Designing A Business That Brings Dreams To Life With Nafissa Shireen

Nafissa Shireen:

Thank you, Jennifer. I’m so excited to catch up and connect and chat today.

Jennifer Bourn:

Now, you and your husband each own your own businesses, you both work from home, and you both work in each other’s businesses. I worked with my husband for a little while, and there are definitely some challenges to working with and around your spouse. So I need to know the details.

Nafissa Shireen:

Okay. So, Mike and I actually met at work when we both had a job. He was in sales and I was in accounting and credit. So we already started with tension and friction. So, that’s how we met.

So, we’ve always worked together but obviously, we have very, very different businesses, with mine being a coaching business and he is a manufacturer’s sales agent. And each of us has different skills that we bring to the business.

And so I’m able to bring my administrative mind — I don’t bring my coaching mind or mindset because that’s just not a bridge husband and wife should ever cross — but I’m able to bring my, my social media mind, some of my marketing, I know how to work, the tools that he needs to get his newsletters out.

And he’s really talented in photography, video, and music. So, I can come up with a concept and strategy, but he can do the actual artwork piece of it and compose the music. And it’s great having him do my photos because I don’t have to worry about putting a copyright on it. Like my photos are mine. So that part works out really well.

Um, there’s definitely a lot of conversation. We live together, we work together, but when are we working on my business, and when are we working on his, and when are we not working? Just have to kind of clarify those things.

Jennifer Bourn:

Yeah, having that conversation: It’s after five, can we not talk about work? Because sometimes you’re passionate about something — you’ve got something going on — and it’s hard to shut that off.

Nafissa Shireen:

Yes, and there’s always something or an idea. And especially with the horses being so much part of what I do, where’s that line? Am I just talking about my horses or am I talking about my work with horses? So, we have to sort of get that clear. But I think, for the most part, we’re really clear on what our strengths are to help each other with it. So. It just kind of all flows. It’s really weird. It’s two different businesses, but we just sort of flow it like it’s one

Jennifer Bourn:

That’s fantastic. So, on top of running your business, you’ve got the ranch, and you call it a city farm. So I want to know a little bit about the ranch and kind of how that came to be.

How did you go from having a traditional online business to then dealing with a ranch, river breaches, floods, fallen trees, caring for and training horses, and dealing with horses escaping? You’ve said that moving to the farm was really a dream but also that you kind of had no idea what you were getting into.

Nafissa Shireen:

No idea at all whatsoever. I had a horse of my own and I just kind of had this idea in my head, "Hey, wouldn’t it be nice one day if I could have my own place?"

But I was actually terrified of my own horse. I would only be around him with professionals, yet I wanted my own farm. So, I mean, that makes literally no sense. But it’s just, you know, your dreams don’t have to make sense and they never will.

And then, as I started to progress at moving out of corporate and getting into coaching, I started to get a little bit more help from one of my coaches on stepping up my horsemanship. Like she gave me some guidance and where to start looking to get help, that could help me actually become a horsewoman, not just a rider.

And I just started poking and prodding around, and I still always had this idea way in the back of my head that I wanted to have my own place with my one horse, and maybe I would have borders there, and then the borders would be brave and then they could deal with my horse.

So, I just started to pursue that. And then I started to learn about equine facilitated coaching and learning, and I started reading books, and I saw how people had been transformed by horses or what that interaction had been between a client and a horse, and I had actually witnessed that with my own horse and other people or my own horse and myself.

And I just got really curious, and going down that road of being curious, one thing led to another, and then I realized I really needed to get my own place. If I wanted to do this, I couldn’t do it in a boarding facility. And it was just one step after another.

And then one day I realized I’d been talking about this for a really, really long time. But I’d never talked to a banker. I never talked to a real estate agent None of that. And then one day I thought, maybe I should. And then it just happened so fast. It was like, boom, boom, bang. this place is literally a four-minute drive from my other home. I didn’t even know it was here.

Jennifer Bourn:

Oh, my gosh. Isn’t it funny how once you start taking action, action begets action? And once you take that first step, everything starts happening?

