actually drain into the drain. Instead, it’s like the pipes a little bit short. So it drains around the drain doesn’t go actually into the other pipe goes around it. And the floorboard is soaking wet around it. And so wet that is now dripping into the crawlspace. Because this is had been happening all summer as we’ve been running our air conditioner. So upon a learning of this, you know, and just sidenote, our landlord isn’t concerned doesn’t think it’s a problem thinks it’s just gonna dry up no big deal. So that was a Thursday, I immediately make an appointment for the mold inspectors to come out Monday. So then over the weekend, before the mold inspectors come out, but after we know that there’s a serious problem, and I have like high high high suspicions that mold is growing. There, we see that there is an open house across the street. There’s a townhouse just like ours, the one that we’re renting, that is for sale. And being the nosy people that we are we go into the open house because we’re curious to see how they’ve redone it looked on Zillow could see that, from the pictures that things looked really nice and comparison to ours. And they had definitely done some remodeling recently. And so I was curious to see like how it looked in person. So we head into this open house. And it just so happens that no one else is there, it’s totally quiet. We get to talking with the realtor, we spend like probably 20 minutes, telling her basically her whole life story, and all about this mold stuff. And what we found that past week that was going on and our landlords response and how we think it’s mold, and we don’t know what we’re going to do and all this stuff. So we go into all of this, we just totally talk your ear off to the point where I apologize for talking her ear off. But she was really great and super nice and really interested in what we had to say. Anyway, Monday rolls around, mold inspector comes over, and confirms that there is definitely mold growing in that situation. Not sure what kind of mold not sure how severe but can confirm there’s definitely mold like growth, which means we need to act fast because both of us could get sick could get worse. You know, Kristen has been on this protocol and not getting better. So now that makes a ton of sense. So we basically have two options in this scenario either. It needs to be properly remediated and fast. And the word proper here is really important because with people who get as sick as we do in this situation, you have to take extreme care for it to not get into the rest of the house for it to not be made worse for to not spread all this stuff. And there are very few companies who actually do it the right way. And so that needs to happen. We need to take proper remediation protocols seriously, or we need to get out. Those are our two options in this scenario. We can’t live with it. We can’t make it work for a while. It has to happen fast before we get sick. So as soon as I find this out as soon as the mold inspector who I’m actually like friends with at this point, because I’ve used him so often. And he knows my whole situation and everything. I text Kristen, who was at work, and I tell her Yep, it’s mold. We don’t know how bad it is or what kinds or anything like that yet, but we can confirm that that is what’s going on here. An hour later. She texts me back and says that she has emailed the realtor that we met on
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Saturday at the place across the street, just to see if the owners would remotely consider renting their unit to us for a few years. And I guess I should mention here that we loved that place when we went in for the open house, it was like so beautiful it had been so well maintained, it had been recently renovated, with the idea that the owners were going to live here. So not like a flip, but an actual redo in the best way possible. And then they unexpectedly had to move. And so it just was such an awesome place. And we’re like, gosh, we really could potentially buy this. But you know, it’s not 100%. It’s not like exactly what we would want if we were buying. But gosh, it would be great to rent that place. And so she tried, she just put it out, just to see what would happen, sent the email, not expecting to get anything in return. But the realtor actually emailed right back, and said she was always working in the best interest for her clients and see how this could be a really good opportunity for them, they had just bought the place. So I’m holding on to it a little longer would make a lot of sense for them financially. And she said she would talk it over with them and let us know,
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then come to find out probably maybe 24 hours later, they agreed to consider it and wanted to keep it on the market for one more week. And if it didn’t sell in that week, it was ours. So while this is happening, we get the mold report back super high levels, it’s bad, it’s not a good situation. The mold inspection report has a list of every single thing that we need to do considering our chronic inflammatory response syndrome. And what needs to be properly remediated, extend it all to the landlord doesn’t agree to remediate in the way that we need it done. doesn’t think it’s a big deal. XYZ. Very, very grateful that he offered to let us out of our lease at that point, once he realized we had a bigger situation on hand than he wanted to deal with. So the next weekend rolls around, there’s another open house at the place across the street, tons of people show up, you know, we’re kind of watching because now we have a stake in the game. We’re watching to see who comes in and how interested they seem. And it was a busy day for that place. But for whatever reason, no one placed an offer.
