On this episode of Entrepreneur’s Enigma, host Seth sits down with Shana Francesca, a life designer, speaker, life coach, and entrepreneur. Shana has been an interior designer for 17 years and has been doing life design work for a few years as well. Shana and Seth discuss the value of coaching aspect in interior design work, and how being an entrepreneur is tough when working primarily on your own. Shana emphasizes the importance of our orientation to space with respect to energy we wish to bring in our lives. They stress upon the fact that we need to interact with the environment in a way that reflects our ecosystem rather than making it industrialized or sterile. Mental health is impacted by the interior environment and studies during the pandemic show that happiness is directly tied to it. Listen in to learn more about Shana’s work and her goal to help more people understand the connection between intentional living, leadership, and interior design.

Key Moments

01:18 – Life design is about intentional living and leadership, not just in personal life.

08:33 – Mainstream media lacks nuance in portraying interior design accurately.

09:32 – Each client’s interior design journey is unique and deeply nuanced.

10:00 – The best thing about being an entrepreneur is the ability to pivot and explore.

10:16 – Being an entrepreneur allows for personal growth and better client service.

12:29 – Valuing people and paying them well is essential for success as an entrepreneur.

12:36 – The power of valuing people keeps the speaker up at night, deeply nuanced.

16:17 – Our actions have a ripple effect, embracing nuance and accountability is crucial.

16:55 – Curiosity is essential, but society often discourages it, hindering authenticity.

Find Shana Online:

https://www.concinnate.world/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/shana-francesca-36b79217/

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Transcript (Provided by CastMagic.io)

Seth [00:00:00]:

Entrepreneurs Enigma is a podcast for the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, for the wins and the fails that we all face. Be entrepreneurs. How we learn from adversity. Every week, I talk to a different entrepreneur with a story to tell. I’m Seth Goldstein. Come with me on the journey. This is Entrepreneurs Enigma. Let’s get started. You. Hey, everyone. Welcome to another edition of the Entrepreneurs Enigma podcast. I’m Seth, as always, and I’m here with Shayna, Francesca, and can you see the name of your company? Because I’m going to screw it up.

Shana [00:00:43]:

It’s okay.

Seth [00:00:44]:

Consonate at consonate world. So she upon herself to go into those cooled suffixes.

Shana [00:00:51]:

Right? Exactly. Yeah.

Seth [00:00:53]:

I didn’t want to screw it up, and I was like, Consnate? Yeah, it’s better safe than sorry. Sheena is a life designer, a life coach, a writer, a speaker, and we made on Pod Match, which was really cool. I tried this out because I don’t really have a problem getting people on the podcast, but I was like, Let me try this out. And she popped up as a match. And I’m like, oh, she sounds interesting. Let’s talk. So we talked beforehand, and she guess what? She’s dull. No, she’s very interesting.

Shana [00:01:24]:

Super dull. There’s nothing interesting about me at all.

Seth [00:01:27]:

Nothing. You should see her about page. It’s a long bio of stuff. So, Sheena, how’s it going?

Shana [00:01:34]:

Good. Now that we’re on here. Technical issues.

Seth [00:01:38]:

Technical issues. Oh, my goodness. It’s what we call Murphy’s Law when it comes to podcasting. All that good stuff. But in the end, that’s the podcasting. This is not NPR. This is for this is fun. We enjoy it and all that. So what is life design?

Shana [00:01:57]:

Yeah, life design is about intentional living and leadership. And I phrase it that way specifically because whenever I say intentional living, people’s minds on going to one specific place, their minds typically go to their personal life. Right.

Seth [00:02:14]:

Makes sense. Yeah.

Shana [00:02:14]:

But we are living while we’re working, right?

Seth [00:02:18]:

Well, we sometimes feel like we’re dead.