Nafissa Shireen:

It just happened so fast and then here I was. And so, I had to step up my horsemanship and learn a lot more. I had borders at first and then I stopped doing that. I had my horse. I adopted a pony. I bought another horse in 2019. And then I do have one boarder, and she’s farm manager, so her horse is here.

So, here we are four years later it… Jennifer, it happens so fast. One day I’m in suburbia and the next day I’m on a farm.

Jennifer Bourn:

One day you had one horse and you were a little bit afraid of that horse.

Nafissa Shireen:

Terrified actually. Yeah.

Jennifer Bourn:

And now you have four horses. What kind of work did you have to do to go from being terrified of one horse to now being in charge of, caring for, and then facilitating the relationships between other people and those horses?

Nafissa Shireen:

This might sound a little bit cliche, but at that point, I was taking my NLP certification. And when you take any form of coaching training — proper coaching training — part of what you are doing is you are processing with your classmates whatever you wanna work on. And this was a 12-day in-person course. And I just thought, I’m gonna take advantage of this, and every time I have to work with somebody, it’s going to be on a horse fear. And so I literally had 12 days of NLPing my fear out of me.

And then I was able to start to learn with the learner’s mind and then aligning with different coaches. And I really struggled a lot with the whole traditional approach where a lot of people seem to treat horses quite violently in my opinion — where they’ll smack them or use harsh tools on them — and I never was into that. And so that also started me down on a different road because I wanted to have a more conscious approach. So, I started to find different mentors.

So, after fixing my mind and fears, I started to learn different things and went down a different quest. And so it’s just been surrounding myself with a lot of mentors. And nothing beats hands-on experience.

I’ve had at least 11 different horses come through here at different times. And I’ve had unbroke Phillies, and when you’ve got babies that are completely unbroken and one of them gets their foot caught in a net and you’re the only one there, you just kind of have to do it.

So part of it was just living with horses and adapting to it.

Like any fear, the only way over it is through it. So you start to get more comfortable. And then I’m always studying different ways of horsemanship. So when you’re seeing people work with them, that’s the culmination of a lot of relationship work and hours and hours of study and practice. Training my horses is not something I can delegate.

Jennifer Bourn:

No, that’s definitely not. But you have been able to figure out how to get help in different areas of your business — at the ranch and in your coaching business. How did you decide what help to delegate and how did you figure out who that first good hire was going to be?

Nafissa Shireen:

I knew nothing when I started my coaching business. I didn’t even know what an email list was. So, my very first hire was a VA that just explained it all to me and it was really good cuz they were able to take a lot of the stress off my plate. But it wasn’t good in the sense that I didn’t even know what I didn’t know, so I couldn’t put checklists in place to make sure that all the boxes were ticked, and that we didn’t have disasters happen on launches. And there were some pretty big ones that happened. I kind of learned on the job.

I had no technical skills so those were the things I started to get help with. I managed the things I could manage, like bookkeeping and accounting, because I was a CPA, so I could do that. The administration, the client scheduling — all of that I did because I knew how to do that.

So, my first thing was to just start hiring out the stuff I had no idea how to do, and then, as I started to make more money, I could bring in more people to do the things that I knew how to do but didn’t enjoy and actually weren’t a good use of my time. For the first couple of years, I did a lot of stuff by myself.

Jennifer Bourn:

I’m sure a lot of people can relate to that. I know I can definitely relate to that. How did you get to a point where you did have checklists or you did have systems that could be relied on?

Nafissa Shireen:

I mean, in the beginning, every blow-up was earth-shattering and it would destroy me and I’d be up all night and crying. I mean, now I don’t care. I just go, "Okay, what blew up here? Why did it blow up?"

So, just to give one example of a launch that didn’t go well: It was a simple webinar and I had a lot of people sign up and not one person showed up. And the reason nobody showed up was that the virtual assistant sent out the reminders, in the wrong time zone.