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So they called us the next day and agreed to rent it to us, they had already moved out everything was ready to go. So there could be a really quick turnaround, I believe it was probably like a week and a half from the time that they agreed to until we moved in. And also our current landlord allowed us to have a five day overlap with the old place so that we would have time to move because the biggest hardest thing when you are someone who has chronic inflammatory response syndrome, and you have been exposed to mold, and all of your belongings have been exposed to mold, that they all need to be cleaned or trashed. So not only did we have to move all of our belongings across the street, we also had to clean them all. You know, we set up our carport at the old place as our cleaning station, we had to clean them all wipe them all down, wash them in the washing machine, depending on what it was clean everything before we can move it over. And that takes time. So we needed every ounce of those five days to be able to do that. And of course, our new landlords were super nice. And let us get in early over here too. And so it all just worked out so perfectly well we didn’t end up getting a new mattress and a new couch. So those things were some kind of losses we had, they were both six months old, because like I said we’d gotten all new furniture when we came over here but just not worth it to take that chance for something that you can’t really clean in places where we spend a significant amount of time like eight to nine hours a night sleeping on a mattress, want to make sure that that’s as clean and as safe as possible. And then you know, spending an hour or two a day on the couch or whatever. Wanted to make sure that that was a safe place to so I guess we can put a bow on this story here. As you probably have guessed, we moved and we are now are in a new townhouse that is actually part of the same complex that we were in and that was really important because the two things we love the most were the location of
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where we were, and the layout of the place. So it’s a very similar layout and works really well for our family. And we’re moved in, we’re almost kind of organized, not 100%, yet still waiting on that couch to be delivered. So don’t have our, you know, living area set up yet, but we’re getting there. And it’s so much better. I guess I also should mention, we did have this place, mold inspected before we agreed to move in. And actually, that was at the request of the landlord. So the new landlord wanted us to get this place inspected before we agreed to rent here, just to make sure it was going to be safe for us, which just says so much about the situation that we’re in now compared to the last situation. And so that was really meaningful to us, but came back totally 100%, clear and safe and great and wonderful. As I said, it’s been well maintained and well cared for. And that makes a really big difference for people like us. So we’re happy. This is by far, like 1000 times over a better situation. And it was meant to work out this way. And it just took a really kind of stressful situation in order to get here. And I think that’s the lesson I want to leave you with as part of this story. Because let’s think about this, let’s go back and recap all of the things that had to line up for this to work out in the best possible way. First of all, if we would have gotten the paint out of the crawlspace, when we actually needed it, which was like March and March, probably, it would have still been winter here. And we would not have run the air conditioner yet. And we would have never known there was a problem. So we would have continued living in that place for who knows how long with this mold situation going on that you can’t see visibly, it’s going on kind of underneath the surface and in the crawlspace, which we would never ever go into if we didn’t need that paint. And if we would have gone in when we actually needed it, we would still have never known. So the fact that we tried all of these other scenarios to not have to go into the crawlspace still ended up having to do it. But it being summer made all the difference it made it so that we were able to recognize this problem. If we didn’t go to the open house that weekend for no reason. We typically always want to go into open houses, but we never do because we have stuff going on. It’s the weekend we’re out doing things we’re out living our lives. So for us to be home and to just like walk into this open house across the street is all part of the alignment. If we didn’t strike up a conversation with the realtor and tell us tell her our whole life story and how we’re living in mold and how we’re sensitive to mold, and it makes us really sick and all this stuff. If anyone else would have been in at that open house. In that moment, we wouldn’t have done that. If Kristen didn’t have the guts to email the realtor once we found out our situation. And if they wouldn’t have been interested in renting if they really needed to sell this place. If they found a buyer in that time that we were kind of in this interim time where they were still we’re going to see what happened. And we weren’t sure if they would rent it to us or not, if they would have found a buyer in that time. There were so many things that had to line up exactly perfectly. In order for this really bad, stressful situation that we did not see coming we did not want in order for that to become the best possible thing that could have happened for our living situation for our lives. And in order for us to get on with our lives and feel comfortable and safe and healthy. For the long term. This all had to happen exactly as it did. And so that’s the lesson I guess I want to leave you with is sometimes and I don’t even want to say sometimes I want to say the vast majority of times if not all times, when something really undesirable, stressful, bad happens.
