About Toni Vanschoyck

Toni has been working with start-up network marketing companies for over 20 years. Before that, she owned two successful traditional businesses in landscaping and daycare that she started after being burnt out from her corporate restaurateur job. Her track record for success in network marketing in the field and corporate, allowed her to reach the top in organizational sales and income.  Currently, Toni has helped a team build over two billion dollars in organizational sales in just over 6 years. She is also the first to earn over one million dollars. 

She helped to found and launched a company called Monat, which is a clean, plant-based beauty brand. She is now a 10 million dollar earner and is a part of the exclusive MDC (Million dollar club) and has 4 streams of income which bring in multiple 8 figures. Toni has also sat on advisory boards and has also been a liaison and helped small startups and small business owners through using social media, increasing sales goals, relationship building and retention of current customers and representatives. Toni has proven systems for individuals looking to improve human relationship skills both in the workplace and the home.  Toni has learned a great deal about the industry and being able to do what only a few can. Teaching and coaching teams of people and individuals has been one of her greatest accomplishments along with helping them achieve success. This also helped her to learn how to help others and how to build a brand name.

Toni has also written three best-selling Amazon books under the series Effing Simple and has created a training and coaching platform.  

Toni is always working on personal and professional growth along with wealth skills.

Her goal is to help leadership in companies and sales initiatives help others to do the same.

Toni has been professionally speaking for over 10 years and has a variety of topics including motivation and success principles and has authored many articles.

Toni's belief in giving back and working with non-profits have been a top priority. She has worked with the Center For Women, The American Heart Association, and Habitat For Humanity.  She also now operates her own non-profit, Lowcountry Love.

Name
Toni Vanschoyck

City, State, Country
Charleston, South Carolina

Company Name
Monat

Lowcountry Love

Books
Effing Simple

Effing Simple You Do You

Effing Simple Leadership

Website
https://leadership.effingsimple.com

Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/tonivanschoyck

Instagram Page
https://www.instagram.com/tonivansofficial

https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/effingsimple

LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonivans

Episode Transcription

Intro/Outro: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Survive Scale Soar podcast, hear and learn through the success of others how to build the life and business you deserve. Learn to overcome failure, and what it means to seek out how to become the best possible version of yourself. And now here's your host, coach, entrepreneur, husband, and father, and author of the number one bestselling book, Survive Scale Soar, Jeremy Williams.

Jeremy Williams: And welcome back. This is Jeremy Williams and you're tuning in to the Survive Scale Soar podcast. The podcast for the entrepreneur built by entrepreneurs. Today, I'll be joined by an amazing guest,Tony Vanschoyck, a serial entrepreneur, three time best-selling author, and she helped found and launch a company called Monat, which is a clean plant-based beauty brand.

She is now a $10 million earner and is part of the [00:01:00] exclusive million dollar club. She has multiple streams of income, which bring in an eight figure income. Toni also owns and operates the nonprofit Lowcountry Lov. Today, we'll have a conversation about tenacity and having a passion for what you pursue. Before we get started with our guests.

A quick reminder if today's episode moves you, makes you think differently, makes you laugh, or, you know it may help someone, be sure to share it. And welcome Toni to the show. How are you doing?

Toni Vanschoyck: I'm so great Jeremy. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm very honored.

Jeremy Williams: I appreciate you taking the time to do this.

I know you're busy. You're part of Mike's inner circle as well. That's the way we've been able to connect, and so many great people that come into that room. Toni, I want to talk today about your journey. You've obviously had a huge amount of success with a company called [00:02:00] Monat.

I know you were in the restaurant industry and you've been an entrepreneur all your life. Tell us about that journey, and how it led you to this big opportunity.

Toni Vanschoyck: I actually started working in restaurants when I was 15 years old and I was working full-time.

I was doing well in school, and it just wasn't my thing. For me, it was boring. I poured a lot into my work ethic. I learned from my dad. My dad had many or various jobs, but it was this industry that he loved. I think that that's where my work ethic comes from.

My dad worked for big corporations. I eventually was working for a huge restaurant corporation running many restaurants and opening new restaurants for a big chain. I loved it, but I started having children and that schedule just doesn't [00:03:00] work very well when you're working random hours, 70 to 80 hours a week.

I did it through the birth of my first two children. By the time I got pregnant with my third child, I was like, I can't do this anymore and be present and be at home. What I did was I had PTO and I had maternity leave. I had time built up, and I also had a medical issue with working so much with being pregnant with our son, and I just had two.

I literally reinvented myself. We started with two brick and mortars. I had a really successful lawn service and a daycare. I ran the books, and my ex-husband ran the crews. We also had two assistants and a daycare.

