Business Credit vs Personal Credit: How to Scale Safely with Sheila Ann Mac

Kathi: Hi everyone, I'm here with Sheila Ann Mac. She has over 20 years of experience in sales, leadership and personal development. She's a reboot consultant, team leader and mastermind facilitator. Sheila Mac has a passion for helping businesses, teams and individuals achieve their goals, and I am so excited to talk to Sheila about how she gets those teams to meet their desired results, with online courses and trainings and all the things that she does, because she is a busy, busy girl. So thank you, Sheila, for joining me on the show. I so appreciate your time.

Sheila: All right. Thanks for having me, Kathi.

Kathi: Yeah, absolutely. So tell me a little bit about your journey. How did you start doing what you're doing now? What did you do before you started leading teams and that type of thing?

Sheila: Okay, well, we go way back to when I was 23, which was a few minutes ago, and I opened my first gift store in Montrose, California. And the next thing you know, I ended up having five gift stores. The first one I leased out for five thousand dollars a month, which was so much money when you're 23. I don't even know how they gave it to me. And I had negotiated six months of free rent, and when you're 23, six months can be like six years. And all of a sudden the rent is due, and I had to figure out how to make the rent. By the time I hired a marketing consultant, I redid everything in the store. This is a 5,000 square foot store, so it's a dollar a square foot. And so I had to learn everything. And by the time I was done, I decided, okay, when this lease ends, I'm going to start buying my own buildings. I was very successful, and I started purchasing other buildings, and that was paid for by the sales in the store. So that was my first thing. And I was in the Montrose Shopping Park, and I remember everybody was two, three times my age, obviously. And they would say, now how is it you're buying a building? What do you do? What are you doing? And I didn't even know there was such a thing as coaching or consulting. I didn't even know the term. And I was like, let me show you how. And then, for me to get paid, I got my real estate license, and I would help them buy their buildings. And I was still running my stores and buying another building and doing a 1031 exchange. And so that's how I got into consulting before I even knew I was consulting.

That's how I got into consulting before I even knew I was consulting.

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Kathi: That's a pretty amazing story. You were doing what you knew how to do and people were paying you for it, which is the ideal entrepreneurial story, right? Amazing. Okay, so when you got your very first paying coaching client, to show them how to do it, what did it feel like? Where were you in your life at that point, and how did you feel when it happened?

Sheila: It was a dress shop owner. She had a dress shop, and she asked me for help. She was probably two and a half times my age, and she said, I will pay you. I just need your help. How do I market this store better? How do I display things? How do I actually buy a building one day? And that was how I started. And I was like, you're going to pay me for me to talk to you? I've been doing this for free for a while. I had no idea. So it was pretty cool. I was like, I can't believe this lady's going to pay me. That's awesome. So I didn't even know what to charge, what's fair. And I did a percentage deal. I didn't want to charge her. I was like, okay, you make so much, and I want a percentage, because I didn't even know how to figure out what you charge. We didn't have Google back in the day. We were going from DOS to, I had a point of sale maybe the second year in the store. So it was a different time, and you couldn't just go figure things out in a second.

Kathi: But still, taking a piece of the bottom line is also residual income, which was kind of smart of you way back when too.

Sheila: Yeah, I needed all that income, because I was buying the buildings and I was paying them off as quickly as possible. So that was my goal: the ownership.

Kathi: You are so smart. Wow, that's very, very exciting. So if you were to do it all over again, starting from nothing, what would you do, or what would you change?

Sheila: Oh, I would do business credit right away. I kind of fell into that, and I was like, oh my gosh. By the time I was 25, I was able to buy a van for the store and buy the property with the business credit, so it was the lowest interest rate. And having this S corp: somebody had told me, get into the S corp for protection. If somebody falls in your store, oh my gosh, you could lose whatever. So it would just be getting the business credit and separating that. And that was one thing with my clients. They didn't know. I had another very popular store. They sold clothing for teens, and they made a fortune in town. They were there for probably 25 years, and I shopped there when I was a kid and got the Jordache jeans. They were fifty dollars a pair back in the day, and it was a big deal. And so they did really well, but they were using personal credit. So when the husband got sick and they needed to retire, they didn't have the ability to sell their business or move forward, because they kept taking money out of the house to pay for it, and they didn't buy a building or anything. They took the money out of the house to pay for the holiday season, to buy all your merchandise in June. And then for the holidays, you would make all your money back for the year, and then you'd pay down your house again. And then when they got sick and needed to retire, they lost their home too. It was tough. And they said, well, we thought you were such a young one that didn't know what she was doing, but we should have listened. And I was like, oh, well, I didn't even know what I was doing. I just knew that I needed to cover myself and figure out a way to not pay this rent, because rent just kind of goes. In Beverly Hills, it's 20 or 30,000 a month for a store. You're going to rent versus buy, because it's way too expensive. But is it worth you being there? So that's when you have to really see if it pencils for you to have a business where the location is so important.

