After You Decide with Shir Shelef

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, one of my favorite quotes is "The magic you’re looking for is usually just in the work you’ve been avoiding."  I know, I hate that it’s true too.

Every December, right around my birthday (classic Sagittarius), I sit down and write out the lessons that actually moved the needle for me that year. Last week I was cleaning up my notes app and I reread my "25 Lessons for 2025" list and it stopped me. Some of these I’ve lived out every day, and some I’d honestly forgotten about.

So today, I’m giving you the 4 big ones. These are the beliefs that allowed me to 4x my income, pivot my entire brand without spiraling, and finally sign the clients I’m actually obsessed with.

In this episode: 

• Nobody believes in you at the start.  I’m breaking down why you have to be the one to build the evidence and belief, first before you expect anyone else to care.
• Results abandon people who abandon their beliefs. It’s easy to follow the "money hacks" or the latest reel trend, but if you don't actually believe in the offer you’re putting out, you wismell the lack of conviction from miles away.
• Discipline is doing what you said you’d do long after the excitement has left the building. If you have "half-in" energy, you’re going to keep getting half-in results. It’s just math.
•  Growth requires you to sacrifice the version of yourself who needed permission and vanity metrics to feel safe. The version of you that got you here isn’t the one who is going to get you there. Most people never make that trade. 

Post: 25 Lessons in 2025

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If you're someone who's just posting and waiting... waiting for someone to fill out that form in your bio, waiting for someone to message you about that CTA in your stories, this episode is for you.

In this episode I'm breaking down the four ways I actually start client conversations in the DMs, without it ever feeling like a pitch, and why posting and praying is quietly costing you clients you don't even realize are already watching you.

I also share four actual methods and dive into:

• Why a bigger following doesn't always equal bigger sales
• My 4 methods that will bring you clarity on who is in your audience and who can be your next client
  • The story swipe up, and how to actually keep that conversation going
  • A great idea for story polls (and why not doing it gets you the opposite of the data you want)
  • Why voice notes change how every one of these land
  • The most overlooked way to fill your DMs: just saying thank you

SIMILAR EPISODES:
Identify who you want to serve in this season: After You Decide You Want Aligned Clients, Not Just Any Clients

If you want to feel more confident on sales calls: Sales Shifts That Turn Calls (and DMs) Into Actual Conversations

Connect with Shir on Instagram

If you're standing at your own pivot point right now,  scared to post the thing that doesn't match your old content, worried it'll tank your numbers,  this episode is for you.

This is a permission slip to stop reading a dropping metric as proof you made a mistake, and start understanding it could be leading you straight to your true passion (for me, it 4x'd my business, and led me to my dream clients!!!) 

We get into the year I spent pitching brands with only 1,400 followers before I even knew the why behind it, the 30 clients I coached before I ever posted that I was a business mentor, and why being a creator was one of the ways I found out what I was actually good at and love.

In this episode:

• The day I stopped posting cute content and started posting business content,  and how my business 4x'd within a year
• The 30 clients I coached in 8 months, before I'd ever posted that I was a business mentor
• Why I waited until August 2024 to hire my own mentor, and what I needed to be sure of first
• The one thing that kept me going through the pivot: getting brutally honest about what I actually wanted
• The moment I stopped checking my metrics and started checking one question instead: if Instagram shut down tomorrow, could I still operate my business?
• Why being a creator led me to finding my passion and what I am insanely good at 

SIMILAR EPISODES:
From Travel Posts to Building a Business

6 Questions to Help You Figure Out What To Build Next In Your Career, Business And Life

Connect with Shir on Instagram

In this episode I'm breaking down the five things I changed about how I sell that took me from dreading sales calls to genuinely loving them,  and helped me sign aligned clients along the way. 

We get into the moment that changed my entire relationship with selling (a high-pressure sales call that left me feeling gross), why "setting the frame" at the start of a call changes everything for the person on the other end, and why I stopped assuming why someone booked a call with me and started asking instead.

I also share why I stopped pitching my whole story and started zooming in on the two or three chapters that actually matter to the person in front of me, why inviting someone in works so much better than pitching them, and the one shift in how I handle "I want to think about it" that isn't "more information"  that changed my retention and referrals completely.

In this episode we cover:

• The high-pressure sales call that changed how I sell forever
• Why setting the frame in the first 30 seconds removes all the guesswork
• The one question I ask instead of assuming why someone's on the call
• Why sharing your whole journey can actually work against you
• The difference between pitching and inviting , and why it gets more yeses
• How I stopped treating "I want to think about it" as a rejection

Connect with Shir on Instagram

At the beginning of this quarter, I looked at where I'm actually being intentional in my business: posting, offers, systems, what I consume, how I move my body.

In this episode, I break down exactly where being intentional is playing out, what that looks like, how you can find out for yourself and audit what energy you really are bringing into this quarter! 

In this episode:

• The dinner conversation that made me stop using "I don't have time" as an excuse for posting
• Why I told myself the algorithm doesn't love or hate anyone, and started treating every post like a data point 
• The difference between an intensive and 1:1 that most people get wrong when picking which one they actually need
• Why I abandoned five separate tools I'd pieced together, and went back to the one system I avoided for a year because of the learning curve
• The physical device in my house that I have to manually unlock before I can open Instagram
• How cutting what I consume dropped my podcast production time from several hours to under 90 minutes a week 
• Why I hired my own client to be my nutrition & fitness trainer 

Connect with Shir on Instagram

There was a point in my business where I stopped trying to serve everyone. I got radically clear on exactly who I want to work with, and that one shift changed everything. My client retention went up, the trust got deeper, and the results my clients get became so much better. None of that happened by accident.