That entrepreneurial spirit came very early on. The one thing I didn't [00:04:00] understand about my industry that I'm in now, is how it truly does help and it, it helps literally anyone and it's all about leverage. So I got started. When the big three car companies, because our business was outside of Detroit, Michigan hit that first recession, half of our lawn service accounts were gone overnight.

We did well. We ran two crews. We were bringing in a really stable six figures in our business., and it was like, poof, half of our accounts were gone overnight. I had to think very quickly on my feet. Actually one of our best lawn service clients sent us a ton of referrals.

I got started in a personal care products company. Now, mind you, I'm going to date myself. This was over 20 years ago, and I've been involved in the industry in some capacity ever since. That first company I was in for eight years, and they changed their formulations. I couldn't. [00:05:00] If I can't use the product, if I'm not passionate about it, you really will not hit your stride in this industry of network marketing.

Be that as it may, I was with another startup for six years from inception until the end. The owners got really greedy and we're taking more and more money out of our pockets, and that didn't sit well with my integrity. I decided right before they closed, unbeknownst to me that, that my trust, honesty, and my integrity is everything.

You'll hear me say that word a lot because, especially in the industry that I'm in now, if you don't have trustful relationships, you're never going to sell at a high level.. People will do business with you because they know, like, and trust you.

We've said this for years. Through that transition, I had about a year and a half, two [00:06:00] years, I tried to start up my own direct sales company with another partner that turned out horrible. I ended up losing almost $50,000 in that deal, and we were struggling.

I hadn't had an income coming in, and then my husband at the time was a Civil Engineer. We had moved to Chicago building roads and bridges. He got his premiums cut, and then half of his income went overnight. I don't have an income coming in at all to the point where my husband said you have to do something. I don't care whether you go back behind the bar, and you bartend a couple of nights a week.

My primary thing was being a mom and me being unemployable. You know once you have that little sliver of entrepreneurism, it's really hard to go back and work for somebody else. Not only that, [00:07:00] people will pay you just enough for them to get rich off of you and for you to get by.

Even though I was on my third job interview, oh boy, money fell into my lap. Somebody introduced me to someone that was working at the home office, and it was all on paper. We didn't have products to try, and we didn't have samples. We didn't have marketing materials.

We basically had a one-page land landing page. I committed to this even before I tried the product, which for me, was very unusual to do because I have to make sure that I am involved and I am all in 100%. I did know the caliber of these professionals; a family with a track record in the industry.

Our president Stuart MacMillan and then Rita Davenport, who is an icon, and she had her own TV show, had been VP of a [00:08:00] huge company for many years. Now she coaches, speaks, and trains. They had actually invested into Rita Davenport, teaching, coaching, and training with us.

That was a huge deal for me. I had known Rita for many years though not personally until we started in Monat, and knowing that they had invested in this upfront, and kept telling me, Toni, it's going to be the best product you've ever used. Rayner said, my wife Carolina loves it. Rayner is the CEO of Monat.

She was one of, one of the road testers. I mean, that's all we had. The home office staff, 11 of us ran with this in the beginning; September of 2014. We got an unmarked box with a one bottle of shampoo, a bottle of conditioner, and our signature rejuvenate oil.

[00:09:00] I've been green and clean for many years; clean, safe, effective non-toxic products we're not a stranger to me. I've done that research for a very long time. We've been living that way, and I thought this is too good to be true.

My husband's mom actually comes from that background. She owned two salons. She was a stylist for many years. As soon as we got that box back in August of 2014, we both tried the shampoo and conditioner, I just knew that this was going to be incredible. It was on a wing and a prayer that we've launched with nine products. We had an opportunity..

Our goal was to do a million dollars in our first year and we did $25 million. This was only in the US based [00:10:00] on those nine products. We didn't launch outside of our country until 13 months later. I knew the very first month that we launched this that it was going to be incredible.

You had to take that gamble because there was nobody doing that in our space, network marketing, and there are a lot of products that are playing in the clean beauty space. They have the clean ingredients, but their efficacy sucks. We actually created this product that is green and clean, it's non-toxic and it actually works.

Jeremy Williams: I want to ask you a question, cause there's a lot to unpack there. One of the things that stood out to me was you went through a lot of trials before you got to this huge success. I heard the word reinvent, [00:11:00] and I know our listeners are entrepreneurs.

They're looking to build businesses, or maybe they have businesses. What does it mean to reinvent yourself? Is that essentially a requirement to be an entrepreneur?

Toni Vanschoyck: I don't think it's a requirement. I think there was a company or two prior to me partnering up with Monat.