Kathi: Yeah, absolutely, for retail. Retail is tough anyhow, under normal circumstances.

Sheila: Yeah. So now we're online, and the game changed again.

Kathi: Yeah, that's the one thing about change. It's something you can always count on, isn't it?

Sheila: It was really interesting, because I saw the change and things going online. So I put my stores online, and I was able to make that income plus rent out all my buildings that I had paid off. You know what I mean? So I was able to just be a landlady and travel full-time. I did that when the kids were older, and had a blast.

Kathi: Yeah, that's when I met you, traveling around, being the vagabond that you are.

Sheila: I had to learn how to travel. It was so different for me.

Kathi: Yeah, absolutely. So what do you think? You've been an entrepreneur for a while, and I'm sure you've been up and down a rocky road. If you had a piece of advice for entrepreneurs who want to create more freedom, what would you tell them to do?

Sheila: I would say to diversify: invest in something and diversify your investments to create some passive income. And business credit is the greatest place to start, because without that business credit, you're back to that other story I had, where you're going to go ahead and use your personal credit. To me, personal credit is for emergencies. It's if you need to help your kids or something like that, but it's not really what you want to fund your business with.

To me, personal credit is for emergencies, but it's not really what you want to fund your business with.

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Kathi: Yeah, that's really, really good advice. Definitely. So you're a busy girl. How many companies do you have? What do you have going on here?

Sheila: Oh my gosh. Well, the gift stores, they're online now, and I have somebody that runs those, pretty much one of the kids. So that provides for his house and his family and everything going on with that, and it gives me income as well. And then the properties. So I switched over to real estate, because that's something that I was doing. I had my license, and I was helping other people to buy and do these 1031 exchanges, so you can build up and exchange without paying the capital gains tax. And with that, I didn't even know, again, I didn't realize what I had or what I was doing was such a big deal. Doesn't everybody know this? And so I was invited by eXp Realty to go ahead and teach an online course on commercial investing and 1031 exchanges. And to me, it's like, oh, well, that's like the back of my hand. I know how to do that. That's easy for me. That's like zero effort. And so I'm teaching real estate agents online how to invest for themselves and how to help their clients. And then later I transferred over and work also with Keller Williams in Beverly Hills, and in Vegas as well. So that's just fun, and it's mostly referral work and teaching classes right now.

Kathi: So when you're doing all this stuff and you're busy, busy, busy, what do you do to de-stress whenever you feel overwhelmed and burned out and just ready to say, I've got to do something? What's your go-to hack to de-stress?

Sheila: All right. Well, first of all, everything I do is fun for me. To socialize and help people and talk to people? Okay, I could do that. It's not a problem. That's fun for me. And then I created a lifestyle based on what I wanted and what makes me happy. So my lifestyle design is I have two homes and a beautiful wellness center to go to. And so my de-stress is to go to our events, have fun, go dancing, do fun things like that. It's like a five-star resort at one of my homes, and you can do paddle boarding and go on the boat. So that's my de-stress. And then family time is really important too. And my book is all about this: something happens in life, and it always does, whether it's the coronavirus or some other fun thing going on. Some kind of life shift happens, and it's really about your identity at that moment. It's like, okay, now I get to reinvent myself and my life on my terms. How can I have fun? How can I make life work for me? Because in the end, all that matters is you're happy with family and friends, and everything else is just a bonus. And so that's what I did: just design my life on my terms, and help other people do that.

Now I get to reinvent myself and my life on my terms.

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Kathi: That's a fantastic piece of advice that's never been heard yet on this podcast: design the life of your choice, because it comes back to we are our own boss. So, ladies and gentlemen out there, if you feel like you don't have freedom, you're the one that created that. So you can reinvent, you can recreate, to create more freedom, if that's what you're really craving. And what I find is if you don't have freedom, it's because you're probably not on purpose. And like you said, Sheila, what I do, I love. It's fun. So it's not work, so you have less likelihood to get burned out.

Sheila: Absolutely. It's social time, working with my clients. I get things done, and it really does change things for them. And it's easy, but for me, it's fun. And to see that shift happen is everything. I'm just having fun. It really is. And if I wasn't, I don't need to do it, so I wouldn't do it.

Kathi: Yeah, absolutely. So tell me about your book. How did it start?

