March 15, 2025 • 46 mins
Episode 64 Frederick Dudek (Freddy D)
Revolutionizing Business with AI and Automation: Insights from Shannon Lavenia
Shannon Lavenia joins us to share her incredible journey from being orphaned at a young age to becoming a seven-figure business strategist and AI innovation leader. Her mission with Brand Builder AI is all about helping local businesses harness the power of AI and automation to achieve scalable growth while reclaiming their time. We dive deep into her experiences, including overcoming stage three breast cancer, and how that resilience has fueled her drive to empower other entrepreneurs. Shannon emphasizes the importance of having the right systems in place to ensure business success without the burnout. Get ready for a straight-up conversation that reveals how embracing AI can transform operations and profitability for any business.
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Takeaways:
- Shannon Lavenia's journey from being an orphan to a successful business strategist showcases incredible resilience and determination.
- Leveraging AI and automation can empower local businesses to achieve scalable growth while reclaiming personal time and freedom.
- The importance of immediate response in business cannot be overstated; contacting leads within 15 minutes can significantly increase conversion rates.
- Building genuine relationships with clients and suppliers is crucial for long-term success and can lead to increased loyalty and referrals.
- Attention is the new currency in business; if you're not engaging your audience, you're likely losing them to competitors who are more interesting.
- A holistic approach to business operations, integrating marketing, customer service, and technology, is essential for sustainable growth and efficiency.
Links referenced in this episode:
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Brand Builder AI
- Brand Builder Design Studios
- Cardone Ventures
- Jack Canfield
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(01:58):
Today we have an extraordinaryguest who bridges the gap between
cutting edge AI technology andpractical business success. Someone
whose journey is as inspiringas the results she delivers. Shannon
Lavenia's story is nothingshort of remarkable. From overcoming
the challenges of beingorphaned at a young age to becoming
a high school teacher, shecompletely transformed her life into
(02:20):
that of a seven figurebusiness strategist, AI innovation
leader and sought afterspeaker. As the founder of Brand
Builder AI and Brand BuilderDesign Studios, Shannon has revolutionized
how local businesses leverageAI and automation to achieve rapid
scalable growth, all whilereclaiming their time and personal
(02:40):
freedom. Her expertise increating enterprise level systems
has attracted high profileclients including Cardone Ventures
and success legend JackCanfield, who specifically sought
out her strategic guidance.But what truly sets Shannon apart
is her resilience. Afterconquering stage three breast cancer,
(03:02):
she has channeled herunstoppable energy into empowering
hardworking business ownerswith AI driven systems that maximize
profitability without theburnout. Her philosophy is simple
but powerful. With the rightprocesses, systems and automation,
you can have an exceptionalpersonal life and extraordinary business
success. Get ready for aninspiring and insightful conversation
(03:24):
as we uncover how Shannon ishelping business owners level up
with AI, scale their profitsand build businesses that truly work
for them.
Welcome Shannon from BrandBuilder AI. Welcome to the Business
Superfans podcast. We're superexcited to have you here this afternoon.
Shannon, how are you?
I'm doing awesome. Thank youfor inviting me to be a guest. I'm
(03:45):
super excited to be here andexcited for our conversation.
Yeah. So Sharon, tell me alittle bit about your story of how
you your road to coming upwith Brand Builder AI. So there's
a backstory to all that. Sowhat's the backstory?
Great question. So I have beenin business since 2002, so I've been
in business for quite a while.I've had a marketing agency, branding
(04:08):
and marketing agency. And in2019, I actually got diagnosed with
breast cancer and I spent twoyears fighting that. And when I was
on that journey, I really hadto figure out how to automate a lot
of things in my own business.Cause I was stepping out, right?
I was. I knew I was going tobe down from the chemotherapy and
(04:30):
stuff like that. And as I wasgoing through that process, I reached
out to other businesses thatwe had been working with on their
branding and their design andtheir websites and I said, hey, are
you guys having these samestruggles where you feel like you
just can't step away from yourbusiness? And they said yes. And
that kind of Got us into thepath of utilizing AI and then implementing
(04:54):
AI in other people'sbusinesses to automate their sales
processes. And we fullylaunched in 2021 and then did a relaunch
in 2022 and have been justgoing straight up since then.
Wow, what a story. Socongratulations on beating the breast
cancer stuff.
Thank you.
(05:15):
Yeah, my now wife, we've beentogether for 12 years now, but we
just got married in October oflast year. And she's always concerned
about that.
Yeah, it's a big concern. Andespecially I think as business owners,
one of the things we forget tothink about is like, how will our
business operate if we can'toperate it? And that just hit me
(05:36):
like a ton of bricks verysuddenly. And fortunately, I was
able to figure a lot of thingsout that have helped a lot of other
businesses from my own journey.
Yeah, because a lot ofbusiness owners, they're the business
and maybe a solopreneur andthey get sidelined. Who's going to
take over the business isgoing to help, who's going to keep
running it? Or if you're abusiness that's got a small team
(06:00):
with you, same thing. If youdon't delegate, don't empower people,
don't put systems in place,you know, something happens to you,
who's going to run it, who'sgoing to take over, what's the Plan
B? Plan C?
It's exactly right. And duringthose times when life isn't so good
is usually when you do needmore income, not less. Figuring out
(06:23):
how to keep your businessoperational and producing income.
Whether you are a solopreneuror whether you have a big team or
whether you're a multimilliondollar company, what happens when
the leader is down? You reallyhave to think about that. And we're
in such an amazing time rightnow where AI is able to do so much
(06:44):
in our business that you canbe much more efficient, you can have
a much higher roi, you canhave operational things happening
when you're not even there. Soit's just pretty amazing where we've
evolved. I grew up in the agewhere we were still putting cassette
tapes into a cassette playerto start a computer. To even think
(07:08):
about the fact that now we canhave AI answering our phone calls
and scheduling appointments,it's just. It's crazy. It's wild.
Yeah. No, I go back a littlefurther where we actually had flip
switches onto a big mainframeand had to do a certain sequence
to get it on. And then therewas a 300 megabyte was a huge hard
(07:31):
drive.
Yeah.
About, I don't know, 6, 8inches high and probably about, if
I remember correctly, at leastmaybe 18 inches round. And you would
bump the hard drive machineand it ruined the hard drive. People
were restricted from gettinggoing into the computer room. Only
certain people that had theskill set to go in there. We've come
(07:54):
a long way because I've gotmore power on my smartwatch than
in doing a computer back then.
It's so true. It is just. It'sso wild now. It's amazing.
It's really exponential nowbecause when I got started in the
software industry decades ago,we had maybe one, two releases a
(08:14):
year now. People put updatesalmost daily. There's a patch put
out or at least once a week.Some platforms put out updates and
everything else. So totallyjust totally changed the game.
Yeah. And I think businessowners, one of the things that we
communicate a lot and it's sorelevant to your topic of creating
super fans is businesses haveto embrace this. It's not really
(08:38):
a. Like maybe one day somedayI'll look at AI. It's moving so fast
and it's allowing us asbusiness owners to create such engaging,
connecting content and toproduce it so quickly and distribute
it so rapidly that if you'renot embracing it, you're not going
(09:00):
to get the attention that youwant for your business. And that's
as business owners. Right.Attention is the new currency. That's
really what we're looking for.Right. We're looking to capture as
much current, much of thatattention currency as we possibly
can. And if we're not, ifwe're not keeping our audience and
our customers and ourpotential customers engaged in some
(09:21):
type of conversation ormission or journey, then we lose
them because somebody else is.Someone else is more interesting.
Oh, absolutely correct. Andthen you gotta include all of you
got suppliers that areproviding you with product and such
and services or distributor,if you're marketing stuff through
a distribution channel. Soyou've got all those components need
(09:42):
to be involved. Because ifI'm. If I'm a supplier and you're
the business that's reachingout to me, expressing appreciation,
gratitude, happy birthday, allthose kind of things. And then there's
another supply, the personthat needs my supplies. And they're
always complaining about thisand about that and everything is
(10:05):
always upside down, who am Igoing to favor when there's a demand
for something right away? Theperson. That person that's been nice
to me, that's beenappreciative and everything else
I'm going to bend overbackwards to provide the supplies
to them versus the other guy.The other guy is going to take sit
on a bench for a few minutes.
(10:26):
Yeah, it's exactly right. It'sabout building relationships. I feel
like we've gone full circlebecause back in the 1940s and 1950s,
that's how business reallyevolved was through those types of
relationships where peoplewould send gifts and personal cards
and celebrate birthdays andanniversaries. And then that kind
(10:48):
of dropped out for a while andit came into the what have you done
for me lately Generation. Andnow we're circling back to that where
it's really about buildingthose relationships and keeping that
relationship and keeping thatattention. Because there's so much
opportunity now, right? There's.
