How To Master Sales Automation Strategies With Shannon Lavenia

As entrepreneurs, we often face the double-edged sword of building something we love while managing the chaos of scaling. In this episode, I sit down with Shannon Lavenia, co-founder of BrandBuilderAI.com, whose story of resilience and strategic brilliance is nothing short of inspiring. From navigating multimillion-dollar losses and battling breast cancer to transforming her business with cutting-edge sales automation strategies, Shannon shares how intentionality and leadership shaped her entrepreneurial journey.

We dive into actionable insights, including the power of recurring revenue, automating lead generation, and managing teams with a balance of compassion and accountability. Shannon’s passion for helping business owners implement systems that free up their time while driving growth shines through every moment of our conversation. Whether you’re looking to scale your business or refine your leadership skills, this episode is packed with lessons you can apply today.


Connect with Shannon Lavenia:

Don’t miss the chance to connect with Shannon Lavenia and learn more about how she’s transforming businesses with automation and leadership strategies. Visit BrandBuilderAI.com to explore tools and insights that can help scale your business with confidence and ease.


Books Mentioned:

• Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

Join the New Catalytic Leadership Community

Check out our new online membership site, with new resources by Dr. William Attaway and his team added weekly: https://checkout.catalyticleadership.net/

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Leadership Evolution
• 6:30 Overcoming Financial Setbacks
• 12:00 Navigating Personal Challenges
• 18:00 The Power of Sales Automation
• 27:01 Intentional Business Planning
• 32:31 Advanced Leadership Insights
• 40:31 Final Reflections and Resources

Transcript

Dr. William Attaway: 0:00

It is such an honor today to have Shannon Lavinia on the podcast. For over 20 years, shannon's been helping entrepreneurs to optimize their brands, their lead generation and their sales processes so they can scale effectively and efficiently. She is the co-founder of BrandBuilderAIcom, the ultimate sales automation system for entrepreneurs and businesses who want to get to the money faster and easier. Shannon's passion is to empower big thinkers to create fun-fueled, passion-fulfilling, wildly profitable businesses without the stress, the overwhelm and the frustration of DIYing their digital systems. She leverages her expertise in automation strategies, systems and attraction marketing to help her clients and students sell out their services and programs and magnify their impact. Shannon, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for being on the show.

Shannon Lavenia: 0:56

Thanks for inviting me. It's quite an honor and I'm super happy to be here and to provide whatever value I can to your audience.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:04

Well, I know you're going to bring a lot, so let's dive in.

Intro/Outro: 1:09

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:16

Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway coach, dr William Attaway, I would love to start with you sharing a little bit of your story with our listeners, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader. How did you get started?

Shannon Lavenia: 1:38

Wow, this is like a very loaded question. So I mean, I started my adult career as a high school teacher, so I was a high school science teacher, and then we my husband and I got married. We quickly realized that the nine to five journey was not going to be the right path for us to achieve the goals that we had. We definitely were big dreamers. We had like a if we can dream it, we can do it attitude, and so we started our business. And when you're in business, it's very different because you're not just responsible for yourself anymore. You're now responsible for other people clients, customers.

Shannon Lavenia: 2:28

So I very quickly realized I did have to develop myself as a leader and fortunately, because I was trained as an educator, you know, as a teacher you're naturally expected to develop these leadership skills because you're leading a group and as a high school teacher, you know there's you're basically leading five or six groups a day through an entire year and you have to learn a couple of things. One you have to learn how to command and have some authority. So it's definitely a skill that I learned to develop um, to have authority in front of other people, um, how to communicate in a way that other people are willing to receive that communication right, because communication in itself can create all kinds of different responses, depending on how you communicate something to somebody. Um, anyone who's married knows that there's definitely a difference between get me the milk and can you get me the milk right. That could be the start of a good day or a bad day, right.

Dr. William Attaway: 3:33

So true.

Shannon Lavenia: 3:35

So you have to learn how to communicate and fortunately, I was kind of thrust into the fire, because teenagers are, like, some of the hardest to deal with, right? They have so much emotionally going on in their own lives that you really do learn how to communicate with a smile and with an expectation and, um, with some understanding, right, you learn how to communicate with some understanding. Um, also, I had to learn how to get people to do what I wanted them to do, but in a way that they also wanted to do it Right. So there's like different ways of leadership there's leadership by force, there's leadership by threat and there's leadership by engagement. And I always look to to do leadership by engagement, right, so the other person has a personal desire to do what I want them to do.

