Revolutionizing Business with AI and Automation: Insights from Shannon Lavenia

Freddy D: 00:01:58

Today we have an extraordinary guest who bridges the gap between cutting edge AI technology and practical business success. Someone whose journey is as inspiring as the results she delivers. Shannon Lavenia's story is nothing short of remarkable.

From overcoming the challenges of being orphaned at a young age to becoming a high school teacher, she completely transformed her life into that of a seven figure business strategist, AI innovation leader and sought after speaker.

As the founder of Brand Builder AI and Brand Builder Design Studios, Shannon has revolutionized how local businesses leverage AI and automation to achieve rapid scalable growth, all while reclaiming their time and personal freedom.

Her expertise in creating enterprise level systems has attracted high profile clients including Cardone Ventures and success legend Jack Canfield, who specifically sought out her strategic guidance. But what truly sets Shannon apart is her resilience.

After conquering stage three breast cancer, she has channeled her unstoppable energy into empowering hardworking business owners with AI driven systems that maximize profitability without the burnout. Her philosophy is simple but powerful.

With the right processes, systems and automation, you can have an exceptional personal life and extraordinary business success.

Get ready for an inspiring and insightful conversation as we uncover how Shannon is helping business owners level up with AI, scale their profits and build businesses that truly work for them.

Freddy D: 00:03:33

Welcome Shannon from Brand Builder AI. Welcome to the Business Superfans podcast. We're super excited to have you here this afternoon. Shannon, how are you?

Shannon Lavenia: 00:03:42

I'm doing awesome. Thank you for inviting me to be a guest. I'm super excited to be here and excited for our conversation.

Freddy D: 00:03:49

Yeah. So Sharon, tell me a little bit about your story of how you your road to coming up with Brand Builder AI. So there's a backstory to all that.

So what's the backstory?

Shannon Lavenia: 00:04:01

I have been in business since: 2002

And in: 2019

I knew I was going to be down from the chemotherapy and stuff like that.

And as I was going through that process, I reached out to other businesses that we had been working with on their branding and their design and their websites and I said, hey, are you guys having these same struggles where you feel like you just can't step away from your business? And they said yes.

ses. And we fully launched in: 2021

Freddy D: 00:05:09

Wow, what a story. So congratulations on beating the breast cancer stuff.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:05:14

Thank you.

Freddy D: 00:05:15

Yeah, my now wife, we've been together for 12 years now, but we just got married in October of last year. And she's always concerned about that.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:05:24

Yeah, it's a big concern. And especially I think as business owners, one of the things we forget to think about is like, how will our business operate if we can't operate it?

And that just hit me like a ton of bricks very suddenly. And fortunately, I was able to figure a lot of things out that have helped a lot of other businesses from my own journey.

Freddy D: 00:05:44

Yeah, because a lot of business owners, they're the business and maybe a solopreneur and they get sidelined. Who's going to take over the business is going to help, who's going to keep running it?

Or if you're a business that's got a small team with you, same thing.

If you don'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's going to take over, what's the Plan B? Plan C?

Shannon Lavenia: 00:06:14

It's exactly right. And during those times when life isn't so good is usually when you do need more income, not less.

Figuring out how to keep your business operational and producing income. Whether you are a solopreneur or whether you have a big team or whether you're a multimillion dollar company, what happens when the leader is down?

You really have to think about that.

And we're in such an amazing time right now where AI is able to do so much in our business that you can be much more efficient, you can have a much higher roi, you can have operational things happening when you're not even there. So it's just pretty amazing where we've evolved.

I grew up in the age where we were still putting cassette tapes into a cassette player to start a computer. To even think about the fact that now we can have AI answering our phone calls and scheduling appointments, it's just. It's crazy. It's wild.

Freddy D: 00:07:15

Yeah. No, I go back a little further where we actually had flip switches onto a big mainframe and had to do a certain sequence to get it on.

And then there was a 300 megabyte was a huge hard drive.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:07:31

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:07:32

About, I don't know, 6, 8 inches high and probably about, if I remember correctly, at least maybe 18 inches round. And you would bump the hard drive machine and it ruined the hard drive. People were restricted from getting going into the computer room.

Only certain people that had the skill set to go in there. We've come a long way because I've got more power on my smartwatch than in doing a computer back then.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:07:59

It's so true. It is just. It's so wild now. It's amazing.