So, it was really just learning from mistakes because there was no way I could foresee what checklist I needed until something went wrong. And if you don’t know what you don’t know, I just recommend just being chill about it because it’s going to happen. So you may as well just debrief afterward and figure it out.

Jennifer Bourn:

So many times we want to pretend we’ve got all the things together. We did it all the right way. We’ve got all the systems and all the checklists. But it’s true. So much learning in business is trial by fire. Let’s do it and then we’ll figure out what didn’t work and we’ll fix it for the next time — and sometimes that’s the only way to learn it.

Nafissa Shireen:

Absolutely. But it did take me a couple of years to be able to pull the emotion out of it because the first couple of years when things would happen, I’d get very, very upset and emotional cuz it wasn’t working.

Jennifer Bourn:

It can be so frustrating. I know I have totally been there. But you also over the years, have revisited and changed up your technology to better support you and to simplify systems and processes.

What kind of changes have you put in place with your technology to better support your business?

Nafissa Shireen:

My technology kind of evolved organically again, because I didn’t know what I didn’t know. So I had the one system and then I just kept getting different apps and using APIs and patching it all together. And I, at one point, I must have had like about 10 different apps working just to get my marketing out there — and I’m not really an online marketer. My skill is coaching and I don’t do complicated funnels. And yet I still had all of that.

And so I just got rid of it all and went down to one because I also realized that I was paying my VA so much money just to fix broken APIs all the time. And I would pay her for maybe an hour of tech support to sell a trip wire product for $19.

Jennifer Bourn:

Those stories of paying technical virtual assistants to manage problems that software should not be having, to sell those low-level trip wire entry-level products, are so pervasive. Being able to simplify that down to something that works better and cut that cost is huge.

Nafissa Shireen:

And it was really scary at first because I was so entrenched in everything I had — and that’s what kept me from doing it. And then in 2020, I took a year off when my mom passed away and that was the catalyst for me to do this — and I actually did it myself.

I needed something to do. I had laid my team off cuz I was taking a break and I wanted to be in control of it. So I got rid of about four or five different digital products, I went to one system that can handle selling digital things, and it gave me everything I needed. It was the best decision ever. And I ended up going from spending, are you ready? A thousand dollars a month on all my apps and APIs to $150.

Jennifer Bourn:

That is a huge difference! You went from Infusionsoft with all these ancillary things that connected into it, to what…

Nafissa Shireen:

Kartra.

Jennifer Bourn:

And saved $850 a month.

Nafissa Shireen:

Yes.

Jennifer Bourn:

That’s mindboggling.

Nafissa Shireen:

But at the time I set up Infusionsoft, that’s all there was. Kartra’s not perfect. There are some frustrations with it. There are things Infusionsoft just did a lot better, but honestly, for the lower cost, whatever, I’ll figure it out. It was a freedom thing and it only took me about five weeks and I wasn’t even working full time.

I had all these opt-ins because I was following different models where every blog has to have a content upgrade — and I thought this is ridiculous. So, they just all go to four different main pages now. So those were things that I really simplified. I stopped following all the formulas because they were just driving me bonkers.

Jennifer Bourn:

So many times we get caught up in what we think we should be doing. There’s a billion people out there that are going to tell you all the things you should be doing to bring in the right kind of clients or run the business the way that they think it should be run.

But you really evaluated what was right for you and your business and then took the initiative to change things — to make sure that your business was serving you; that your business was supporting the lifestyle that you wanted; and that it was creating time to go work with your horses.

It’s not just about hiring for your coaching business, you’ve had to get help with the ranch to get help with the horses, and things like that. Do you use the same approach for hiring when you’re hiring for your farm?

Nafissa Shireen:

It’s the same thing. When it comes to the farm, I tend to sort of have the attitude that I’m not going to hire somebody to do something I wouldn’t do myself — maybe it’s because some of it is some of the most disgusting work you can ever imagine. But I hire it because it’s not the best use of my time.

Because if I work as a farm hand, I’m gonna get paid like a farm hand.