Shana [00:02:20]:

Right. We don’t feel that way. It doesn’t feel that way, which is why I phrase it intentional living and leadership. Because the intentional living part is for all of us, and the leadership part is for all of us. I want people to be able to see that connection between those two things. And that’s what my work is about. Because even if we don’t lead a company or we don’t lead a team or any of those things, we still lead ourselves.

Seth [00:02:39]:

Yes, absolutely.

Shana [00:02:40]:

And it’s really important to see it that way. And so life design is intentional leading and leadership and living.

Seth [00:02:47]:

So on your website over at Consonate World, you have a bunch of different stuff. It looks like you do some interior design for the office and for making it intentional. It’s intentional. It’s not just your computer on a desk. It’s meant to be intentional life. You’re leaving with living work, living life with a purpose, which I really like because it’s not just kind of all thought provoking, all in the brain hoohah, that kind of stuff. It’s everything.

Shana [00:03:18]:

It’s everything. It’s everything. The nuance of being alive. The nuance of being human and being alive. Yeah.

Seth [00:03:24]:

That’s cool. So how long have you been at this for?

Shana [00:03:27]:

So I’ve been an interior designer for 17 years, and my interior design work yeah, I know that’s it just a few years, and then my interior design work has led me to my life design work because many of my clients. Like, one of my clients is the head of Neuro, anesthesiology at UPenn. And he was telling everyone that I was his interior designer and life coach. But see, there always was this aspect of coaching to my work. I just didn’t recognize that other people saw the value in it. I saw the value in it. I just didn’t know that they captured it quite so clearly. And the minute that someone vocalized that and recognized it in a way that I was like, oh, they do see it.

Seth [00:04:10]:

Oh, you’re onto something. Yeah.

Shana [00:04:12]:

Then I was like, okay, so I can continue to build on this aspect of my work because I can only work with so many people as an interior designer. Right. And I trained other designers below me going to continue in this work. But it’s a whole mind shift, right. So to be able to train someone as a life designer and do interior design work for me takes, like, two to three years of training.

Seth [00:04:35]:

Wow.

Shana [00:04:36]:

Right. Because it’s first a mental shift, and then it’s a design shift. And it’s like a retraining of how you look at what interior design is. Because interior design is for me, it is a reflection of who we are internally. Right. It’s not meant to be a function of marketing. It’s not meant to be what you see on HDTV. It’s not meant to be a regurgitation of somebody else’s space. It’s meant to be a mirror of who you are on the inside. And then it becomes even more nuanced when there’s multiple people living inside of a home or working inside of a space. When you’ve got a corporate environment, when I’ve equal parts corporate clients and personal clients, that’s awesome when it comes to all aspects of my work. And so there was this deep, like, okay, I’m only one person. I can only take on so many interior design clients, but I can lead workshops, speak at conferences, speak in front of corporations, speak in front of networking groups, all these things. And talk about intentional living and leadership and intentional interiors and people to be able to begin to understand the nuance and the connection between all those things in a much more powerful way with a hell of a lot more people at the same time.

Seth [00:05:53]:

We’re going to take a quick break here from our sponsors and get right back to the show? Yeah, absolutely. It’s incredible looking at what you’re doing when you think about interior people don’t think about interior design, let’s be frank, most people don’t.

Shana [00:06:07]:

People don’t think about interior design as something deeply important for their mental health. They do not. And yet there’s studies that show that it is.

Seth [00:06:14]:

There is feng shui.

Shana [00:06:15]:

Yes. So ancient practices of feng shui and there’s an Ayurvedic practice, the name just left my head as soon as we started talking about feng shui it’ll come up, it’ll come up, it’ll come back. But there’s an ancient Indian practice as well, I think predates feng shui but please don’t quote me on that.

Seth [00:06:35]:

We won’t it’s only being recorded but.

