The Startup Ideas Podcast - Sales funnels for Beginners

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

I’m joined by Jonathan Courtney, as we deep dive on how to set up million dollar sales funnels. 1) Startup Idea 1: Paid Ads Agency• Huge market for one-person ad consulting businesses• Target specific verticals (e.g., hair salons, female info product owners)• Take a cut of revenue instead of charging upfront2) Facebook ads still crush it (for 40+ demo):• Still effective for 40+ demographics• AJ&Smart spends $80k/month on FB ads• 318% ROI in June ($252k revenue from $80k spend)"Meta ads are only dead for people under 35" - Jonathan3) Funnel basics:• Opt-in page → Free training video → Call booking• Use ClickFunnels for quick tests• Use Framer for validated funnelsPro tip: Automate everything possible in your funnel4)  The book funnel strategy:• Offer free digital + physical book• Lose money upfront to get email addresses• Monetize later with other offersExample: http://workshopperplaybook.com/5) Copywriting hacks:• Focus on increasing status (even for B2B)• Use pain vs. pleasure framework• Adjust tone based on economic conditionsKey insight: Status increase drives purchases, even in corporate training6) Jonathan's funnel philosophy:• Don't obsess over tracking every conversion source• Focus on overall company growth• Prioritize Facebook ad spend ROI"You have your monthly P&L. You just make sure your company is growing" - JonathanTo improve your rankings your business on Google and using AI for SEO, sign up tohttp://boringmarketing.com/🎯 To build your own portfolio businesses powered by community you might enjoy my membership.You'll get my full course with all my secrets on building businesses, peer-groups to keep you accountable, business ideas every single month and more!Spots are limited.https://www.communityempire.co/📬 Join my free newsletter to get weekly startup insights for free:https://www.gregisenberg.com/70,000+ people are already subscribed.Want more free ideas? I collect the best ideas from the pod and give them to you for free in a database. Most of them cost $0 to start (my fav)Get access: https://www.gregisenberg.com/30startupideas FIND ME ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergInstagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/FIND JONATHAN ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/JicecreamLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-courtney-4510644b/Episode Timestamps:0:00 Intro06:41 Startup Idea 1: Paid Ads Agency26:19 Funnel Hacking and Conversion Optimization34:34 AJ & Smart Funnel breakdown44:27 Copywriting Hacks

What is the promise that you're going to give our listeners today by listening to this? I actually, I know I told you I didn't have any ideas, but I thought of some things beforehand that I think could be interesting. I think there's a massive empty space in the market for not dushy, non-agency companies who help other people run Facebook ads. Literally that. A lot of the times when people are building startups or when people are thinking of businesses, they're not thinking about the fact that even very simple Google ads are hard to set up for a company and for even an event. So just being, giving people like the basic package of meta ads and Google, simple Google search ads, it can be a game changer for these people. Here's what I do, okay? Just to get the business off the ground in one month.

Okay, what is that? Oh, shit. This is, this is called the, play date. It is a games console made by a company called Panic. And it's a collaboration between panic. Let's see if I can get this. Wait. So I'm pouring some beer here using this crank. Oh, ah, I used to be a barman. Wait, let's try this. See that? You see that shit. So it's a collaboration between panic and what do you call them? Teenage Engineering, the company that I have like every product of. And it's just such a cute, cool thing for Panic to do. It took them a very long time. to make it. It's like a passion project. But it sells like a lot.

I don't know if you know about panic, but they do like, they make this console. They also publish a lot of different video games. They're like an aspirational company to me. I love companies that are just like doing lots of weird stuff. That's what I want to be. Yeah, you love weird. You love weird stuff. I just had Jason Freed on the pod, actually, your boy.

Jason was on the pod. Yeah. Cool. Very cool. And we talked about making soft. software weird. So you guys are... We're very aligned on that. Aligned, yeah. Yes, Jason is grace.

We actually just moved from using Slack, Asana, and Notion, back to using Basecamp after a four-year break. And it is honestly refreshing. Like, I started to have the feeling that my company was becoming like a chat room, basically. Like, we were just on Slack all day. You just open Slack and you have all these red dots. and what I presented to my team last Monday two weeks ago was let's not become a company that talks about doing stuff all the time and talks about making stuff all the time and let's just go back to being a company that makes stuff.

And so yeah, I feel like Basecamp's interface is more built for just working on projects instead of talking about working on projects. In fact, it's actually quite hard to just have open dialogues within Basecamp, the product, and this is annoying some of my team, but I love it. Not only did you switch to Basecamp, you went viral on Twitter for it. This tweet went crazy. I never have anybody liking any of my stuff on Twitter or on X. I was so, I hate when that happens because I'm like, oh, oh, did I do something bad?