Shannon Lavenia: 4:29

And there's no like psychological trickery in that. It's just really understanding what the other person's goals, wants and needs are too, and communicate it in a way that aligns with them. So they have a vested interest. Also, a great parenting tip if you do have teenagers, like I do, so you know, with teenagers, parenting by threat or parenting, you know, by just power, doesn't really work, because they're powerful too and they honestly don't care about your threats. So you can try to have some interest, right, they're going to be, they're going to want to do it.

Shannon Lavenia: 5:07

So there's a little bit of understanding that you really have to be like, personally vested in understanding other people, um, so I developed these skills over time and a lot of it was just, you know, uh, understanding the mistakes I was making along the way and having a willingness to look at those mistakes and adapt, to develop the leadership that I have now. And I have a really great team that works for me now. Many of them have worked with me for many years and we have a very good client base because we've applied these things to our clients as well. And there's some books that I've read along the way. You know a lot of the just standard leadership books, and some of it I agreed with, some of it I didn't. I think, also because I'm a woman, I have a little bit of a different leadership style and a lot of the leadership books are written by men. So you know, I tend to be a little bit more nurturing or or things like that.

Dr. William Attaway: 6:07

I think I'm not I'm not, you know, saying anything that men aren't nurturing or anything, but I just think I have a little bit of a different style from that angle you know, we were both speaking at the same event down in Tampa earlier this year and that's where we first met, and when I heard you speak there and then again at the high level event, I was so impressed with your story, and not just with what you do. What you do for your clients is definitely worth talking about, and we will. But you, as a leader, you have gone through some really high days, really high points, and you've gone through some really low points. You know it's so easy for somebody looking from the outside at a leader like you and say, oh wow, you know she's never had to deal with what I deal with. She's never gone through anything, any real struggles. Her journey has just been up and to the right.

Shannon Lavenia: 7:01

Yeah right.

Dr. William Attaway: 7:02

If somebody were to tell you that like to walk up to you and say that to you, what would you say?

Shannon Lavenia: 7:08

Well, one, I would literally say that's just an excuse. It's like a deflection that people say but in this entrepreneurial journey, right, I started my business in 2002. So I've been on this journey for a long time 23 years, right, um, and my business partner is my husband. So there's a whole other dynamic that goes into growing a business with your spouse. But during that time you know, we have, um, when we started our business, we had a lot of success very quickly.

Shannon Lavenia: 7:41

Um, we were young, we were stupid, I didn't have a lot of business training, so I spent a lot of money on really frivolous things. You know the Bentleys and the million dollar homes and all of that. And in 2008, the real estate market crashed hard. Now I know some of the people listening to this are probably 20 somethings and and you weren't there through this, or maybe you're you experienced your parents going through it. But we lost a couple million dollars pretty much overnight, um, and that we ended up going through bankruptcy in 2012. And we, at the time, we had the largest bankruptcy that was filed in Tucson, arizona, multimillion dollar bankruptcy, and we lost everything.

Shannon Lavenia: 8:26

We, we, um, couldn't keep our home. Uh, we didn't. We, you know how to sell our cars. So we went out to Delaware and we lived in this really tiny condo, um, and we didn't have a car. My husband kept his Harley. Uh, I had a bicycle, we had a baby who had just turned one and you know, I picked a part-time daycare so I could walk her there. It was like three quarters of a mile. I'd walk her there and I'd walk her back and I justified it as like okay, this is how I get my daily exercise right.

Shannon Lavenia: 9:00

Because I couldn't afford a gym at the time. So, if you can imagine, we went from living in this 5,400 square foot mansion on top of a hill driving a Bentley, a Range Rover, a Maserati, to living in a little tiny condo without a car, next to my in-laws who kept telling us to get jobs, like they basically wanted John to go back to being a mechanic and me to go back to being a teacher, and that wasn't going to work Right and we had to do a lot of personal development to get our heads straight. And, um, I'll share one story. I think this was a very pivotal moment and then I'll share another big loss that we had.