Shana [00:06:37]:

We won’t quote you on it. Right, but these ancient practices talk about our orientation to our space and its reflection of the energy we’re wishing to bring more of into our lives and the way that we interact with our environment and the way that we are. Because as human beings, I think we continually forget that we are part of nature and that we are part of an ecosystem and that our environment is meant to be a reflection of that ecosystem. It’s not meant to be the sterile industrialized version of a home. Our home is supposed to be a reflection of who we are and it is meant to support us, not us support it. Our interior environments, period, are meant to support us, not us to support them. And I think too often they are way too sterile and we don’t recognize the deep impact of our mental health and there’s been studies that came out specifically during the pandemic that showed that our happiness is directly tied to our interior environment.

Seth [00:07:34]:

That is kind of true, because I work in my basement, so there’s not much feng shui going on down here. But the fact that I go into Ikea, what it is, and put up bookshelves behind me makes me feel a little bit better because it’s like it’s not just a tarp or a backdrop.

Shana [00:07:54]:

It’s like this is actually yeah, it’s a real thing.

Seth [00:07:56]:

It’s a real thing. Like this book there, if I back up too fast, things fall down. This happened. I’ve gone up to stand up on my standing desk and things fall down is a physical manifestation of my background, of what I convey and I love that and it’s really cool. So have you always been an entrepreneur or have you worked interior design for a company before?

Shana [00:08:19]:

Yeah, I worked for other people for a really long time, for twelve years and then I was like there was no room for me to design the way that I knew that I wanted to, the way that I knew that I needed to. There was no room for the way that I thought about interior design and now there was much more conversation about it and by more I mean there’s some conversation about what I’m talking about. But it’s still not pervasive. It’s still not trickled down to what we understand and consume every single day. Because most people are connecting with interior design through HDTV or through what they see on Netflix or those things.

Seth [00:09:01]:

Reality TV.

Shana [00:09:02]:

Yeah. Right. And that is not real. Right. Besides the fact we get to have a whole conversation about the budgets and how those are supplemented. And those are close to real, number one. Number two is that oftentimes because they’re working within a tight schedule, there isn’t deep nuance in the way that they’re designing. They’re also because they’re creating themselves as a design brand. They are creating a branded look rather than creating a unique look for every single client. And when you look at my portfolio on my website, every single project is very different from each other. And it’s very different because each person I work with is deeply nuanced and different from each other. And so it’s not about me. I function as the mirror for my clients, reflecting. I see them as whether we’re having a conversation about intentional living and leadership or we’re talking specifically about their interiors. But part of intentionally living is the interior environment which you surround yourself with. So, again, I always come back to all these things work together. They are, in fact, not separate, and in my mind, cannot be separated.

Seth [00:10:15]:

Love it. So what is the best thing about being an entrepreneur, now that you answered it, but I guess you can say it again. What’s the best thing about being an entrepreneur? Since you’re not a cog anymore?

Shana [00:10:27]:

Yeah. The best thing about being an entrepreneur is also sometimes the toughest thing is being able to pivot whenever you need to and when your own growth has gotten you to a place where you can’t continue to keep doing things the way that you were doing and to be able to have the flexibility to be able to just pivot and explore and to be an explorer within your own business, within your own existence in this world. Right. And to see how you can show up better for your clients. Right. Through your own exploration. But it also is a two edged sword in that it’s tough doing things primarily on your own. Right. And I have people that I contract to work for me when I need.

Seth [00:11:11]:

That kind of scale up. Yeah.

Shana [00:11:12]:

Right. You can scale up and so on and so forth. But primarily I’m doing this on my own. I don’t have employees at the moment. Right.

Seth [00:11:18]:

Yeah.

Shana [00:11:19]:

I’m not big enough to be able to afford employees. And if I did have them, I would insist on equity within what we’re growing.

Seth [00:11:26]:

Yeah. That’s a good thing.

Shana [00:11:28]:

Yeah. Well, equity financially is really important for me. I’ve never paid anyone less than $20 an hour, and that was an intern.

Seth [00:11:39]:

You pay what they’re worth, right? What you hope they’re worth.

