Automation isn't just about saving time; it's about creating the freedom to live the life you love while your business thrives. In this episode, we have special guest Shannon Lavenia, founder of Brand Builder Design Studios and co-founder of SalesGenieCRM, to uncover 4 automation strategies that can revolutionize your business and save you precious time. From the email funnel to the sales pipeline management, Shannon covers the hacks to boost your bottom line and dissects how it works. Shannon also shares her inspirational story of overcoming adversity, including battling stage 3 breast cancer, and how her grit and resilience fueled her transformation. She shares how she has cracked the code to building successful online businesses while putting family first, and today, she reveals that code to you. Shannon also has a bonus gift to equip you with the tools and strategies you need to automate your business, increase your revenue, and create the freedom-based lifestyle you've always desired. Don't miss the chance to transform your business and life with these automation hacks. Tune in now.

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I'm super excited about this one. I'm here with my good friend Shannon Lavenia. She is a high-energy dynamic speaker, coach, and serial entrepreneur. She has transformed her life from a bored, broke high school teacher to an online business and branding expert. Her story is one is overcoming adversity to living an incredible life. She survived and thrived through being an orphan and beating stage three breast cancer. When it comes to grit and resilience, you need to hear from Shannon.

She's the Founder of Brand Builder Design Studios, Cofounder of SalesGenieCRM, and Creator of the Brand Builder Course Collective, which includes CEO Freedom Accelerator, List Cure, and Brand Builder programs. She's family-focused and is operating her business with the philosophy of family fun first while still creating incredible results and serving her audience with results-driven expertise.

She's been featured in Thrive Global, Authority Magazine, Databox, Leadpages, Medium, and Entrepreneur Magazine, which is so exciting. In this episode, she'll be talking to us about four simple automations that will save you time and make you money. We need to hear from Shannon. I'm so excited to have her here.

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Thank you so much, Shannon, for joining us.

I am so happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me to the summit. I love being a part of your summits. They're fantastic and provide so much value.

We can’t do them without you. You're a must-have every time.

Thank you. I love being here. It's always fun.

We have an amazing group of speakers here to bring some cool energy to the table. I'm super excited to dive in. For the people who are possibly meeting you for the first time, can you tell us a little bit about your story and what brought you to this point in your entrepreneurial journey?

I would love to. I was a high school teacher. I taught high school Biology. After eight years of that, I realized that I wasn’t formed or made to work that hard for that little. Every day, I would go to work and would be like, “Is this going to be my life?” The wake-up call came one day when I was in the teacher's lounge. I looked around and there were teachers who had been teaching for 25 or 30 years and they were miserable. It was like a crystal ball showing me what the future held for me if I stayed on the same path that I was on.

I decided to become an entrepreneur. My husband and I started a business together. We had the inkling, but the hard line in the sand came when he was downsized at his job the weekend we got married. It was quite a stunner. It was really shocking. We got thrown into being entrepreneurs. We started in the direct selling industry, selling personal development products. In fact, our first product was by a guy many people know, Bob Proctor, who passed away but made this legendary contribution around the world. We sold one of his courses. We sold conferences and did well. We made our first $1 million in 16 months in business. That was money we profited from those. We went from there.

2023 is our 20th anniversary of working from home and starting our business. It's been really great. We’ve gotten to live in different places. We moved to Florida from Arizona. Before Arizona, we lived in Utah. We were like, “Let's go live in the mountains.” When we were done with that, we were like, “Let's live in the desert,” and then we were done with that. We are on the beach. We get to do a lot of things that we love to do and get to help other people.

Where my branding agency came from was when you do well in business, a lot of people start to ask you what you've done. It was a natural progression to helping other people develop standout brands, which are the brands that would get a lot of attention and connect with clients, and teaching people how to market online and also automate. I'm very big on automation because I'm always looking at how much I am working. I truly believe if you get your processes and systems in order, you can work a lot less but still earn a lot more.