Shannon Lavenia: 9:40

But, um, my father-in-law took me to the grocery store and at that time we didn't have a credit card. I didn't have a bank account because we owed the IRS money and I didn't want them drafting the money out of our account. So we were doing everything with cash. We had our clients send cash. We had one business bank account, but the cash would go in and we would take it out. So people would wire us the money, we would pull it all out immediately, and so we weren't operating anything in the banking system and we my father-in-law took me to the grocery store and I was standing there and I had $40. I had my little basket of groceries and there was a woman in front of me who was putting one item up on the belt and asking the cashier how much the total was right. We've probably all seen that right, somebody doing that.

Shannon Lavenia: 10:30

So I'm watching her doing this and I'm getting a little, you know, a sense of pity for her while this is happening and I'm just thinking, oh my gosh, you know, I wonder what's going on in her life, or whatever. And then it dawned on me that I was literally about to do the exact same thing. I'm looking at her with total pity, and then I was about to do the same thing and I was like, oh my gosh, I've forgotten who I am. Right.

Shannon Lavenia: 10:57

In the moment of like, of, of looking at her with pity. That was, that was my real beingness. Right Like I'm, this is not me. And then I was like Holy cow, I'm literally about to do that. So I gave her the 40 bucks, I put my groceries down, I went out. My father-in-law was like, where's your stuff? And I was like, just take me home, took me home. I went into my husband who was like still festering on this whole bankruptcy thing, and you know he's, he's, uh, an Italian man who's very much about taking care of his family. It hit him hard and um, and I was like, dude, like you have 30 days to make 10 grand, like that's it. We're out of here. I want to buy a car and I want to get out of here. Like we have to remember who we are. So we went back to the personal development.

Shannon Lavenia: 11:42

Every day we had our goals. We had them on a goal card. We were reading thinking grow rich. Every day we started visualizing again and within 30 days we made 10K. We went, we bought a car Within the next 90 days. We moved out of Delaware. We rented a townhome in Park City, utah. I was like I want to go someplace. That's affluence right. I got to be back in a place that's affluent. We rented probably the cheapest, most rundown town home in Park City, utah, which is a very affluent area Right, and I put my daughter in public school. We were driving a Dodge Journey you know, I was so grateful for the car and we built back up and we built back up to a seven figure business. And we built back up and we built back up to a seven figure business.

Shannon Lavenia: 12:25

And then in 2019, it was kind of like this trifecta of crazy events that happened. One, we decided to move to Phoenix. We as an agency were doing sales for other agencies, so we were providing sales team and process for other high ticket agencies and we made the mistake of putting all our eggs in the one basket that was really lucrative and that basket got raided by the Federal Trade Commission. On the weekend we moved to Phoenix. Right, it was absolutely insane. We moved to Phoenix, I went to Dunkin' Donuts to get my family some breakfast and my card declined and I was like wait, what Right? And then I tried another card at the same bank and that declined. And then I paid this like $17 bill or whatever with a credit card and I logged in my bank account and the money was gone. So what had occurred was the FTC pulled back the wire transfer, like the last wire transfer. So here we were, we called the owner of the company, they're rated, they're shut down. That was like 90% of our income. Oh my goodness, it was so insane. Then, later that year so that happened in February of 2019.

Shannon Lavenia: 13:47

And then in May of 2019, I was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. So it, like it all kind of happened at once. And we were, you know, we had just moved there, so we were renting this $4,000 a month house. Moved there, so we were renting this $4,000 a month house. And you know, it got to the point where we sold one of our cars to try and pay that that rent. We had to downsize again to a townhome. I, we, I had to take months off for treatment, chemotherapy surgeries, radiation John was a hot mess because here he is trying to take care of me and you know, all that time it was just struggle. We were barely able to crack through like the eight to $10,000 a month.