Did I, like, did I post something that's somehow risky politically or something? And no, I was, I opened up Twitter. There was, I opened up X. There was a thousand notifications. I never get more than two. And so I was thinking, shit, did I make a really off-color joke? It was just the post about Basecamp.

Which I'm trying to pull up the post. You basically were just like I switched to Basecamp. I think the way I put it, I mentioned this thing about Slack kind of became the default interface of my company. And that, but like your tools in a way do determine a little bit what your work culture is like.

And your tools kind of, I don't know how you say. There's probably a really nice way to say it. Like the tools determine the way you work, something about that. And it was just so I've been traveling a lot over the last few weeks. Laura and I who run the company have been rethinking the business from the ground up, but mainly from like the outside perspective. So we're going to be relaunching the business on the second of October. But then we started to realize to make all of these changes,

we're going to have to change everything inside the business to, for everything to really work and feel different. So we're moving office. That's one big thing. Moving to a new physical location, a bigger space. And that's like doubling down on us working in person together, being able to collaborate with more people. And the second thing was getting fucking rid of Slack.

Fuck that shit. I actually took, I saw your tweet when it had like three likes, like early. And I was like, this is interesting. I shared in my Slack and I was like, what do you guys think of this? And people didn't want to get rid of Slack. Of course, because it becomes, it is your work interface. Yeah. It literally becomes your work interface.

And here's one of the dangers I think of Slack. I see Laura, who's a senior member of AJ and Smart, who's running like very large seven figures sections of the business. I see that. I started to see that her job was replying to people on Slack. And I'm like, wouldn't we make way more money if you used your marketing strategy skills instead of replying to fucking Slack messages? But it makes, and it's the same for me.

I'm the CEO. And I was spending all day just replying to Slack messages. It's because it's like easy to do that because the work is just put there for you. It's like your tasks are ready for the day. Whereas real work that makes real money. and make seven figure differences, that doesn't come from just responding to shit on Slack from my perspective. So I just wanted to get rid of it, go cold turkey, it's gone now.

I haven't opened Slack in two weeks. It feels liberating. This is the episode. Like, what do you want to talk about today? What do you want to talk about on the Startup Ideas podcast? Yeah. What is the promise that you're going to give our listeners today by listening to this. I actually, I know I told you I didn't have any ideas, but I thought of some things

beforehand that I think could be interesting. Like a couple of things that I notice are missing in the industry. That could be for small startups or one person kind of solopreneur thingies. One is, I noticed that one, like, one of the best ways to build a business and to grow business is to run paid ads. I mean, a lot of people. people know this. The problem is... Shocker. Shocker. Wow. You know, everyone's been asking for Jay Ice Cream, J. Ice Cream, Jonathan, Courtney, for these hot takes, everyone.

Again, these hot takes for me. But when... So a lot of businesses, small businesses, big businesses need paid ads, or they often don't even realize that paid ads are worth using. The problem is that the market for people who offer paid ad services are either agencies, which are too expensive and like too big and just confusing? Or do she guys who are like 25 wearing a gold Rolex and look kind of intimidating? Quick ad break. Let me tell you about a business I invested in. It's called Boringmarketing.com. So a few years ago, I met this group of people that were some of the best SEO experts in the world. They were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on Google. And the Secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and AI.

I could help you outrank your competition. So for my own businesses, I wanted that. I didn't want to have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg. I didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses. I wanted to rank high in Google. That's why I like SEO. And that's why I use Boringmarketing.com. And that's why I invested in it.

They're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day sprint with 100% money-back guarantee. Who does that nowadays? So check it out. Highly recommend boringmarketing.com. And I think that so when I tell people that we at AJ and Smart run a million dollars of ads per year, they're like, but Facebook ads don't work. Like, but I heard meta ads don't work, but I heard this doesn't worry. And I was, I'm always very confused about why they think this. But when I talk to them, it's because they're somehow when they're looking for paid advertising for their business. They fall into like the doucheaverse. You know what I mean? They end up having calls of these people who are obviously just don't give you a sense of safety and trust. And

I'm always helping companies running their ads, obviously for free. This is just something I want. I'm like, you need to do this. This is something that's very effective. You can like turn on ads and get leads and then you can monetize those leads. That's like a really big way our business runs. And I think there's many, there's a huge amount of space in the industry for one person, ad consultants, basically, who appeal to specific verticals and are not douchey. So for example, there is a huge space in the market for people who can run ads for just like salons, like hair salons. There's a huge space in the market for people who can run ads specifically for female. info product owners. There's so many different verticals that you could go into running ads for people,

but not becoming an agency and not presenting yourself as like a rich person on the internet because I think that's a turnoff for a lot of people, especially in Europe. And so that's one thing I'm thinking. I'm always thinking about like, again, which businesses, what I started, which businesses am I trying to get my friends to start so that I can eventually just become part of it and get a cut of it. I think there's a massive empty space in the market for not dushy, non-agency companies or a single person shows who help other people run Facebook ads.