That’s perfect. That’s what this whole summit's all about. If you are working yourself to death, that is no lifestyle. That's not a life that anyone wants to live. The more you can streamline and systematize your business, you are going to have a better lifestyle attached to it. I want to circle back to a couple of things in your story that may be resonating with people in the audience.

First of all, what a crazy honeymoon period to be like, “You don't have a job,” but there's something magical that happens when you burn the boats. There's no other choice. You have to commit. You're not half in and half out. You have to be all in. I have a feeling that had a lot to do with why you're so successful because when you have to be all in, you are all in.

It's very true. When I'm onboarding a client, one of the things that we do is a profit analysis. It is like, “How much money are you making?” People will say, “Zero,” but that's not the correct answer because they've had expenses and they're not looking at that. They're being very casual about it. When we started our business, it was feet to the fire. We had to go. We had to commit ourselves.

There were things that we did, which is a little bit off-topic or a little bit of a tangent. One of the things that we did right away was we started to fill our tank with all the right information. That's what everyone here is doing on this summit. You're filling your tank with the right information. We knew that we had to change our beingness or our way of thinking if we were going to earn more or if we were going to create a better life.

We canceled our cable TV. We stopped listening to the news. All we did was read positive stuff. We hung around positive people. We looked for mentors. We had a coach. We did all those things to make sure that we were aligned with the amount of effort and intention we were going to put into our business. That produced a really amazing result.

That's super smart because whatever you're putting in here is going to make its way into the results in your life. You guys were very intentional about what you allowed in your lives. It’s fantastic. I have to say. It's fantastic that you have this teaching background because teachers make great coaches. That's working in your favor. I love that.

I love teaching. I hated the politics of the public school system. It's gotten even wilder and crazier, but when I was in it, it was even rigid and difficult to make a difference in kids' lives. That containment was a struggle for me. I love to teach. I transformed it into teaching entrepreneurs how to be successful online.

The other part of your story that grabbed my attention is you started by selling someone else's product or service. As you developed a lot of skills and got good at doing that, you naturally expanded into creating your own products, your own services, your own programs, and things like that. There are lots of people in the audience reading who are on both sides. Some people are still selling other people's products and services, and there's nothing wrong with that. You can make great money doing that, especially if they have great products.

You can make millions. That's right.

There are a lot of people in the audience as well who have expanded into creating their own products, services, courses, programs, and that kind of thing. You talked about the key automations, the four simple automations that can save you time and money. What are the big four, in your opinion, that if people want to streamline and systematize their business, it’s the four they have to have if they don't want to have heartache and headaches?

Automation Hack #1: Building Your Email Database As A Valuable Asset

Number one is you have to have some funnel in place. What I mean by that is in business, your email database is your most valuable asset. Even though we live in the world of social media and you can instant message people, direct message people, comment, and communicate via social media, you don't own that data. If social media were to kick you off or go away, you don't have anything that is an asset for you. You're a part of someone else's asset. When you have an email database when you're building an email list, that's your asset.

Any type of promotion that we do, whether it is offering something for free or commenting on somebody's stuff and saying, “We can help you with this,” we always have an opt-in funnel in place where somebody can put their name in their email address and get something in return for that. That's the first thing. You need to have at least one funnel that you can send people to to get their names and email addresses.

You can even do it with a Facebook group. You can have people go to your Facebook group, input their email address in one of the questions, and then suck that email address right into your system. There are different systems out there. I know you use Kartra. I use SalesGenieCRM. Some people use other stuff. There are tools that you can use to get that email address into your database, even from Facebook. That’s the first one.

Automation Hack #2: Streamlining Appointments With Automated Calendars

The second one is you have to have an automated calendar set up so that people can book a call with you very easily. It is the biggest waste of time to sit here and be like, “How about Monday at 1:00? That doesn't work? What about Wednesday at 3:00? What about this? What about that?” Before you know it, you are four weeks away and nobody can figure out what time you guys can connect. Having a calendar in place with automated reminders that set people up is going to be one of the most valuable automations that you can have.