Freddy D: 00:08:04

It's really exponential now because when I got started in the software industry decades ago, we had maybe one, two releases a year now. People put updates almost daily. There's a patch put out or at least once a week. Some platforms put out updates and everything else.

So totally just totally changed the game.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:08:26

Yeah.

And I think business owners, one of the things that we communicate a lot and it's so relevant to your topic of creating super fans is businesses have to embrace this. It's not really a. Like maybe one day someday I'll look at AI.

It's moving so fast and it's allowing us as business owners to create such engaging, connecting content and to produce it so quickly and distribute it so rapidly that if you're not embracing it, you're not going to get the attention that you want 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 that attention currency as we possibly can.

And if we're not, if we're not keeping our audience and our customers and our potential customers engaged in some type of conversation or mission or journey, then we lose them because somebody else is. Someone else is more interesting.

Freddy D: 00:09:30

Oh, absolutely correct.

And then you gotta include all of you got suppliers that are providing you with product and such and services or distributor, if you're marketing stuff through a distribution channel. So you've got all those components need to be involved. Because if I'm.

If I'm a supplier and you're the business that's reaching out to me, expressing appreciation, gratitude, happy birthday, all those kind of things. And then there's another supply, the person that needs my supplies.

And they're always complaining about this and about that and everything is always upside down, who am I going to favor when there's a demand for something right away? The person.

That person that's been nice to me, that's been appreciative and everything else I'm going to bend over backwards 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.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:10:26

Yeah, it's exactly right. It's about building relationships.

ll circle because back in the: 1940

And now we're circling back to that where it's really about building those relationships and keeping that relationship and keeping that attention. Because there's so much opportunity now, right? There's.

Freddy D: 00:11:09

Yeah, and that's where AI comes in too, because it can actually personalize the stuff.

You can set up AI to be able to understand the avatar, for example, of one your target audience, but then it can go granular and into the actual individual. So you can have a higher level avatar that says, okay, this is my target market. And then within my target market here are the individuals.

And it will study that particular person and then it'll communicate appropriately to that individual and how that individual prefers to be communicated with as well as the conversation.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:11:48

Exactly right. Exactly right.

And even for customers, sending a birthday message, sending a personalized email, using AI tools in sales automation, we're always looking at how do we hyper personalize the follow up.

So if they already bought widget A, we're not going to send another email offering them to buy widget A, we're going to send an email that says, now you have widget A, here's the next thing that you would want to get that's going to help you use widget A, right? Or help you optimize that. So AI is so valuable for that.

Freddy D: 00:12:21

So let's go into what does brand builder AI actually do and what services do you guys provide?

Shannon Lavenia: 00:12:28

So we're a service and a SaaS, right? So SaaS, if anybody doesn't know, stands for software as a service.

So we have a CRM and a funnel builder, a website hoster, calendar system, invoicing, all of that.

And we provide that to companies that we work with who are looking to organize their data and use AI in their follow up and in their sales automation. So we set that up so that they have their systems in place, the foundational systems for them to be able to scale.

And then where we also really shine is local business, Google Maps optimization. So we work to get people ranked up to number one on the Google Maps for their industry in their area.

And then we do SEO optimization on the back end and we tie it all together with content distribution. So it's really a cohesive relationship model.

And when we're talking to business owners, one of the biggest challenges that they have is they've invested in something like SEO or they've invested in Facebook ads, or they've invested in Google Ads, or they've invested in postcards and they've hired really like a one lane business. That's what I call them. They're really good at one thing, right?

So they're good at postcards or they're good at Google SEO or they're good at Facebook ads. But every one of those channels will only get you so far if your entire ecosystem doesn't support turning those leads into sales.

That's really where we come in is we take a very holistic approach to marketing where we look at what are the inbound channels and then what happens once that lead comes in? Where are they seeing you, where are they being followed, what content are they getting? How is that assisting you in your SEO? Right?

So Facebook ads can actually help you boost your s done. Right? So but a Facebook ads manager might not know that. Right?

So even though we work with businesses and we'll work with their Facebook ads manager, we pull that into how does this work in a holistic way to really hyper nurture these leads into converting them into sales.

And where is the long term vision in terms of your ranking with SEO, your ranking on Google Maps, your reputation management and your internal operations and can you scale effectively?