Shana [00:11:44]:

Yeah. It’s not even that. It’s that human beings are the only beings on this planet that have to pay to live here. Right.

Seth [00:11:50]:

That’s kind of true.

Shana [00:11:51]:

No, it is true. We’re the only beings on this planet that have to pay to live here. And yet we systematically deny the resources, money necessary for people to be able to buy, to be able to provide themselves safe and clean housing, to be able to provide themselves nutritious food, to be able to have access to clean and potable water. All of these things are necessary to sustain human life. And no one asked me here. They, in fact, were forced here right against their will. And then we deny them the money to stay here.

Seth [00:12:21]:

We disappeared.

Shana [00:12:23]:

When I found my business, I decided to no longer perpetuate exploitative systems in which I had pulled myself out of. And so I pay people. I can’t afford to pay people more than $40 an hour at this point. But depending on what people are contract, how much experience they have and what they’re going to be helping me with, I pay people typically between $25 and $40 an hour.

Seth [00:12:46]:

Because you’re a good person and you value them.

Shana [00:12:49]:

And that’s I value people. Yeah, I value people. And oftentimes I’m paying them. Right.

Seth [00:12:54]:

You devalue people.

Shana [00:12:55]:

I value people and I show them. Exactly.

Seth [00:12:58]:

I love it. You need to talk about one, the flip side. What keeps you up at night that it’s on you, but you want to elaborate a little bit more on that. Like, what keeps you up at night.

Shana [00:13:08]:

Beyond yeah, what keeps me up at night is that what I’m talking about is deeply nuanced. And so much of our world requires categorization and strict hierarchy and over reliance on a singular topic to brand yourself. What I’m doing is the antithesis of that is reintroducing us to curiosity and nuance and exploration and play and all of these beautiful things that make us human. That I think the lack of has led to a significant aspect of our mental health crisis is because we are denying our own humanity simply to survive. And that puts us in a place of trauma daily right? To have to leave massive parts of ourselves behind every single day simply to survive. My work is adding this nuance back in and trying to create space and encourage community and encourage us to exist once again within an ecosystem because human beings are in fact part of an ecosystem, which is this Earth. Right? And so for us to understand that is deeply nuanced. And so what keeps me up at night is that that is something we feel in the deepest parts of ourself. Whenever I say it, no one argues, no one says, no, that’s wrong. No one has ever said that to me, ever. But what keeps me up at night is that I’m operating in a way that’s contrary to our current system. Right? And so it is a matter of like, how do I reach more people faster, right? Like I don’t know how to reach more people faster. Have this conversation so we can once again exist in community with each other. And I don’t know that we ever truly existed in community together within the United States of America. Not in a healthy way, but when we look at historically the way that indigenous peoples operated and traded with one another and we look at earlier their way of doing things, which was a much healthier way, right? And we’ve never been perfect in human history. There’s no such thing.

Seth [00:15:25]:

Have you ever watched if you watch TikTok, there’s always a lion falling into the moat at the zoo. There’s always something silly happening. They’re not perfect. They’re animals. Everyone’s flawed in some way. Yeah, I’m sure that lion felt like an idiot afterwards, right?

Shana [00:15:40]:

I mean, there’s no such thing as perfection, right? And the thing that I say, I remind people is that if we seek to be perfect as human beings, the only thing we’ll be very good at, the only thing we’ll be perfect at is absolutely nothing. So our aim, right, is not my aim is not for us to be perfected or to create a perfect society, but to create a society in which we are continually invested in curiosity and continually exploring better ways to connect, to understand, to be in community with one another so that we’re not exploiting one another. And we are deeply connected to the impact of our actions because physics tells us that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, correct? That implies to every single thing that we do as a human being this conversation has a ripple effect. Everything that we do has a ripple effect. And when we deny that, we deny our power, right? When we sit with that, it is a very deep and interesting thing and it can be painful because then we realize how much we might have harmed others in our actions in the past without taking accountability for it. But again, this is where the nuance of my work comes in. In talking about the connection, curiosity and respect and accountability and practicing all those things.