So, I have to make sure that I have that covered. And because I’m a small farm, I don’t actually have enough work to employ somebody full-time here on the farm. And so what I do is ask farm hands that don’t have enough work to come and do things for me — and I pay them triple the going rate because it’s four or five hours a month for some of the most disgusting stuff.

Jennifer Bourn:

You’re like, worth it. Worth every penny

Nafissa Shireen:

And then there’s daily things that just never go away. I have one horse here that I am boarding and his owner does the daily cleaning of the stalls in the mornings before she goes to her other job. So I pay her to do it and then I also give her horse free board and I take care of his hay and shavings Because if I spend two hours a day cleaning the barn, then I’m not going to have time to have two hours a day training my horses.

So, what might take me three hours, she does in an hour. So again, it’s worth it to pay her.

Jennifer Bourn:

Well, you are hiring people who are passionate, like the woman who has a horse. She clearly is going to care a lot more about that job and be more invested in doing it well, than Joe off the street.

Nafissa Shireen:

Totally. And if I have to travel or go somewhere, she will come a couple of times a day. Even if I have a house sitter to, check up on things. Or even when I leave my husband alone with the horses, she comes and checks a few times a day.

The other thing that I have embraced lately, is the whole Workaway Farm Stay Experience, where you have travelers come from all over the world, and you give them a room and you give them food. Like, you feed them and they work five hours a day, five days a week for you. Then they have their own time.

For us to suddenly have international travelers in our house and have this cultural exchange has been really cool. But they’ve been doing these odd jobs on the farm that are actually really hard to fill with people because right now everybody’s trying to find farm hands.

And these aren’t regular jobs — they just come up when they come up and it’s hard to fill it. So one of them is painting all our fences.

Jennifer Bourn:

That’s amazing. I think it was Rocky Mountain National Park. In both the tourist towns — Grand Junction and Estes Park — they had all these seasonal workers that come in for the busy season from other countries in trade for room and board. It’s a similar concept, but you’re getting people to help with whatever you need at the time.

Nafissa Shireen:

Totally.

Jennifer Bourn:

That flexibility is pretty amazing.

Nafissa Shireen:

Yeah, and we are going to use that a lot more because it’s not just the work. We really have enjoyed having different people here and having the conversation, and sitting on our deck at the end of the day, and having a cocktail and having a great conversation, and just learning about different people from all over the world, like that is so cool.

Jennifer Bourn:

That’s so amazing. Buying this farm and having this sanctuary for horses and for coaching was really a dream of yours. And now it’s a beautiful property.

In your vision for what you wanted this to be, like, did it evolve over time as you brought people to the farm and you kind of saw what was needed?

Nafissa Shireen:

So when it was my dream, I didn’t know what I wanted. I never, in a million years thought I would be able to buy a property where I live in suburban Vancouver — and, and then we did.

I didn’t even know this place was here. We have this beautiful pond out back and that sold us. The horse area was a complete overgrown disaster and the barn was in rough shape. I had no idea what it could be, but I saw the pond and I knew there was a field and I just went on instinct.

And we bought it and it just kind of fell together that way. And we are in the process now of, reclaiming one part of the property that we had left completely overgrown. And so it’s kind of evolved. Now that I’ve been able to expand in my horsemanship and have different experiences and working with multiple horses at once, I want to be able to give that to clients — but I want them to have a bigger space because it’s safer for them to have bigger spaces.

Jennifer Bourn:

Nice. And I’d like to talk a little bit about coaching with horses because this might be a new concept for a lot of people. Tell me a little bit about what makes this so powerful.

Nafissa Shireen:

I replaced my regular VIP days with horse VIP days. So people come here and what makes it really powerful is horses are instinctual prey animals. And so they look at everything through the lens of, am I gonna be eaten and die? That’s as simple as it is. So, there’s a spiritual side to it, there’s a scientific side to it, and somewhere in the middle is where they meet and you start to have results.

So, there are two different ways that I work with people. One is in reflective sessions, the other is in active sessions.

