Correctly Leverage Facebook Groups with Christina Rowe

You don't need a giant group to make money with Facebook groups. That's a big myth. People think you need this big giant group. I mean, I know people, members of mine who've had very small groups that made millions of dollars. There's maybe 3,000 people or a couple hundred people. They'll, they'll do very well. So it, you know, it's just the right people. That's the, that's the most important thing, getting them into your group, your right target market.

In the last decade, I went from being a startup entrepreneur to selling over a billion dollars in my own products and services online. This show's gonna show you how to start, grow, and scale a business online. My name is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. What's up everybody? Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. I'm excited today, we got a really special episode for any of you guys who wanna figure out how do we build a list, how do we get more traffic, how do we get a following of people who we can sell to in the future without spending a ton of money. I don't know about most of you guys, but right now the climate in paid ads is getting harder and harder. It costs more money to get traffic, You know, we used to spend, back when we launched ClickFunnels, we were spending $2 or $3 to get somebody to opt into a webinar. Now today it's like $5 to $10 per opt-in for register, to register for a webinar. Like, it's crazy how expensive it's gotten. And if you're not really good at funnels, it's getting harder and harder to be successful online. And I've seen that just inside the ClickFunnels community. People who 10 years ago had a lot of success because ads were so cheap, they had these funnels, they blew up, and now today, because it's harder, a lot of these people aren't able to stay in business right now. And so I've been trying to find Who are the people who are having a lot of success getting traffic that's not the typical ways you get traffic? It's not just, you know, buying ads on Facebook or Instagram or YouTube, but they're doing things that are different, that are unique. And so I'm excited because the special guest we have for you today is someone who's built a Facebook group of over 850,000 people. Those people who join the Facebook group also join her email list, so she's got an email list of the same size, and she's using this in business after business, market after market, to grow an audience before someone launches a product. And it's really fascinating, it's using Facebook groups. It's funny 'cause I don't know about you, but I've had a Facebook group for a long time. In fact, ClickFunnels, when we first launched ClickFunnels, we couldn't keep up with the support demands we had, and so we created a Facebook group, it was like ClickFunnels, I think it was community support, and so we'd have everyone submit a ticket and then go to the community and maybe they can help you, trying to help us out, and this little community support went from 5 people to 500 people to 5,000 to 50,000 to, not 500,000, I think it's 300-something thousand people now in this group, and for me it's been this thing where I didn't know what to do with it. It's an asset, but I don't know how to monetize it. It's this thing and it's like, and so I've been trying to figure out how do we have success with our Facebook groups? I didn't know. And what's interesting is in my inner circle, the last 2 inner circle meetings, everyone here, basically to be in the inner circle, you have to have made at least $1 million. You have to win a 2 Comma Club Award to be able to apply to be in the groups. Everyone here is successful. They've all won a 2 Comma Club Award. They're all, they're doing good things. And everyone has a chance to mastermind network and then based on what's happening over the event, the people who have the best presentations come on stage and share what they did. How they did it, and the person I'm gonna introduce you guys to during today's podcast interview actually went, in the last 2 times in a row, won the contest where she was on stage explaining her Facebook group strategy because it's so cool, and it's unique, and it's different, and it's a way to get a lot of traffic for free. Again, she's got 850,000 people in Facebook group, on an email list, and she didn't pay Zuckerberg anything for that, which is crazy. This is also something, if you're just getting started, that's powerful, right? If you're working on a funnel, working on a product or something, and you're like, who am I gonna sell this to when it's done, right? If you follow the process you're gonna learn on today's episode, you can start a Facebook group, get people in there so by the time your product's ready, you already have an audience who's ready and willing to listen to what you have to say. So this is something, if you're a beginner, it's gonna be powerful. If you're an advanced marketer, it's gonna be amazing as well. And so I'm excited to introduce you to our guest today, Miss Christina Rowe, and it's gonna be a lot of fun, so let's jump right into how to grow your company with Facebook groups. What's up everybody? I'm excited today to be talking to you guys about traffic and lead generation through a different unique method that our guest has mastered mastered. I'm excited to interview her to find out exactly how she's doing it. So her name is Christina Rowe. She's been in my inner circle for a while now. In the last two inner circle meetings, everyone breaks down. We have 100 really high-level entrepreneurs in these rooms and everyone has a chance to go and mastermind individually. And then each of the rooms, people vote on like who had the best idea or the best way to grow their companies and things like that. And two times in a row you've won, come on stage and share it with everybody. And I've been in the back and I kind of like hear you talking about it. I'm trying to take notes, but it's hard to understand. And so I pulled you aside today to find out all the stuff for me and for everyone who's listening about how you have done that, which is gonna be exciting. So I'm excited.

