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Are you fed up with the corporate bullshit holding you back? Welcome to Invest in Yourself, the Digital Entrepreneur Podcast. The ultimate launchpad for entrepreneurs ready to seize control and unleash their creative genius. Hosted by Phil Better, the podcast mogul, each week he's breaking the chains of conventional work with bold strategies, raw insights and inspiring success stories from the entrepreneurs who took the risk and invested in themselves. This is your call to arms. Invest in yourself. Break free from someone else's rules and build the empire you deserve. Now let's dive headfirst into today's explosive episode.

Welcome back to another amazing episode of Invest in Yourself, the Digital Entrepreneur Podcast. I am of course your host with the most feel Better the podcast Mogul. And I'm going to bring you closer to today's transformative minds in digital strategy and entrepreneurship. Our guest today is someone who's revolutionized how local businesses thrive in a digital world, equipping them with cutting edge tools to simplify operations, increase profitability and supercharge growth. Our guest is the powerhouse behind brand builders AI. With a rich blend of expertise as an entrepreneur, digital strategist and an AI innovator, our guest has dedicated her career to helping businesses harness the potential of AI for high impact results. Through her all in one CRM, AI employees and automated platforms, she enables business owners to streamline processes, cut costs and skyrocket client engagement, unlocking success with ease and precision. Known for her high, high ROI solutions and straightforward approach, our guest empowers businesses to not just keep up, but excel in today's competitive digital landscape.

She's a sought after speaker, sharing her insight on everything from leveraging AI to creating customer connections that last. Today she's here to dive deep into strategies that are helping businesses shine online and beyond. So get ready to be inspired as we welcome that dynamic, insightful and result driven Shannon Lavinia. Shannon. Did I pronounce that last name correctly or did I almost?

Lavinia.

Lavinia. I apologize.

So close.

So close. Shannon, welcome to the show. I'm very excited to have you here and learn all about you, so thank you.

Yeah, me too. I'm very excited to have this conversation and to help some people out today.

Awesome. All right, so we're going to dive straight into it because we got to get get this show on the road. Why did you become an entrepreneur? What made you decide to throw off the shackles of the nine to five world and become a free person in the entrepreneurial world?

This is such a great question because I was kind of the accidental entrepreneur I was a school teacher, taught high school biology for 8 years. Loved working with the kids, hated the politics of the education system, the public education system. And in 2002, so I kind of dates myself, my husband and I were getting married. And oddly enough, his managers did not come to our wedding. And we were like, wow, this is really odd. You know, where's, where are the guys from his job? And of course, because we work, could not take a honeymoon. I went back to teaching Monday. He went back to his sales job Monday.

His office had been converted into cubicles. And he was not fired, but put in a very awkward position where it was evident they really wanted him to quit. So there was a gigantic pay cut. You know, and for those. Anyone who's paid for your own wedding, you know, we had just bought a new car, a new house and paid for our wedding. And all of a sudden that six figure income was gone. And it was very shocking. So we, you know, did a lot of personal development, a lot of introspection.

We were newlyweds with a major financial crisis.

And on the horizon, just on the horizon.

I know, right? We were like, okay, we basically have about 30 days worth of living income. You know, what are we going to do? And an opportunity fell in our lap to sell someone else's personal development program. And John was in sales. I had just reduced to a part time teaching schedule. So now I was making literally no money. I probably could have volunteered and made more money to work on my master's degree. And uh, you know, I looked at this and John got very, very sick from the stress of what he was experiencing. And we were like, that's it, you know, we're, we're done.

We're never working for someone again. Let's just go out on our own venture. And even if we fail, it'll be better than this, right? It'll be better than what we were experiencing. And we actually did exceptionally well. We ended up earning over a million dollars in like 16 months. It was crazy. It was life changing income and that. You know, we became addicted to being entrepreneurial at that point.

You know, I was, I was teaching, you know, for like no money. People on welfare were making more money than me as a teacher. So I, you know, all of a sudden I was like, that's it, we're done. And we have been self employed now. This year is our 23rd year. And not saying it's been all rainbows and unicorns, because it definitely hasn't. You know, along the way we had losses, we filed for Bankruptcy at one point when the real estate market crashed. But because we have these entrepreneurial skills, we.