(11:09):
Yeah, and that's where AIcomes in too, because it can actually
personalize the stuff. You canset up AI to be able to understand
the avatar, for example, ofone your target audience, but then
it can go granular and intothe actual individual. So you can
have a higher level avatarthat says, okay, this is my target
(11:31):
market. And then within mytarget market here are the individuals.
And it will study thatparticular person and then it'll
communicate appropriately tothat individual and how that individual
prefers to be communicatedwith as well as the conversation.
Exactly right. Exactly right.And even for customers, sending a
(11:53):
birthday message, sending apersonalized email, using AI tools
in sales automation, we'realways looking at how do we hyper
personalize the follow up. Soif they already bought widget A,
we're not going to sendanother email offering them to buy
widget A, we're going to sendan email that says, now you have
widget A, here's the nextthing that you would want to get
(12:14):
that's going to help you usewidget A, right? Or help you optimize
that. So AI is so valuable for that.
So let's go into what doesbrand builder AI actually do and
what services do you guys provide?
So we're a service and a SaaS,right? So SaaS, if anybody doesn't
know, stands for software as aservice. So we have a CRM and a funnel
(12:38):
builder, a website hoster,calendar system, invoicing, all of
that. And we provide that tocompanies that we work with who are
looking to organize their dataand use AI in their follow up and
in their sales automation. Sowe set that up so that they have
their systems in place, thefoundational systems for them to
(12:59):
be able to scale. And thenwhere we also really shine is local
business, Google Mapsoptimization. So we work to get people
ranked up to number one on theGoogle Maps for their industry in
their area. And then we do SEOoptimization on the back end and
we tie it all together withcontent distribution. So it's really
(13:24):
a cohesive relationship model.And when we're talking to business
owners, one of the biggestchallenges that they have is they've
invested in something like SEOor they've invested in Facebook ads,
or they've invested in GoogleAds, or they've invested in postcards
and they've hired really likea one lane business. That's what
(13:44):
I call them. They're reallygood at one thing, right? So they're
good at postcards or they'regood at Google SEO or they're good
at Facebook ads. But every oneof those channels will only get you
so far if your entireecosystem doesn't support turning
those leads into sales. That'sreally where we come in is we take
(14:07):
a very holistic approach tomarketing where we look at what are
the inbound channels and thenwhat happens once that lead comes
in? Where are they seeing you,where are they being followed, what
content are they getting? Howis that assisting you in your SEO?
Right? So Facebook ads canactually help you boost your s done.
(14:29):
Right? So but a Facebook adsmanager might not know that. Right?
So even though we work withbusinesses and we'll work with their
Facebook ads manager, we pullthat into how does this work in a
holistic way to really hypernurture these leads into converting
them into sales. And where isthe long term vision in terms of
(14:50):
your ranking with SEO, yourranking on Google Maps, your reputation
management and your internaloperations and can you scale effectively?
Can a new salesperson come in,can a new appointment center come
in and is it plug and playlike you can drop them in a seat
and they already have alltheir systems set up. So that's our
zone of genius is taking thatholistic approach for a business
(15:13):
that's really looking to scaleup to the next level and wants to
make sure that they'refoundational elements are incorrectly
and that everything they'redoing is part of their bigger picture.
No, that's absolutely right onthe money. Because when an inquiry
comes in, how it's handled iseverything. I have a rule, I have
(15:35):
a rule that if someone comesin, they need to be contacted within
15 minutes. Today's world yougo beyond 15 minutes and it's maybe.
But if you contact them within15 minutes, one, it shows you're
attentive, two, shows thatyou're interested in their business
and three, you beat out allthe competition. It doesn't have
any tools, et cetera, tofollow up, because usually it just
(15:58):
goes into some email and itjust sits there. And there's no acknowledgment
that it's come in or any ofthat stuff. When you're incorporating
AI tools, you can have notjust a generic autoresponder, it
can actually be a personalizedresponse back to the person. As an
example, I was in a networkinggroup and one of the persons in there
(16:20):
says that they were chattingwith somebody on their website chat
box, and they were going forseveral minutes. They finally realized
that they were speaking to arobot that wasn't a person. But they
still continued with itbecause they said it was giving them
the information that theywanted. But the fact that it was
(16:41):
taking place was the game changer.
I love that you say thatbecause that's one of the things
that we do, is we installthose chat widgets with AI. And I'm
shocked when I go to a websiteand they don't have a chat widget.
Because we live in an instantsociety now. And people that started
(17:01):
their business five or 10years ago, they forget that, that
we live in an instant society.People want answers instantaneously.
If they go to Google and theysearch for landscaper near me, they
call that first number of thatfirst person. If they don't answer,
they call the second person,then the third person, then the fourth
person.
Yep.
They read every single review.They'll go to the website, they'll
(17:25):
go to the chat widget, they'llstart a conversation. If they don't
get a response right away, ifit says, leave your information,
we'll call you tomorrow,they'll go to the next guy because
their attention is on hiringsomeone and they want to complete
that cycle. They want to getit done. They're not doing research.
They're actually trying to getthe result of hiring someone to come
(17:48):
out. And I have a great storyon this in relation to an H Vac,
an air conditioning repairperson. And our air conditioning
in our house went out on July4th. Fourth of July, right in Florida.
It is hot, it's sweltering.It's like an emergency to not have
(18:08):
air conditioning because youcan already picture. I already told
my husband, if we don't getsomeone out here in two hours, I'm
going to a hotel becausethere's no way I'm going to be able
to sleep at night. Then I'mgoing to be miserable. Tomorrow.
Everybody's going to have amiserable Day. It's not going to
be a good scene. Let's justget the H Vac person. So we called
the first person, no answer.Called the second person, no answer.
And I get it's a holiday. Butwe called the third person and they
(18:33):
said we can come out on anemergency basis. It's an extra $200.
We were like fine, do you needus to pay you now? Just have somebody
come out. And they came outand they fixed the problem. And now
they're our preferred vendor.We stopped using the other person
that we used before because wewanted that result. So you get an
(18:54):
idea of what people arelooking for in that. And when we
installed AI Voice into one ofour clients, we have a client in
Arizona who's landscapecompany and when they started with
us, they didn't even have aGoogle business profile yet. They
still got to a million dollarsa year in revenue. We were max because
he had to do door knocking. Itwas house by house sales. And we
(19:16):
got their Google my businessprofile up. We got them up to number
one in their area. Their callsincreased by over 200%. Then their
staff couldn't handle thecalls. So 60% of the calls weren't
being answered. So then we putin voice AI and now his biggest problem
is he's getting so many jobshe has to hire more guys to be able
(19:38):
to get more trucks, to be ableto get out and do all these jobs.
Right. It's a great problem tohave. But it's because in his particular
industry, a lot of those guysare on their personal cell phones
as their phone number. Theydon't answer the phone at night.
They're not answering thephone when they're with the kids
or with the family, which is agood thing. But they're also losing
(20:00):
all those jobs.
Sure. It goes back to what Iwas saying. You got a 15 minute window.
That's it.
That's really the bottom linebecause you just outlined it right
there. You went through 1Hvac, second one and the third one
answered there. You got thebusiness. It's that simple. Who responds
first has the best chance.Even. Even if you're shopping. One
(20:22):
of the things I teach peopleis that you either want to be number
one or you want to be numberthree. You never want to be the middle
salesperson.
That's so true.
Because number one person setsthe bar, number two is always screwed
and number three can play cleanup.
That's right.
So if you're number two, ifyou're listening, change out, reschedule.
(20:43):
So you're number three, thenyou have a good chance because you
set that bar so high if you'renumber one by that person taking
that response from you guys,answering the call, providing a service
as fast as possible, nobodyelse can compete with that.
That's how you create asuperfan. That's how you get the
five star review. Right.Reviews are literally gold. Like
(21:06):
you can bank on reviews.People read them, they study them,
they look for a review that'slike them. And if you're answering
the call right away, you'redelivering what you promise, you
do it with a smile, youprovide exceptional value and you
ask for the review. People areexcited to leave it and they'll leave
(21:27):
a five star review. They'lltell a story, they'll share the good
benefits and that sellspeople. That literally will reduce
the buying friction. So peopleare more likely to take out their
card and pay without anyhesitation if they've read really
good reviews and people haveresponded well and they can relate
(21:50):
to one of those reviews. Andeven that can be handled with AI
now.
Sure, yeah, you can createthat engagement of the automatic
follow up. I always used totell people when I did, you know,
coaching and sales coaching,it'd be okay. You've got one of these
smartphone things. There itis, use it when people are done.
Can I get a quick videotestimonial that becomes your salesperson?