Well, thank you, Russell, for having me. I'm excited. I just love to talk about Facebook groups because I believe they're the greatest lead generator that you can have for free, organically.

It's interesting 'cause most Facebook is like cost, at least for us, it costs so much money. And also on top of it, we've built a group. We have like, I don't know, 300,000 people in our group and we're not making any money off 'em at all. So I'm like, there's something I'm doing wrong for sure and something you're doing right for sure. I guess my first question is how did you like, I just go back a little more so people who don't know who you are, like, uh, tell us about your business, how you got started into, into the whole world of online marketing.

Sure. So in my former life, I call it, I used to own a hair and nail salon way back in New Jersey. And when I got divorced and sold that, um, I decided to write a book about divorce and it was called 7 Secrets to Successful Divorce. And it was for women. So I had a choice, it was 2006, whether to try to get a publisher and then this thing called, you know, online marketing. So I went and went down that route and loved it. And then other people started saying, oh, can you help me with your business? Help, you know, help me, coach me, teach me how to do it. And so I've been like, you know, old school back when we had FrontPage, we didn't have ClickFunnels, right? You guys do not realize how it was back then.

Cause I used FrontPage all the way until ClickFunnels was launched. Like that was the same way.

I love it. I loved FrontPage. Yeah. It was like, yeah, that was my first funnel builder. And so, uh, then I started a women's organization in South Florida when I moved there.. And that's how I got involved with, um, eventually creating the Facebook group. So the original group, it was mainly 1,000 women from South Florida. It's called the Women Helping Women Entrepreneurs. And then it started to just grow. It started more women that started to join lots of conversations. And I noticed—

Was it all organically or did you do anything to make it grow?

Oh, that was just all started all organically, word of mouth, a lot of members inviting other women. And I think the key was, it was the engagement because I think, um, two things, it's the engagement and the name of the group, the group being Women Helping Women women entrepreneurs, when people searching Facebook, looking like women are looking for help, they're going to put women entrepreneurs and like Facebook's little bots go out and will show your group based on your keywords. And that's why you'll see in groups, you ever notice, you'll see, it'll say, you'd like to join this group. So it's just all, you know, recommending other groups that you may like. So I think that's what helped kickstart it in the beginning. And then it started taking off. And I realized at the time I was doing coaching, personal coaching, and so were everyone group. So I was like, okay, I can't compete with my own members. So I took a step back and decided to create a new model for the group. And I did a continuity membership program where I allow the women to promote their businesses in the group to the other women internally. Yes. And that's what really started, you know, making it explode because the women were using it to grow their own businesses. And to this day, that's what they do. So now we're up to 850,000 women. And, uh, yeah, so all over the world, it's amazing. So many different countries, and it's just been incredible. And, you know, a lot of those women have invited, you know, that's a great way to get members to your group is to ask your members, you know, if you love the group, share it. I've never done a contest, but I know group members who've done contests, you know, invite as many people and get them in. But you don't need a giant group to make money with Facebook groups. That's a big myth. People think you need this big giant group. I mean, I know people, members of mine, who've had very small groups that made millions of dollars. There's maybe 3,000 people or a couple hundred people. They'll, they'll do very well. So it, you know, it's just the right people. Yeah. That's the, that's the most important thing, getting them into your group, your right target market.

Interesting. So, so outside like creating it and start it, start growing organically and stuff like that, was there ever a spot where you're buying ads or pushing? I know some people do do that, right? We haven't done that, but I think people, there's ways to buy ads. Oh yes. To also grow the group as well, right?