We've always been able to rebuild.

So I love that. I love how the teaching situation. I. I personally think teachers should be paid more than CEOs because of what they have to put up with.

Totally agree. They're. They're responsible for creating the future. You know that professional basket players get paid more to entertain us than teachers get paid to literally create our future.

It's true. I think we have everything backwards because also I think the educational system needs to be reworked and put towards independent thinking people. But anyways, that's politics. We're going to move that off aside. We're on entrepreneurial stuff here. When did. When did you. During your 23 years, which.

Congratulations. That's. That's astonishing.

Thank you.

Especially in this new age of digital marketing, because you started when the digital marketing world was very scammy. I'm going to say scammy because it felt like that as someone who grew up with the Internet, it felt very scamming. But not everybody was scamming.

So I started. I started entrepreneurship before Facebook existed.

Yeah. So it's.

Yeah. You really OG. Yeah.

And I, I love talking to the OGs, because you got. You were able to see the full change from really talking about entrepreneurs. Because entrepreneurs when I was younger was, you know, your, Your crazy uncle who would say, yeah, I got this, this get rich quick scheme.

Right.

He would call or the aunt or uncle. Usually it was the uncle or the cousin, you know, the, the black sheep of the family. And they were just jumping from scheme to scheme. But you were able to see the full entrepreneurial venture online, where it went from nobody to Covid. Just exploding the market.

Y.

But I want to know when you were first starting out, how. I want to say, I don't want to ask how long it took for you to drop out of the 9 to 5 race, but what was it like when you were finally able to say, okay, this venture is more profitable than both our jobs combined? And was it your husband who stopped working first or was it you who got retired first to take on the venture?

So we actually quit our jobs on the same day.

Now that. That's a huge entrepreneurial venture right there. Both of you deciding to leave?

Yeah, but we did set a target. So we said that as soon as we were making $20,000 a month in profit, we would quit our jobs. And that was October 31st of 2002. And we did a lot of personal development. Like when we started our business. We stopped watching the news. We read personal development books every day. We wrote our goals out.

We read them aloud every day, multiple times, and we made our business the number one priority. So it was literally like every extra waking minute we had, we poured into getting leads, doing sales calls, and closing people, right? And so we set a goal to quit our jobs by October 31st. We actually hit that goal. And it was kind of crazy because the first month, we made no money. Into the seventh week, like, the three weeks into the second month, we had made $0. And. And there's. There's a lot of mental fortitude that you have to, like, really put in place to just keep on having the faith that this is going to, at some point, crack and the revenue is going to come in.

And we made our first sale in the fourth week of our second month, and that sale brought in $6,000. So it was. It was a pretty. A pretty good sale. And then I would say, yeah, it was a really good sale. And then the. The third month, we brought in $24,000 in revenue, and we both went in on Halloween. And you'll laugh at this, because I had pictured in my mind, like, part of this that we were doing was visualizing quitting our jobs, right? So John had it down like he was going to walk into his boss and be like, I can no longer afford to work for you and shake the guy's hand and leave.

And my conversation was a little different because as a teacher, you're licensed and there's some contractual obligations and stuff like that, so. But I envisioned walking in on Halloween dressed like a pumpkin because, like, the pumpkin was turning into Cinderella, right? Like, I had this whole thing in my mind. And. And I did. I got a pumpkin costume. I dressed up in the morning, and I walked into my principal's office, and I said, hey, I'm giving you my. And I'd like to work through the end of the year to give you time to get a replacement. And.

And then he was like, well, we're going to, you know, cancel your contract and pull your license and all that stuff. And I said, okay, fine, I'll just leave today. And that. And then he was like, wait, what?

Rebounded back onto him.

I know. I actually got really excited. I was like, oh, okay, well, I'll just leave today then. And I, like, turned and went to walk away. And he was like, wait, wa. Wait, wait. He was like that. No, no, no.