I think for me being in this industry, I had to reinvent myself and really look at what that really meant for me. I truly think people are put on this earth because they're given one special talent that they're supposed to share with the world. No matter what that is for you, it's what you love to do.

Sometimes you fall in love with doing something. It was new to you at some point, but you love what you're doing and you're really great at it. Right. I'm going to use a double negative here. You can't not, not, if you love [00:12:00] what you're doing, that is your path to make money.

And something else right now, the journey that you're going through is that you're working, bringing in this other income, so you can have the dream. So you can have that entrepreneurial business that you want to have, whatever that is. And, there's no idea that's too small.

I think reinventing for some people must happen, especially if they're in an industry that they really love, and they're going to continue on, but they've had some massive failures. Jay and I, case in point to, especially the older we get, the more wisdom that we acquire. I failed so many times, too many times to count, and I still fail. It’s learning from those mistakes and applying what works and moving forward that matters..

Jeremy Williams: That’s really powerful. The failure being the learning experience. We want to call it failure, and if we can shift our mindset to [00:13:00] understand it’s a learning opportunity to get us to the next step. It's a bigger opportunity, right?

Toni Vanschoyck: 100%. I know this for a fact if I hadn't had divorces, plural, and I did not have failures in my business life.

With businesses closing, I filed bankruptcy. We were behind on our house payment for months. That's where we were coming from, and my husband is a huge source of inspiration. He also works in this business with me now.

If we hadn't had those failures… If you're starting a business, you're going to have to bootstrap it. You're going to be [00:14:00] responsible. You're going to be wearing all the hats. There isn't an entrepreneur that I know of that all of a sudden became successful overnight.

That just doesn't happen.

Jeremy Williams: It’s the tortoise and the hare, right? The hare’s great to have all that success and really fast yet, it's the tortoise that it's always going to have that patience over time. That's when it's stacking the wins, right? You stack them and stack them, and when you look back, it's like how did I get here?

It was all those things that got you there.

Toni Vanschoyck: Oh 100%. You know, the other thing too, is that Jeremy now you know I love working with entrepreneurs to help them. You know I’ve figured them out, and I understand where they want to take their business. I recently was talking to Barbara Allen, a member of the Inner Circle, about this.

Barbara has this awesome idea for an event that she wants to do helping people [00:15:00] uncover pros and cons. Why does this matter so much? I think it's really important that anybody looking to become any kind of entrepreneur, whether it's a brick and mortar, whether it's an e-commerce business, whether it's in some sort of sales role, that they really need to sit down and evaluate.

What do I truly want out of this? Am I passionate about it? That word passion is going to be a fundamental difference in your success.

Jeremy Williams: I one hundred percent believe that. Now you're a member of a very small circle within your company Monat, and it's the $10 million circle. Tell me, what is that?

Can you share with our audience, what is the one thing that you attribute to that success?

Toni Vanschoyck: What that means is that at [00:16:00] Monat, we have three eight figure income earners since we launched this baby seven years ago. It's myself and two other fabulous women that are a part of our team. We have reached that echelon where we've earned $10 million in commissions; not sales commissions.

I still struggle sometimes to find the words. I'm still sitting here pinching myself. I can't believe all of the wonderful things that have happened, and the one thing that I will truly attribute to success is you have to be tenacious.

There's one other thing. You have to be self-accountable. Jeremy, if you don't mind, I want to break down the word tenacious. You, especially in this industry, must have very thick skin because you are going to be told eight times out of 10, “NO”. Anybody listening to this in a sales [00:17:00] role will understand what I'm talking about. Even more so, you're dealing with individuals one by one, and it can be experienced on a very wide scale.

Now with social media, you have to be tenacious in your follow-up. You have to be tenacious in your prospecting and inviting, and you just have to be tenacious knowing what you really want.

Jeremy Williams: Yes, I think that's true. I wrote an article today, Rising Above the Noise, and there's just so much noise out there and I'm sure in your industry specifically.

Do you want to be the cream of the crop? You've got to find a way to be louder than everybody. And I think tenaciousness is at work. You got to be tenacious about being out in front of everybody and not being that secret salesman.

Toni Vanschoyck: Right. I always say no matter what, if you have a closed mouth, you have closed business. [00:18:00] I don't care if you're a REALTOR®, in insurance sales, in medical sales, or if you're in network marketing. If you're not asking for the business, and mind you it takes an average of five to seven times to get to a yes, don't expect to sell.