Sheila: Oh my gosh. My book started when I had just stopped traveling. I had burnout from traveling full-time for seven years. I had a blast, learned from all the masters, and it was wonderful. And then I was like, I need to have a home again. And so I bought this beautiful home on the beach, in Ventura. Well, I designed the house, I made it beautiful, and it took me about a month. And finally, my daughter was going to move in, and we were going to live at the beach and have this wonderful life. And the night that I was moving in, clients kept me late, and I was like, okay, I just want to go. I had Airbnb rentals, and they had a problem, and it was this whole long story. So when I'm driving home, there's fire everywhere. And I lost the home and the investment and the car and my cat. And I was like, that was a rock bottom for me. I don't have my clothes. I don't have my house. Talk about clearing clutter: there was no clutter left. I mean paperwork, important pictures. Luckily, I had backups of a lot of them, but not everything. And so it was hard. And everybody else was going through the same situation in my area, so it's not like you could just ask for help, because everybody needed more help than I did. I got to stay in this little rental. My vacation rental was full, so I stayed in kind of like the maid's quarters, I guess, where you have all the towels and all. And there was a little bathroom and a little sink, and it was 400 square feet. And I'm like, this is not cool. And then I borrowed a car from one of my sons, and it was this car that drove sideways. This is so stupid. And I'd have to lease out a nice car from Turo for my real estate clients, to figure everything out. And it took about a month and a half. And then I was invited to Beverly Hills to work, and I moved there. And then I got this great deal on this home. So it was all perfect, and even better than what I imagined, and I got to redesign things. I was like, wow, I didn't even know that I wasn't supposed to live in Ventura, I guess. Okay, cool. I'm supposed to go to Beverly Hills, and this beautiful lake vacation home. So that was the shift. And I thought, what would I tell my best friend if they were going through a tough situation like this? How would I help them? So my chapters use a formula for whenever life happens and we have a shift. The first chapter is on grieving and getting back on track through that. And then I go into, if you're getting a divorce, or a relationship, that chapter is Shift or Get Off the Pot, and it's all about: do you stay or do you go? And if you go, how do you reinvent yourself? And there's parenting, and then our whole shift that happens when our children grow up and our identity shifts again, and we don't have the same responsibility we did. Then there's parenting our parents, elder care. That's the time in life where a lot of us are facing that now, and maybe we can't even have them in a care facility, and we've got to have them home. I took care of all my relatives until they passed away, grandparents and this and that. And so that was something I went through, and I was able to speak from my experience in how to do that. And there are so many resources you don't know about until after the fact, or you've spent way too much money trying to help mom or dad. So there are all these different things that happen in life, and they happen to everyone. And so it's, how do you get through it? So I use this formula, and the last chapter is lifestyle design. So whatever happened or is happening, it's really, okay, let's redesign your life. Reinvent yourself on your terms.

What would I tell my best friend if they were going through a tough situation like this?

Kathi: Wow, that's an amazing book. Everybody should pick that up. We're going to put the link to it down below in the show notes so that you can buy it. What's the website where they could go to also check it out?

Sheila: Okay, yes. So I have a free gift for all your listeners. If you go to www.sheilamac.com, that's S-H-E-I-L-A M-A-C, sheilamac.com/freegift, there you will have a free introduction to the Boots Formula, as well as the Boots meditation.

Kathi: I love it. I love it. It's funny that you talk about shift a lot. I almost named this podcast Shift Happens, because it's really about change. What do you do when things happen and you have to change? How do you change with grace? How do you reinvent? Just like in my background, which we talked about a little bit, when we lost our company, and when you lost your house, it's like, okay, so now you have this space. You have this vacuum of free space and free time and freedom in your mind, actually, because it's all like a boom. Okay, reset. It's actually a gift that is given to us, I think, at certain times during our life when we need it. We need that little clickety shift to pop us into action. And I highly recommend that all of you grab the free resource, because Sheila knows what she's talking about. She walks her talk, girls and guys. She totally knows how to help you go up by your bootstraps and regain and reset and revitalize your life. Obviously, you're walking your talk, because you love your life and you're cranking out and you're doing amazing things.

Sheila: Thank you. Thank you.

Kathi: Well, I really appreciate your time on the show. Make sure to grab the resource. And I wish you no more fires.

Sheila: Yes.

Kathi: But reinvent and reinvent and reinvent, because that's what it's all about.

Sheila: Thank you. Thank you again, Kathi, for having me on the show.

Kathi: Absolutely. Sheila, take care of yourself.

Sheila: All right. Bye-bye.

Kathi: And for you listeners, I will see you next time around. And thanks, Sheila.