Shannon Howard: Scale Your Business

Welcome to the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with the support you need to finish your book. Best part is, after you finish your book, they take care of the entire publishing and marketing process 100% for you. So if you want to become a successful author, make sure to check out authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.

All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today, uh, we have Shannon Howard with us. She is great at fixing things, uh, your messaging, your marketing materials, your sales funnel. And that is why when you're ready to scale your business, you need a Shannon. So welcome to the show.

Thanks, Tyler. Thanks for having me.

Of course. I'm pumped to have you here. Let's jump right in, Shannon. The first one I got for you is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?

I think usually I focus on the story of recovering from an eating disorder, but I think just a fun, cool story is, is how I met my husband. So I met him on a street corner in Pennsylvania. Just not as bad as it sounds, but we were just waiting for an Uber at the same time. And one of his friends invited me to hop into their Uber. I said, yes, sure, why not? And now we're married. So that was kind of a cool story. And the thing I kind of learned from that, because people say, wow, that's really risky. But to me, I think risks comes with reward. Calculated risk comes with reward and just kind of being able to see the potential for things. Obviously not making a risky decision just to do that, but kind of thinking like through what's the worst that could happen and what's the best that could happen and then finding a happy medium.

Yeah, no, that is an awesome story. That's awesome. So congratulations on that. The next one I have for you is what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?

Sure. So in terms of most valuable piece of information, one of the things I've been working on a lot with clients is marketing automation, which is really kind of utilizing technology to get the right message to the right person at the right time. And this is really kind of where marketing is headed, more personalized, segmented communication. And it's just really, it's really fascinating to, to learn how you can use technology to send people things without needing the marketer to be involved. So you kind of think through ahead of time, what's the buyer journey? What's the process that they're going through? What are the questions that they're asking? Are there pieces of content that would help to move them further along in the buying process and scheduling those out to go out automatically and move them through your marketing and sales funnels without the need for human involvement? So that's kind of the thing that I'm working on now that I'm finding to be super useful for people. It's just diving more into that technology piece of how we market to people.

And what is your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry-specific.

Best piece of overall business advice would be to pay attention to your customers. I think not enough people do this. We get so— I mean, I'm big on having the right technology in place and having the right systems in place. But I think the most important thing is to listen to your customers. And sometimes that means changing the game plan And sometimes that means going out of your way to, to make a customer happy or to solve a complaint or to fix a bug when maybe that wasn't as high on your priority list, but to just always be in communication with them and learning from them because they're really— your customers should be at the heart of your marketing strategy and your product development and your business. And if they're not, I think you're missing out on a piece of that and your business isn't going to grow as much as it could.

And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?

Slow down. I'm a very fast-paced person. I grew up in the Northeast, and I just feel like we do everything on hyper speed. And definitely to just slow down and be patient and not expect everything to happen automatically. And to just learn how to be patient with processes and the time that it takes other people to like think through things. And that being slower doesn't mean not caring or not like being willing to move forward, but sometimes it just means thinking things through and looking at it from a different angle and making sure you're making the right decision instead of the easiest decision.

Yeah, I think that's actually really big in today's world too, with also like just everything with social media. I think it's easy for us to compare like people's social medias with like our like realities. Um, and it's like everything's— everybody else like on Instagram like seems like they're so far ahead, but it is a highlight reel. So I think like just like patience is what I'm getting at. Like I think patience is a big thing, um, because a lot of people just want it to happen so fast.

So, um, yeah, so yeah, just kind of on that note, one of my friends built her Instagram following to, I think now she's over 120,000, but to get over 100,000 followers and putting out really great content and like quality followers, didn't buy anyone, didn't buy any followers. It took her 18 months, 18 months of being very consistent and putting out quality content. But it paid off because now she's been able to launch her business off of that. So that patience paid off, but 18 months is a really long time to wait. To launch your business. But when you put in the time and effort, you're able to build something that lasts rather than, you know, taking off and then falling straight to the ground.

Yeah, totally. And honestly, to build $100K in 18 months is pretty damn good. That's awesome. So yeah, congratulations to her. That's awesome. So kind of going a little bit down a different path, in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?