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It is on the path to getting to the good, the better situation what you do want how you do want things to play out. It’s part of the process. It’s getting you into alignment. And so for us, we label that as bad, stressful. Unwanted
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frustrating,
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you know, a failure, all these things that we have told ourselves over the years. But that’s just us labeling it, what’s really going on is just what’s going on. It’s just part of your experience. It’s just one thing that is happening in this grand scheme of life, that is getting you to what you desire, because the universe is always working for you. And obviously, this is such a crazy, huge life lesson, but let’s apply it to business. When I think about my business, and the crazy ups and downs I’ve had over the years, and there have been some really, really awesome highs and some really, really low lows, the things that didn’t work, the pivots, the quote, unquote, failures, all of these things, and looking back at them now, every single one of them happened in order for me to get where I needed to go. They were all part of my journey. That got me what I wanted. Even if it didn’t feel like that at the time, even though it’s impossible to know where that situation is going to lead you to a better situation that is coming. They all still have a purpose. And the same goes for you too. I know, it’s hard to see in the moment. I know the default for all humans, is to get wrapped up in these undesirable situations, get wrapped up in the achiness of those moments, how much it sucks how disappointing it is how it feels like, it’s never going to happen, feels like you’re doing all this work for nothing like we can really snowball into this place, especially when it comes to business and, and work and trying to build a business and build a life around your business and all these things. But what if we were, as humans having this experience, to walk around, always knowing, always understanding, always having this unshakable confidence that it’s all working out for us.
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But it’s all part of the process. That is all part of the journey, that it’s all part of the plan. And you get to decide whether you see that as something that is terrible as a failure. As you know, work that’s not being seen, as things that are disappointing are never going to happen. You get to decide how you see each scenario, each situation. And what if instead, you know, that that is part of your story, that is getting you where you want to go. Having that unshakable confidence that unshakable knowing that even though you can’t feel it, or see it or experience it yet, it still is there, it still is going to happen. It still is on its way. What if we just could know that. And if I think back, you know, the second we find out that all of this is happening. We’re like, oh my gosh, what are we going to do? How are we going to find another place to live this quickly? There’s no way that this is going to work out like you. We all do? I do. I’m fully admit that I was in that place where, you know, in that timeframe, I didn’t know what was going to happen. I was freaking out. Where are we going to live? How are we going to know it’s safe? It is really hard to find a place to live around here. And just having to go through that whole process again, oh, my gosh, we can move everything again. Oh my gosh, did ended up going down this hole. Right. And that’s just the normal human experience. It’s like what we are conditioned to do. And yet, what if from the very beginning, I and you and we all know that? Yes, this thing is happening. This is part of it. And I’m going to move along with it. And yes, I’m going to have emotions about it. And yes, I’m going to feel those emotions and just experienced the range of everything. And also, I’m going to still have that knowing that it’s all going to work out. So I guess that’s what I want to leave you with because I think you know, if you really think about this, you can come up with multiple examples of this in your own life how something really bad, really unwanted happened, but then out of it came a really amazing opportunity or experience that you just had to go through that muck in order to get to and sure there will be some things that that opportunity hasn’t come about yet. Maybe you’re currently in the muck. But what if then you can transition that and and what’s in yours
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So headspace about it into knowing that from the muck, comes the magic, Hey, I just made that up. I really like that. I’m gonna coin it, I’m gonna put it on Instagram, from the muck comes the magic. And if you can stay in that place and just own it, just own that MCC and experience it and know that something really awesome on its way because of it. All right friends, I’ll leave you with that. Thank you so much for letting me vent about my story and what has been going on the past few weeks and how crazy it was I just needed a place to vent and uh, you all were the people that had to go through it. But don’t worry, we’ll be back to talking and mindset and business and energy and all that amazing stuff that we do here on unstuck entrepreneur. I’m excited to be back. I’m excited for the future episodes, we’ve got a lot to cover. So if you’re not already, make sure you subscribe to the show, so you don’t miss an episode. They come out every Wednesday, and until next time, take care. Hey friend, real quick before you go, don’t forget to head over to my website and take the quiz to find out your solopreneur personality type. I’ve created a super fun super informative two minute quiz that will show you which one of the four solopreneur personality types you fall into. Could it be the boss, the socialite, the visionary or the supporter? Which one are you? Not only is it just fun to know more about yourself, especially as it relates to your business, but it’s also really important information so you can be sure that you’re building a business that works for you, based on your energy, your personality, and your desires. Did you ever take those quizzes from the Cosmopolitan magazine back in the day? It’s kinda like that, but with actual solid questions and real helpful tips and advice at the end, you can find the What’s your solopreneur personality type quiz right on the homepage of my website at Shawnmynar.com head there now to take the quiz then let me know over on Instagram at unstuck entrepreneur, what your type is I’ll see you over there
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