Literally that. That's it. That's one idea. What do you think? Do you notice this with the fact that like paid ads get poo-poed, but probably not for the right. reasons. Yeah, I also noticed that the gold Rolex presidential or whatever it's called, they all have the gold Rolex. I don't know what it is about signing up to a meta account,

but it's like you need to unlock it with the Rolex. Yeah, with your gold Rolex. Yeah, it's like instead of log in with Facebook, it's like log in with your gold Rolex. Yes. Yes. I mean, that's fine. If you're appealing to people who want to run ads. for that kind of lifestyle stuff. But it turns, there's a lot of people not realizing that there's an entire rest of the market for, like, if you were,

I see, I see a lot of open space for people to run ads to grow people's Patreon accounts, their creative Patreon accounts, things like this, where it's about taking a cut of the revenue or something like that, but there's just so much open space for it. I'm experimenting, with this in my business at the moment.

So I'm experimenting with partnering up with other people in my kind of strategy design space and helping them run ads and helping them with sort of lead generation. And sometimes I'm shocked. I'm like, why haven't you done this in the last six years? Like, why are you just doing it now? And often the story is a little bit like, oh, yeah, we tried it and it didn't work. And then we talked to this guy and he seemed a bit scammy and then this and this. Then we worked with this agency and we couldn't contact them.

And I'm like, there's so much space for this. There's so much space in the market for this. Just being the, honestly, just being a meta ads expert would be a game changer. If you don't market yourself in a weird, it's about getting rich way. You know what I mean? So are you running the, as the meta ads expert, are you running the ads yourself or you're just coaching them on how to run ads. Quite literally sitting in a room with them, opening the meta dashboard, showing them

our meta dashboard, showing them how we're doing it. So it's more of an advisory thing. So we're like advising people on setting up funnels and taking a cut of their revenue. We're going to like announce that publicly in probably two weeks after we launched this episode. But yeah, for the last like two and a half years, we've been advising other companies on lead generation, building funnels, that kind of stuff. Pure advisory, no agency work, no consulting. I guess it is a bit of consulting.

I don't know the difference between advisory and consulting. Okay. So this idea, okay, now what I'm really understanding is someone can go and do this and not even charge a monthly fee, but say like, hey, I'll take a percentage of revenue here's what I do, okay? Just to get the business off the ground in one month. The first thing I would do is look around at events like, let's say yoga retreats that are happening around New York, something like that. Just make a Google Doc of the ones that are not full yet. They haven't been filled. And I would contact these people and try to figure out, hey, are you having trouble filling up these events? I can fill it up for you using Facebook ads, but I'm going to take a cut of every ticket sale. The end. That's all my first clients. Obviously, not everyone would say yes, but that would be an example of how I would jump on this, starting this business. But yeah, I would be looking for things where I think the product is probably good or the product is maybe interesting to me so I know how to make ads for it. Oh,

and for me, that's like creative stuff. So I could definitely sell, I could definitely help someone make ads for like creative retreats, things like this, yoga retreats, meditation, anything in the wellness space, anything in the design space. Um, I'd also look at things like bigger, you know, installate, like art installation things, things like this. I would be reaching out to these people assuming they don't know how to do paid ads and trying to work with them on selling out their thing. Because honestly, event owners hate selling events. They love putting on events. That would be like my first vertical that I would attack.

Well, it's a pretty broad vertical. So it's like a horizontal vertical of events. but I would be looking at events around a city that I kind of understand, in general topics that I kind of understand. And I would offer them a deal like that where I'm taking a cut only for the ones they sell and only for the ones they sell through my ads, through their ads, which I help them set up. Cool.

I like it. I mean, easy to start. I feel like you're right. Like, people are getting, I think you're right. You're right. I don't like to say you're right often. And the other thing. thing is people think meta ads are dead because people are not understanding that meta ads are only

dead for people under 35. So meta ads work really, really well for us better than anything else for people over 40. And there are a lot of people over 40 in the world. They're not all just dead, you know? So I think that a lot of the times when people are building startups or when people are thinking of businesses, they're not thinking about the fact that just because they don't see meta ads and just because they're not on Instagram, doesn't mean like a massive amount of the population aren't seeing these things. Even very simple Google ads are hard to set up for a company and for even an event. So just being, giving people like the basic package of meta ads and Google, simple Google search ads, it can be a game changer for these people. And if you're taking a small cut of every single

one of those sales, I know someone else who's doing this as well and he's doing pretty well and he's also not dushy and he's a bit more like a bit more in the selling like the spiritual events and stuff like that like retreats things like this i don't know i feel my brain is a bit muggy i don't know if i'm making am i making sense you need your brain needs to get muggy more often because you are finally making some this is making a lot of time i'm also sweaty i'm also This is great. Okay. So I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, and I was like, how's business? He runs a SaaS. SaaS business. I think they do like three or four million ARR.