There is now. I have never done that for my group personally. But there are, there's a brand new feature that came out about 6 months ago. It's called Promote Your Group. Like you'll see it under your Manage section. Like you'll look and it'll say Promote Group. And basically it's like boosting your Facebook group. So it'll populate with your About section of your group and then it'll allow you to pick your audience. The key with that, I have a lot of smaller groups as well. Like we have different countries, different states, like we're all over with groups. I've lost count of how many groups I have. I don't even know how many more, but I've tested it out in my smaller groups. And I've gotten some really high quality members. Like for example, right now I'm doing, cause we're having an event in London in May. So I have a UK group. So I just went in, into there, did promote group, and I changed the, um, about section a little bit up, you know, just made it shorter. And then it mentioned that we're having, getting together, made it more like, you know, join this community. And then I targeted, you know, women at a certain age who are in London area.. And then I picked like coaches, you know, coaches, that demographic. And I'd be getting tons those couple days, tons of new members. And I put $100 into it. I did this with my Arizona group and I, I think I spent $100 and I got 51 women, women entrepreneurs who make over $100,000 into the group with email addresses. So it could be very powerful.

What's that? That's a $2 lead, right? Am I math right on that?

I think, yep. About $2 lead. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I think because it's a newer feature, Facebook isn't like char— you know, charging as much for it. I did try it on being more vague in a different group and it didn't work as well. So I think you have to like really be very specific, even location-wise. Like don't try to do the ad for like a whole bunch, the whole United States at once, like target it and test it, you know, and be very specific. And then Facebook will go out and show it to people. And then I think a better thing to do, and I haven't done this yet, is to put something really irresistible, lead magnet in the ad. So, you know, because they're going to see join group on the bottom. So if you give some ethical bribe, And then they can only access it by getting in the group. They'll be more apt to join the group as well.

Interesting. Okay, so I wanna, I wanna understand your model then. So you've got your huge group and then you have the little group. Is this, is this all feeding the same business or these, are they all different businesses?

What's the, what's the model? Oh, same business. So it's the Standout Online Membership Program. So if I've always, I started out, it was, um, for years it was $97 a month. Now it's $197. And that gives them the ability to, you know, they get to promote in the business. Um, they get, uh, promotional posts, they go live. They get other features like spotlights and, you know, directory and all that stuff. So that's the main— everything feeds into that. And plus I have courses and all that other stuff, but everybody— so all the local groups, you know, feed into the, to the big group.

So you do local group to find the people locally, then you push them from there into the bigger group.

Yeah. So like a lot of— yeah, they've all pushed in. They all go into the, you know, into the autoresponders. You know, every new member comes in, get the emails. Not everybody's gonna give you an email, but we still— people ask me, do you still accept them? Well, we do. And so they all go into the welcome, you know, uh, series of emails.. And then that in the part of that will be to convert them into becoming a paid member. Right. Um, so that's been the model of just, you know, driving them all back to the main group to, to promote.

So I was actually, before we had the start of the interview, I actually found your sales letters reading it to see how you were doing it and saw that was like $197 a month. They get to do, they promote inside the group. So basically they go, they're doing Facebook Lives in there, stuff like that. Yeah. So I'm curious, does it make the group crazy? We got, I don't know how many members you have, but they're all posting stuff all the time, or is that just increasing engagement? Is it like, what's it feel like inside? I'm not a, I'm not a female entrepreneur, so I haven't snuck in yet.