Sometimes the reflective sessions might seem the most boring but those are the most powerful because when you are with horses, they’re going to respond to who you are and how you’re showing up in that moment. They don’t lie. They have no agenda. And if you’re not congruent emotionally — so if your insides don’t match your outsides — they’re gonna let you know. They won’t want anything to do with you.

If you’re in your head — and how many times as entrepreneurs are we in our head and not in our body — they stay away from you. So a lot of the times, people have had the biggest breakthroughs when they’re just sitting in reflective sessions.

There’s actually a study done by the HeartMath Institute, where they were trying to see if people could affect the horse’s heart rate. And it turned out it was the opposite way, where the horses could bring the person’s heart rate to match the horse’s heart rate in a calm setting. And that’s why people tend to feel very relaxed and sleep really well if they hang around horses that are just in their natural setting.

And being at your most relaxed is when we’re in our most creative state, and when we’re in our most creative state, the things buried deep in our subconscious, come through or ideas pop up because we got quiet.

And then the other part with the active sessions is — these aren’t my words and I can’t remember who said it, so I don’t wanna steal their words but I’m gonna use the expression — it’s about catching somebody’s energy and action.

So, when you think of any retreat that we might go on, part of the whole reason they have activities is there’s going to be a point where you just catch your energy in action because the facade drops, And then, it becomes a coaching moment.

So, when you’re around a thousand-pound animal that’s walking freely, that’s doing their own things, you catch people’s energy and action pretty good. If I’m asking them to move the horse, to groom the horse, or bring the horse’s life up to a gallop or a run, I mean, that brings up a lot of stuff for people.

How you do one thing is how you do everything. And sometimes some of the most powerful things that happen are not in any exercises they’re in between them.

One client, she really wanted to go in with our really big horse — he’s 17 and a half hands and he’s a little bit handicapped. That’s why he’s here. And so he waddles and he looks like he’s gonna fall or run or jump, but he’s just trying to, straighten up and catch his balance. And she wanted to go in with him.

I put him on a halter. I didn’t have him free and I wanted it for safety. And as soon as we got in there, he did his little waddle, and she grabbed me and threw me in front of him. And she started shaking and shaking and shaking, and I said, okay, you need to, get out of the pen right now. And I took, I took his halter off and he was fine.

I went to talk to her and what she said was fascinating. She said, "I know that you would never intentionally put me in danger but I don’t think you were reading that horse correctly."

Then I had a little ping in my head because I had known something that was holding her back.

And I said to her, "Okay, so you trust me and my intention but you don’t trust my judgment." She’s like, "In that moment, no." And I said, "So where else might this be showing up?"

And she just started to list all these things where she wasn’t trusting other people’s judgment — and they were people that she looked up to — and how it was affecting her and her trust ability. That changed the whole two days with her and she had a ton of breakthroughs. And that wasn’t even an exercise. It was just the horse, shuffled and scared her and I caught her energy in action of not trusting, and that’s what was holding her back.

Jennifer Bourn:

Oh my gosh. Being prepared for the unexpected and those moments where a coaching moment, a teaching moment organically came up and was a reflection of her experience with that horse.

Nafissa Shireen:

Totally. You see that happen a lot.

So I have a boundary that we don’t touch horses that haven’t given express permission. It’s all consent-based. Even with the horses, you have to get their permission. It’s a very powerful exercise to see if they can read the body language and the energy and if the horse can read theirs — because that happens out in the real world with people, and sometimes we ignore it. So this brings you present to how that energy of yours is showing up. And how are you reading the other person’s energy and the horse won’t judge you.

We were in with my pony and he looked at her and he wouldn’t, come over because she was just so intense she really wanted this pony to like her, and then she burst into tears because the pony just wasn’t coming and she was just doing everything she could to let this pony know that she loved him and wanted him.

And then what came up for her and her leadership in her company, as she was trying to show up as a friend, not a leader. And so there was always a lot of disorganization because she wasn’t being the leader they wanted. She was being their pal and then they weren’t giving her the respect as the leader because she was trying so hard to be their friend.