Software as a slug, wasn't it? Software as a slug, exactly. Yeah, I just wanted to make sure that I know what you're talking about. Yeah. And I'm like, how are things going? And he's like, oh, you know, amazing. Like things are, you know, we just hit three and a half million ARR. We're growing double digits month over month. and it's like, oh, great. And then he ends it with, and we don't even run any paid ads. As if it's something to be proud of or? As if it's something to be proud of.

And I hear that often. I don't know if you hear this often. I hear it all the time, dude. You're constantly hearing it. I hear it all the fucking time. And I'm like, yeah, that's because you're stupid. That you could have six million AORR. Yeah, exactly.

I don't want to say your friend is stupid. I mean, he isn't. He isn't. He's a really smart guy. But I think for whatever reason in Ventureland, a lot of the time, it's kind of, it's one of those things. It's kind of a status symbol to be like, you don't use that. It's 100% a status symbol. This is the problem.

We take a lot of the Silicon Valley status symbols and try to apply to apply. these status symbols to small businesses. I think this is what Jason Freed is good at kind of cutting out and getting through the bullshit. A lot of these status symbols like not running ads, saying Facebook is dead, saying meta is dead, are totally relevant when you're trying to be, when the status game in Silicon Valley and the status game in startups is to work on like the cutting edge stuff. But if you're working on doing something that's like, you know,

running a yoga retreat or running a creators retreat or trying to sell cops or whatever it is, you don't need to play those types of status games. And in fact, they might actually hurt you. Like trying to build a massive personal brand or a massive like crazy, like trying to do what liquid death did, but for your tiny yoga retreat or something isn't going to necessarily apply without having loads of funding and all these other things. I think ads are just such an amazing, easy way to start for most people. I also know it because I run a community, which has like a couple of thousand people in it. We teach people also, hey, you know, we're teaching them facilitation,

but we realize after a while, well, they need to get clients. So we need to teach them some basics. And when people run ads into a simple funnel, they get call bookings. and when they get call bookings, they get clients. The end, it's as simple as that when you're a one-person show or a small team, ads are so, so helpful. When you can't do some massive branding campaign

and get on TV and do billboards and stuff. I don't think you should start with ads, though. That's my take. Because I think in order to create ads that are really highly performing, you have to have your messaging pretty dialed. And I think the best way to get your messaging really dialed is to do organic content. See what works on places like Twitter, Instagram.

Just do that for free. Learn. That's your training wheels. And then once it starts to get traction, then you know, okay, this is the messaging on social I need. And this is the messaging I need on my landing page that actually converts. Now I'm ready to experiment with paid ads. I agree. In most cases, I agree with you. And what we do is we, because our audience, again, is older. Like our, at the event that your CEO was at, I think he was probably the youngest person there. And he's in his 30s or something. Yeah. So our audience, our audience. And he's in his 70s. He's in his 70s, exactly.

He's in his late 70s. Like, just due to the price range, like, just due to the price range, like, Like our in-person events cost like $11,000 something dollars. We are aiming for like generally it's senior people at corporates and consultants coming to our events. Oh, now this senior people make sense to me. I don't mean. Literally senior people. I don't mean senior, senior. Although actually, yeah, the range, the range of ages at our last event was from 25 to 76.

Not too bad. Not too bad. Not too bad. What was I trying to say? What fuck is I trying to say? You're losing your memory in your old age. Dude, I've had such a crazy last like six weeks. My brain is done.

I need a break. I can't get a break until like the 3rd of August, but I'm definitely at the point now where I'm like, I actually need a break. Shh, don't tell anyone. But I've got 30 plus startup ideas that could make you millions. And I'm giving them away. for free. These aren't just random guesses. They're validated concepts from entrepreneurs who've built

$100 million plus businesses. I've compiled them into a one simple database. Compiled from hundreds of conversations I've had on my podcast. But the main thing is, most of these ideas don't need a single investor. Some cost nothing to start. I'm pretty much handing you a cheat sheet. The idea bank is your startup shortcut. Just click below to get access. Your next cash-loving business is waiting for you. But I think I was talking about ads.

Fucking ads, all right? Fuck it. This is what happens when a guy from Europe comes to America for an extended period of time and goes to like L.A. and San Francisco. go and just gets overwhelmed. The earth being in mind cannot comprehend. There was an earthquake while I was in L.A. by the way.

Oh, are you okay? I was making deals while this was happening. I just ignored it. To be honest, I actually just didn't. So I was on a call. I was walking on the beach. I didn't feel it. But if I had felt it, I would have totally freaked out.