The higher the ticket price, the more exposure you're going to need. I'll give you an example and this will fit very well with what you do. Our REALTOR when we moved here to Charleston from Chicago, showed us over a hundred houses, and we finally decided on the hundred and secondth. It had all of our checklists because I wasn't willing to compromise.

It's going to be based on exposure, building and again. I call us professional relationship builders.

Jeremy Williams: Yes, I think that's a lot of sales, right? It's not about the transaction. It's not about units. It's not about volume. It's about [00:19:00] relationships because in the end, the relationships will take care of everything.

Toni Vanschoyck: Absolutely. They are emotional transactions. And yet how many deposits are you going to make into a person? People have an emotional deposit account.

Jeremy Williams: Yes, absolutely, and you've got all these big things that are going on with your business, you’ve written three best-selling books, and you operate a nonprofit; Lowcountry Love.

Your John Maxwell certified as a coach. Why do you go beyond just the business?

Toni Vanschoyck: Jeremy, I'm always looking to be better. I also participate in a small group that is personally mentored by John Maxwell himself.

Three years in, [00:20:00] we still make that investment because we've seen how much it grows everything. Mr. Maxwell says, everything rises and falls on leadership. Even after listening to John for 15 years, I’m still listening to him. I still learn from him so much.

It's because your experiences are different the older you get, and you acquire more wisdom. I'm always looking to learn. Learning is a lifelong process. What can I do today to be better than I was yesterday?

Jeremy Williams: Tell me about Lowcountry Love. What spurred that opportunity?

Toni Vanschoyck: My husband and I moved from Chicago to South Carolina. We've been here now for six years and unbeknownst to me, South Carolina is the number [00:21:00] one state in entire country for domestic violence against women.

Being that I had experienced some of that myself, I said, how can we have a more direct impact on a grassroots community? For seven years, our foundation has been rooted in gratitude, giving back because there's so much more that the universe provides for you when you give freely.

I was looking at my husband when we had a friend’s entire house burn down to the ground. They lost everything. I'm like, how can we make more of an impact? How can we raise funds for people that are in certain situations instead of having it go through a major fundraiser? I want to be able to give back to those people that are in need, especially here in the Lowcountry.

[00:22:00] In South Carolina, I don't know if you know this, you got your high country and you got your low country. High country is further north up in the state. I said to my husband, I truly feel that everything here, spirituality, our blessings that we've had come across, this is all done in love.

It was natural for us to call it Lowcountry Love. I haven't really taken it to the scale that I want to, but we’ve given back. I think it's now up to about $80,000 that we've given back to nonprofits and families in need since we launched this three and a half years ago.

Jeremy Williams: What a beautiful thing.

I go back to those two words you shared, tenacious and passion. And this definitely sounds like a passion, a calling to you.

Toni Vanschoyck: Yes. It's one of the great things too, that we've been able to do because we have been so [00:23:00] blessed. I've got other irons in the fire for different things, but if we didn't have this, I wouldn't have those options.

I firmly feel, and Mike does talk about this a lot too, having those multiple income streams are so important, especially now.

Jeremy Williams: Yes. I believe that to be true. You've got the three books. Tell us a little bit about those. You wrote a series of books, I think Effing Simple.

You have the brand Effing Simple. Tell me a little bit about that. What does Effing Simple mean?

Toni Vanschoyck: That was my true labor of love. I always wanted to write a book. I am not the type of person that can sit for very long, I’m like a squirrel. This was born out of there not truly being a book for my industry on the market that was relevant because of technology.

As a matter of fact, I wrote this almost three and a half years ago. I need to update [00:24:00] because technology changes on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. There wasn't really a book for my industry written out there that really embraced social media, technology, and everything like that.

Being innovative, I'm like, I want to write a book for our industry. Knowing that I'm still in the industry, you have a lot of people that have written books, but they're no longer in a network marketing company. I firmly feel they can't speak to some of the things that we have now because of the different platforms and different ways of doing things.

That was the first book. Then the series came with just really keeping it Effing Simple because as we grow as a society, everything is so complicated, Jeremy, everything. I wanted to take my business platform and simplify that. And then I'm like, [00:25:00] if we can do it for a business platform, why can't we do it for other key components in life?

Effing Simple You: You Do You was our second book. Our third book was written on leadership; Effing Simple Leadership: How To Take Back Control and Make an Impact on Every Part of Your Life. I am taking all of my knowledge, everything that I've been able to learn, because I love to read, I love to listen to podcasts and interviews, and just pick out the most important things.

If you just focus on these four key things, and I always try to keep it at four or five key things, you're going to find a lot more success. You're going to find more time. You're going to be a better parent. You're going to be a better person to yourself. That's where this idea was born.