Automation Hack #3: Effective Sales Pipeline Management

The third automation that is incredibly important to anybody who is doing any type of sales is to use a system where you can track your leads in a sales pipeline. When you have that sales pipeline that you can drag and drop people through stages, you're going to make way more sales. Statistically, we've proven this over and over again. When you have a down point in time, let's say you're at the end of the week and you're like, “I need to make another $2,000,” or whatever, you can either fumble through your Post-its of notes that you have on people or go into your system and be like, “Here are the hot prospects I have. Let me get into communicating with these guys to see if I can pull a sale in before the end of the business week.”

Automation Hacks: Use a system where you can track your leads in a sales pipeline.

It is about using a system. We use SalesGenieCRM. When we drag and drop our prospects from one stage to another, we even have automations that are a little bit higher level with that that will set up tasks for our sales team. It will put notes to say, “A call was made. This is where that's going.” That's the third automation that is important for anybody in business. Back in the day, in 2002 when I first got started, we used to use a recipe box and index cards.

I’ve heard of people using recipe boxes and index cards, trying to write them in a notebook, or trying to create an Excel worksheet. Honestly, you're going to work yourself to death because they all require your manual input.

Automation Hack #4: Maximizing Revenue With Abandoned Cart Sequences

You'll forget because you'll get off the phone and the kid will be crying or your husband walks in, or it's time to go to the movie. There are a million things that can distract you from updating the record and then you forget and lose what's happening there. I'm going to throw in a fifth one here that I was talking about. The fourth one is to have a good indoc sequence. What I mean by indoc is indoctrination. It's a word that we use when we're talking about getting the new lead warmed up to who we are and what we offer, and before you get into the sales sequence.

A good indoctrination or you could call it a welcome sequence, too, is ongoing email communication that keeps you in front of your new prospect for a good period of time. The way that ours is set up is we have an index sequence. It has five emails. That's the, “Welcome to my community. This is who I am. Here's a little bit about my story. Here's part one of my story. In the next email, I'm going to tell you part two. In the third email, I'm going to give you something fun. In the fourth email, I'm going to wow you with something. In the fifth email, we're going to start talking business.” From there, they go into a sales sequence for my first entry-level product.

If you are in any type of business, let's say you're in network marketing, you would have that welcome sequence and then you would have one thing about your business that you're going to focus on. In network marketing, coaching, and course creators, I find a very common problem. It is that people will focus on too many things and they will have too many offers. It's very confusing for the customer. They can't make a decision because you're not asking them to make a yes-no decision. You're asking them to make a decision from A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and it goes on and on. They oftentimes don't have all the data on those different things to make an educated decision so they will make no decisions. No decision equals no sale.

I have also seen that. I describe it as a confused mind says no. They're like, “This is too much. No to all of it.”

It's overwhelming. Especially in network marketing, sometimes, it's like, “You can get this pack or this pack.” The way that I built my business to $1 million was by offering one thing. We had other products, but we didn't tell people about them until they bought the one thing we were selling them. People are like, “You made $1 million from selling one product?” It is like, “Yeah, we did.” We still do.

When people come in, we offer them one course and it's our bestselling course. It's the one that helps people the most. We give it to them and offer it right away. It's low cost. Once they say yes to that, then we offer them the next thing and they can say yes to that. We'll offer them the next thing and they can say yes to that. We never give them a, “Do you want A or do you want B?” ever. That's the other thing. You want to have that indoctrination sequence in place. I’m going to give you two more. I'm thinking, “Which one do I want to tell you?”

You have so many. We'll take as many as you want to give.