I had to, like, cried or something. We had, like, a WhatsApp group for all the people who came to our event, and they were, like, posting about it. But yeah, so let me close this one up. I remember what I was talking about. It is like this kind of form of pride. It's a status symbol to not run ads. Fine.

If you want to be, if you're already, like, if you've already got funding, if you've already got some angel investment, or if you're just like, have a huge personal brand. Oh, yeah. No, dude, I remember you were saying first post on, you know,

first post on social media before ads. And I agree with this. The only thing is sometimes people, I agree that this is the best way to do it. In the best case scenario, you're able to test things out in an organic environment and even just getting a feel for the way you write and practicing. So we tell people and our people to practice on LinkedIn just because that's where they happen to hang out. Running ads, though, I think in itself is worth learning just as a discipline. just because when you get that thing you want to sell, you don't want to be feeling helpless and just like,

oh, there's nothing I can do now. I just have to wait and beg people to buy my thing or come to my thing. I love the idea of just being able to put money into the machine. The machine finds the people for you. And then you can figure out how you're going to convert them, which is another whole thing. But I do think you're right. If you can do both, it's even better.

but I just think that discipline or knowing someone who can do it, knowing someone who can help you run these things and demystify it is great and becoming the type of person who can help other people do that. Not huge startups,

but small businesses. I think it's a no-brainer. You know, I've known you for a few years now and you talk, you always talk about ads. I always, it takes like, if I'm hanging out with you, it takes like two minutes before you just bring up ads.

You just love bringing it up. But I haven't heard you talk at all about conversion, really. Like, how much do you think about landing page conversion, conversion rate optimization? We, well, we definitely always, we think about it more like return on ads, ad spent, essentially. So our ROAS and we are aiming. We're basically aiming for like, okay, we spent $1, we want to make. $1.50 back, right? And we have our funnel laid out essentially in every step. So we'll have a funnel. We'll have like 12 steps, 12 different things that are going on. And we're constantly, constantly

tweaking it. So like our workshop or master funnel, which was, which is our kind of most successful program, we have been tweaking and like poking at this funnel to increase conversions for four years now since since November 2020. But it's not just landing page conversion rate. It's sales calls. It's like tweaking the video on the second page. It's like the survey. We're constantly tweaking it.

So the answer to the question is we obsess about it. But we don't obsess about it in the very beginning. We get the funnel out there. And then we can really quickly see which things are broken, which things make no sense. But yeah, a funnel from day one to day 100 usually looks pretty, different or a landing page. Can you walk me through how you actually write out the funnel and how you build the funnel

and what tools you use? I'd love to do that if it's not too boring. I mean, it is probably boring, but whoever's going to listen to it is going to probably do quite well. So I think it's, and I want to know. Okay. Yeah. I think when you're learning a new thing, when I'm learning a new thing, the best way

for me to learn it is to have one very specific example thing that I can use as my like, I'm going to, it's like, I don't know, if you're looking at a, I'm trying to think of a good analogy for this. Maybe I don't need an analogy. When I got into funnels, the best way for me to learn funnels was finding someone else's funnel I really liked and funnel hacking it, essentially signing up to every single part of it, screenshoting every single page, looking at all the emails, screenshoting all those, printing out the entire thing,

laying it all out and trying to understand what the hell is going on here. Like, why is this happening and then this happening and then this happening? So for me, one of the first types of funnels that I got really interested in

was called a VSL funnel, which is a video sales letter funnel. And it has, I'll just draw the thing. I'm going to draw like the basics of this funnel. So this funnel for us, we are getting, so this is cheesy, but we go to this very cheesy but fun event called funnel hacking live, which I've told people about before. And this year, I hope I'm not over, I hope it actually happens or else this will be kind of

embarrassing, but we're picking up an award for having our first $10 million funnel. And so I'll draw out our $10 million funnel. So it's one funnel. Draw it out while you're drawing it out, people who are listening to this on audio, you might want to head to YouTube. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I'll try to describe it. But I'll draw the main funnel. So you have an, the first page you create is called an opt-in page. So this is basically a page that offers someone who is interested in the topic something. And for in a VSL funnel, that something is a free training video. So if let's say you want, for us, we want to sell a 7,000. $500 facilitation program, which is like a combination of self-paced videos and actual live coaching. So we want to sell that. And so what we offer them, we don't sell them that

first. We don't even tell them about that first. Our Facebook ad is selling a one-hour free training, which teaches you the basics of facilitation. And so our opt-in page is to sell that free training, nothing else. And so our opt-in page leads to a video. Okay, when you say selling a free training, you're not selling any. So the way you talk about it in marketing is you're always selling the thing that sells the thing. I wish I could remember the name of the guy who said that, Steve Larson, I think. So your Facebook ad is selling the opt-in page. Your opt-in page is selling watching the video.

And I'll tell you as you go, but you're basically right now, All you're focused on is selling the idea of watching this video because people can get free stuff online all the time. All of YouTube is free. Why the hell should you give your email address and sit down and watch this particular video? So you do have to sell watching this video, basically. Because in the end, someone being trained by you on a small level is an ad. It's a pitch, essentially, because they're getting a sense of what it's like to be trained by you. So there's an opt-in page, which basically tells them that they can get this free.

It can be also a downloadable. It can be a lead magnet. It can be like a PDF. We're doing a new one soon, which is like a list of different exercises and that kind of stuff. Like we have this. This is actually one version of it here. I'm holding it up to the screen. It's a book, a physical book called meetings that we're going to be using as a lead magnet that

will actually ship to you. It doesn't matter. the opt-in page is about getting your email address and ideally getting your attention on something. And so the next page, so the first page, we build these on either Framer or ClickFunnels. So Framer is when we want to have something that looks nice. And ClickFunnels is when a random person at AJ and Smart, including me, who doesn't want to figure out how to use Framer properly, just needs to test some Facebook ads. So I don't have any affiliation with ClickFunnels, click funnels, but that's like what we use for a lot of our funnels.

So I'll make an opt-in page. And how do I figure out how that opt-in page should look? I look at other people's opt-in pages, right? That's how I do it. Then the next page is the video. The video is like a training based off the book, which is called Expert Secrets from Russell Brunson. I know. People think he's cheesy.

I don't care. I think that book is really good. And I use 50% of the format of that book to do the training. And instead of selling something at the end of the training like he does, because I don't feel comfortable doing this, I sell a call. So basically, I tell the, in this training, I tell people if you liked this training and you want to know, if you want to get like a proper training from AJ and smart, either in person or online, you can. you can book a call with one of our career coaches who will talk you through and show you all the different things we have. And we get between 16 and 20 of these call bookings per day, which we have gotten since November 2020. So the video leads to a call booking. Wait. Sorry. Go ahead. Are you charging for these calls or they're free? They're free.

They're free. We are actually paying for everything up until this point. It's actually R-O-I-negative up until this point. So it's a Facebook ad to an opt-in page to a free training. And then this free training, a certain amount of people. I can tell you the exact stats we have if you're interested, because I have this thing open. I want the exact stats. I am highly interested.

I'll open up the funnel tracking sheet and I'll tell you everything. Open up the funnel tracking sheet. All right, let's see. Well, I give you a feeling for this one funnel about how much it cost, how much it made, this kind of thing. So we spent 74, it's euro, we spent $80,000 on ads in what month is this in June. So this is just a June page that's open right now, $80,000 in June on Facebook ads. $6,000 in June on Google and YouTube ads. So total ads, oh yeah, sorry, total ad spend.

So total ad spend between Facebook and Google, a $79,000, $86,000. Then total cash collected was $200,000. Oh, yeah, total revenue was $252,000. So, and that's like $2,270,000, yeah, $270,000, $252,000. This is getting confusing. I apologize. But our return on investment on Facebook ads and Google ads was 318%. So that's an example.

And you can see how many calls booked. We had 339 call bookings. Only 273 of those people turn. turned up because obviously not everyone turns up. And we sold 65 units of Workshoppermaster. That's an example of this particular funnel running. And this has been going for, you know, four and a half, well, whatever since November 2020 is. So yeah, that's that funnel. So it's four years, by the way. Four years. Okay. Facebook and Google ads, which then lead to an opt-in page. which then leads to a video, which then leads to a calendarly,

which then leads to the team taking call bookings. If you want to see this funnel working, you can. But please don't book. I will ask your audience to not book calls. I'm just wondering, should I do this to my team? Because actually, every time they click on the ad, we're going to get charged. No, I'm actually, if you know, you know. If you know how to do this, you know how to do it.

but I'm not, it will, please don't do the call booking part of this because that will cost my team a lot of time and money if you cancel. But yeah, we have multiple funnels like this. We also have a book funnel that's running. This one I can actually show you or your team can look at. If you search for the workshopper playbook and you go to workshopperplaybook.com. This is the same thing, except instead of a free training, you can, get a either a free Kindle version of the book or you can get a digital and physical copy of the book. We get, we make zero. Actually, we lose money at this step. But we want you to give us your email

address and your details because then we can bring you into other parts of the funnel. And we'll often use this as like the front end of the funnel because Facebook ads, when you're holding something physical like a book work really well. And so this is one of our funnels that has been probably the most successful one we've ever made. And this book obviously isn't the best book ever. It was supposed to just be a little PDF lead magnet that I created in the space of one week or less. But in the end, it was like,

oh, this lead magnet's getting so big, we can use it as a book funnel. But yeah, so adds to book funnel, to getting the email address, and then into some sort of campaign later, like our Black Friday campaign for this year. So we'll take those leads, leads, which have not been monetized yet, and we'll bring them into our Black Friday campaign.