In this episode, I walk you through the exact framework I use with my own clients to identify who you actually want to serve, not by building an offer first and hoping the right people show up, but by looking at your own past conversations for the pattern that's already there.

In this episode:

• Why the thread connecting my businesses of photography, content creation, social media management, and coaching was never just the skill, it was always the conversation
• The moment I realized casting a wider net wasn't the goal, going deep with fewer people was
• What it actually means to be the right fit for a client beyond the problem you solve: the mission, the way someone shows up, the way they trust the work
• A 6-step framework to identify your ideal client from your own history: five conversations that lit you up, the common thread, tracing it to your own story, naming what shifted you, naming the transformation, and ranking who excites you most
• Why so many people build the offer before identifying the person, and what that costs them
• The audit question I ask myself every few months to keep attracting clients who bring me excitement, not just clients

Connect with Shir on Instagram

In Q2, I focused on behind-the-scenes work and less posting... truth be told, I have posted less to my feed this quarter, and yet, in the final week of Q2, five client renewals and three brand new aligned clients. 

In this episode, I challenge the narrative that you need to be everywhere posting constantly. I'm taking you behind the scenes of what was actually happening in Q2 when I barely posted but stayed intentional about lead acquisition and positioning, and why the generic "post more" advice misses the full picture entirely.

In this episode: 

• Why posting more has its place, but is not my full strategy, and the bts of what I do during a busy season of serving my clients
• Three patterns to look for, when you welcome clients: lead acquisition, positioning, and persistence
• How many leads you actually may need (spoiler: probably not 50 a day) and reverse engineering that number
• The difference between talking at your audience versus talking with them
• Why identifying problems without offering solutions breaks trust and leaves clients hanging
• How consistency, is the key metric to seeing what actually works (both on and off social media) 

Connect with Shir on Instagram

In this episode, I sat down with Lydia Klemensowicz, a dating coach and matchmaker who is revolutionizing the methods in which ambitious women approach dating.

Instead of protecting herself after hardship, she got curious. And what she discovered is that the way you handle rejection in dating is the exact way you handle it in business. Your belief systems create reality faster than circumstances ever could. Presence matters more than your profile. And healing counts when you actually apply it to real life.

In this conversation, we explore what most people miss: your dating patterns and your business patterns are operating on identical rules.

In this conversation: 

• Why your dating patterns are a direct mirror of your business patterns (and what each one reveals about the other)
• The gap between internal work and actual integration, why healing doesn't count until you apply it in real life
• How belief systems create reality faster than circumstances ever could
• Why rejection in dating and rejection in sales are the same problem with the same solution
• Dating as branding: how to position yourself without it feeling transactional
• The five core feelings that should guide every dating decision (and how to identify yours)
• Why presence is your biggest advantage over apps, profiles, and location
• How solo travel taught Lydia about magnetism and what it means if you're not traveling
• The cost of protecting your peace so hard you forget to experience anything
• Why "too busy" is the excuse that's costing you the most
• How to stop consuming stories about why dating is impossible in your city
• The role of intentionality in showing up differently than you have before

Connect with Lydia:
Lydia's Instagram
Flirting with Life Podcast

Work with Lydia:
 [Free]: Delicious Dating Playbook
2 Week Activation - Meet Men in the Wild

Connect with Shir on Instagram

I recorded this episode for the woman who has spent years inside a company, a studio, an industry, building real results for real people, and one day realized the values no longer align.  And now you are standing on the other side of everything you have built wondering what any of it means outside of the industry or place it lived in.

Like me. I spent years in an industry I was good at, building a body of work I was proud of, until I wasn't aligned with it anymore. And the hardest part was not leaving. It was figuring out that everything I had built came with me into this next era and season 

In this episode:

• Why the "wait, it's a bad time" narrative is not meant for you
• The difference between the container closing and what you built inside it, and why only one of those actually belongs to you
• Step one: how to write down every transformation you have created in a way that makes it impossible to keep discounting yourself
• The ripple effect of your work that you have never once stopped to calculate
• Step two: why anyone can learn a framework but not anyone can do what you do with it, and the spin class story that proves it
• Why the people who stay stuck can describe exactly what they left but cannot yet describe where they are going
• Step three: how to name the next era before you build a single thing inside it
• What you are actually missing right now, and it is not talent, time, or proof

Connect with Shir on Instagram

Building a life you don't want to escape from isn't a business model, but rather starts with a decision.

If you have been waiting for the right moment to start living the way you actually want to live... to travel, to work from anywhere, to stop treating your own life like something you can only have when... this episode is going to hit.

In this episode I discuss:

• Why "the business model" is the most surface level answer to how I work from anywhere, and what the real answer actually is
• Why the goalpost never stops moving and what happens when you finally stop chasing it
• What I did three weeks after launching this podcast when I got on a plane to Japan with a full client roster and zero certainty
• Why your routines are not home things, they are your things,  and what it actually looks like to take them with you
• The offer that hasn't launched, the program sitting in your drafts, the investment you keep saying you'll make when,  and what that is really costing you
• Why the life you are waiting for is not coming. You are already in it. You just keep calling it not enough.
• What showing up as your future self looks like when that future self is right now

Connect with Shir on Instagram