And she saw this happen with what she was doing with the horse because it brought it out to her in an extreme degree. And so then we were able to coach and start speaking about that and how she could start to show more leadership. She did some exercises, she had some time to reflect, and then I invited her to go back in the pen and just kind of show up as a leader and that pony just went right over to her.

She changed her energy. And this wasn’t something that I knew she was struggling with. It came up in that moment when she burst into tears, cuz the pony wanted nothing to do with her. So that was what was really cool.

Jennifer Bourn:

It’s another one of those unexpected moments.

And I think that goes back to some of the things that you shared with the growth in your business — allowing things to blow up and then to come back and say, "Well, that didn’t work, let’s fix this."

I strive to embrace the idea of imperfection. Things aren’t always going to go according to plan, but we’re going to take it as it comes and we’re going to evaluate, and then make the best decisions.

Nafissa Shireen:

Being on a farm has humbled me so many times because You can’t just decide how your day’s going to be. There’s always a possibility that something happens.

Jennifer Bourn:

There is no way that you could do all of these things and manage your business. Mike, manage his business, and the farm without being smart about the help that you have. And you have got, resources available on your site with tips for how to get help when you need it — I will link to that in the show notes.

So I have a couple of questions for you as we wrap up. The first is what can’t live without tool have you discovered that you wish you knew about earlier?

Nafissa Shireen:

I got it right here. It’s my Super Note. I cannot live without this. I can’t. I am a note-taker and now that I can capture my notes and cut and paste my handwriting, I keep my brain organized. I know it sounds geeky, but I am never, without it. It’s always right here.

Jennifer Bourn:

I love it. And then, what do you do to ensure that even when things don’t go, according to plan that you still have a great day that you remain in a positive head space?

Nafissa Shireen:

I’ll be honest. There are some days where it can be hard to maintain a positive head space just because there’s a lot going on. But I guess it’s not good all day all the time, but there’s good in every day. And I feel that every time I go outside and I look at my horses or I look at my pond. It just takes me to a space of, "Oh yeah, look at what I’ve done."

You don’t have to have horses or a pond to do that, but I think it’s just taking a step back to get away from the stuff in front of you. for me, it’s being outdoors, it’s looking at what we’ve created, it’s having a moment with my horses. And so that’s what will always put me back in a good mood — and fresh air. That is the one thing that is really changed with having a farm is I get so much more fresh air than I ever did because I’m outside so much and that does wonders for a person’s mindset

Jennifer Bourn:

That’s amazing. And I love going back to why you’re working hard in the first place. Finding a way to remind yourself of why you’re doing what you’re doing can help get you back on track and help you stay focused.

Nafissa Shireen:

And that’s my why. It’s my horses and being able to provide for them and to be able to be a voice for kinder, gentler horsemanship through my work. As much as I live for my clients’ breakthroughs, what gets me out of bed in the morning is when I get messages on my TikTok or my ranch page where somebody says, "You know, thanks to you I stopped hitting my horse."

Jennifer Bourn:

Oh my gosh.

Now Nafissa, where can people learn more about your coaching, and connect with you, and find you online?

Nafissa Shireen:

My Facebook page is at Nafissa Shireen. And then on Instagram, that’s where I’m a little bit more active with photos of the farm, it’s Believe And See Ranch. And my website, is NafissaShireen.com.

Jennifer Bourn:

Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your journey of seeking satisfaction.

Nafissa Shireen:

Thank you.

Jennifer Bourn:

If you enjoyed this episode of Seeking Satisfaction, subscribe for new show updates at Jenniferbourn.com/seeking-satisfaction, and please leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform.

If you would like to hear more from Nafissa and learn her secrets for how to hire someone and get the help you need when you don’t think you can afford it, check out the Seeking Satisfaction Extra Minutes Membership. Members receive extra minutes from podcast guests like Nafissa that provide valuable training to help you do business better.

You can find the details about the Extra Minutes Membership and Nafissa’s bonus training in the show notes at Jenniferbourn.com/011. Until next time, may you live inspired, embrace imperfection, seek satisfaction, and have a fabulous day.

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