Seth [00:17:00]:

That’s awesome. Wow, there’s a lot unpacked there, which is awesome. If people catch the video and I push it up live audio, my head’s going up and down, I’m going to give it a strain in my neck. I’m completely in total agreement. So here’s a question for you what is the most important thing to carry with you all the time?

Shana [00:17:22]:

Curiosity.

Seth [00:17:23]:

Love it.

Shana [00:17:24]:

Because wrapped up in curiosity is authenticity, is vulnerability, is play, is exploration, is all of these deeply human things that we have lost connection with. Because even from the time that we’re children, people are telling us curiosity killed the cat. Which sounds benign. It sounds benign, but it’s not benign, right? It begins to erode our understanding of who we are and cause us to pull back and be afraid to be curious because then we won’t be accepted. If we’re too curious, people won’t like us, then we won’t survive. Like, it goes back to our need to survive as children. And so it’s really quite much more sinister than I think we recognize.

Seth [00:18:04]:

It is very sinister.

Shana [00:18:07]:

It is sinister.

Seth [00:18:08]:

It is sometimes most of the time, it’s not intentional.

Shana [00:18:12]:

It’s just no, of course not. Correct. We’ve grown up that way. And so, again, because our curiosity has been eroded, we are not leaning into asking ourselves, wait a second. Is me saying this thing actually true? What is the grounding for this thing? Where did it come from? What did it do in my own life? What did it disconnect in my own life? Right. Our curiosity has been eroded because of programming. And so that over and over again, we’ve been told the same things. And in order to survive and to be accepted in society, we have to just go along with those things. And so our curiosity is completely gone.

Seth [00:18:47]:

Yeah. Technical term. Exactly. Hello? Raspberry. Raspberry.

Shana [00:18:53]:

It’s Raspberry.

Seth [00:18:54]:

Exactly. Sheena, where’s your watering hole? Online? Where do you hang out the most?

Shana [00:19:01]:

Oh, gosh. So I spend a lot of time you mean, like, in life or where do I live?

Seth [00:19:06]:

No, like online. Where can people connect?

Shana [00:19:08]:

Where do I live? Okay. Yeah. So where do people connect with me the most is typically through LinkedIn or TikTok. I love me some TikTok. Also, don’t be a stranger. If you follow me on TikTok, don’t be weird about it. Don’t just because people lurk and then will, in real life, comment about the fact that they watched a TikTok. They’ll talk about a specific TikTok, something I didn’t post anywhere else. Because what I post on TikTok doesn’t show up anywhere else. And they’ll comment about it in real life, but I know for a fact they don’t follow me. And I’m like, Wait a second. So you creep on my TikToks? You just talked about my TikTok, but you don’t actually have no idea because.

Seth [00:19:49]:

They forgot that they saw her somewhere. Exactly.

Shana [00:19:53]:

So LinkedIn TikTok yeah, on TikTok. It’s just Shane of Francesca. It’s easy.

Seth [00:19:58]:

It’s easy. Of course. Spelling francesca. It took me like five or six times to type it out. But it’s Italian name. Go figure.

Shana [00:20:05]:

Yeah.

Seth [00:20:05]:

And they can find you at Consonate World, which I will play in the show notes as well. And reach out. Say hello. She does not bite. She’s very nice. And we’ll see everyone next time. That was a great show. If you’re enjoying entrepreneurs Enigma, please view us in the podcast directory of your choice. Every review helps other podcast listeners find our show. If you’re looking for other podcasts in the marketing space, look no further than the Marketing Podcast Network@marketingpodcast.net. Goldstein hopes you have enjoyed this episode. This podcast is one of the many great shows on the MPN Marketing Podcast network.