Can a new salesperson come in, can a new appointment center come in and is it plug and play like you can drop them in a seat and they already have all their systems set up.

So that's our zone of genius is taking that holistic approach for a business that's really looking to scale up to the next level and wants to make sure that they're foundational elements are incorrectly and that everything they're doing is part of their bigger picture.

Freddy D: 00:15:26

No, that's absolutely right on the money. Because when an inquiry comes in, how it's handled is everything.

I have a rule, I have a rule that if someone comes in, they need to be contacted within 15 minutes. Today's world you go beyond 15 minutes and it's maybe.

But if you contact them within 15 minutes, one, it shows you're attentive, two, shows that you're interested in their business and three, you beat out all the competition. It doesn't have any tools, et cetera, to follow up, because usually it just goes into some email and it just sits there.

And there's no acknowledgment that it's come in or any of that stuff. When you're incorporating AI tools, you can have not just a generic autoresponder, it can actually be a personalized response back to the person.

As an example, I was in a networking group and one of the persons in there says that they were chatting with somebody on their website chat box, and they were going for several minutes. They finally realized that they were speaking to a robot that wasn't a person.

But they still continued with it because they said it was giving them the information that they wanted. But the fact that it was taking place was the game changer.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:16:45

I love that you say that because that's one of the things that we do, is we install those chat widgets with AI. And I'm shocked when I go to a website and they don't have a chat widget. Because we live in an instant society now.

And people that started their business five or 10 years ago, they forget that, that we live in an instant society. People want answers instantaneously. If they go to Google and they search for landscaper near me, they call that first number of that first person.

If they don't answer, they call the second person, then the third person, then the fourth person.

Freddy D: 00:17:21

Yep.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:17:21

They read every single review. They'll go to the website, they'll go to the chat widget, they'll start a conversation.

If they don't get a response right away, if it says, leave your information, we'll call you tomorrow, they'll go to the next guy because their attention is on hiring someone and they want to complete that cycle. They want to get it done. They're not doing research. They're actually trying to get the result of hiring someone to come out.

And I have a great story on this in relation to an H Vac, an air conditioning repair person. And our air conditioning in our house went out on July 4th. Fourth of July, right in Florida. It is hot, it's sweltering.

It's like an emergency to not have air conditioning because you can already picture.

I already told my husband, if we don't get someone out here in two hours, I'm going to a hotel because there's no way I'm going to be able to sleep at night. Then I'm going to be miserable. Tomorrow. Everybody's going to have a miserable Day. It's not going to be a good scene. Let's just get 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. But we called the third person and they said we can come out on an emergency basis.

It's an extra $200. We were like fine, do you need us to pay you now? Just have somebody come out. And they came out and they fixed the problem.

And now they're our preferred vendor. We stopped using the other person that we used before because we wanted that result. So you get an idea of what people are looking for in that.

And when we installed AI Voice into one of our clients, we have a client in Arizona who's landscape company and when they started with us, they didn't even have a Google business profile yet. They still got to a million dollars a year in revenue. We were max because he had to do door knocking. It was house by house sales.

And we got their Google my business profile up. We got them up to number one in their area. Their calls increased by over 200%. Then their staff couldn't handle the calls.

So 60% of the calls weren't being answered.

So then we put in voice AI and now his biggest problem is he's getting so many jobs he has to hire more guys to be able to get more trucks, to be able to get out and do all these jobs. Right. It's a great problem to have.

But it's because in his particular industry, a lot of those guys are on their personal cell phones as their phone number. They don't answer the phone at night. They're not answering the phone when they're with the kids or with the family, which is a good thing.

But they're also losing all those jobs.

Freddy D: 00:20:01

Sure. It goes back to what I was saying. You got a 15 minute window.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:20:05

That's it.

Freddy D: 00:20:06

That's really the bottom line because you just outlined it right there. You went through 1H vac, second one and the third one answered there. You got the business. It's that simple. Who responds first has the best chance.

Even. Even if you're shopping. One of the things I teach people is that you either want to be number one or you want to be number three.

You never want to be the middle salesperson.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:20:31

That's so true.

Freddy D: 00:20:32

Because number one person sets the bar, number two is always screwed and number three can play cleanup.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:20:38

That's right.

Freddy D: 00:20:39

So if you're number two, if you're listening, change out, reschedule.