So Mo Gawdat, who I think is the CXO or something at Google, wrote a book called Solve for Happiness. And he was talking about how the equation for happiness is really just when your expectation meets or doesn't meet your reality. So just the difference between the two. And I know people say like, don't say— you don't set your expectations low because you want people to like kind of live up to your expectations. But also not setting your expectations unrealistically high. And I know for me, that's been like a lifelong struggle as a perfectionist to understand that my high standards, like I can't base my happiness on super high standards. I have to learn how to be okay with the way that things are. So I think it's knowing where your expectation is in relationship to reality, but then also learning how to just be okay with the way that things are. Like not everybody's gonna think the way that you think, they're not going to do things the way that you do things. They're not going to— not everybody's going to like you. And that needs to be okay. And we have to find ways to be okay with that, which I think varies depending on the person, whether that's a meditative practice or some other kind of spiritual practice. But just being here, being now, and letting it be the way that it is without needing to change it all the time.

And what is the best book that you've read? And what was the number one thing you learned from that?

That is literally the hardest question that anybody's ever asked me because I love to read.

That's awesome.

Yeah, yeah, I have like 100 books on my bedside table. But recently I was reading this book called The Synergist, and it was really cool to me for two reasons. One is I like books that kind of teach you about different personality types and different ways that people relate with the world, because I think it's really important to learn how other people perceive the world, because sometimes I think we have conflict in our relationships, whether those are friendships, romantic relationships, family relationships, or work relationships, because we don't understand where other people are coming from. And if we kind of can learn how to see things the way that they see things, or we can understand how they process things, we can learn how to work better together. And then the other thing that I really like about it is, is he says like synergistic type personalities, which is a learned personality style, they put the interest in the business first. So he calls it the enterprise commitment, which is I'm gonna put the interest of the business and what needs to happen for the business ahead of my own personal priorities, whether that's my need to get things done or my need to come up with the latest and greatest new idea or to innovate and create or create structure and processes and systems. We all kind of have a natural tendency, but it's this willingness to put our tendencies on the back burner to do what's in the best interest of the organization. And that was just really neat because to me I was like, well, no, duh, like why would you not put the interest of the business ahead of your own personal interest? But it was really kind of a light bulb moment that that's not how everybody thinks. And it's really important to be aware of what our natural tendencies are and then to be able to put that aside for the best interest of whatever it is, whether it's our company or whether it's the organization, if we're on a nonprofit board, something like that, to be able to put that first above our own need to be right or have things done our way.

And then what is your favorite quote and why?

This one I have tattooed on my body. It says, "On ne voit bien que de cœur, l'essentiel est invisible aux yeux," which means in English, one cannot see well except with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes. And that was really, it's from The Little Prince, which is like a French children's book. And it was just really potent to me because I think we see things on a very surface level and we learn to see what's in front of us and take it at face value. But if we can learn to see beyond the surface to the depths of kind of who someone is beyond how they present themselves to the world, then we open the doors to a completely different relationship. And that's true in our personal relationships, relationships, but also in our professional relationships. Like, our customers are not just the basic demographic data, but they're the how they got to that, that place, you know, how they got to the job position that they're in, or how they got to buy our product or service or program, or what kind of relationship led them there. There's, there's a lot of layers to a person beyond what we see on the surface level. So it's just a reminder to not judge people at that surface level and, and look further.

And I'm just curious, because that sounded amazing, like what language was that?

French.

Ah, got it. All right. I like French. That's awesome. Well, listen, Shannon, thank you so much for coming on. This was an amazing episode. The last question I have for you before we let you go is where is the best place for people to find you online?

www.youneedashannon.com. That would be the best place.

I love it. Thanks again.

Yeah, thank you, Tyler Wagner.

The podcast you just heard was made using Anchor. Ever thought about making your own podcast? Anchor makes it really easy for anyone to get started. It's a one-stop shop for recording, hosting, and distributing podcasts. Best of all, it's 100% free. Sign up now at anchor.fm/new. That's anchor.fm/new to get started.