We just took it a step further, and it’s getting done on Monday. I'm so excited about our Effing Simple coaching platform. That's really what I wanted to take it towards because I love learning about people. I love what makes them tick. I love [00:26:00] just to share my wisdom and knowledge, and how I can help.

That's my heart being a servant to others.

Jeremy Williams: Yes, and that's one of the unique gifts about coaching I enjoy is being able to help others. I really appreciate you saying it can be simpler than what sometimes the world tells you it needs to be. I coach a lot of real estate agents, small business owners, and there's a lot of technology that's being pushed into the industry.

Some of it works, some of it doesn't, but it complicates everything. I have agents that will go knock on doors, or go join a chamber and build relationships, and do things that are not that complicated; Effing Simple. They’re more successful than these individuals that are trying to figure out how all these pieces work.

Sometimes it's better to keep it simple and having a coach like you, that's going to [00:27:00] be able to present that information to them. That's refreshing to hear that there's other coaches that share some of the same values.

Toni Vanschoyck: 100%. And you know, my mind right now is industry specific to network marketing.

Like I said before, there aren't a lot of people that are actually in a company that are in the midst of it, and they've moved on from their career. I'm looking at my approach being relevant because I'm in the thick of it. I think that makes a fundamental difference.

When you've done it, when you've done it before and you're still in, you're still present, and it gives you a separate sense of authority.

Jeremy Williams: Absolutely. We have entrepreneurs that are listening to this call or somebody maybe in the corporate world that's ready to strike out [00:28:00] on a new venture. What is one piece of advice from your heart that you'd like to share with that  entrepreneur seeking to start something.

Toni Vanschoyck: I think they need to look at it from a point of self validation. If they're waking up in the middle of the night and they're thinking about it, or they wake up the next morning and they're thinking about it, I firmly feel that those are angel winks.

That's the direction that you need to go in. It's kind of like when someone comes to mind, like you're just sitting there, you're going along with your day and someone pops into your head or you have this idea, it's almost like you're being told you need to act on this.

Trust your intuition for a reason. There's a reason why we're beings of energy and for whatever reason that is coming to you, there's a reason it's coming to you. What most people do is they will bury it, and they won't act on it because it [00:29:00] seems like I've been too long in this career, or this is silly. There is no idea that silly, and Jeremy, can I share an example with you real quick? I have a really good friend, and his name is Anthony Doran. He was in this business for three years and at this point he had moved on. He showed Jay and I this prototype called the Sneaker Glove.

I looked at the prototype, and that's all he could talk about. I'm like, Anthony, you need to do this. You need to do this. He went through some trials and he finally got the prototype. He had somebody produce it, and he is supposed to be on Shark Tank next season. He's in over a hundred retail stores right now because we kept pushing him, and sometimes you need people to push.

Even though he's a really good friend, we saw the value in it, and [00:30:00] he kept talking about it. Dude, you need to do this. The Sneaker Glove is very unique. You put it on, and you can clean your sneakers and pivot to clean stainless steel appliances.

It does all of these different things. When you're thinking about this, or maybe you're an inventor, or you have an idea of what you want to do, don't ever discount that.

Jeremy Williams: Yes, I think that's great advice. It's the subconscious talking to the conscious. When you hear those voices, there's a reason. I believe it's a Spiritual calling you're being told, hey, this is the opportunity. This is the door you need to step through.

When we don't do that, we miss out on being the best version of ourselves. What powerful information. Toni, if somebody wants to get in touch with you, you've got this great new coaching program that's coming out [00:31:00] that’s going to be industry specific, or they want to buy a book, or they want to talk to you more about the opportunities with Monat, how do they get connect with you?

Toni Vanschoyck: We're launching the new website Monday. It's been in beta testing for about three months. It is leadership.effingsimple.com. You can DM me up on Instagram. That's where I do a lot of my business at @tonivansofficial. 

Jeremy Williams: Awesome. Great. This will be in the show notes too. Toni, I thank you for taking time out of your schedule today, and there's so much value you provided. I know for me, it was tenacious and passion is what I took from today.

I appreciate you sharing and the stories that I know are going to have an impact on somebody listening to this.

Toni Vanschoyck: Awesome. Jeremy, again, I'm so honored and thank you so much [00:32:00] for your time as well. I cannot wait to share this with others.

Intro/Outro: Thank you for listening to the Survive Scale Soar podcast. If you heard something that made a difference in your life today, share it with someone that might benefit and subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. Learn more about the host of this podcast and coaching services offered by Red Hawk Coaching by visiting www.RedHawkCoaching.com.