Like, okay, stay. Give us till December. And I actually helped them find a replacement. So I only stayed two weeks and they, they had a replacement. But that was, that was, you know, our, our big exit. And we still tell that story because it was like every day visualizing walking in looking like a pumpkin and stuff like that. And I remember going to school in the morning and some people being like, you know, why'd you dress up like a pumpkin today? And I was like, oh, I thought it was cute. You know, I didn't want to tell anybody yet.

And then afterwards I was like, because I'm now Cinderella.

What would have been great is if you had a change of costume like halfway through. But I want to touch on your visualization.

Yes.

A lot of entrepreneurs, they do the manifestation, they do that self development, which is very important because we got like you said, you went seven, nearly seven weeks without a sale. And that is hard because you get the, the, the initial rush which lasts like two weeks, right? Like, oh yeah, I can do this. You know, all the other negatives you like, oh, it's going to come, it's going to come. But come week three, week four, week five, it starts like, am I doing the right thing? Like, you start questioning the little voice in the back of your head. That society place there that says you're going to fail. Like, negativities coming. How much did those visualizations keep you tethered to your dream even through those like first seven weeks where you had nothing and the doubt was creeping in?

It was, I would say it was like 95% of really what kept us very focused was just visualizing that day, right? And knowing with like, like feeling beforehand the confidence and the self assuredness and the, the like emotional reward that it happened. So much so that when we actually made the money was not near, it wasn't even that exciting because it, you know, we were like, oh yeah, okay, great, we did it. And I think John and I like high fived each other or something. But you expect to have like this huge thing that I l made in, in one month, what I was almost making a year. My, my full time salary as a teacher was $26,000 a year. So we visualized it and felt the emotions of already achieving it every single day. And that really kept us very focused on that. The other thing that kept us very focused was we did have a mentor and our mentor had already been successful in selling the products that we were selling.

And because of that, like I, you know, one of, I guess one of the things that I kind of decided for myself early on is if like one person can do it. And if I'm physically capable of doing it and, and I want to do it and I have the ability to do it, I can do it. So, you know, like, I'm not going to go win the, you know, the next Olympics.

Track and field Olympics.

Right? I'm physically not capable of doing that. And, and I don't have the interest in that. But at the time I met this guy and he was making $40,000 a month and he had prior been a stereo installer right In. In an auto zone. So I was like, okay, if this guy who had no sales experience could come in, learn this sales system and run with it and get to that mark, then I can do it too. Like, I have the same abilities to learn to do the simple actions that he was doing. And then, so him being there with us really was a catalyst to that success because we had someone who was more successful than anyone else in our circles of influence. And that really, like, you do have to up level your circles of influence too, otherwise, because like, our friends, the, the other teachers at the school literally went out and bought those like gold circle chocolates and threw them all over my desk one day when they found out what I was doing on the side.

And they were like, oh, you know, here's your pot of gold. Like, they, they lit. Openly mocked me.

Oh, and no support. No support.

No support. Because it's just like not. It's out of their reality that that could even be right because they're doing the same mundane go to a job every day thing that everyone else is doing and that's like all they can think of for their life. So it's really hard for them to think of anything else for someone else's life. And then it also, I think it served as like a reminder that I was going after something bigger and they weren't. So they just wanted to kind of like, keep the crab in the bucket, so to say, right?

Like, you're in the boiling water with us. Don't get out of the boiling water. Come suffer and become chowder.

Yeah, like, there's no escape for you, dude. Like, we're gonna pull you back in. And that's when I, that's also when I realized that, like, holy cow, like, my environment has been keeping me stuck for a long time. There was a big shift that happened at that time for John and I and like the people we were hanging out with and our goals versus their goals and stuff like that.

I love that. I love how you're.

You.

You touch on a Lot of things that I jump into, which I love because you're giving me access. I don't have to go to my pre scripted questions that I have. I want to touch on your environment, I want to touch on your mentorship, all this. So we're going to start with your environment. Because most entrepreneur, most want, I don't want to say want to be entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, they're stuck in that world of people who are stuck to the nine to five. They are stuck in the limited view that the world has to offer. They think only unicorns like Jeff Bezos, you know, someone who strikes it rich, has the parents that can help them, will be able become these super successful entrepreneurs. But you were able to connect with someone who nearly had this exact same life you had, I want to say with the, the, your mentor who was like working a 9 to 5 job, which with, I don't want to say he didn't have any education.