Shannon Lavenia: 14:38

And some of that came from, like, long-term clients who were like, what kind of work can I give you to like help you guys out, right? Like we almost had that type of experience and when we came out of that, um, again, uh, a lot of personal development. Like the first thing I did when I got diagnosed with breast cancer, I was like I'm doing a dream board, because the only thing that I need to focus is on, like, what's it going to be like on the other side of this, right, or this is going to kill me, right? Like it's like we're now in a financial mess, we're super stressed, we have a daughter and and we have to rebuild. And I will tell you that we're we were not financially irresponsible to the sense that, like we had our six months reserves, but that goes fast when you're living a high, you know a high lifestyle. So now we're like two years reserves, like two years sellable assets. Like we. We have a much stronger plan now, but we had to build back up from that and that actually was um. That was how I found high level because, coming out of breast cancer, I decided to um, in addition to our agency, launch a coaching program and I was like you know what I? I know how to build. We built our agency back up pretty quick and then I was like I'm just going to tell other people how to do this and we ran the coaching program for like two and a half years. We don't offer it currently anymore. We're just 100% focused on our agency because it's grown so fast. But you know, it gave us like high level, gave us a path where we could then see like a very simple method of creating recurring income.

Shannon Lavenia: 16:30

The biggest mistakes we had with before was we put all of our eggs in one basket.

Shannon Lavenia: 16:35

We had no recurring, so zero recurring income. It was like eat what you kill. If we weren't paid, we weren't making money, and even on the affiliate marketing side, like we did affiliate marketing but some of the affiliate programs changed their terms or the company sold and the new buyers eliminated the affiliate program. So we really wanted something that we could have recurring, and that's when we discovered SaaS. So that's given us like this huge ability. Now we have more than enough money to cover our bills, to cover our office expenses, to cover our payroll, so we're able to take time off and able to focus on other things. And and that's what got us here but it is not by any means been this like golden spoon experience where you know it's. You know we had like an up trajectory. We had more like oh shit, moments of like what are we going to do now, than most people, and we applied the very basic like seeing fundamental business principles that help us take our way out of it.

Dr. William Attaway: 17:44

What a remarkable story I mean to go through and things that were such high moments and such incredibly difficult stretches, and to come out the other side and to get to meet you and John and talk with both of you and see a couple, that, whose marriage is so rock solid and who are business partners Like that's. That is not often that both of those things are said in the same sentence, you know, because it can create such an interesting dynamic. You know, what you have built, you know, with with your agency, is something where you are able to add value and provide a service to businesses in a really powerful way. Share about that for just a minute. I'd love to hear more about what you do through your agency.

Shannon Lavenia: 20:09

So we're really focused on sales automation and, I would say, uh, local SEO reviews management. So, um, we work with a lot of businesses that are mom and pops, so they're brick and mortar businesses. They're at about the million dollar mark and they're looking to scale up to that like next break point of two and a half million to 5 million, right? So if you don't know about breakpoints, there's definitely certain dynamics that happen in businesses at certain levels. There's like the 500,000 mark, where you really start to hire, to the million dollar mark, where you really start to implement systems for automation and growth, and then the two and a half million dollar mark, where you start to look at like, how are you setting up your business for exit?

Shannon Lavenia: 20:56

So we work with a lot of the million dollar to two and a half million dollar mark businesses and a lot of those mom and pops don't have any, you know, automation. Some of them are actually still using their personal cell phone to take sales calls. So, um, which you know they're, they're like biggest complaint is like I can never get away from my business and it's like, well, dude, like you, like you, literally are carrying around business in your hands 24 7 so you know what I mean.

Shannon Lavenia: 21:24

Like so we work a lot with the sales automation, like lead generation, coming in the um, the auto text, back now with the AI employee and then optimizing their Google business profile so that when um calls come in like so we like to drive in a lot of calls organically. And then how do you optimize those to get those appointment bookings, to get those jobs and to get paid? Um, and I love working with local businesses for a couple of reasons. Um, I've, I can't. I came out of the um course and education product sales, so I used to sell courses to entrepreneurs and then I had a coaching program and I also worked with coaches and I love them too.

Shannon Lavenia: 22:11

But there's a different dynamic between how a business owner who has a building and trucks and equipment makes money decisions versus somebody who's running a totally virtual business. They just, you know, if we go to them and say, you know, and we're not the cheapest agency on the block by any means, we have great reviews, we have great success stories, great case studies, all of that but if we go to them and say this is going to be $10,000, they just bought a truck for $150,000. You know they're like oh, okay, that's, they just think about that number differently. So I love to work with them. I also love to work with them because it's very easy to get a result in my book.

Shannon Lavenia: 23:01

It's very simple to get a result because there's there so many of them are such hot messes that even a little tiny shift makes a huge incremental change in their business. So that's who we focus on now and that was a big shift for us. Coming out of the high ticket course and coaching program industry, where we provided sales teams, we provided funnel builds, we provided ad services, to then switching to local small businesses. That was a big shift too and it's been a very beneficial shift for us in a lot of ways, including being able to have like just standard office hours, like they work on standard office hours. We work on standard office hours, you know 3.30, I'm out, I'm with my daughter and it works. You know that works great for us.

Dr. William Attaway: 24:01

I love that. Well, it sounds like you've been very intentional about the priorities that you're setting and you've built a business around those priorities.

Shannon Lavenia: 24:11

That came out of the breast cancer journey really priorities. That came out of the breast cancer journey really, um, when we, before I was diagnosed, um, you know, we really hustled hard um we kind of had this like hustle mentality and, um, I still carved out a lot of family time.

Shannon Lavenia: 24:28

I have a very specific way of managing time, um, that I've taught for years, and it starts with setting your calendar up with family first, so like you book your family time first and then you build everything else around it.

Shannon Lavenia: 24:41

And I've done that since I, since my daughter was born, so I've always had a lot of time with her, even though we've had businesses and I run the businesses and and I have clients you know that we're accountable to and all that.

Shannon Lavenia: 24:55

But, um, when we came out of, when I, when I, was going through the breast cancer journey and we came out, um, I really set some very specific goals. Um, one is to retire at 55 and I turned 50 this year, so that's a really big goal. That's a five-year plan and there's some big numbers we have to hit and there's a very strategic exit strategy on that. So every decision we make in our company aligns with how viable our company is, right, how it's set up for an exit, how it's set up for an exit. The second thing is it's also every decision we make is also designed around the time that we have with my daughter because she's 14, right. There's only so many years we have left with her in this parenting experience that we're having, and that retirement also coincides with her turning 18, because then we want to take off an entire year to travel the world Right.

Shannon Lavenia: 26:02

And that that's part of that plan and I mean I'm not going to, I won't sugarcoat it Like, my lifestyle is not inexpensive at all, um, so I don't plan.

Shannon Lavenia: 26:15

If I'm retiring at 55 and my plan is to live to, you know, a hundred um, god willing, like, like, like, we have to make a lot of money Now, we have to sell for a lot of money and we have to invest that um strategically in order for us to be able to survive off of that for the rest of our lives. When you're thinking that way, when you're thinking like, okay, I'm going to retire at 55, but then I'm going to need another 45 years worth of income and the decisions I make today are going to affect whether this plan comes to fruition or not, you really do make your decisions differently. Like I'm not sitting here scrolling through TikTok videos when in four years, I have to make enough and set my company up enough to strategically exit to support me for the rest of my life, right? So every little micro decision you're making is like on that bigger plan.

Dr. William Attaway: 27:17

I love the intentionality of that and the discipline that you have built into your systems to keep you focused you know from from calendaring your family time for making sure your priorities are calendared because that's when they actually are priorities to saying, hey, this is the timeline and what do we have to do every day to get to that five-year goal. I think that intentionality is something that every leader listening can learn from and model after, because I think that's how you get from where you are to where you want to be.

Shannon Lavenia: 27:51

Oh, 100%, and it's surprising how many people do not operate with a plan right, so they get up and they're, they're, they're literally making up decisions throughout their day, and then the next day they're getting up and they're making up decisions again that day, but you don't know if those decisions are aligned with anything. Right. So it's if you, if you're just randomly making decisions, you end up with like this hodgepodge and you never really get any momentum.

Shannon Lavenia: 28:28

Um so you have to have a plan and you have to stick to that plan. And, um, you know, sometimes when I'm working with entrepreneurs, they're like well, how do I know that the plan's going to work? And and the reality is the plan doesn't work. You make the plan work right. The plan is never the the originator of the result. It's like you're setting a plan and you're agreeing that you're going to align your effort, your intentions, your decisions, your resources, your money you know all of that to making that plan go right.

Shannon Lavenia: 29:04

And sometimes, when people ask me about, you know, john and I have been together 20, 27 years. Now it'll be 27 years December 21st. I, that's awesome, I know, right, it's wild when I think about it. I was 23 when we met and we're such totally different people now than we were when I was 23 and he was 27,. Right, and we have so many more life experiences and stuff like that. But you know, we've always been on the same plan together and because we're on the same plan together, we've been able to stick together, because even things like bankruptcy and stuff we were like, well, definitely made some mistakes there, you know, and like, and we just look at it and we're like okay, how do we not repeat this? Yes, again, like how do we not repeat it Great question.

Shannon Lavenia: 29:59

It doesn't make sense to sit there and fester over it and feel like you know dirt forever Like like human beings, we all make mistakes. It's just the reality of it.

Dr. William Attaway: 30:10

That is true.

Shannon Lavenia: 30:11

Right, you know, my daughter put a thing of lemonade in the backseat cup holder the other day and my husband took a turn and it flew and there was like lemonade all over the back of the car and she was like in tears and I was like, babe, like what, you know whatever, not to say you know, don't cry over spilled milk or whatever. But I'm like, well, now you know that a tall cup can't go in a low cup holder. Right, it's a lesson, it's. It's what we do in life. We like slam up into things, we make a mistake, we look at it and we're like, ok, well, now I know, don't put a tall cup in a low cup holder and you're just going to have to spend some time cleaning it up, right, and that's. That's the same thing with every mistake we make through life.

Shannon Lavenia: 30:55

And, um, I think sometimes even and I'm going to, I'm going to digress here for one second you know, I see a lot in the high level group and then other groups like how do I get clients? How do I get clients? How do I get clients? And to me, that's like one of the most fundamental things. It's like you pick up a phone, right, or you go knock on a door, you walk into a restaurant, you have a conversation. I'm like I don't understand. Like, how do you get clients? It's not like clients don't come to you until you're at my level of the game, right, when you're at my level of the game and you have all the Google reviews and you have hundreds of clients you've served that are now referring people to you and you have active affiliates, then clients come to you. But even then, we still go out and we get clients.

Shannon Lavenia: 31:45

Right, I will still. If we have a, if we we track everything with statistics. So if we see our graph dip, I will pick up the phone and start cold calling. If I have to businesses, right. So, but it's because I have a plan and if that graph goes down, even a little bit, that puts me further back from my five year exit. Am I, like you know, feeding, feeding myself for the next 45 years after that? Right? So I can't let that go down. And so that means I got to go call someone. And Google maps you guys have it so easy. I started business in 2022, google maps, or 2002, google maps didn't exist, facebook didn't exist. We flyered cars, dude. Absolutely.

Shannon Lavenia: 32:38

Flyered cars.

Dr. William Attaway: 32:41

And print out your MapQuest directions to get there, to do that right.

Shannon Lavenia: 32:45

I was running from security guards in mall parking lots while I was putting out little. You know index size cards on saying you know if you want to make an extra $4,000 a week in your business. You know index size cards on saying you know if you want to make an extra 4,000 a week in your business, you know, call this number. And you know so. We would get up early and go do that in July in Arizona, not to say uphill barefoot, but like nowadays, it's like I'm going to Google, let me Google dentist in Tampa. Okay, I'm going to start from the top of the list to the bottom. Hey, I noticed, you know what I mean. Like it's just, like it's so easy.

Dr. William Attaway: 33:22

It's a whole different world, no doubt.

Shannon Lavenia: 33:24

It is yeah so.

Dr. William Attaway: 33:26

Shannon, you know you have to lead at a different level today than you did three, four or five years ago, and that same thing is going to be true three years from now.

Shannon Lavenia: 33:37

True.

Dr. William Attaway: 33:37

You know your clients, your team, they're going to need you to continue to level up. So how do you do that? How do you stay on top of your game and level up with the new leadership skills that your team and your clients are going to need you to have?

Shannon Lavenia: 33:52

So number one I always am in in masterminds Like that is, I'm always in a mastermind with somebody who has better results than I do, that I can like shove a problem at and get a quick answer Right. Um, so that's the first thing. If you're not investing in being in an environment of people that are producing higher than you, you're definitely putting yourself at an advantage. So if you're just starting out, if you can do that, do it. If you're not, carve out a percentage of whatever money comes in and put it aside so you can invest in that, because that was a total game changer for me. I will say that I grew very quickly because I was ignorance on fire. I literally just did what I was told to do.

Dr. William Attaway: 34:40

Um yeah, Ignorance on fire. I've never heard that. That's good.

Shannon Lavenia: 34:43

Yeah, totally Ignorance on fire. I was like I found someone making 40,000 a month. I was like, just tell me what to do, I'll do it. I had no opinion about it. He was like you have to go put 5,000 flyers out in a parking lot. I hated every single second of it, but I still did it until I could hire a couple of other guys you know to go out with me and do it too. And um, you know that that was just it, and we lived very frugally during that time. So you don't spend the money you make either. You know you, you take care of your basic living expenses, but you reinvest and reinvest. The other thing is about leadership. Now, at this level, is you really have to think about the cause effect exchange? That's what I like to call it right.

Shannon Lavenia: 35:29

So I'm always looking at what I'm doing. What is it causing Like, what effects is it causing? At what I'm doing. What is it causing Like what effects is it causing?

Shannon Lavenia: 35:40

And when you're running a team, you're working with clients, there's some indulgences that you no longer have the ability to indulge in, and one of those is mood swings. So you have no ability to indulge in that in your so good, that's so true like some mechanisms in place to remind each other to do that, without being like dude, you're just, you know, being an a-hole right now, like you need to knock it off. Um, and and because of that, like as a leader, you set the tone for the entire organization and your team will produce at the energy level they're in. And if you think about that and you and you kind of like translate that into dollars in your bank account, it's definitely very profitable to have high energy, good mood, positive attitude and carry that into your team.

Shannon Lavenia: 36:53

Then come in angry, upset, irritated, tired, frustrated, like all that stuff. You have to leave outside the door, and that's also a really good reason to have a mentor, a coach, a leader, somebody like that who can kind of talk you off of the ledge at times when you do have things that are frustrating, so you're not bringing them past the door into your office and, with your team, pass the door into your office and with your team, Um, the second thing is you have to understand, you know that you're working with human beings and if you bark at them or you're critical of them, or you're yelling at them or you're antagonistic or you treat them like they're stupid or anything like that, they're not going to stay with you very long and you're going to have a lot of turnover.

Shannon Lavenia: 37:47

So you have to be willing to invest the time and the training and the resources and the cultivating these people and acknowledging the things that they've done right and gently correcting the things that they've done wrong, right.

Shannon Lavenia: 38:05

And the way that we do that in our organization is with SOPs. When somebody does something wrong, we will immediately say, oh, we don't have an SOP on that. Okay, there was a blind spot. We write up the SOP, we give it to everybody. They read it, they sign off on it. Now it's ready to be implemented. They've been trained the second time. They're now responsible for implementing that SOP, right? So now we can say, hey, there's already an SOP on this from the first time. Now what's happening? Right?

Shannon Lavenia: 38:39

And then the other thing which is kind of a dichotomy is I am fairly ruthless as a leader, and before you guys think I'm saying something really bad, I'm just going to give you the definition of ruthless, because sometimes people think that this is not not what it actually means. But not what it actually means, let me give this to you Ruthless definition Having or showing no pity or compassion. So I know that sounds like I'm a total bitch, but that's not what I mean. So what I mean is you will have the type of people in your company employees, staff members that will chronically have problems and they expect you to be quote understanding of their problems. But the real understanding comes from. It takes a team effort to operate and run a company and everybody has to contribute to the welfare and wellbeing of everyone else. And if you have one person who chronically has a problem they're chronically sick, their parents are chronically sick, like all of this you can not put all of your emotional resources into that understanding of that person because it's literally hurting the rest of your team and it's hurting the rest of your organization.

Shannon Lavenia: 40:12

So we established an expectation, and part of this is because I do work in, like I have an international team, right, so they're not in the office.

Shannon Lavenia: 40:17

I have some people in the office here.

Shannon Lavenia: 40:19

They're not in the office and there can be this thing of like oh, there's a tsunami coming, oh there's this, oh, my son is sick, my husband's sick, my brother's sick, like all this stuff.

Shannon Lavenia: 40:29

We set an expectation in the beginning and we explain that their contribution to the team supports the other team members and there's an exchange there, right, other people showing up exchanges with them, so they have a certain number of days that they can take off unpaid, a certain number of days they can take off paid, and beyond that, then there's no exceptions with that Right and that that's led us, and it sounds like mean sometimes when I talk about it, but it's one of the reasons people stay with me so long and work with us so long is because they know if they show up, other people are showing up too, and your high producers, who always show up, who have high integrity, who do the great work, they get worn out by the excuse makers and the chronically like lax contributors, and that's how you lose good people and you keep non-good people. So you have to be a little bit steadfast in your expectation and your rules.

Dr. William Attaway: 41:39

That's so good.

Shannon Lavenia: 41:40

Yeah.

Dr. William Attaway: 41:42

You know you, you are a continual learner and you've come across that several times in our conversation. You are always learning, always growing. Is there a book that you would recommend to the leaders who are listening? Hey, if you haven't read this, this, this made a difference for me. This made a difference in my journey.

Shannon Lavenia: 41:58

Um, yeah, it's actually a book that I read every single year. I keep it on my desk, I reflect on it often. Many people have already read it. It's Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich Particularly. You want to go through there and look at the causes of success and the causes of failure. Those two things in there. It's a book. Oftentimes I'll tell people read this book and they're like I already read it. I'm like that's great, but you're not applying it.

Dr. William Attaway: 42:27

Right.

Shannon Lavenia: 42:28

There it is, and it is a book that has to be applied in order to get the benefit out of it and we use those as a checklist, right, like, do we have all of these causes of success in? Yeah, are we avoiding all of these causes of success in? Are we avoiding all of these causes of failure? And that the using that as a checklist has been when we've when that's fallen out of our business, that's when we've come up against things like putting all our eggs in one basket and having that company get raided. Yeah, you know like we literally lost like $75,000 a month in income overnight. If you can even like contemplate that, wow, we were like all right.

Shannon Lavenia: 43:17

Okay, yeah.

Dr. William Attaway: 43:22

What a story that you have had so far. And you are not done.

Shannon Lavenia: 43:28

No, no, no, I know yeah.

Dr. William Attaway: 43:31

Your best days are ahead and, with the intentionality and the discipline that you're bringing to this, and the ever increasing leadership skills, you're going to get there.

Shannon Lavenia: 43:41

Thank you, I appreciate that vote of confidence. I love it.

Dr. William Attaway: 43:46

I have no doubt. I have no doubt.

Shannon Lavenia: 43:48

I don't doubt it either we're full seam ahead over here.

Dr. William Attaway: 43:53

I love it. Shannon, I know people are going to want to stay connected to you and continue to learn from you. What is the best way they can do that and learn more about what you?

Shannon Lavenia: 44:02

do? You can actually visit our agency website, brandbuilderaicom, and there's a phone number on there. You can text in or call or send an email through a contact form. Or you know find me on social media, um. Or you know find me on social media, shannon Lavinia. On Facebook. I'm Shannon Tice Lavinia. Uh, t, I, c, e and um. I always love chatting. I'm in a lot of the high level and agency Facebook groups. I'm at all the events, um. You know that you're at all the events Cause we see each other all over the place.

Dr. William Attaway: 44:40

It's true.

Shannon Lavenia: 44:40

JP from high level. We came in, we were in Cancun. Oh no, we were in Dallas and we were in Cancun, Then we were in Phoenix or in Tampa and then he was like I feel like we just see each other everywhere. I was like, isn't that the best? It is the best.

Dr. William Attaway: 44:58

It is Shannon. Thank you so much for being so generous today in sharing what you've learned so far in your journey. I can't wait to see what's next for you.

Shannon Lavenia: 45:07

Well, thank you, and it has been such a pleasure getting to know you. I know that you are the most in-demand coach, because almost everybody that I know is coaching with you, so it's truly an honor to be on your podcast and with your audience as well, so thank you for this opportunity thanks for joining me for this episode today.

Dr. William Attaway: 45:29

As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, if you don't have a copy of my newest book, catalytic Leadership, I'd love to put a copy in your hands. If you go to catalyticleadershipbookcom, you can get a copy for free. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out.

Dr. William Attaway: 46:03

My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible. This book captures principles that I've learned in 20 plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to catalyticleadershipnet to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, leaders choose to be catalytic.

Intro/Outro: 46:49

Thanks for listening to Catalytic Leadership with Dr William Attaway. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode. Want more? Go to catalyticleadershipnet.