I don't know how to get in the group, but I wanna know what's happening. Yeah. We have only, only women, but yeah. So at the live, we do schedule out the lives. So we try to not like, you know, have like maybe a 15-minute overlap. Um, posts though, you know, they can post whenever they want. They're all on preapproval. Anybody who becomes a paid member gets preapproval. And what really works are call to action, like two-step posts. That's what's really does phenomenal in groups. So it's giving something of high value away for free. This is what the women do. They're like, I have made, created, um, you know, this training, I've got X result with it, you know, so I made, you know, $780,000 doing this. And, you know, uh, here's my free training. Who wants it before I make it paid? Me, me, me. Then in the comments, everybody's saying yes. And then they'll go in and respond to those and either lead them to their own Facebook group or to the beginning of their funnel. And I like to say leading them to your Facebook group is very powerful way to grow your Facebook group. Because once, if you're giving them that training, once they get the 3 questions, they have to give you the email because you'll say, well, we need your email. We can't send you what, you know, the training, we need your email. So now you've got them both. You've got them in, you know, you're going to get, put them into your, into your autoresponder and you're also getting them into your groups. So chances are then when they're, if they're acting interactive, they'll see in the feed, the Facebook feed, they'll see your group. Group. So it's like a double whammy, right?

I'm assuming that all these women who are posting to just helps the group, like the quality of the group, getting more people— like it shows them people's feeds more often, so it increases the value and all that kind of stuff for them as well, right?

Yeah, it's because, it's because engagement— like, you know how the algorithm works for groups or for posts or anything— is like the more you like or comment, Facebook says, okay, you like that, we're going to show you more of that. So that's what happens inside of groups, is that they see, okay, you like that group, you've just asked, you know, you know, 5, 10 people, you just said, yes, I want that. Or are you having a conversation? I mean, we have a lot of posts too that are very help. People want help, you know, like I'm ready to quit. I'm so frustrated with my business. What do I do? And then everybody rallies and, you know, and so those are really nice, you know, the value type posts. But these posts that are on like the color backgrounds that are the short, you know, call to action posts, those you tend to see those first in the group because they're the ones getting massive amounts, like 1,000, 2,000 comments, you know, just huge reach. Because people are excited to get those, you know, lead magnets.

Yeah. So cool. Am I allowed to ask how many members you have paying for that?

Sure. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So I think we have close to 1,000, I believe.

Yeah, about 1,000. And then do you ever have an issue? I'm just imagining on my side, like, my thinking, like, how could I implement this in what I'm doing? Like, do you have people who sign up for it and they start— I know in my world there's a lot of people like, I don't want them talking to my audience. They're going to spam them. They're going to do stuff like that. They're going to, you know, I mean, do you have any of those kind of issues or do you have to deal with and, you know, kick people out or whatever? Or is it not too bad?

Well, no, we get issues with, well, women fighting. Oh yeah, that's— yeah. Yes. Oh yeah. We have very, like, a lot of moderators, 17 moderators in the group. And we have very strict rules, you know, and they'll spam each other's comp, like, you know, somebody who's paying will have a post and they'll come in and try to promote in the comments and immediately, you know, they're warned and then kicked out. But though more of an issue used to be is the, you know, we have very strict rules. There's no politics, there's no, you know, you cannot talk about I mean, they'll fight over anything. They fought over the Barbie movie. Okay. Yes. We had fights. We had like, oh yeah, they'll just, I mean, crazy things. You'll be like, what? Like, why are these women fighting? Because women can get, you know, when they're in conversations. So we have to be like on top of it at all times.

Yeah. I imagine too, when they're going live and stuff. So you said you, you schedule out when they're able to go live. So if you have 1,000 people, is it 1,000 lives a month happening?

Well, you know, not everybody takes a, you know, Right. It's like people join and not every— some of them don't want to go live ever. They don't want to be live. So some of them will ask, can we just do 2 posts? You know, we will allow that. Or they'll just, you know, they won't go live at all. So we haven't had that problem where it's just too many people. It's just so many people in the group, such a large group that, you know, it's, it hasn't been an issue for us as far as, you know, over lives being overlapping each other.

Thankfully. So your, your students, other people, you know, who you've trained on this, are they doing the same model where they're letting their members go live or is it or are you just focusing on building groups for other, other purposes or both?

Well, it was interesting. So when I started this and we started the group in, um, October 2016 and the membership model, I think it was the beginning of 2018. So since then there's been several of my members who have grown their groups to maybe 100,000, 50,000, 70,000 who have now taken my model and they're doing my model. So they're, you know, they're feeding from my group. Paid members to their group, and we've got members who are paying for all of our groups. So it's like a little network. And I've actually, um, did Zooms with several of these women. So I'm like, we got to collaborate somehow on this, you know, make like, you know, they'll figure out the idea how we can do something together. But it's interesting. So it's like a network of women who've decided that this is a great model. But yeah, many members come into my group and they'll quickly build their group, their group up, you know, to huge levels by just simple asking questions like, you know, a question just like we have a member who just asked, like, um, who here wants to meet on Zoom on Thursdays and have coffee and collaborate? You know, let me know. And then all these people are like, oh my God, yes, yes. And then she's inviting them to her Facebook group and getting them in. Yeah.

Um, so I'm thinking right now, so we have a business we're launching, uh, it's called Understand.me. You may know about it, it's a personality thing. But I'm trying to figure out, because I feel like that would be a really cool place to have a group because everyone in there sharing their like, here's my personality, here's my DISC, here's my 16, you know, it can be fun engagement anyway. But I'm just like, if I was to hire you to consult me, like, what would you look like? How would you, what would you try to do with something like that?

With a group like that? Well, I'd first want to identify, you know, who the exact target market of people that you want into the group. And then I would base, do some searches. First thing I always do when I tell anybody to do this is like, okay, think exactly who is the person looking for a group like that? Like, you know, What will they be thinking when they're searching in the search bar to join a community? Because everybody joins communities because they want to be with like-minded people, or they want like answers to questions. So you have to be and put yourself in their shoes. And then see when you put those, you know, that search in what hit groups, what's coming up, what groups are coming up, and then you could quickly see the ones with a lot of members. And the ones that, you know, maybe are flopping, and you just look, look and see. And you'll get an idea of what to name it because that's really important. The name, name is number one. And then your about section, you wanted to load it up with, you know, all the keywords related to the person, to the person that you're trying to target and to niche to. And so that would be the step number one, to create the group that way. And then once you have that, then you would, you know, again, you'd want to start, you know, drawing in people into the group, even through your personal profile. So doing the two-step post that I just spoke about, you do it on your personal profile, and the— where they're going to get whatever you're giving away on that concept will be inside that group.

So it'll drive people from your personal profile, the initial surge of people in there. Yeah, that's my fear is like you start an ad and like the first person like signs in, like they're the first member, it's like, oh right, right, right.

Yes, yes. Am I in the wrong spot here? Yeah, you want to actually plant some people in there first. You had to get the conversation going, and it— and people always want to talk about themselves. So if you have a group and you start asking them, you know, questions about, you know, in 3 words, what do you do? Like, people love to answer that. Or, you know, even where do you live? People, anytime you're getting them, each time they're like voting for your group because they're commenting or engaging, they're going to have, it's going to be more engagement. Facebook gets the signals. So this is a good group. This is something people want to see. I'll recommend it more. And that's where it really comes into, you know, getting your Facebook to do the work, the heavy lifting for you for free. Be showing your group, you know. And we did have, um, we were lucky and fortunate, we were one of the Facebook commercials, if you remember the commercials. Yeah, we did. We have, um, they asked me and they did, um, 2 or 3 versions of a commercial for us and even a radio spot, which I did the voiceover for, which was really exciting.

I'm curious, did you get traction from the radio and TV to the group? Were you able to see people coming in?

Yeah, I mean, I guess they were. Can we just get them so many members all the time? So, but it did— there was a little uptick in that time period. Yeah. When they were running the commercials, it was just really cool.

I remember that happened. I remember sitting there, I was watching TV and some ad came up for a Facebook group. Maybe it was me, but I was like, how crazy that Facebook's advertising groups on TV. I remember thinking that like, this must be something big that like we're not even aware of or not paying attention to if they're buying TV ads to promote it, which is interesting.

It's interesting because I was invited in 2019 before COVID early to the Facebook Community Summit. Event, which was at, in Menlo Park at Facebook. So, it was thrilling to actually be there. You know, I had to make a post, you know, I'm posting on Facebook while I'm at Facebook, right? And so, that was super cool. And so, they do those virtually now, but they were very invested in community. I think Zuckerberg had said at one point, you know, the heart of Facebook is the communities. And it, there's, I think, 1.8 billion people in Facebook groups. So, that's where, you know, you say, well, Facebook is for old people, or, you know, you get all of that, but people still go for groups and maybe your family and your But I think they get the most engagement from groups and that's why they've been invested in it.

Yeah. Now, next question I have is I'm thinking about logistically, like we have our big ClickFunnels group, right? Which is similar to your big group. And when you start talking about the fact that you have these little ones in different cities, I was like, oh, how cool that'd be if we had like Funnel Hacker meetups or Funnel Hacker or entrepreneur groups in each city. But I'm curious, how do you manage all that? Like one group's hard enough to manage. I can't imagine if we had 12 or 20 or 100, like how do you do it right now with all the multiple groups?

Well, I do have, you know, we have volunteers, that's your biggest thing is to get volunteers, a lot of my moderators just volunteer because they love the group. So in that case, for you, I mean, you have people volunteering to be leaders, like make them into a leadership position for, you know, who wants to be a leader for whatever town you're in, and then you facilitate that. And this is what, you know, you're going to moderate the group, you're going to spend X amount of time in the group per week. And then whatever perks you want to give them, you know, one of the things we did with, and this worked really well, was now when somebody posts, right, we have to approve every single post. So if you're not a paying member and you try to promote in the group, we have our moderators tell you, you know, you have to pay, but, but I let them give their affiliate link. Okay. So now when they decline posts, people are, oh, okay, I have to pay. And they're, they're joining. And so they're actually making money.

Oh yeah.

The moderators put, okay. Yes. And that motivates them. So they make money, they make a they're making good money by just putting— and it's exciting for them to decline people. Yeah, exactly. Yes, here's my link. Yes. So that's the motivation. Like, anytime you can motivate people by giving them any sort of perks or benefits to work for free.

Yeah, for sure. That's, that's really, really cool. Interesting. And then is there— do they say it's a smaller local— like you said you're doing an event in, you say, London? Yes, yes. That group either long-term, or is it something you're doing right now, getting people there and you're going to use that to do the thing and then you close it down, or keep running now indefinitely.

That's been there, that group, the UK group. It's a smaller group. I think it has about 3,000 people in it. And I haven't really paid much attention to it till now since until I'm doing an event in there. And now I'm, you know, engaging with the members and that's really important too. Now I'm spending time in there asking questions, you know, and, uh, one really powerful feature. I don't know if you guys use it in ClickFunnels group is the new chat feature for groups. I don't think we have. You might, you should look, you should probably do have the ability to, um, add a chat. Chat. And so for some reason, you know, you have a big group or not everybody's getting alerted to everything, but chats have cool feature with it. So you can invite like your most engaged members and there's like, you can click when you start the chat and it'll say, so invite the most engaged members of the group. What's really cool is the events for groups. They have a brand new feature that's in there. A lot of people don't know about. So when you know, you do an event through your group, so now you're, you have the event and you want to invite people. And there's a feature says invite people who are not in the group, which I've never seen before. So you can actually invite friends and stuff who are not actually in your group to this event. So how you could use that is if you want to get more group members, you know, you put the training again in the group that's for the event, the free training, and now you invite other people that are there and they can now go in and get in. And they also have a new feature in there called message friends, and it's in bulk. So if your friends friends in the group, you could pick all at once and send a personalized message through Messenger. So you can message a bunch of your friends.

Hey, is this just you as the admin, or is that each member internally can also do that?

Oh no, this is just the admin. That's for that. And the— and so that— and also, so the events have their own chat feature, and so does your group itself that you can get people in. And that gets a lot of talking. You have to be careful though, because people love to spam. Oh my God. You say no spamming. Oh, my business, my business, especially in the business world. It's yeah, I've shut a lot of them down.

Especially your people going there used to be no promote inside the group.

The ones who are not members, you know, they just want to spam, you know, because they think, oh, this is my opportunity, you know, which is not. Let's have conversations, right? But they could be great when people start talking, you know, in smaller groups, like when you get real conversations going, getting to know each other, and then they want to come back to the main group because because, you know, it's a value to them.

Interesting. I'm just thinking about in our world, we keep talking about like we want to break off and do local events all over the country and the world potentially anyway. But I was like, this weird chicken and the egg, like how do we do that? And how do we find the right person? And I'm just thinking through this, like how cool would it be if we did have— we started at the Facebook group level, we have all these different groups and find out which ones have the most activity or whoever's hosting, moderate, whatever it is. Could then we could start doing local events and have like, there's the group, it's already prebuilt. And then from there it's like, oh, we're gonna meet, we're all gonna hang out or whatever.

Oh, that is a great idea.

Which would be kind of, be kind of fun.

I love that. That is so powerful because then too, when you use, if you wanna even use the promote your group feature locally, like, like I did with Arizona, I just picked 3 little cities in Arizona close by and it was just like, boom, getting in these highly qualified people. And people love that. People wanna, you know, everybody feels like all zoomed out, right? We wanna get back in person. So by doing that in local communities and bringing ClickFunnels all over the country like that, that would be so powerful. It'd be really cool. Oh yeah, people would absolutely go crazy for that, 'cause then they can meet each other and network.

Yeah, and I don't know if you, do you know who Pace Morby is? Yes, yes, he's amazing. Pace is amazing. One of the coolest things he does is he has meetups happening all over. I don't know how he created, how he did it initially, but every weekend there's a meetup, like 50 or 60 of them around the country. And then he randomly will fly to each, to different ones. And so people have no idea if he's gonna come, and then if they do, he'll find the head coordinators. Like, I'm gonna be in Tampa tonight, tell everybody., he'll show up and there'll be 800, 1,000 people who all show up and he'll spend all day there hanging out. I was like, I wanna figure out how to replicate that. But again, it was like, how do we, how do we start building those groups initially? And I think that doing it through Facebook initially and seeing where the pockets of like inner excitement are at and stuff like that could be the, could be the way to do it.

You could see starting in like the major cities, you know, and you'll see which one, you know, which or which states, like I do, we do ours by states and just seeing which states are most active. Like we have, you know, ones with 6, 7,000, 5,000, you know, depending on, on the state or area.

So you have one in each state right now?

Now for years? Uh, not every single state, but the major ones. You know, we have Florida, Texas, California. We had— do have the small— I mean, we have so many of them.

Did Idaho make it?

Do we make the, the cut? No. Oh man, you're a man. I know we gotta make a man version. But yeah, the, um— but that would be phenomenal for you though, because I could see that, you know, people would really love to join their local, you know, uh, group in, say, Arizona, ClickFunnels Arizona group, and then have— knowing that you might show up would be like really cool.

Oh yeah, they'd be so excited.

Interesting.

Um, man, there's so many ideas that I'm like running through my head right now as we're talking. It's like hard to ask you questions. I'm thinking about how I can apply it. So, um, let me think some more. What are things am I maybe forgetting or not thinking about? Like if I, if I was going to go deeper, someone who's listening is just like, I want to go deep on this, I want to start creating my own group, group or groups. Like what are the other things that they're probably not thinking about?

Well, the power of other people's groups, right? So going into other people's groups and getting, you know, building your own group with And there's some, you know, I won't mention names of anything, but there's some really cool software. And I'm actually going to be white labeling one that actually does something really crazy. You can literally get like, go to a group and get all the members out, like their IDs and then run ads. So like, yeah, that's super cool. So you could literally go to a group. I'll give you an example. My daughter has a product for golden retrievers. It's called the Healthy Golden Supplement. So she needs health. She needs golden retriever owners, but That's a hard niche even with ads because it's like people like golden retrievers, but it doesn't mean they have one in their house. But there are Facebook groups for golden retriever owners. So she can go in there, go to the members list, and then it will import into a pipeline all of the members. And then she, you can export that, run it to Facebook, you know, to the Facebook ads, then use the promote group feature. Go in and invite all those people to your group. Oh, that's cool. So now you're getting in your group and they're exactly— I was all geeked out and excited. I was like, oh my gosh, I can do this. Oh my gosh. I'm like, this is like so awesome.

This should be illegal, right? