The Career Suite

Helen G. Sneed (00:01.628)
Thank you for joining me at the Career Suite. I'm Helen G Sneed, Principal Partner of Drive the Goal, and I'm excited. This is not only season two, but in season two, we are inviting professionals, goal getters, CEOs, founders, co -founders, and friends. And a special friend that I have with me today is Shannon Herrera, Co-founder of Maven Leadership Solutions. And we're going to talk about how talent,
the right talent changes everything. And her story really is about mission and merriment. So before I give away too many of her secrets, please join me in welcoming Shannon.

Shannon Herrera (00:44.764)
Thank you for having me Helen, I appreciate the opportunity.

Helen G. Sneed (00:48.698)
I really am excited to have you. This is really cool. you know, I appreciate your grace as we go through this together. We have a few growing pains, but I think we'll have fun.

Shannon Herrera (00:59.332)
Yes, absolutely.

Helen G. Sneed (01:01.362)
So please tell me, I know some of it, but tell everyone watching and listening, tell us a little bit about you and Maven Leadership Solutions.

Shannon Herrera (01:12.893)
Well, my husband Michael Herrera and I we founded Maven Leadership Solutions in 2019 as a consulting business for nonprofits. So we specialize in helping nonprofits work with their boards, doing strategic planning, growth, getting the right people on your Board of Directors, and then fundraising.

Helen G. Sneed (01:30.054)
Okay.

Shannon Herrera (01:39.357)
How do we do an annual fund? How do we sustain ourselves? How do we pursue major gifts? Because sometimes those are things that people with a passion to help the community in a certain specific area don't know how to do. They just really know what their passion is and what they want to provide the community, but they don't know how to sustain themselves in doing it. And that's where we come

Helen G. Sneed (02:00.21)
That's awesome and it makes sense, right? When I think of even in the for-profit world, people that know how to paint and they become painters, they may not necessarily know how to run a business and do accounting, right? So awesome, so this is where you come in and I think one of the things we wanted to touch on was one or maybe even two common pitfalls that non-profits run into that you can help them with.

Shannon Herrera (02:13.085)
Correct, absolutely.

Shannon Herrera (02:27.771)
Yes, mission drift is something that we talk about with people all the time. As a nonprofit or even as any kind of company, you need to set your mission and that is what you set your guard rails with. And as you grow as a company, as a nonprofit, your vision will change, you your ability to help and do other programs. You know, your vision will change as your strategic plan goes forward, but your mission has to stay the same. You need to really

Helen G. Sneed (02:40.658)
Okay.

Shannon Herrera (02:57.948)
Guide that and guard it because mission drift can lead to not being able to sustain yourself because another pitfall that we've I've talked with you about is Really following the money when it comes to a nonprofit chasing the money instead of chasing your mission and that can lead to not being sustainable, you know because people are willing to make concessions to their mission to get a certain particular gift and

Helen G. Sneed (03:12.272)
Yes. Yes.

Shannon Herrera (03:27.319)
It's just a slippery

Helen G. Sneed (03:29.552)
I'm glad you brought up, how did you describe it? Mission Drift? Is that how you described it? So I'm glad you brought that up.

Shannon Herrera (03:33.699)
Yes!

Helen G. Sneed (03:37.734)
I know we've both worked in nonprofit and you continue to work in nonprofit and we find that the donor or potential donor sometimes they want to help guide where that money goes and at times it is outside of the mission and really isn't necessarily going to help the community in the way that donor might believe it will.

Shannon Herrera (04:03.843)
Right, you know, and we do have, you know, people are savvy these days and they do want to restrict their gifts and that's very understandable, but making sure they're restricting it within a way that still is part of your mission is really where what it comes down

Helen G. Sneed (04:10.372)
Yes.

Helen G. Sneed (04:20.706)
I like that. I think we know that sometimes it can money can come with strings attached but they have to be the right strings. Okay. All right. So the other thing I wanted to have you touch on was having the right talent.

Shannon Herrera (04:29.018)
Absolutely.

Helen G. Sneed (04:37.78)
on your board, but also in the organization, right? I think that's really important that you have the right people in the right positions running the right program. So talk a little bit about having the right talent in your organization.

Shannon Herrera (04:53.787)
You know, I mean you want the right people on the bus to move forward and you want the right people on your board as well. That's why nominating is so important and I know that we talked and you're going to share a little bit about some great ideas to find potential board members. But you know something that my father has always shared with us is FAPQ.

Helen G. Sneed (04:58.759)
Yes.

Helen G. Sneed (05:08.772)
Yes. Yes.

Shannon Herrera (05:20.331)
and FAPQ is F -A -P and that is the fun at party quotient. And I know it sounds silly, but people say, we all know what IQ, how intelligent you are. EQ is emotional intelligence. And your resume is what gets you the interview, but FAPQ at your interview is what gets you the job, your fun at party quotient. Do you fit in on this team?

Helen G. Sneed (05:40.838)
Right.

Shannon Herrera (05:48.526)
You know, do you fit in with this team? Are you going to be a team player? What is your charisma like? Though that is what you really want to showcase at your interview and that's what you want to be looking for in a potential, you know, in many other things. But something that is the most important thing, I think, is to showcase your personality. And that is what my father has always told me.

Helen G. Sneed (06:11.782)
So it doesn't sound silly and here's why. I go back to my days of interviewing in corporate America and how you presented your answers had a lot to do with it, right? Were you just reading from a script? Did you memorize your responses or were you giving us your personality so that we had a little insight into who you are? So your FAP cue, I just have to get used to it a little bit, right?, is actually very relevant. I love that it's something that your father brought into your life and you're using it today in the organization. I think that's actually great. One way to honor him. And it is quite relevant in profit or for-profit and nonprofit. It truly is because you can be mission driven and people not necessarily warm up to you. And in a nonprofit, we have to win their hearts, their minds before we ever see any money.

Shannon Herrera (07:07.361)
Yes, it's all based on relationships.

Helen G. Sneed (07:07.476)
Yes, relationships. That's right. I think we touched the other day on networking and how people, they often will go to networking events, but they don't necessarily capitalize on those potential relationships and nurture relationships. And I think that's important in what you do as well, right?

Shannon Herrera (07:32.211)
yes, the follow -up, or as we talk about in nonprofit world, stewardship. If you tell someone you're gonna call them, you need to call them. And just like you and I, we met at a networking group, we did several years ago, and how important that group has helped both of us professionally, how important that is. And it's not just attending, it's meeting people.

Helen G. Sneed (07:38.584)
yeah.

Helen G. Sneed (07:46.531)
We did.

Shannon Herrera (07:58.869)
and following up with them and seeing, know, what is the synergy there? Is there ability to collaborate? You know, how can I introduce this person to my network and they can help introduce me to their network? That's just how we all grow.

Helen G. Sneed (08:13.096)
So we didn't plan this particular one, so that's why you're here. We're stuttering a little bit, right? And I'm thinking how to word it, so bear with me. I think just yesterday, as we were prepping for today a little bit, we talked about you have a friend that's in Ireland that works in HR. And you suggested potentially the three of us talking together on a podcast, and I reached out to her on LinkedIn, and I thought that was fabulous.

Shannon Herrera (08:32.376)
Yes!

Shannon Herrera (08:43.321)
Absolutely, yes. Because, I was just thinking, you know, what a great opportunity to share what you guys are doing as owning HR consulting businesses, you know, across the pond from each other. But the ability to share because the pitfalls and things that we face are not that different, no matter where we are

Helen G. Sneed (09:05.752)
Right. Yes, yes, there's a lot of commonality, yes, which makes what you do relevant to really not just nonprofits. And I respect the fact that you're focused on nonprofits. So don't want to get away from your mission. It is relevant for profits as well. that's it. I think there was something else we wanted to touch on. building the board, right?

Shannon Herrera (09:31.927)
Absolutely.

Helen G. Sneed (09:33.624)
And do you have some experiences before I talk about mine as far as how you've helped put boards together that you want to share?

Shannon Herrera (09:46.037)
well, I thought I really liked what you had to say. So I'm gonna let you go first.

Helen G. Sneed (09:51.197)
Okay, okay, that's fine. That's fine. So yes, we were chatting a little bit and I found it interesting. I would say maybe four years ago, maybe it was five. I'm not sure exactly. Somewhere in that timeframe, I needed to put a board together. I needed to overhaul a board of directors and I used LinkedIn in order to find every board member except one, except one. What's makes it amazing you had the opportunity to not only look at their LinkedIn profile, you could see some of their recommendations. You could also learn more about what was important to them by the posts that they made. So you really had insight into their personality and their resume portion of their LinkedIn, as well as recommendations. So I often say to people, LinkedIn is the place to be. If you're running a business, you want to own a business, you're looking to market to a certain demographic, anything related to business, profit, or non-profit, you really need to be on LinkedIn.

Shannon Herrera (10:58.133)
Yes, and I think a lot of individuals sometimes only think as LinkedIn as a place to go to find a job, to market themselves for that new position. And I would be remiss in not sharing that, know, Helen, you helped me with mine, upgrade it, because I didn't know what I was doing. So thank you so much.

Helen G. Sneed (11:09.768)
Thank you.

Helen G. Sneed (11:16.274)
You're welcome. I need to polish it a little. It's been a little while, right? We can't let it stay a sale, so we have to update it a little bit. So I'll take a look at that for you. I'll have to take a look at that.

Shannon Herrera (11:19.55)
Yes, yes.

Shannon Herrera (11:25.527)
Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah, and that is important because it's not just looking for a job. It's looking like we talked about. It's looking to collaborate. It is looking for those board positions. You know, you want to market yourself in a lot of different ways and keeping up with that and reaching out to people.

Helen G. Sneed (11:42.95)
Yes, it's great. Did we miss anything? I don't think we did, but I thought I would ask you, did we miss anything on the topics that we wanted to cover? Because I want people to really understand the depth and breadth of what you can do to help their organization.

Shannon Herrera (11:59.359)
Yeah, well, I would love to share how people can follow up with me.

Helen G. Sneed (12:03.358)
Absolutely, yes, yes. How can we find you Shannon and how can we find your organization Maven Leadership Solutions?

Shannon Herrera (12:11.509)
Absolutely. Well, on LinkedIn, underneath Maven Leadership Solutions, on LinkedIn, and you can also email us at mavenleadershipatgmail

Helen G. Sneed (12:22.972)
Fabulous. Thank you, Shannon, for spending time with me today. And I will make sure to have your contact information at the end of the podcast as well. So everyone, please enjoy the rest of your day. And Shannon, thank you for joining me. And I look forward to collaborating more with you again in the future.

Shannon Herrera (12:40.788)
Absolutely, thank you so much. Take care.

Helen G. Sneed (12:42.822)
Thank you. Take care. Thanks everyone to all my goal-getters out there. Make sure you reach out to me, HGSneed at DriveTheGoal.com and we'll make sure you get your goals going!