(22:14):
You don't have to say anythingnow. You just play these 12 different
video testimonials about theservice and how you've delivered
it or the product and etcetera. You don't have to say zip.
Let the videos do the sellingand you'll be sold. And you bring
up another thing too that'simportant, Shannon, is that staying
in communication because toomany people do a good, really good
(22:35):
job and you never hear fromthem again. They never follow up,
they never check up.
Oh true.
They did a great job. You'resuper happy. They didn't ask for
a review. They left, they saidthanks, took the check or the credit
card, processed it, gone. Andyou never hear from them again. Those
are so many squanderedopportunities because you are a super
(23:00):
fan of what they did, but theynever asked you for anything to help
promote their business. Andout of sight, out of mind. And next
time you need the similarservice, you don't even remember
them. You get somebody newbecause they never reached out back
out to you.
Yeah, that's right. You'resitting there, wait, who was that?
I used, what was their name?And you're not going to take the
(23:24):
time to go back through yourbank statement to try and find out
who you used two years ago todo something like that. And there's
ways to counter that. Givethem a QR code, sticker, follow up
with them with email, send abirthday card, any. There's just
a gazillion ways to follow up.And years ago, when I started my
business, one of my mentorstaught me the phrase, the fortune
(23:47):
is in the follow up. Andthat's so true because even a great
example, that landscapecompany that hired us, they were
on my email list for eightyears. Eight years of getting email
follow up. And then they wereat that point where they were just
so burned out that they calledme up and were like, can you help
(24:07):
us? And that's generated over,I don't know, $150,000 in revenue
for our company. Just workingwith that one business and helping
them scale. Was it worthsending out eight years worth of
emails for that? Of course itis. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. When I was sellingmanufacturing software, we would
(24:30):
have a meeting and we'd haveeverybody into the meeting to demonstrate
the software and thetechnology. So it would include the
people from the shop floorthat were running the milling machines
and the lathes and the wire,EDM and all that machinery stuff.
Yeah.
And I made sure to geteverybody's name and then I would
send back. Then there was noemails yet. So I would send everybody
(24:52):
a personalized letter would beShannon, thank you so much for participating
in our meeting today. Yourinput was very beneficial. Appreciate
hope you got a lot of stuffout of it, et cetera. And we would
win the sale. And I wouldreach back out and says, okay, why
did you guys pick us? Themajority of them would be, we felt
that after the sale you wouldgive us the best service because
(25:16):
you being out running themilling machine with nobody ever
acknowledges you, you got aletter saying thank you for your
time. Appreciate it. Soeverybody in the shop floor that
participated in a meeting, notjust management, I included, everybody,
didn't matter what level inthe company was. So everybody had
to feel good because everybodygot recognized and appreciated and
(25:39):
that got the sale.
That's awesome. I love it. Itjust goes to show you people are
future forward thinking andthey are thinking like, how is this
going to work out for me? Andit's that level of customer service
and attention that this is howyou don't have to compete on price
is through that value. Becauseif you're competing on price, the
(26:02):
only question you have to askyourself is how low can you go right
before you're out of business.So in our instance, even for a website
build, we're not the cheapestperson on the block, but we always
complete the project. It'salways exceptionally done. We always
meet the timeline. You look usup and there's just no bad press
(26:23):
at all because we always dowhat we promise. When you do that,
you don't have to be the $400website builder or you don't have
to be the service providerwho's all about price. It's okay
if you give an invoice andthere's a little bit of sticker shock
because they're getting theexperience that you're the one who's
going to provide the mostvalue to continue with that.
(26:44):
Price becomes a secondaryconversation. Because if you're really
working to help that businessowner get to the level that they
want to get to, and you'reworking with them, and now they're
seeing it, because that's thehard part is getting them to see
how you can get them to wherethey need to be or where they'd like
(27:06):
to be. But they don't know howto get there.
Right.
The cost becomes secondarybecause you're really focusing on
saying, okay, you want to be,let's say, $2 million worth of revenue
versus $1 million in a year.So you want to grow a million dollars
in a year. You work with them,from what I'm understanding, to lay
(27:28):
out that plan. So now they cansay, okay, I can see that, and I'm
going to spend $100,000 togain $900,000. Absolutely, that's
right.
Yeah. And I think too, we'vealways taken the holistic approach
because I've been doing this along time, so experience definitely
(27:49):
matters. I've seen businessesthat will put a ton of money in one
channel, right, or one lane.So they'll hire an SEO expert, but
then the SEO expert neverfollows up on how does that SEO actually
convert to money at the end ofthe day and how is it converting
to the overall strategic planof this business? Right, Their five
(28:11):
year plan, their ten yearplan. Maybe they're planning for
an exit. How does that evenwork with an exit? How will it work
with their advertising? Sowhen we talk to a business, we look
at everything, we do acomplete audit, we're looking at
their entire footprint online,we look at their website, we look
at their inbound mechanisms,their outbound mechanisms, how are
(28:34):
their salespeople operating,where are the cogs in the machine,
what's slowing theirproduction? And just speeding it
up and making it very simple.Business actually is very simple.
It seems really complicatedbecause there's so many different
ways to do things, right. Thatkind of adds the complexity to it,
(28:55):
but it's very simple. You'regetting the attention of people.
You're turning that attentioninto conversations. You're turning
those conversations into cash.And that's the basic simplicity of
business. So if you keep itthat simple and you just make it
very streamlined, then thebusiness will grow. When there's
(29:16):
a ton of complexities aboutit, then the business doesn't grow.
It goes back to what you weresaying earlier when we started Conversation
is that some business guys andgals work inside the business. They're
busy in the weeds becausethey're the only one that can do
it as good as they can do it.
(29:36):
That's a whole nother episode.
I'll take 80% of what I can doif I don't have to do it. That's
the reality of it. But youcan't scale and you can't systematize.
And what you're talking aboutreally, is having a system in place
for multiple differentdepartments. And in your case, you're
(29:57):
helping people with systemsfor their engagement with prospective
customers and existingcustomers and any partners associated
with that business. Because aswe talked earlier, it's a whole ecosystem.
And so the left hand has gotto know what the right hand's doing.
The left foot and the rightfoot got to be involved, and they
(30:19):
all got to be coordinated.Otherwise you can't walk.
That's right. And everythingleads to revenue. Even in the case,
like with the landscapecompany that we were working with
in Arizona, with their volume,that extra volume can be monetized
just by finding a partner, alandscape company partner that's
(30:40):
willing to buy those leads.Right? So if they have those leads
coming in, instead of wastingthem, just go to another landscaping
company and say, we have moredeals than we can possibly do. Will
you give us a percentage? 10,15%. What are your margins then?
Now you have a whole notherrevenue channel that you can monetize.
(31:01):
But it's through those thingswhere if you're only hiring a Facebook
ads manager and they give youmore leads than you can handle, you
just have extra leads that arebeing wasted. When you look at it
holistically, and you'relooking at it with that very simplistic
model of you're looking to getattention, you're turning the attention
into conversations, you'returning the conversations into cash.
(31:24):
If you can't Handle all thoseconversations, then you need to just
find another way to turn theminto cash, not just waste them. Right?
Yeah. Like you said, marketthat to somebody else. Or it's a
possibility of saying, hey,let's partner up and maybe we expand
our business.
That's right, exactly. There'sso much nowadays. It's just I, I
(31:48):
truly feel that in 2025,there's far more opportunity now
than there was even 10 yearsago because the effort to the money
is decreased so much versuswhen I started my business in 2002,
we started flyering cars andnewspaper ads. So there was like
a huge amount of effort thathad to go out to generate the leads
(32:10):
and then a huge amount ofeffort dealing with the leads and
then trying to even takemonetary transactions was like a
whole nother animal. You hadthis like machine on your desk and
you had to get the person togive you the credit card number over
the phone. And it was just,there was a lot of effort that went
between the idea to the cash.Now the, that effort has been so
(32:32):
dramatically reduced. And thetime from somebody inquiring to you
getting paid can be seconds,right? It can literally be seconds
online. So there's so muchopportunity if people are willing
to take advantage of it andutilize AI, utilize cutting edge
tools, really look at theentire model very holistically, figure
(32:56):
out how to optimize all oftheir inbound channels and then just
scale. And I love what yousaid about hiring because delegation's
a big part of it. We have aframework that we teach and go through
with our business ownerscalled the paid framework. And it's
promote, automate, influenceand delegate and that you always
start with promotion, nomatter what. I think a lot of times
(33:19):
people start backwards. Theystart, I have to make the products,
I have to do all this first.You have to figure out if people
are even going to beinterested in it or buy it. You promote
when the leads start comingin, you automate that nurture you
influence with excellentsalesmanship. So you have to learn
how to really influence thatbuying decision. That's done online
with some factors like yourreputation management, your reviews,
(33:40):
the flow, the channel, thespeed to call back. Like you said,
really, you cannot wait morethan 15 minutes. Now there's technology.