So you're number three, then you have a good chance because you set that bar so high if you're number one by that person taking that response from you guys, answering the call, providing a service as fast as possible, nobody else can compete with that.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:20:59

That's how you create a superfan. That's how you get the five star review. Right. Reviews are literally gold. Like you can bank on reviews.

People read them, they study them, they look for a review that's like them.

And if you're answering the call right away, you're delivering what you promise, you do it with a smile, you provide exceptional value and you ask for the review. People are excited to leave it and they'll leave a five star review. They'll tell a story, they'll share the good benefits and that sells people.

That literally will reduce the buying friction.

So people are more likely to take out their card and pay without any hesitation if they've read really good reviews and people have responded well and they can relate to one of those reviews. And even that can be handled with AI now.

Freddy D: 00:21:54

Sure, yeah, you can create that engagement of the automatic follow up. I always used to tell people when I did, you know, coaching and sales coaching, it'd be okay. You've got one of these smartphone things.

There it is, use it when people are done. Can I get a quick video testimonial that becomes your salesperson? You don't have to say anything now.

You just play these 12 different video testimonials about the service and how you've delivered it or the product and et cetera. You don't have to say zip. Let the videos do the selling and you'll be sold.

And you bring up another thing too that's important, Shannon, is that staying in communication because too many people do a good, really good job and you never hear from them again. They never follow up, they never check up.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:22:40

Oh true.

Freddy D: 00:22:42

They did a great job. You're super happy. They didn't ask for a review. They left, they said thanks, took the check or the credit card, processed it, gone.

And you never hear from them again.

Those are so many squandered opportunities because you are a super fan of what they did, but they never asked you for anything to help promote their business. And out of sight, out of mind. And next time you need the similar service, you don't even remember them.

You get somebody new because they never reached out back out to you.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:23:18

Yeah, that's right. You're sitting there, wait, who was that? I used, what was their name?

And you're not going to take the time to go back through your bank statement to try and find out who you used two years ago to do something like that. And there's ways to counter that. Give them a QR code, sticker, follow up with them with email, send a birthday card, any.

There's just a gazillion ways to follow up. And years ago, when I started my business, one of my mentors taught me the phrase, the fortune is in the follow up.

And that's so true because even a great example, that landscape company that hired us, they were on my email list for eight years. Eight years of getting email follow up.

And then they were at that point where they were just so burned out that they called me up and were like, can you help us? And that's generated over, I don't know, $150,000 in revenue for our company. Just working with that one business and helping them scale.

Was it worth sending out eight years worth of emails for that? Of course it is. Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:24:26

Yeah, yeah.

When I was selling manufacturing software, we would have a meeting and we'd have everybody into the meeting to demonstrate the software and the technology.

So it would include the people from the shop floor that were running the milling machines and the lathes and the wire, EDM and all that machinery stuff.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:24:43

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:24:44

And I made sure to get everybody's name and then I would send back. Then there was no emails yet.

So I would send everybody a personalized letter would be Shannon, thank you so much for participating in our meeting today. Your input was very beneficial. Appreciate hope you got a lot of stuff out of it, et cetera. And we would win the sale.

And I would reach back out and says, okay, why did you guys pick us?

The majority of them would be, we felt that after the sale you would give us the best service because you being out running the milling machine with nobody ever acknowledges you, you got a letter saying thank you for your time. Appreciate it.

So everybody in the shop floor that participated in a meeting, not just management, I included, everybody, didn't matter what level in the company was. So everybody had to feel good because everybody got recognized and appreciated and that got the sale.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:25:41

That's awesome. I love it. It just goes to show you people are future forward thinking and they are thinking like, how is this going to work out for me?

And it's that level of customer service and attention that this is how you don't have to compete on price is through that value. Because if you're competing on price, the only question you have to ask yourself 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 cheapest person on the block, but we always complete the project. It's always exceptionally done. We always meet the timeline. You look us up and there's just no bad press at all because we always do what we promise.

When you do that, you don't have to be the $400 website builder or you don't have to be the service provider who's all about price.

It's okay if you give an invoice and there's a little bit of sticker shock because they're getting the experience that you're the one who's going to provide the most value to continue with that.

Freddy D: 00:26:44

Price becomes a secondary conversation.

Because if you're really working to help that business owner get to the level that they want to get to, and you're working with them, and now they're seeing it, because that's the hard part is getting them to see how you can get them to where they need to be or where they'd like to be. But they don't know how to get there.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:27:08

Right.