He might, he might have had an education, he might have had a degree. I don't know. And I don't want to question that. But you're someone who, you know has an education, is in the world of education, you understand how to teach. So you're very coachable because you have to be coach as a teacher. Then you have your partner John, who's a salesperson. And we all know salespeople have to be coachable because you have to learn the process of how to coach. When you, when you've got that mockingness and you realize that these people are just, I don't want to say ants, but they're stuck just following the same path.

You know, they're on that roulette, the rat race. You know, they're in that rat race to steal something from, you know, Robert Kiyosaki. At that moment you realize you had to jump out of that rat race. You had to get out of the race, take a right turn instead of taking the left turn and meet these people. How long after the golden, you know, your pot of gold, as you said, did you start bringing in people who were outside of your normal network, like your mentor, and bringing in other people who could help you up, level your life into the life that you wanted to.

It was, it was pretty quick because we were selling a personal development program. We actually were selling a personal development program by a guy named Bob Proctor.

Oh, the king, the king, the legend.

So we were immersed in it, right? And it was such an eye opener for me because I grew up, first of all, I was the only, I was the first person in my family to go to college. And for me it was really an escape out of this, like childhood that I had. And so even as a child I was like, I looked around. My family was like a very unique, like very poor. I don't want to say unique, but very so word I'll use. Interesting.

They were a family. They were a family. All families are interesting.

Yeah, very poor. And I looked around like I was pretty young, like my high school age, and I was like, if I don't get out of here, like, I'm literally going to be trapped. Like, I'm probably going to have like three kids by three fathers. I'm going to end up on drugs. I'm like, like that was just kind of the inevitable path for me. So I started looking at ways out and college was like, you know, something I could reach for. And then I went to college and then I became a teacher. And when this whole thing went down with John losing his job and us really questioning the whole system, it was also, you, you also have to look at the, the movie the Matrix came out in 1999, right? Now this is 2002.

So the red pill, blue pill had kind of been like a concept. We were already like, wow, this is amazing. And then we were reading personal development books and then this opportunity to sell Bob Proctor's courses came along and we were like, okay, let's do this. And so we were in a circle of people that were really invested in personal development and we started to question everything. I looked at being a teacher in the education system and I was like, wow, I'm really part of the machine that just pushes kids to go into college, to get jobs, to work these jobs, to have this college debt, to like, you know, it's almost like this modern day form of indentured servitude, right? Is like. And when you look at it that way, you're like, whoa, you can see the actual machine in place that's there. So then we, John and I just looked and we were like, we really want to have friends and colleagues that are entrepreneurial, that are trying new things, that are risk takers, that don't think we're insane because we're willing to lose it all to try something new, right? And that's. That happened pretty quickly.

We started to go to seminars and events and conferences and join masterminds and really invest a good portion of our income into that type of environment. And that just helped us always scale. And you never know the connections that you're going to have because can I share a quick story, please?

The show is yours. I just sit here and look pretty, okay?

So you never know the connections, connections you're going to have. But in 2009, you know, the real estate market here in the United States was crashing like very heavily and, and a lot of very wealthy people. It kind of hit the very wealthy people and then the kind of the up and comers into the middle class or the people that were like emergent wealth, right? And I would say we were like emergent wealth. We were in the million dollar range. We had had a good amount of assets, we had a bunch of real estate. And the real estate market crashed and the company that we were partnered with also crashed. The partners split like it was kind of like this trifecta and perfect storm of love. It was a perfect storm of like everything.

And we, we had what most people say to have, right, have six months worth of liquid, you know, bumper. Well, this was like a two year crisis that was happening in the economy. And we, we were talking to a friend of ours and he was like, you know who you need to talk to? Grant Cardone. And I was like, great. And he was like, get in your car, I'm taking you up there. And at the time Grant was living in la and we were living in la and we got in my Bentley and we drove up to Grant's house with our friend and we sat down. We had a very candid conversation about what this is going to look like. And Grant, Grant just reminded us, he said, you have to focus on what it's going to be like on the other side, right? What is it going to be like on the other side of this? And our real estate losses were too heavy.

We ended up having to file bankruptcy. We filed bankruptcy for an entire year. I didn't even have a car. So I went from having a Bentley, Maserati, a Range Rover, a million dollar plus mansion, a bunch of other real estate, to having no car, living in a tiny condo in Delaware, you know, with my in laws support and then and again reapplying those basic principles of visualization, rebuilding. There weren't like friends to go to, to be like, hey dude, what opportunity do you have for us? Because every one of our friends was going through a similar situation. Grant was going through it. Like that's when he was starting to move out of LA. He didn't come out with his books until 2015.

We filed bankruptcy in 2012, right? So that like gap period of six years was like hard for a lot of People and we rebuilt everything up applying those same principles. And we also watched Grant rebuild up in a big, huge way. Like he's a billionaire now. Right. Applying those same principles, though, it's pretty amazing.

I love that. Oh, it's a great story as well. Because we are on the precipice. It kind of. Well, I'm in Canada, so it's a little different, but we are kind of seeing the same type of shaky real estate market that 2008 brought along for you guys down. Down in the States. You know, like, yeah, like it's very. There's a lot of parallels that were going on.

So I'm like, scared. Luckily I'm not in the real estate ventures yet.

Yeah.

Since I can see the market similar to 2008. And it's great that you're saying this because history repeats. Right. There's going to be a period where a lot of people are in one sector and it just drops. Like you had the 2001 bubble with the dot com bubble and you had the real estate bubble. And it's like a circle. There's always something that pops. There's always a bubble that pops.

And understanding what Grant said is so important. Look what's on the other side. You got to focus on what's on the other side. Yes, right now is the suck, but the good is on the other side of the suck.

That's right.

And you always look in that. So I love that you said that because it's very important for entrepreneurs because the first couple, like you, like you said in the beginning, like your first six, seven weeks was suck. It went from yay excitement to suck, and then it went back up to yay. So the suck is always there. It's just how you deal with the suck. And you mentioned like upgrading your community, making sure your community is at the level that you want to be. Because there's that famous saying. I'm not sure who says you're the equivalent of the five people that you sort surround yourself with.

So true.

So if you're surrounding yourself with teachers, you're going to be a teacher. If you're surrounding yourself with entrepreneurs who are pushing themselves to the next level, you're going to be in that, that wheel. Well, you're switching into a different race. You know, the Maserati race, if you will, you know, the Bentley race, you know, having these, the nice car race. I want to know apart from the masterminds, apart from the, the books that you. The self development books, apart from the programs that you went into what is one thing that you do on a daily basis that lets you invest in yourself to become the better version so that you can be both mentally and emotionally strong for when the suck happens.

So I would say one of the things is I get up early every day, so I'm an early morning riser. I get up typically most days at 4:30 unless I've had something. I know, right.

So I'm usually going to bed at 4:30. But that's another.

I think you've got like either or, right? Like I get up at 4:30 in the morning and I start my day by writing a plan for my day. And if I have a plan for my day that aligns with my goals, I have like this inherent sense of confidence that the time I'm putting into my business is actually going to move my business and me forward. I think a lot of times people, especially entrepreneurs that are newer, they're very used to someone else telling them what to do every day. And when they start as an entrepreneur, they get up in the morning and they just start doing things right, Just anything. And it's kind of like whatever idea shoots in their mind, they're off on that. Whatever fire shows up, they're off putting that out. Whatever call comes in, whatever email, whatever. You know, it's like this constant bounce from one thing to another with no real plan.

And at the beginning of the year we always do like a big strategic plan. And it sounds so technical and like businessy, but it, you know, it really isn't. It's like, okay, what do we want to accomplish this year? And then we work backwards from that of like, what are we going to have to do to get there? And then in the mornings when I'm planning, I'm always like knocking stuff off of that bigger plan for implementation and going. And when you do that, like speed is your friend because there's not a lot of distractions. The other thing is I read every day. I'm really, I either read or I do some type of training, a video training. I buy a lot of courses, but I buy them and I go through them and consume that information. Now I actually use AI a lot of times to just summarize and give me like a, A, a step by step plan of them, but I'm always improving my skills.

Yeah, I know. People are like, wait, what?

Yeah, you just gave away a huge secret here that we're going to touch on in a second.

I do it with books too.

Oh, even better. I love it. Obviously you, as I mentioned, in the. And you just mentioned now you deal with AI. You use brand builders. AI, that's the name of your company, use AI. Because I think AI is very helpful. It's a tool for everybody, including us podcasters.

It doesn't, it won't replace the work you do, but it will make your work easier. It simplifies a lot. Like you said, you use it to simplify courses, give you a step by step plan. Like that is sometimes the best thing. If you don't know where to start, just ask AI. Sometimes just putting your ideas into AI chat. GPT is free. Obviously there's others you can pay with.

I want to know when someone is looking to start entrepreneurship. This is an advice I want to give to those beginners because I had the same issue. And when we're thinking long term, most times beginner entrepreneurs, they don't know what they don't know, right? Because we don't. We never started a business unless you have family. One of the key important things is being able to keep all the contacts that you have with individuals that you either you meet on a call, in a Facebook group or, you know, on the street. And for bigger businesses, they have something called a CRM, which is a client relationship management tool. I want to know for you, someone who went from teaching into the world of entrepreneurship into the world of business, not entrepreneurship, you're a business owner now, right? When did you realize how important the CRM was for your business? And then how important is. And yeah, how important is the CRM for your business and for beginner entrepreneurs to start having a CRM early in their process?

Okay, this is a really great question because I realized right away that I was going to need a way to organize the leads because I was still working a job and building my business. And one of the things that I had read early on, and I forget what sales book it was, it might have been like Dan Kennedy or something like that, but I had read that it that it takes like up to seven times contacting somebody for them to actually have a conversation with you. So I knew that and I didn't want to waste leads. Like we were very. I wanted to be as efficient as possible. So the way that I started that, which with my CRM was I started with a recipe box and index cards and, and that's also because it was 2002 and you know, like we were still on dial up. So there weren't a lot of CRM options at the time. So we started with recipe boxes and we would write every lead on an index card.

And it would just go through the different tabs that we had in this recipe box so that I would always make sure I was making those calls. And doing that now with, with what we have with Brand Builder AI, we set that CRM up and it literally puts it into a digital pipeline, right? Which is just like that recipe box with rows. And you can be like, okay, made first call made second call made third call made fourth call made fifth call. And even like you can check off all the leads and just click one green telephone button and it will call those leads in order until somebody answers. So instead of where I used to have to, like, I used to have a phone on my desk, we had multiple phone numbers. So I could like dial one phone and dial another phone at the same time and wait for one of those people to pick up, right? And. And then hang up. Now it just does that automatically.

But what a lot of newer businesses do is they put everything on paper there or post it notes, or worse, they use their personal cell phone and they just keep the phones in there. If you use your personal cell phone in your business, you're never going to be able to escape your business. It is literally one of the most critical mistakes that newer business owners make because they don't expect to grow fast enough and they think that it's going to be okay. But you have to remember, people will call you at midnight, 2am Whenever they're working or whenever they need help, they're going to be calling that number. So you can never escape. It's like literally the big ball and chain to your business. So getting a digital phone number for your business is also critical for us. And really it was like mentorship.

I didn't know any of this stuff myself. I just asked our mentor, like, what are the most critical things we have to do? And he was like, one, you need a phone number. Because back then, cell phones, you know, if you call, you remember when you used to get phone, you said minute.

Allotments free night and weekends were my favorite.

Three nights and weekends. And you could only call like in state for free on those minutes and stuff, right? So nobody used their cell phone. Like you were insane, insanely rich if you could use your cell phone ever. But, you know, so I had a business phone that was separate than my house phone and that made a big difference because I could just turn the ringer off and then I kept those leads in as soon as we could. We started with a CRM called Goldmine and put all of our leads in there and that actually we became the number one sales team, my husband and I in selling that those Bob Proctor courses and we sold seminar tickets. And I really credit having a CRM for that because we were able to be way more efficient with our leads and, and generate more revenue with those leads than other people who are disorganized. And that's true to this day of any business. It you will generate a way more money from the leads you have if you're organized with those leads and you're following up with them correctly than if you're not.

I love it. It's very important. Like you just dropped tons of gold mine gold mining nuggets there that I'm going to have so much fun going over and chipping out to get golden nuggets to give to my audience. Yeah, like how important it is to be organized. You know, CRM can help you. The seven points of contact is so important. Following up with leads is so important. And being organized obviously proves that you can become the number one salesperson.

And it does help that your husband was in sales because then you got a little. But, but you're. You prove, you prove yourself that even if you don't have sales, you can be successful. You can. As long as you're open to learn. We are coming to the end of the episode which hate Shannon, because I'm having a great time chatting with you. I love someone who's in the AI space. So we'll definitely have you and your husband probably back on in a future date.

But we're going to finalize this with my favorite question. It's a selfish question of course, because everybody who's listened to the show knows I have a lovely little nephew and I want to give him the big book of entrepreneurial ventures. So at 10 years old, I have your 10 year old self here. What advice would you love to be able to give to that young 10 year old Shannon?

I think that probably two things. One, college wasn't necessary for my success. It was. It definitely like gave me an environment. But you can learn a lot online now and from books. And my daughter is 14 and she's already had two businesses which is just mind blowing to me. I know, I know. It's like it's totally mind blowing.

So the digital age has really made it very easy for anyone to start a business and get the training and the education to do very well in it. Exceptionally well. And then the second bit of advice is to really understand that you don't have to trade time for Money. And that, I think is a generational myth that's breaking down with the younger generation that you can leverage systems and you can put in like one hour of time and you can leverage systems and create lots of income. Way more than that. Like, I'm gonna put in one hour and I'm gonna make $25, or I'm gonna make $50, or I'm gonna make a hundred dollars or whatever. You can put one hour of time in and create systems that can bring you thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.

I love that. Such great advice. Shannon, I'm gonna jump off the stage here. I want you to tell my audience where they can find you, how they can even become part of the Brand Builder AI community. So the floor is yours. Let them know. Pitch them everything you got. So here you go.

Well, definitely see us at brand builder AI.com. you can go there and book a demo. You can give us a call and set up an appointment. You can talk to our team. We love working with local businesses, helping you set up your systems, creating a lot of efficiency that just helps you boost your roi. It makes business a lot easier, a lot simpler, and you don't have to work harder to see growth. You can actually work a lot smarter.

I love it. Simple, straight to the point. Shannon, it looks like you've been doing this for more than 14 years here, or, sorry, two and a half decades. You've been doing this for at least 50 decades.

Yeah.

I want to thank you so much for being here. You were an absolute, absolute pleasure and you've dropped so much golden nuggets for the. Our audience. I can't. I want to thank you so much for that.

Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. It's such an op. It's such a great experience being part of a successful podcast such as yours and your phenomenal host, Phil. So thank you so much.

You're going to make me blush, so I'm going to try to end this quickly. Shannon, thank you for the kind words to my audience. Remember to check out the show notes down below so that you can connect with with Shannon at Brown Builder AI and all the amazing things that they have going on. It's very important that you have that CRM, just like Shannon said, to take yourself to the next level and 10x, as the Grand Cardone says, 10x your business. I thank you so much for listening and remember to always invest in yourself.

Thanks for joining us on Invest in Yourself, the digital entrepreneur podcast. The podcast mogul reminds you that your journey to freedom and success starts with one powerful move. Investing in yourself. If today's episode sparked your fire, hit that follow button on Spotify and drop us a comment. Share your wins, your challenges, and what drives you to break free from the corporate grind. Remember, you're your best investment. Always invest in yourself because your potential is limited, limitless. Until next time, keep hustling and take control of your destiny.