This is the other one that I suggest you have, and this is going to save you so much time. If you are going live in your Facebook group, Instagram, or TikTok and doing these videos that are value add where you're growing your audience, what you want to do is create a drip sequence that people would go to. Once they're done with your sales sequence, they automatically go over to this drip sequence. It drips on them every 2nd or 3rd day with a link to something that you recorded. That recording could be eight months old. It doesn't matter.

Every time you do a video and you're doing a tutorial, a live, or something like that, you want to go into your email autoresponder and add another email to that drip sequence with a link to that content. By doing that, you're building out this never-ending follow-up with your leads who are constantly getting this great content from you.

What happens with that is when you're doing those videos, hopefully, you're also in the videos doing a call-to-action on something. It is like, “Go here to buy this. Go here to get this,” or something. There's a call-to-action at the end of the videos. It's not like, “I hope you enjoyed this training. I’ll see you.” You want to give people something to do in exchange for getting that great training.

You don't have to keep building sales sequences because you're sending people to your content and your content is selling them. That's the simplest thing to get a VA to do. They download a video, go to your email sequence, and put an email at the end that says, “I did this great training. I want to make sure you know about it. Here's what's in it. I’ll see you there.” It's not a complicated email. It's very short. You can have maybe 5 or 6 different versions of that your VA can cycle through. They go and add this email in. You have an endless stream of amazing content that you're emailing to your list.

That is such a genius idea. That's something that I don't have in my business. As you're describing it, I'm like, “That is wicked smart. I'm going to steal that.”

I'm going to give you one more sneaky one that I did a TikTok on. In particular, this is how we helped one of our clients recover $1,300 in sales from their eCommerce funnel. They did a promotion. They contacted us and said, “We have people buying, and we have people not buying. We noticed right away that some people were going to their cart and not buying.” We looked at it and said, “We think that these people are going to the cart and not buying because they're popping off to do research.”

What we did was we added a special type of sequence called an abandoned cart sequence. I know you know about these, but this is a bit higher level. A lot of people don't know about them. If you're doing any type of online sales, you have to make sure that you put in a sequence that sends emails to people who made it to the cart and didn't buy.

If you're doing any type of online sales, you have to make sure that you put in a sequence that sends emails to people who made it to the cart and didn't buy.

What we did in this case was we said, “Are you doing some research? We wanted to point out these things and let you know that our sales end at midnight. If you're price shopping, guaranteed, this is the lowest price. Come get this now.” It was for an eCommerce product. We got 43 sales that had dropped off and about $1,300 in revenue captured from that one email sequence.

There were only two emails in that sequence. It was super short, easy, and not complicated, and it brought in more revenue. That's another automation that you can add to your tool chest. When I'm working with my clients when we're going through their systems and working with them on their launches and stuff, we're always looking at, “Do they have these things in place?” It's really important.

To create 2 emails that are in a sequence that will run over and over again on autopilot, you create it once and it can run 1,000 times. The first time through, they made an extra $1,300, but what about the next 22 times that the sequence runs for someone? That's going to pay them dividends week after week.

I didn't give you four automations. I gave you six. I love to overdeliver.

That is so Shannon's style. I love that about you. There are all these great nuggets. Someone reading might be realizing there are certain ones that the minute they heard it, they realized, “I don't have that in place. I really should, but where do I learn how to do this? How do I do what Shannon did and scale to $1 million? I wish I had a step-by-step guide. I wish I had a blueprint of some sort.” I know that you have a special gift for our audience that might be exactly what they're hoping for. Do you want to tell us a little bit about it?

I do. I have had so many people ask me over the years, “How do you grow and maintain a seven-figure business?” I wrote out what's called the 7-Figure Roadmap. I laid out exactly what I did and still do in my business. In this blueprint, I talk about four pillars of business. The four pillars are really important. Whenever we're working with someone who's struggling, we always find that 1 or 2 of them are being neglected. You end up with a house with its roof sliding off.

It’s like a dilapidated house. You don’t want that.

Your business isn't working. A good indicator of that is you're working all the time and you're busy, but your bank account isn't showing the result that you think it should. It has the four pillars in there, and I laid out all that information. There are automations that go along with each of those four pillars that can make your life a lot easier, can help you ditch the hustle, and can turn your business into a profit-pumping machine that funds your freedom and is working for you instead of you working for it. Ultimately, that's the goal. It’s to have a business working for you instead of you working for it.

I love that. That's what it's all about. If you have the right strategies in place and then you systematize them so that you can work smarter, not harder, you can have not just the income and the thriving business but the lifestyle that goes along with it and a life that you love. I know everything that you've done in your business, you’ve done with the purpose and intention of building the lifestyle that you and your family want. That's exactly what you teach your clients, too.

That's exactly right.

I love that. Thank you for that gift. That is an amazing gift, but I understand it's not the only one you have for the VIP ticket holders. There's something extra special. Do you want to tell us about that one?

Yes. I talked quite a bit about email. Email follow-up is the goose that laid the golden egg. I have people that 2 years, 5 years, or 10 years after they first joined my email list will, all of a sudden, wake up and purchase. I’m not saying it takes that long. Sometimes, people buy right on the spot, a lot of people. Email follow-up is such a critical element of your business. What I found was a lot of people struggle with what to write about, what to write in their emails, or how to formulate their emails in a way that engages the reader and gets a good response.

I created a product called the Get to Yes framework. It's really cool. It is a Trello board filled with ideas and subject lines on emails plus a framework for writing an email. You can follow this framework, “Write this here. Write that there.” It's drag and drop. You can take the ideas that are in each section and drag and drop them over into a sequence. You can build your sequence based on what you've customized. That's normally $97, but I'm giving it to you for free as a VIP. I'm excited for you to get it and access it. Everybody loves it and I know that you'll love it, too.

That is so generous. Thank you so much. We're so excited. Grab Shannon's free gift. If you don't have your VIP ticket yet, you can scoop that up. You can get Shannon's VIP gift and all the other VIP gifts from all the other speakers as well. That’s a huge value there. That also comes along with all the episodes. You can binge-read them as much as you want and grab all those gifts. You'll have those waiting for you there. Scoop those up.

I know Shannon's going to come into our Facebook group. She's going to do a live Q&A. As you were reading all the amazing tips, the 4 plus a couple of bonus tips she gave us, if 1 of them spoke to you and you have a burning question that I didn't happen to ask in this interview, come to the Q&A and ask your questions. Shannon is awesome about helping make sure everyone is pointed in the right direction, making progress, and getting amazing results. Join us there. Meet Shannon in person and chitchat with her. We would love to see you there. Thank you so much, Shannon, for joining us.

Thank you so much. I love these summits. You are such a rockstar for providing so much value to your audience and your students. It is an honor to be a part of this. Thank you again.

Thank you so much. We'll see you guys in the next episode.

Helpful links:

Brand Builder Design Studios

TikTok – Shannon Lavenia

Connect with Shannon: https://www.Facebook.com/CEOFreedomPlan

Shannon’s free gift for you: https://ListCure.com/eBook-4911

Audience Explosion Toolkit - Adrienne’s free gift for you:

Freebie Audience Explosion

Adrienne’s Entrepreneur Community on Facebook - https://www.Facebook.com/Groups/6.Figure.Strategy

About Shannon Lavenia

Shannon Lavenia is a high-energy, dynamic speaker, coach, and serial entrepreneur who transformed her life from bored, broke high school teacher to online business and branding expert. Her story is one of overcoming adversity to live an incredible life, having survived and thrived through being an orphan and beating Stage 3 breast cancer. She is the founder of Brand Builder Design Studios, co-founder of SalesGenieCRM, and creator of the Brand Builder Course Collective which includes the CEO Freedom Accelerator, List Cure, and Brand Builder programs. Shannon is family focused, operating her business with the philosophy of family fun first while still creating incredible results and serving her audience with results-driving expertise.