Freddy D: 00:27:09

The cost becomes secondary because 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 out that plan.

So now they can say, okay, I can see that, and I'm going to spend $100,000 to gain $900,000. Absolutely, that's right.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:27:41

Yeah. And I think too, we've always taken the holistic approach because I've been doing this a long time, so experience definitely matters.

I've seen businesses that 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 never follows up on how does that SEO actually convert to money at the end of the day and how is it converting to the overall strategic plan of this business? Right, Their five year plan, their ten year plan. Maybe they're planning for an exit. How does that even work with an exit?

How will it work with their advertising?

So when we talk to a business, we look at everything, we do a complete 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 their salespeople operating, where are the cogs in the machine, what's slowing their production? And just speeding it up and making it very simple. Business actually is very simple.

It seems really complicated because there's so many different ways to do things, right. That kind of adds the complexity to it, but it's very simple. You're getting the attention of people. You're turning that attention into conversations.

You're turning those conversations into cash. And that's the basic simplicity of business. So if you keep it that simple and you just make it very streamlined, then the business will grow.

When there's a ton of complexities about it, then the business doesn't grow.

Freddy D: 00:29:20

It goes back to what you were saying earlier when we started Conversation is that some business guys and gals work inside the business. They're busy in the weeds because they're the only one that can do it as good as they can do it.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:29:36

That's a whole nother episode.

Freddy D: 00:29:40

I'll take 80% of what I can do if I don't have to do it. That's the reality of it. But you can't scale and you can't systematize.

And what you're talking about really, is having a system in place for multiple different departments.

And in your case, you're helping people with systems for their engagement with prospective customers and existing customers and any partners associated with that business. Because as we talked earlier, it's a whole ecosystem. And so the left hand has got to know what the right hand's doing.

The left foot and the right foot got to be involved, and they all got to be coordinated. Otherwise you can't walk.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:30:23

That's right. And everything leads to revenue.

Even in the case, like with the landscape company that we were working with in Arizona, with their volume, that extra volume can be monetized just by finding a partner, a landscape company partner that's willing to buy those leads. Right?

So if they have those leads coming in, instead of wasting them, just go to another landscaping company and say, we have more deals than we can possibly do. Will you give us a percentage? 10, 15%. What are your margins then? Now you have a whole nother revenue channel that you can monetize.

But it's through those things where if you're only hiring a Facebook ads manager and they give you more leads than you can handle, you just have extra leads that are being wasted.

When you look at it holistically, and you're looking at it with that very simplistic model of you're looking to get attention, you're turning the attention into conversations, you're turning the conversations into cash. If you can't Handle all those conversations, then you need to just find another way to turn them into cash, not just waste them. Right?

Freddy D: 00:31:33

Yeah. Like you said, market that to somebody else. Or it's a possibility of saying, hey, let's partner up and maybe we expand our business.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:31:43

That's right, exactly. There's so much nowadays.

just I, I truly feel that in: 2025

So there was like a huge amount of effort that had to go out to generate the leads and then a huge amount of effort dealing with the leads and then trying to even take monetary transactions was like a whole nother animal. You had this like machine on your desk and you had to get the person to give 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 dramatically reduced. And the time from somebody inquiring to you getting paid can be seconds, right?

It can literally be seconds online.

So there's so much opportunity if people are willing to take advantage of it and utilize AI, utilize cutting edge tools, really look at the entire model very holistically, figure out how to optimize all of their inbound channels and then just scale. And I love what you said about hiring because delegation's a big part of it.

We have a framework that we teach and go through with our business owners called the paid framework. And it's promote, automate, influence and delegate and that you always start with promotion, no matter what.

I think a lot of times people start backwards. They start, I have to make the products, I have to do all this first.

You have to figure out if people are even going to be interested in it or buy it. You promote when the leads start coming in, you automate that nurture you influence with excellent salesmanship.

So you have to learn how to really influence that buying decision. That's done online with some factors like your reputation management, your reviews, the flow, the channel, the speed to call back.

Like you said, really, you cannot wait more than 15 minutes. Now there's technology. You can even tell when someone's looking at your website and it can alert you and you can call them. Right.

While they're looking at your website.

Freddy D: 00:33:55

Right? Yeah, I use some of that stuff and it's pretty wild.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:33:58

It's amazing. It's. What a coincidence. You were Looking at our website, of course we knew they were looking at the website, but you're top of mind.

So even the speed, the effort from someone looking at your website to you getting paid is so greatly reduced that time, that effort has like just been squashed to nothing. And it's really just speed now if people are utilizing it, the old school methods are just.

We're going to see a lot of businesses go out of business because they're just not able to attract and capture that attention and they're not willing to invest.

Freddy D: 00:34:33

Well, I think part of it is they don't even, they don't even understand it. I recently worked with a company and I was moving them into the 21st century and they were having a hard time because now it was over their head.

So it became confrontational and I ended up saying, you know what, this isn't going to work out for either one of us. And I left. Because in their minds, losing control because they didn't understand the technology. They didn't know how to utilize the technology.

They knew that they needed it. But then when it was in place, it was 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 for 30 years, but you don't understand. In the last five years things have exponentially changed.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:35:21

Oh yeah. And it's happening faster than ever now.

Even legacy businesses like that, the 30 year old companies and stuff, they will not be able to compete with the newer companies that come up and are able to just capture a huge market share of that attention and keep those people engaged.

Freddy D: 00:35:39

Well, that was with this particular company, their challenge. They weren't growing, they were two and a half, $3 million and they were in a construction space.

.: 000000

Shannon Lavenia: 00:36:09

So true. Yeah, they're going to have to just embrace it.

I've had these hard conversations with some business owners that have had like a plumbing business for 30 years. Father started it now, then it got passed down.

And the reality is, the thing I say to them is, look, if my toilet is overflowing and clogged, I don't need you to explain to me what you're going to do and how you're going to fix it. I just need you to fix it. I need it cleaned up, I need the toilet flushing. Same thing here.

Your business right now, excuse my French, is going to shit and you need it fixed. And you don't need me to explain to you how I'm going to do this. You just need it fixed. And then they get that.

They're like, you know what, you're right. I'm like, you're a plumber, you're not a marketing strategist, you're not a software implementer. I am.

Once they get that, it's you stay in your zone, I'll stay in my zone and you're gonna see the results of what I do. And if you don't see the results, then you have every right to ask for your money back. But they get you the results.

Freddy D: 00:37:11

And going further than that, we're talking about getting the deal. But the reality is, I look at it, the sale really begins once you get the order.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:37:22

That's right.

Freddy D: 00:37:23

Because getting the order to me having been in sales for decades, is the easy part. The hard part is the implementation, the delivery and everything else.

So that's important for everybody to understand is that you can put in all the systems in place and put all the technology and help them get the deal.

But if they can't deliver and they don't have systems in place to do the proper onboarding and delivering and then more importantly, the follow up for ongoing engagement, it's going to fall apart as well, right?

Shannon Lavenia: 00:37:53

Yeah.

Delivery is exceptionally important and it's just integrity in, in the real world, it's integrity, it's ethical, somebody paid you, you made a promise, you need to deliver on it. When people have put money down, they always have a little bit of nervousness around it.

Because I haven't met anybody yet who hasn't been ripped off on something.

They bought something, they got their hair done and the stylist did a terr job or they got a floor installed and the floor installer did a terrible job. Like we've all had those and we carry those experiences with us in the buying transaction.

So it's safe to assume that our customers also carry those transactions with them in their buying experience. And the way that we counter that is through exceptional delivery.

And you do that and they don't have to see what you're doing, they don't have to know what you're doing, but they do have to get communication from you that it is being done. If they don't get that communication, what happens when Human beings don't get communication is they fill in the blanks with the stuff in their head.

Freddy D: 00:39:00

It goes back to dating. Let's keep it super simple. When you're dating, if you remember back in the day, you don't hear that phone call back after you left the message.

Your mind goes always to the negative, never to the positive.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:39:13

Found someone else. They're. They don't like me. They don't want me. They died in a car accident. There's. It's like every fill in the blank scenario is all negative.

It's this void, there's this gap. So if you're communicating, like if we're designing a website, we're sending regularly screenshots, we're showing them what we're working on.

We even send pictures of our designer and the computer and they get to see there's a real person working on it. And it just makes it fun, you know, it keeps them up to date of what's happening on their project.

Freddy D: 00:39:44

And that's how you're creating a super fan of your customer because you're keeping them engaged.

And now they can turn around and they're talking to their other business owner, Buddy or Budet, and they're having lunch, they're having drinks, they're having coffee, whatever it is you say. This marketing agency that we just brought on recently, we're getting pictures, we're getting updates, they're sending some goofy stuff.

This company is really cool. And that's it. That's all it takes. Because they're going to say, really tell me more about that company. We're, we're not happy with ours.

They do an okay job, but sounds like this company's really knocking it out for you. And there you go. That's all it takes. And it cost you nothing.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:40:23

Yeah, exactly. I love that this has been a really great conversation.

Freddy D: 00:40:28

Thank you. Yes. So we're getting close to the end here.

Shannon, what's a good tip that you can give our listeners that they should look at right away as to whether it's set up properly or not? My thoughts are, is Google Maps, are they set up properly under Google Maps? That's probably the first thing that they should look at.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:40:49

A hundred percent. That's a foundational step because that is where the majority of people are doing their search now.

They'll even pull up Siri and they'll say, show me a landscaper near me. It pulls up Google Maps and the actual behavior of what people are doing.

So one of the rules of marketing is always to meet the behaviors of what consumers are doing. Right. So if they're doing that, you want to meet that behavior, and it is your reputation.

So it used to be that neighbors, referred neighbors, and that's how you built your reputation. Now it's Google reviews, it's Yelp reviews.

It's what people see online that determines their buying decision and either increases or reduces friction to them choosing you.

Freddy D: 00:41:35

I'm going to add to that to make. To drive the point home. You and your husband and me and my wife, we go out to the restaurant once in a while, right?

Shannon Lavenia: 00:41:43

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:41:44

What's the things that we all do is we check what the reviews.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:41:50

Yep.

Freddy D: 00:41:50

Everybody does it. You're driving along and saying, what do you got? What do you got a taste for? I don't know. I got a taste for Italian. All right, let's. Where are we?

Hey, honey, take a look and see what Italian restaurants are on the way to wherever we're going or on the way home or whatever. And the person in the passenger seat is looking up and saying, hey, there's a pretty one that's got five stars. Or, oh, no, that one's we just passed.

But, man, that was horrible. And that's what we do today.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:42:19

Yeah, that's it. And we can visualize if it.

If somebody put a negative review and there was, like, multiple of them, then we start to picture in our mind what our experience would be, and we're like, I don't know if I really want to deal with bad tie tonight. Let's go to a different. Let's go to this other one. It has better reviews. We say it all the time. Let's go to this other one.

It has better reviews, so you're exactly right.

Freddy D: 00:42:44

Yeah. It's the world we're in today.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:42:46

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:42:47

So you either got to play in it, or you can sit on the sidelines and watch. There's three types of people. Those that make things happen, those that watch things happen, and those that wonder what the heck happened.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:42:59

That's right. And when you get to number one, too, it's. We just got a roofing company to number one. Their calls went up over 300%. It's literally insane.

The amount of difference it makes being in the number five spot to being in the number one spot, being in the number seven spot to being in the number three spot. Like it. It's business transformational.

Freddy D: 00:43:24

Sure, sure. Totally agree. Yeah. We could have a conversation on this for several hours.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:43:30

That's right.

Freddy D: 00:43:31

So. And how do people find you just.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:43:35

Go to Brand Builder AI dot com. And there's. We offer a free demo. We offer free marketing audit.

Will literally tear your whole stuff apart and show you where you need to make improvements. And our phone number's on there, so you can call my office, but, yeah, super easy.

Freddy D: 00:43:56

Okay. And so that'd be your offers that you'll take a look at their current setup at no cost for them.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:44:02

Yeah, we would love to. On every demo, we actually look at their Google profile and we pull a marketing audit. So we'll show them exactly what's happening online.

Is their site loading slow? What's their SEO standing? What's their review standing? Do they have problems with their Google business profile?

Are they showing up on other search engines? So we give them all that data.

Freddy D: 00:44:27

Okay, excellent. Well, make sure that the website's in the show notes so that people can get to it.

And thank you so much, Shannon, for being a guest on a business superfans podcast. Great conversation, and we definitely would like to have you on the show down the road.

Shannon Lavenia: 00:44:43

Awesome. I loved it. And when we launch our podcast, I'd love to have you on there too.

Freddy D: 00:44:47

Definitely. All right, thank you.