We'll figure out what we want to sell or what we want to do. But yeah, that's, and all of that is Facebook ads, basically. And when you say Black Friday campaign, that's kind of like a squeeze campaign, as they call it? We, for us, this is straight up hardcore email marketing. Like, we start telling people on anybody who's come through any of our funnels but hasn't bought anything yet. We'll send, we'll start sending them emails for, we'll create a sale. We'll create a sale page using ClickFunnels and anybody who hasn't bought anything yet will get pushed towards that sales page using emails and we'll be using ConvertKit to figure out who's done what. And dude, we send a lot of emails. We're famous for that. And get a lot of unsubscribes as well. Yeah, I was going to ask.

Is it the goal just to send as many emails so people unsubscribe? How do you think about unsubscribes and should you feel bad about them? We tried to clean out our list during these campaigns. So during Black Friday, Summer Sale, Prime Day and a back-to-school sale. We're not emailing every single person on our list. So we've 130,000 people on our list today, although we don't do many list-building activities outside of running Facebook ads. we will find us like a cohort or a segment of that of that email list and we'll use that.

But generally, I mean, we're threading a thin line between sending too much, getting too many unsubscribe. Like we're always testing that. But we have a lot of data from the last like 16 or 14 years on doing this now. So we, I think we've got a good, your question is, how do we think about it? We try to make the most sales with the least amount of unsubscribes. But we're also okay if people opt themselves out of what we're selling as well. Because there are people who probably just never want to buy anything that we have. And then they can just continue consuming our free content on YouTube.

And that's also fine with us. But I also feel, you know, we have the biggest YouTube channel for our topic, which is facilitation, hundreds of hours of free content out there. So we're also, we feel like we call it like the goodwill bucket. Whenever we do a big campaign like that where we feel like, okay, we're pushing it, maybe pushing it a little bit. We're also trying to make sure our good will bucket of free stuff is being filled up. Yeah, I think that's smart.

I think that's smart. It also probably helps you with your overall conversion rate. Like if someone finds you via Facebook ad and, you know. Dude, it's the big. So we, everybody who starts working on funnels with me, one of their first questions is how do you track whether, you know, how do you track exactly which things are creating which conversions like so that I know should I put more energy into LinkedIn or into YouTube or into whatever?

And you know, there's a lot of products that can help you track these things. Like Hyros is one of these products. and I, in the end, just, we don't. Right, what do you call it? Hyros? I don't know how you say it. Hyros, Hyros, H-Y-R-O-S. Hyrus, okay, cool.

This tells you, like, I think it tells you if someone comes all the way from YouTube and it tracks all the conversions all the way through, we don't pay so much attention to that. And honestly, this is because I took advice from Sam Ovens, which is don't fucking bother tracking it. Just you have your monthly P&L. You just make sure your company is growing

and that your expenses are a lot lower that you're incoming. And just focus on like the Facebook ad spend ROI. And you can assume that having really great content out there builds trust. The people in the ClickFunnels community call it a shadow funnel, meaning like someone sees your ad. The next thing they're going to do is see if you're,

real. And if they find six years of high quality YouTube content out there, they're going to be a lot more relaxed about going into your funnel than if you're just completely invisible on the internet. We might have to do a part two of this, like how to build funnels.

Dude, I am obsessed with that. I'd love to do, I would need to have like, um, like being able to use like the whiteboard sort of thing. I would, I would happily do a live with you, but it would to be like three or four hours long. I would happily do that and I can go through, we could make a funnel for someone or like for a product. I would love to do that. I love making funnels. I love copywriting. If people, if people want that, comment on YouTube so we know. And that could be something that we do. You know one of the biggest parts of funnels is copyrighting.

Yeah. I spent, today I spent from, I think I spent six hours today sitting with my team rewriting copy. Like, that's why I'm honestly so tired. It's just copy. Copy is honestly the hardest part of my job. Like, takes the most out of me. Yes.

You know, my favorite thing ever is when we're doing our partnerships with other companies, we were working with a company last week. And when I can come up with an angle for them and a sentence for them that just makes them go, oh, my, oh, that's it. That's like one of the most satisfying things of all time. Like, Laura and I who run A.J. and smart were obsessed with the nerdy elements of copy. It's so, it's crazy how much of a conversion rate difference it can make. That's your Don Draper moment. Yeah. Can I tell you one copy hack? Like that you can, there's two copy hacks, actually. So when you're writing copy for, copy is just like text, right? Like, just in case anyone's wondering what the hell we're

talking about. One of the biggest things when you're writing copy and you're trying to figure out, is it good or not, especially for a landing page, is you can ask yourself the question, does this copy push towards the idea that it will increase someone's status? So this is a really big thing. It means that, oh, I held it up to the screen and I realize not everyone listens. The idea is that we're often writing copy when we're writing about a product. We're not thinking about the fact that people often buy things because of status. like, will this make me look better to my peers? And you think, you think like when you're selling corporate training like we do,

well, then we should never lean on the status thing. But of course, if you learn something that makes you more valuable to your colleagues in work, your status increases because more people want you to do things. And so we lean right into that. And it makes a massive difference to sales. if you push towards this idea of helping people increase their status. And not in kind of like a, again, it's not like if you buy this cool watch, then you're going to have a higher status.

It's if you are more useful to other people, you will be perceived as higher status. And it's all very different for different topics and different companies. That's one. The second thing is if you're stuck trying to figure out, what the hell do I write for this headline? Like, I'm trying to sell this microphone or something. Then you can draw this thing.

which is kind of cool, which I'll draw and show here, but I'll also explain it. So on the left, it says pain. And on the right, it says pleasure. I'm sure a lot of you already know this because you've got smart people in your audience. And when you're writing copy, you can figure out whether you want to write copy that moves people away from pain. So away from pain is like never carry around. like this microphone is battery controlled. So it doesn't need this like phantom energy thing.

If anyone knows like a lot of microphones need to be plugged into a much bigger thing for them to work. So with this microphone, if we were talking about moving away from pain, we would say never get stuck in the airport without your podcast equipment again or something like this because you can fit it in your pocket doesn't need phantom energy. So that's moving away from pain because it's reminding you of a painful situation that happens to you. moving towards pleasure would be talking about how beautiful this thing is and how nice it sounds. So it's talking about the positives. And sometimes depending on the economy, this is something that a lot of people talk about in the marketing space.

When the economy is really bad and things are going to shit, then you want to make copy. And especially if you're selling like some sort of education service, you want to talk about moving away from pain. So during COVID, a lot of marketing was about moving away from pain in good times and prosperous times. You talk a lot about moving towards pleasure. It's just another little hack when I get stuck writing copy. That's really good. I've actually never heard of that. I learned it from, I think it was Dean Graziosi on Twitter like fucking six years ago or something or on stage at Click

Funnel Hacking Live. Just all these kind of old school telemarketer guys, I love that people don't really pay attention to them because they have a lot of really good, like they read all these old copywriting books like Dan Kennedy, all these kind of like old school marketers. They have some really good copywriting tips. Like they invented this topic. And we're all just too cool to learn it now, but I'm definitely not too cool to learn. We're too cool with our gold Rolexes.

I'm going to get three gold Rolexes minimum so that I can open my ads account. I have another random idea for you. I don't know if I have time for it. I think I got to go. Oh, shit. What if I say it in one sentence? What if I say it in one sentence? Yeah, save it from one sentence.

Now that weed is legalized in so many places, there are people like me who don't like the smell of it. And now it's everywhere. It comes into your apartment. If someone can figure out a way to get rid of that smell and help with this issue, they're going to make trillions for both the people who are smoking and the people who are receiving the smoke

in cities, in cities especially. But how would you actually do that? I have been kind of hacking together my own system here and that's a longer episode but if people can fit, like making a website based on this search term, like getting rid of weed smell from neighbors and just turning that into affiliate links

to specific air purifiers, things like this. Like doing something like the wire cutter, but for this specific problem, dude, I don't know, maybe it won't make billions. I'm surprised you said website when you could have said turn it into a funnel. Well, we do, we have a huge distinction between websites and funnels.

What is that distinction? The distinction is a funnel. In one sentence. A website is a business company. just saying here's all the stuff we do. A funnel is a step-by-step process to bring someone from being a stranger to a customer. Beautiful.

All right. J.C., J. Ice Cream, J.I. C., Jonathan Corny. Greg! I missed you. I missed you, too, dude. I missed you, too. I wish I would turn up in a more like non-manic state, but you know.

Full disclosure. For the listeners, I was texting you and you were not responding. For weeks. Yeah. I know. I was traveling, dude. I was in your beautiful country getting my brain melted by so many different crazy things going on. It's good fun. I mean, I was literally, here, here, Thursday, August 29. Bro, come on the pod. No response. No response. No response. Then finally I write. Finally, finally you respond. And then I just wrote, I just missed. you. No response. Imagine imagine texting someone being like, I miss you and not responding. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. At least any of the other people who are listening to this podcast who

know me and have the same problem with me, now don't feel like I'm just attacking them individually by not responding to stuff. Yeah, dude, I have to tell you off the podcast how the last six weeks have been because it's crazy. You'll forgive me. You'll forgive me. It's been real. I'll catch you on the next one. It's been great. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me back on.

Of course. You're welcome anytime.