You can even tell whensomeone's looking at your website
and it can alert you and youcan call them. Right. While they're
looking at your website.
Right? Yeah, I use some ofthat stuff and it's pretty wild.
It's amazing. It's. What acoincidence. You were Looking at
(34:01):
our website, of course we knewthey were looking at the website,
but you're top of mind. Soeven the speed, the effort from someone
looking at your website to yougetting paid is so greatly reduced
that time, that effort haslike just been squashed to nothing.
And it's really just speed nowif people are utilizing it, the old
(34:23):
school methods are just. We'regoing to see a lot of businesses
go out of business becausethey're just not able to attract
and capture that attention andthey're not willing to invest.
Well, I think part of it isthey don't even, they don't even
understand it. I recentlyworked with a company and I was moving
them into the 21st century andthey were having a hard time because
(34:45):
now it was over their head. Soit became confrontational and I ended
up saying, you know what, thisisn't going to work out for either
one of us. And I left. Becausein their minds, losing control because
they didn't understand thetechnology. They didn't know how
to utilize the technology.They knew that they needed it. But
(35:05):
then when it was in place, itwas overwhelming and they weren't
willing to put in the time.And I'm looking at them and going,
I know you've been around for30 years, but you don't understand.
In the last five years thingshave exponentially changed.
Oh yeah. And it's happeningfaster than ever now. Even legacy
(35:26):
businesses like that, the 30year old companies and stuff, they
will not be able to competewith the newer companies that come
up and are able to justcapture a huge market share of that
attention and keep thosepeople engaged.
Well, that was with thisparticular company, their challenge.
They weren't growing, theywere two and a half, $3 million and
they were in a constructionspace. I did the research and says,
(35:49):
hey, In Arizona, there's $159billion worth of commercial construction
going on. You're getting0.00000000 somewhere of that business
right now and you're going toget even more zeros in front of you
if you don't pivot.
So true. Yeah, they're goingto have to just embrace it. I've
(36:12):
had these hard conversationswith some business owners that have
had like a plumbing businessfor 30 years. Father started it now,
then it got passed down. Andthe reality is, the thing I say to
them is, look, if my toilet isoverflowing and clogged, I don't
need you to explain to me whatyou're going to do and how you're
going to fix it. I just needyou to fix it. I need it cleaned
(36:35):
up, I need the toiletflushing. Same thing here. Your business
right now, excuse my French,is going to shit and you need it
fixed. And you don't need meto explain to you how I'm going to
do this. You just need itfixed. And then they get that. They're
like, you know what, you'reright. I'm like, you're a plumber,
you're not a marketingstrategist, you're not a software
(36:57):
implementer. I am. Once theyget that, it's you stay in your zone,
I'll stay in my zone andyou're gonna see the results of what
I do. And if you don't see theresults, then you have every right
to ask for your money back.But they get you the results.
And going further than that,we're talking about getting the deal.
But the reality is, I look atit, the sale really begins once you
(37:21):
get the order.
That's right.
Because getting the order tome having been in sales for decades,
is the easy part. The hardpart is the implementation, the delivery
and everything else. So that'simportant for everybody to understand
is that you can put in all thesystems in place and put all the
technology and help them getthe deal. But if they can't deliver
(37:42):
and they don't have systems inplace to do the proper onboarding
and delivering and then moreimportantly, the follow up for ongoing
engagement, it's going to fallapart as well, right?
Yeah. Delivery isexceptionally important and it's
just integrity in, in the realworld, it's integrity, it's ethical,
(38:03):
somebody paid you, you made apromise, you need to deliver on it.
When people have put moneydown, they always have a little bit
of nervousness around it.Because I haven't met anybody yet
who hasn't been ripped off onsomething. They bought something,
they got their hair done andthe stylist did a terr job or they
got a floor installed and thefloor installer did a terrible job.
(38:25):
Like we've all had those andwe carry those experiences with us
in the buying transaction. Soit's safe to assume that our customers
also carry those transactionswith them in their buying experience.
And the way that we counterthat is through exceptional delivery.
And you do that and they don'thave to see what you're doing, they
(38:45):
don't have to know what you'redoing, but they do have to get communication
from you that it is beingdone. If they don't get that communication,
what happens when Human beingsdon't get communication is they fill
in the blanks with the stuffin their head.
It goes back to dating. Let'skeep it super simple. When you're
dating, if you remember backin the day, you don't hear that phone
(39:07):
call back after you left themessage. Your mind goes always to
the negative, never to the positive.
Found someone else. They're.They don't like me. They don't want
me. They died in a caraccident. There's. It's like every
fill in the blank scenario isall negative. It's this void, there's
this gap. So if you'recommunicating, like if we're designing
(39:28):
a website, we're sendingregularly screenshots, we're showing
them what we're working on. Weeven send pictures of our designer
and the computer and they getto see there's a real person working
on it. And it just makes itfun, you know, it keeps them up to
date of what's happening ontheir project.
And that's how you're creatinga super fan of your customer because
you're keeping them engaged.And now they can turn around and
(39:50):
they're talking to their otherbusiness owner, Buddy or Budet, and
they're having lunch, they'rehaving drinks, they're having coffee,
whatever it is you say. Thismarketing agency that we just brought
on recently, we're gettingpictures, we're getting updates,
they're sending some goofystuff. This company is really cool.
And that's it. That's all ittakes. Because they're going to say,
(40:11):
really tell me more about thatcompany. We're, we're not happy with
ours. They do an okay job, butsounds like this company's really
knocking it out for you. Andthere you go. That's all it takes.
And it cost you nothing.
Yeah, exactly. I love thatthis has been a really great conversation.
Thank you. Yes. So we'regetting close to the end here. Shannon,
(40:32):
what's a good tip that you cangive our listeners that they should
look at right away as towhether it's set up properly or not?
My thoughts are, is GoogleMaps, are they set up properly under
Google Maps? That's probablythe first thing that they should
look at.
A hundred percent. That's afoundational step because that is
(40:53):
where the majority of peopleare doing their search now. They'll
even pull up Siri and they'llsay, show me a landscaper near me.
It pulls up Google Maps andthe actual behavior of what people
are doing. So one of the rulesof marketing is always to meet the
behaviors of what consumersare doing. Right. So if they're doing
(41:13):
that, you want to meet thatbehavior, and it is your reputation.
So it used to be thatneighbors, referred neighbors, and
that's how you built yourreputation. Now it's Google reviews,
it's Yelp reviews. It's whatpeople see online that determines
their buying decision andeither increases or reduces friction
(41:34):
to them choosing you.
I'm going to add to that tomake. To drive the point home. You
and your husband and me and mywife, we go out to the restaurant
once in a while, right?
Yeah.
What's the things that we alldo is we check what the reviews.
Yep.
Everybody does it. You'redriving along and saying, what do
you got? What do you got ataste for? I don't know. I got a
(41:55):
taste for Italian. All right,let's. Where are we? Hey, honey,
take a look and see whatItalian restaurants are on the way
to wherever we're going or onthe way home or whatever. And the
person in the passenger seatis looking up and saying, hey, there's
a pretty one that's got fivestars. Or, oh, no, that one's we
just passed. But, man, thatwas horrible. And that's what we
(42:18):
do today.
Yeah, that's it. And we canvisualize if it. If somebody put
a negative review and therewas, like, multiple of them, then
we start to picture in ourmind what our experience would be,
and we're like, I don't knowif I really want to deal with bad
tie tonight. Let's go to adifferent. Let's go to this other
one. It has better reviews. Wesay it all the time. Let's go to
(42:41):
this other one. It has betterreviews, so you're exactly right.
Yeah. It's the world we're in today.
Yeah.
So you either got to play init, or you can sit on the sidelines
and watch. There's three typesof people. Those that make things
happen, those that watchthings happen, and those that wonder
what the heck happened.
That's right. And when you getto number one, too, it's. We just
(43:04):
got a roofing company tonumber one. Their calls went up over
300%. It's literally insane.The amount of difference it makes
being in the number five spotto being in the number one spot,
being in the number seven spotto being in the number three spot.
Like it. It's business transformational.
(43:24):
Sure, sure. Totally agree.Yeah. We could have a conversation
on this for several hours.
That's right.
So. And how do people find you just.
Go to Brand Builder AI dotcom. And there's. We offer a free
demo. We offer free marketingaudit. Will literally tear your whole
(43:46):
stuff apart and show you whereyou need to make improvements. And
our phone number's on there,so you can call my office, but, yeah,
super easy.
Okay. And so that'd be youroffers that you'll take a look at
their current setup at no costfor them.
Yeah, we would love to. Onevery demo, we actually look at their
(44:06):
Google profile and we pull amarketing audit. So we'll show them
exactly what's happeningonline. Is their site loading slow?
What's their SEO standing?What's their review standing? Do
they have problems with theirGoogle business profile? Are they
showing up on other searchengines? So we give them all that
data.
(44:27):
Okay, excellent. Well, makesure that the website's in the show
notes so that people can getto it. And thank you so much, Shannon,
for being a guest on abusiness superfans podcast. Great
conversation, and wedefinitely would like to have you
on the show down the road.
Awesome. I loved it. And whenwe launch our podcast, I'd love to
have you on there too.
Definitely. All right, thank you.
Today we have an extraordinaryguest who bridges the gap between
cutting edge AI technology andpractical business success. Someone
whose journey is as inspiringas the results she delivers. Shannon
Lavenia's story is nothingshort of remarkable. From overcoming
the challenges of beingorphaned at a young age to becoming
a high school teacher, shecompletely transformed her life into
(02:20):
that of a seven figurebusiness strategist, AI innovation
leader and sought afterspeaker. As the founder of Brand
Builder AI and Brand BuilderDesign Studios, Shannon has revolutionized
how local businesses leverageAI and automation to achieve rapid
scalable growth, all whilereclaiming their time and personal
(02:40):
freedom. Her expertise increating enterprise level systems
has attracted high profileclients including Cardone Ventures
and success legend JackCanfield, who specifically sought
out her strategic guidance.But what truly sets Shannon apart
is her resilience. Afterconquering stage three breast cancer,
(03:02):
she has channeled herunstoppable energy into empowering
hardworking business ownerswith AI driven systems that maximize
profitability without theburnout. Her philosophy is simple
but powerful. With the rightprocesses, systems and automation,
you can have an exceptionalpersonal life and extraordinary business
success. Get ready for aninspiring and insightful conversation
(03:24):
as we uncover how Shannon ishelping business owners level up
with AI, scale their profitsand build businesses that truly work
for them.
Welcome Shannon from BrandBuilder AI. Welcome to the Business
Superfans podcast. We're superexcited to have you here this afternoon.
Shannon, how are you?
I'm doing awesome. Thank youfor inviting me to be a guest. I'm
(03:45):
super excited to be here andexcited for our conversation.
Yeah. So Sharon, tell me alittle bit about your story of how
you your road to coming upwith Brand Builder AI. So there's
a backstory to all that. Sowhat's the backstory?
Great question. So I have beenin business since 2002, so I've been
in business for quite a while.I've had a marketing agency, branding
(04:08):
and marketing agency. And in2019, I actually got diagnosed with
breast cancer and I spent twoyears fighting that. And when I was
on that journey, I really hadto figure out how to automate a lot
of things in my own business.Cause I was stepping out, right?
I was. I knew I was going tobe down from the chemotherapy and
(04:30):
stuff like that. And as I wasgoing through that process, I reached
out to other businesses thatwe had been working with on their
branding and their design andtheir websites and I said, hey, are
you guys having these samestruggles where you feel like you
just can't step away from yourbusiness? And they said yes. And
that kind of Got us into thepath of utilizing AI and then implementing
(04:54):
AI in other people'sbusinesses to automate their sales
processes. And we fullylaunched in 2021 and then did a relaunch
in 2022 and have been justgoing straight up since then.
Wow, what a story. Socongratulations on beating the breast
cancer stuff.
Thank you.
(05:15):
Yeah, my now wife, we've beentogether for 12 years now, but we
just got married in October oflast year. And she's always concerned
about that.
Yeah, it's a big concern. Andespecially I think as business owners,
one of the things we forget tothink about is like, how will our
business operate if we can'toperate it? And that just hit me
(05:36):
like a ton of bricks verysuddenly. And fortunately, I was
able to figure a lot of thingsout that have helped a lot of other
businesses from my own journey.
Yeah, because a lot ofbusiness owners, they're the business
and maybe a solopreneur andthey get sidelined. Who's going to
take over the business isgoing to help, who's going to keep
running it? Or if you're abusiness that's got a small team
(06:00):
with you, same thing. If youdon't delegate, don't empower people,
don't put systems in place,you know, something happens to you,
who's going to run it, who'sgoing to take over, what's the Plan
B? Plan C?
It's exactly right. And duringthose times when life isn't so good
is usually when you do needmore income, not less. Figuring out
(06:23):
how to keep your businessoperational and producing income.
Whether you are a solopreneuror whether you have a big team or
whether you're a multimilliondollar company, what happens when
the leader is down? You reallyhave to think about that. And we're
in such an amazing time rightnow where AI is able to do so much
(06:44):
in our business that you canbe much more efficient, you can have
a much higher roi, you canhave operational things happening
when you're not even there. Soit's just pretty amazing where we've
evolved. I grew up in the agewhere we were still putting cassette
tapes into a cassette playerto start a computer. To even think
(07:08):
about the fact that now we canhave AI answering our phone calls
and scheduling appointments,it's just. It's crazy. It's wild.
Yeah. No, I go back a littlefurther where we actually had flip
switches onto a big mainframeand had to do a certain sequence
to get it on. And then therewas a 300 megabyte was a huge hard
(07:31):
drive.
Yeah.
About, I don't know, 6, 8inches high and probably about, if
I remember correctly, at leastmaybe 18 inches round. And you would
bump the hard drive machineand it ruined the hard drive. People
were restricted from gettinggoing into the computer room. Only
certain people that had theskill set to go in there. We've come
(07:54):
a long way because I've gotmore power on my smartwatch than
in doing a computer back then.
It's so true. It is just. It'sso wild now. It's amazing.
It's really exponential nowbecause when I got started in the
software industry decades ago,we had maybe one, two releases a
(08:14):
year now. People put updatesalmost daily. There's a patch put
out or at least once a week.Some platforms put out updates and
everything else. So totallyjust totally changed the game.
Yeah. And I think businessowners, one of the things that we
communicate a lot and it's sorelevant to your topic of creating
super fans is businesses haveto embrace this. It's not really
(08:38):
a. Like maybe one day somedayI'll look at AI. It's moving so fast
and it's allowing us asbusiness owners to create such engaging,
connecting content and toproduce it so quickly and distribute
it so rapidly that if you'renot embracing it, you're not going
(09:00):
to get the attention that youwant for your business. And that's
as business owners. Right.Attention is the new currency. That's
really what we're looking for.Right. We're looking to capture as
much current, much of thatattention currency as we possibly
can. And if we're not, ifwe're not keeping our audience and
our customers and ourpotential customers engaged in some
(09:21):
type of conversation ormission or journey, then we lose
them because somebody else is.Someone else is more interesting.
Oh, absolutely correct. Andthen you gotta include all of you
got suppliers that areproviding you with product and such
and services or distributor,if you're marketing stuff through
a distribution channel. Soyou've got all those components need
(09:42):
to be involved. Because ifI'm. If I'm a supplier and you're
the business that's reachingout to me, expressing appreciation,
gratitude, happy birthday, allthose kind of things. And then there's
another supply, the personthat needs my supplies. And they're
always complaining about thisand about that and everything is
(10:05):
always upside down, who am Igoing to favor when there's a demand
for something right away? Theperson. That person that's been nice
to me, that's beenappreciative and everything else
I'm going to bend overbackwards to provide the supplies
to them versus the other guy.The other guy is going to take sit
on a bench for a few minutes.
(10:26):
Yeah, it's exactly right. It'sabout building relationships. I feel
like we've gone full circlebecause back in the 1940s and 1950s,
that's how business reallyevolved was through those types of
relationships where peoplewould send gifts and personal cards
and celebrate birthdays andanniversaries. And then that kind
(10:48):
of dropped out for a while andit came into the what have you done
for me lately Generation. Andnow we're circling back to that where
it's really about buildingthose relationships and keeping that
relationship and keeping thatattention. Because there's so much
opportunity now, right? There's.
(11:09):
Yeah, and that's where AIcomes in too, because it can actually
personalize the stuff. You canset up AI to be able to understand
the avatar, for example, ofone your target audience, but then
it can go granular and intothe actual individual. So you can
have a higher level avatarthat says, okay, this is my target
(11:31):
market. And then within mytarget market here are the individuals.
And it will study thatparticular person and then it'll
communicate appropriately tothat individual and how that individual
prefers to be communicatedwith as well as the conversation.
Exactly right. Exactly right.And even for customers, sending a
(11:53):
birthday message, sending apersonalized email, using AI tools
in sales automation, we'realways looking at how do we hyper
personalize the follow up. Soif they already bought widget A,
we're not going to sendanother email offering them to buy
widget A, we're going to sendan email that says, now you have
widget A, here's the nextthing that you would want to get
(12:14):
that's going to help you usewidget A, right? Or help you optimize
that. So AI is so valuable for that.
So let's go into what doesbrand builder AI actually do and
what services do you guys provide?
So we're a service and a SaaS,right? So SaaS, if anybody doesn't
know, stands for software as aservice. So we have a CRM and a funnel
(12:38):
builder, a website hoster,calendar system, invoicing, all of
that. And we provide that tocompanies that we work with who are
looking to organize their dataand use AI in their follow up and
in their sales automation. Sowe set that up so that they have
their systems in place, thefoundational systems for them to
(12:59):
be able to scale. And thenwhere we also really shine is local
business, Google Mapsoptimization. So we work to get people
ranked up to number one on theGoogle Maps for their industry in
their area. And then we do SEOoptimization on the back end and
we tie it all together withcontent distribution. So it's really
(13:24):
a cohesive relationship model.And when we're talking to business
owners, one of the biggestchallenges that they have is they've
invested in something like SEOor they've invested in Facebook ads,
or they've invested in GoogleAds, or they've invested in postcards
and they've hired really likea one lane business. That's what
(13:44):
I call them. They're reallygood at one thing, right? So they're
good at postcards or they'regood at Google SEO or they're good
at Facebook ads. But every oneof those channels will only get you
so far if your entireecosystem doesn't support turning
those leads into sales. That'sreally where we come in is we take
(14:07):
a very holistic approach tomarketing where we look at what are
the inbound channels and thenwhat happens once that lead comes
in? Where are they seeing you,where are they being followed, what
content are they getting? Howis that assisting you in your SEO?
Right? So Facebook ads canactually help you boost your s done.
(14:29):
Right? So but a Facebook adsmanager might not know that. Right?
So even though we work withbusinesses and we'll work with their
Facebook ads manager, we pullthat into how does this work in a
holistic way to really hypernurture these leads into converting
them into sales. And where isthe long term vision in terms of
(14:50):
your ranking with SEO, yourranking on Google Maps, your reputation
management and your internaloperations and can you scale effectively?
Can a new salesperson come in,can a new appointment center come
in and is it plug and playlike you can drop them in a seat
and they already have alltheir systems set up. So that's our
zone of genius is taking thatholistic approach for a business
(15:13):
that's really looking to scaleup to the next level and wants to
make sure that they'refoundational elements are incorrectly
and that everything they'redoing is part of their bigger picture.
No, that's absolutely right onthe money. Because when an inquiry
comes in, how it's handled iseverything. I have a rule, I have
(15:35):
a rule that if someone comesin, they need to be contacted within
15 minutes. Today's world yougo beyond 15 minutes and it's maybe.
But if you contact them within15 minutes, one, it shows you're
attentive, two, shows thatyou're interested in their business
and three, you beat out allthe competition. It doesn't have
any tools, et cetera, tofollow up, because usually it just
(15:58):
goes into some email and itjust sits there. And there's no acknowledgment
that it's come in or any ofthat stuff. When you're incorporating
AI tools, you can have notjust a generic autoresponder, it
can actually be a personalizedresponse back to the person. As an
example, I was in a networkinggroup and one of the persons in there
(16:20):
says that they were chattingwith somebody on their website chat
box, and they were going forseveral minutes. They finally realized
that they were speaking to arobot that wasn't a person. But they
still continued with itbecause they said it was giving them
the information that theywanted. But the fact that it was
(16:41):
taking place was the game changer.
I love that you say thatbecause that's one of the things
that we do, is we installthose chat widgets with AI. And I'm
shocked when I go to a websiteand they don't have a chat widget.
Because we live in an instantsociety now. And people that started
(17:01):
their business five or 10years ago, they forget that, that
we live in an instant society.People want answers instantaneously.
If they go to Google and theysearch for landscaper near me, they
call that first number of thatfirst person. If they don't answer,
they call the second person,then the third person, then the fourth
person.
Yep.
They read every single review.They'll go to the website, they'll
(17:25):
go to the chat widget, they'llstart a conversation. If they don't
get a response right away, ifit says, leave your information,
we'll call you tomorrow,they'll go to the next guy because
their attention is on hiringsomeone and they want to complete
that cycle. They want to getit done. They're not doing research.
They're actually trying to getthe result of hiring someone to come
(17:48):
out. And I have a great storyon this in relation to an H Vac,
an air conditioning repairperson. And our air conditioning
in our house went out on July4th. Fourth of July, right in Florida.
It is hot, it's sweltering.It's like an emergency to not have
(18:08):
air conditioning because youcan already picture. I already told
my husband, if we don't getsomeone out here in two hours, I'm
going to a hotel becausethere's no way I'm going to be able
to sleep at night. Then I'mgoing to be miserable. Tomorrow.
Everybody's going to have amiserable Day. It's not going to
be a good scene. Let's justget the H Vac person. So we called
the first person, no answer.Called the second person, no answer.
And I get it's a holiday. Butwe called the third person and they
(18:33):
said we can come out on anemergency basis. It's an extra $200.
We were like fine, do you needus to pay you now? Just have somebody
come out. And they came outand they fixed the problem. And now
they're our preferred vendor.We stopped using the other person
that we used before because wewanted that result. So you get an
(18:54):
idea of what people arelooking for in that. And when we
installed AI Voice into one ofour clients, we have a client in
Arizona who's landscapecompany and when they started with
us, they didn't even have aGoogle business profile yet. They
still got to a million dollarsa year in revenue. We were max because
he had to do door knocking. Itwas house by house sales. And we
(19:16):
got their Google my businessprofile up. We got them up to number
one in their area. Their callsincreased by over 200%. Then their
staff couldn't handle thecalls. So 60% of the calls weren't
being answered. So then we putin voice AI and now his biggest problem
is he's getting so many jobshe has to hire more guys to be able
(19:38):
to get more trucks, to be ableto get out and do all these jobs.
Right. It's a great problem tohave. But it's because in his particular
industry, a lot of those guysare on their personal cell phones
as their phone number. Theydon't answer the phone at night.
They're not answering thephone when they're with the kids
or with the family, which is agood thing. But they're also losing
(20:00):
all those jobs.
Sure. It goes back to what Iwas saying. You got a 15 minute window.
That's it.
That's really the bottom linebecause you just outlined it right
there. You went through 1Hvac, second one and the third one
answered there. You got thebusiness. It's that simple. Who responds
first has the best chance.Even. Even if you're shopping. One
(20:22):
of the things I teach peopleis that you either want to be number
one or you want to be numberthree. You never want to be the middle
salesperson.
That's so true.
Because number one person setsthe bar, number two is always screwed
and number three can play cleanup.
That's right.
So if you're number two, ifyou're listening, change out, reschedule.
(20:43):
So you're number three, thenyou have a good chance because you
set that bar so high if you'renumber one by that person taking
that response from you guys,answering the call, providing a service
as fast as possible, nobodyelse can compete with that.
That's how you create asuperfan. That's how you get the
five star review. Right.Reviews are literally gold. Like
(21:06):
you can bank on reviews.People read them, they study them,
they look for a review that'slike them. And if you're answering
the call right away, you'redelivering what you promise, you
do it with a smile, youprovide exceptional value and you
ask for the review. People areexcited to leave it and they'll leave
(21:27):
a five star review. They'lltell a story, they'll share the good
benefits and that sellspeople. That literally will reduce
the buying friction. So peopleare more likely to take out their
card and pay without anyhesitation if they've read really
good reviews and people haveresponded well and they can relate
(21:50):
to one of those reviews. Andeven that can be handled with AI
now.
Sure, yeah, you can createthat engagement of the automatic
follow up. I always used totell people when I did, you know,
coaching and sales coaching,it'd be okay. You've got one of these
smartphone things. There itis, use it when people are done.
Can I get a quick videotestimonial that becomes your salesperson?
(22:14):
You don't have to say anythingnow. You just play these 12 different
video testimonials about theservice and how you've delivered
it or the product and etcetera. You don't have to say zip.
Let the videos do the sellingand you'll be sold. And you bring
up another thing too that'simportant, Shannon, is that staying
in communication because toomany people do a good, really good
(22:35):
job and you never hear fromthem again. They never follow up,
they never check up.
Oh true.
They did a great job. You'resuper happy. They didn't ask for
a review. They left, they saidthanks, took the check or the credit
card, processed it, gone. Andyou never hear from them again. Those
are so many squanderedopportunities because you are a super
(23:00):
fan of what they did, but theynever asked you for anything to help
promote their business. Andout of sight, out of mind. And next
time you need the similarservice, you don't even remember
them. You get somebody newbecause they never reached out back
out to you.
Yeah, that's right. You'resitting there, wait, who was that?
I used, what was their name?And you're not going to take the
(23:24):
time to go back through yourbank statement to try and find out
who you used two years ago todo something like that. And there's
ways to counter that. Givethem a QR code, sticker, follow up
with them with email, send abirthday card, any. There's just
a gazillion ways to follow up.And years ago, when I started my
business, one of my mentorstaught me the phrase, the fortune
(23:47):
is in the follow up. Andthat's so true because even a great
example, that landscapecompany that hired us, they were
on my email list for eightyears. Eight years of getting email
follow up. And then they wereat that point where they were just
so burned out that they calledme up and were like, can you help
(24:07):
us? And that's generated over,I don't know, $150,000 in revenue
for our company. Just workingwith that one business and helping
them scale. Was it worthsending out eight years worth of
emails for that? Of course itis. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. When I was sellingmanufacturing software, we would
(24:30):
have a meeting and we'd haveeverybody into the meeting to demonstrate
the software and thetechnology. So it would include the
people from the shop floorthat were running the milling machines
and the lathes and the wire,EDM and all that machinery stuff.
Yeah.
And I made sure to geteverybody's name and then I would
send back. Then there was noemails yet. So I would send everybody
(24:52):
a personalized letter would beShannon, thank you so much for participating
in our meeting today. Yourinput was very beneficial. Appreciate
hope you got a lot of stuffout of it, et cetera. And we would
win the sale. And I wouldreach back out and says, okay, why
did you guys pick us? Themajority of them would be, we felt
that after the sale you wouldgive us the best service because
(25:16):
you being out running themilling machine with nobody ever
acknowledges you, you got aletter saying thank you for your
time. Appreciate it. Soeverybody in the shop floor that
participated in a meeting, notjust management, I included, everybody,
didn't matter what level inthe company was. So everybody had
to feel good because everybodygot recognized and appreciated and
(25:39):
that got the sale.
That's awesome. I love it. Itjust goes to show you people are
future forward thinking andthey are thinking like, how is this
going to work out for me? Andit's that level of customer service
and attention that this is howyou don't have to compete on price
is through that value. Becauseif you're competing on price, the
(26:02):
only question you have to askyourself is how low can you go right
before you're out of business.So in our instance, even for a website
build, we're not the cheapestperson on the block, but we always
complete the project. It'salways exceptionally done. We always
meet the timeline. You look usup and there's just no bad press
(26:23):
at all because we always dowhat we promise. When you do that,
you don't have to be the $400website builder or you don't have
to be the service providerwho's all about price. It's okay
if you give an invoice andthere's a little bit of sticker shock
because they're getting theexperience that you're the one who's
going to provide the mostvalue to continue with that.
(26:44):
Price becomes a secondaryconversation. Because if you're really
working to help that businessowner get to the level that they
want to get to, and you'reworking with them, and now they're
seeing it, because that's thehard part is getting them to see
how you can get them to wherethey need to be or where they'd like
(27:06):
to be. But they don't know howto get there.
Right.
The cost becomes secondarybecause you're really focusing on
saying, okay, you want to be,let's say, $2 million worth of revenue
versus $1 million in a year.So you want to grow a million dollars
in a year. You work with them,from what I'm understanding, to lay
(27:28):
out that plan. So now they cansay, okay, I can see that, and I'm
going to spend $100,000 togain $900,000. Absolutely, that's
right.
Yeah. And I think too, we'vealways taken the holistic approach
because I've been doing this along time, so experience definitely
(27:49):
matters. I've seen businessesthat will put a ton of money in one
channel, right, or one lane.So they'll hire an SEO expert, but
then the SEO expert neverfollows up on how does that SEO actually
convert to money at the end ofthe day and how is it converting
to the overall strategic planof this business? Right, Their five
(28:11):
year plan, their ten yearplan. Maybe they're planning for
an exit. How does that evenwork with an exit? How will it work
with their advertising? Sowhen we talk to a business, we look
at everything, we do acomplete audit, we're looking at
their entire footprint online,we look at their website, we look
at their inbound mechanisms,their outbound mechanisms, how are
(28:34):
their salespeople operating,where are the cogs in the machine,
what's slowing theirproduction? And just speeding it
up and making it very simple.Business actually is very simple.
It seems really complicatedbecause there's so many different
ways to do things, right. Thatkind of adds the complexity to it,
(28:55):
but it's very simple. You'regetting the attention of people.
You're turning that attentioninto conversations. You're turning
those conversations into cash.And that's the basic simplicity of
business. So if you keep itthat simple and you just make it
very streamlined, then thebusiness will grow. When there's
(29:16):
a ton of complexities aboutit, then the business doesn't grow.
It goes back to what you weresaying earlier when we started Conversation
is that some business guys andgals work inside the business. They're
busy in the weeds becausethey're the only one that can do
it as good as they can do it.
(29:36):
That's a whole nother episode.
I'll take 80% of what I can doif I don't have to do it. That's
the reality of it. But youcan't scale and you can't systematize.
And what you're talking aboutreally, is having a system in place
for multiple differentdepartments. And in your case, you're
(29:57):
helping people with systemsfor their engagement with prospective
customers and existingcustomers and any partners associated
with that business. Because aswe talked earlier, it's a whole ecosystem.
And so the left hand has gotto know what the right hand's doing.
The left foot and the rightfoot got to be involved, and they
(30:19):
all got to be coordinated.Otherwise you can't walk.
That's right. And everythingleads to revenue. Even in the case,
like with the landscapecompany that we were working with
in Arizona, with their volume,that extra volume can be monetized
just by finding a partner, alandscape company partner that's
(30:40):
willing to buy those leads.Right? So if they have those leads
coming in, instead of wastingthem, just go to another landscaping
company and say, we have moredeals than we can possibly do. Will
you give us a percentage? 10,15%. What are your margins then?
Now you have a whole notherrevenue channel that you can monetize.
(31:01):
But it's through those thingswhere if you're only hiring a Facebook
ads manager and they give youmore leads than you can handle, you
just have extra leads that arebeing wasted. When you look at it
holistically, and you'relooking at it with that very simplistic
model of you're looking to getattention, you're turning the attention
into conversations, you'returning the conversations into cash.
(31:24):
If you can't Handle all thoseconversations, then you need to just
find another way to turn theminto cash, not just waste them. Right?
Yeah. Like you said, marketthat to somebody else. Or it's a
possibility of saying, hey,let's partner up and maybe we expand
our business.
That's right, exactly. There'sso much nowadays. It's just I, I
(31:48):
truly feel that in 2025,there's far more opportunity now
than there was even 10 yearsago because the effort to the money
is decreased so much versuswhen I started my business in 2002,
we started flyering cars andnewspaper ads. So there was like
a huge amount of effort thathad to go out to generate the leads
(32:10):
and then a huge amount ofeffort dealing with the leads and
then trying to even takemonetary transactions was like a
whole nother animal. You hadthis like machine on your desk and
you had to get the person togive you the credit card number over
the phone. And it was just,there was a lot of effort that went
between the idea to the cash.Now the, that effort has been so
(32:32):
dramatically reduced. And thetime from somebody inquiring to you
getting paid can be seconds,right? It can literally be seconds
online. So there's so muchopportunity if people are willing
to take advantage of it andutilize AI, utilize cutting edge
tools, really look at theentire model very holistically, figure
(32:56):
out how to optimize all oftheir inbound channels and then just
scale. And I love what yousaid about hiring because delegation's
a big part of it. We have aframework that we teach and go through
with our business ownerscalled the paid framework. And it's
promote, automate, influenceand delegate and that you always
start with promotion, nomatter what. I think a lot of times
(33:19):
people start backwards. Theystart, I have to make the products,
I have to do all this first.You have to figure out if people
are even going to beinterested in it or buy it. You promote
when the leads start comingin, you automate that nurture you
influence with excellentsalesmanship. So you have to learn
how to really influence thatbuying decision. That's done online
with some factors like yourreputation management, your reviews,
(33:40):
the flow, the channel, thespeed to call back. Like you said,
really, you cannot wait morethan 15 minutes. Now there's technology.
You can even tell whensomeone's looking at your website
and it can alert you and youcan call them. Right. While they're
looking at your website.
Right? Yeah, I use some ofthat stuff and it's pretty wild.
It's amazing. It's. What acoincidence. You were Looking at
(34:01):
our website, of course we knewthey were looking at the website,
but you're top of mind. Soeven the speed, the effort from someone
looking at your website to yougetting paid is so greatly reduced
that time, that effort haslike just been squashed to nothing.
And it's really just speed nowif people are utilizing it, the old
(34:23):
school methods are just. We'regoing to see a lot of businesses
go out of business becausethey're just not able to attract
and capture that attention andthey're not willing to invest.
Well, I think part of it isthey don't even, they don't even
understand it. I recentlyworked with a company and I was moving
them into the 21st century andthey were having a hard time because
(34:45):
now it was over their head. Soit became confrontational and I ended
up saying, you know what, thisisn't going to work out for either
one of us. And I left. Becausein their minds, losing control because
they didn't understand thetechnology. They didn't know how
to utilize the technology.They knew that they needed it. But
(35:05):
then when it was in place, itwas overwhelming and they weren't
willing to put in the time.And I'm looking at them and going,
I know you've been around for30 years, but you don't understand.
In the last five years thingshave exponentially changed.
Oh yeah. And it's happeningfaster than ever now. Even legacy
(35:26):
businesses like that, the 30year old companies and stuff, they
will not be able to competewith the newer companies that come
up and are able to justcapture a huge market share of that
attention and keep thosepeople engaged.
Well, that was with thisparticular company, their challenge.
They weren't growing, theywere two and a half, $3 million and
they were in a constructionspace. I did the research and says,
(35:49):
hey, In Arizona, there's $159billion worth of commercial construction
going on. You're getting0.00000000 somewhere of that business
right now and you're going toget even more zeros in front of you
if you don't pivot.
So true. Yeah, they're goingto have to just embrace it. I've
(36:12):
had these hard conversationswith some business owners that have
had like a plumbing businessfor 30 years. Father started it now,
then it got passed down. Andthe reality is, the thing I say to
them is, look, if my toilet isoverflowing and clogged, I don't
need you to explain to me whatyou're going to do and how you're
going to fix it. I just needyou to fix it. I need it cleaned
(36:35):
up, I need the toiletflushing. Same thing here. Your business
right now, excuse my French,is going to shit and you need it
fixed. And you don't need meto explain to you how I'm going to
do this. You just need itfixed. And then they get that. They're
like, you know what, you'reright. I'm like, you're a plumber,
you're not a marketingstrategist, you're not a software
(36:57):
implementer. I am. Once theyget that, it's you stay in your zone,
I'll stay in my zone andyou're gonna see the results of what
I do. And if you don't see theresults, then you have every right
to ask for your money back.But they get you the results.
And going further than that,we're talking about getting the deal.
But the reality is, I look atit, the sale really begins once you
(37:21):
get the order.
That's right.
Because getting the order tome having been in sales for decades,
is the easy part. The hardpart is the implementation, the delivery
and everything else. So that'simportant for everybody to understand
is that you can put in all thesystems in place and put all the
technology and help them getthe deal. But if they can't deliver
(37:42):
and they don't have systems inplace to do the proper onboarding
and delivering and then moreimportantly, the follow up for ongoing
engagement, it's going to fallapart as well, right?
Yeah. Delivery isexceptionally important and it's
just integrity in, in the realworld, it's integrity, it's ethical,
(38:03):
somebody paid you, you made apromise, you need to deliver on it.
When people have put moneydown, they always have a little bit
of nervousness around it.Because I haven't met anybody yet
who hasn't been ripped off onsomething. They bought something,
they got their hair done andthe stylist did a terr job or they
got a floor installed and thefloor installer did a terrible job.
(38:25):
Like we've all had those andwe carry those experiences with us
in the buying transaction. Soit's safe to assume that our customers
also carry those transactionswith them in their buying experience.
And the way that we counterthat is through exceptional delivery.
And you do that and they don'thave to see what you're doing, they
(38:45):
don't have to know what you'redoing, but they do have to get communication
from you that it is beingdone. If they don't get that communication,
what happens when Human beingsdon't get communication is they fill
in the blanks with the stuffin their head.
It goes back to dating. Let'skeep it super simple. When you're
dating, if you remember backin the day, you don't hear that phone
(39:07):
call back after you left themessage. Your mind goes always to
the negative, never to the positive.
Found someone else. They're.They don't like me. They don't want
me. They died in a caraccident. There's. It's like every
fill in the blank scenario isall negative. It's this void, there's
this gap. So if you'recommunicating, like if we're designing
(39:28):
a website, we're sendingregularly screenshots, we're showing
them what we're working on. Weeven send pictures of our designer
and the computer and they getto see there's a real person working
on it. And it just makes itfun, you know, it keeps them up to
date of what's happening ontheir project.
And that's how you're creatinga super fan of your customer because
you're keeping them engaged.And now they can turn around and
(39:50):
they're talking to their otherbusiness owner, Buddy or Budet, and
they're having lunch, they'rehaving drinks, they're having coffee,
whatever it is you say. Thismarketing agency that we just brought
on recently, we're gettingpictures, we're getting updates,
they're sending some goofystuff. This company is really cool.
And that's it. That's all ittakes. Because they're going to say,
(40:11):
really tell me more about thatcompany. We're, we're not happy with
ours. They do an okay job, butsounds like this company's really
knocking it out for you. Andthere you go. That's all it takes.
And it cost you nothing.
Yeah, exactly. I love thatthis has been a really great conversation.
Thank you. Yes. So we'regetting close to the end here. Shannon,
(40:32):
what's a good tip that you cangive our listeners that they should
look at right away as towhether it's set up properly or not?
My thoughts are, is GoogleMaps, are they set up properly under
Google Maps? That's probablythe first thing that they should
look at.
A hundred percent. That's afoundational step because that is
(40:53):
where the majority of peopleare doing their search now. They'll
even pull up Siri and they'llsay, show me a landscaper near me.
It pulls up Google Maps andthe actual behavior of what people
are doing. So one of the rulesof marketing is always to meet the
behaviors of what consumersare doing. Right. So if they're doing
(41:13):
that, you want to meet thatbehavior, and it is your reputation.
So it used to be thatneighbors, referred neighbors, and
that's how you built yourreputation. Now it's Google reviews,
it's Yelp reviews. It's whatpeople see online that determines
their buying decision andeither increases or reduces friction
(41:34):
to them choosing you.
I'm going to add to that tomake. To drive the point home. You
and your husband and me and mywife, we go out to the restaurant
once in a while, right?
Yeah.
What's the things that we alldo is we check what the reviews.
Yep.
Everybody does it. You'redriving along and saying, what do
you got? What do you got ataste for? I don't know. I got a
(41:55):
taste for Italian. All right,let's. Where are we? Hey, honey,
take a look and see whatItalian restaurants are on the way
to wherever we're going or onthe way home or whatever. And the
person in the passenger seatis looking up and saying, hey, there's
a pretty one that's got fivestars. Or, oh, no, that one's we
just passed. But, man, thatwas horrible. And that's what we
(42:18):
do today.
Yeah, that's it. And we canvisualize if it. If somebody put
a negative review and therewas, like, multiple of them, then
we start to picture in ourmind what our experience would be,
and we're like, I don't knowif I really want to deal with bad
tie tonight. Let's go to adifferent. Let's go to this other
one. It has better reviews. Wesay it all the time. Let's go to
(42:41):
this other one. It has betterreviews, so you're exactly right.
Yeah. It's the world we're in today.
Yeah.
So you either got to play init, or you can sit on the sidelines
and watch. There's three typesof people. Those that make things
happen, those that watchthings happen, and those that wonder
what the heck happened.
That's right. And when you getto number one, too, it's. We just
(43:04):
got a roofing company tonumber one. Their calls went up over
300%. It's literally insane.The amount of difference it makes
being in the number five spotto being in the number one spot,
being in the number seven spotto being in the number three spot.
Like it. It's business transformational.
(43:24):
Sure, sure. Totally agree.Yeah. We could have a conversation
on this for several hours.
That's right.
So. And how do people find you just.
Go to Brand Builder AI dotcom. And there's. We offer a free
demo. We offer free marketingaudit. Will literally tear your whole
(43:46):
stuff apart and show you whereyou need to make improvements. And
our phone number's on there,so you can call my office, but, yeah,
super easy.
Okay. And so that'd be youroffers that you'll take a look at
their current setup at no costfor them.
Yeah, we would love to. Onevery demo, we actually look at their
(44:06):
Google profile and we pull amarketing audit. So we'll show them
exactly what's happeningonline. Is their site loading slow?
What's their SEO standing?What's their review standing? Do
they have problems with theirGoogle business profile? Are they
showing up on other searchengines? So we give them all that
data.
(44:27):
Okay, excellent. Well, makesure that the website's in the show
notes so that people can getto it. And thank you so much, Shannon,
for being a guest on abusiness superfans podcast. Great
conversation, and wedefinitely would like to have you
on the show down the road.
Awesome. I loved it. And whenwe launch our podcast, I'd love to
have you on there too.
Definitely. All right, thank you.
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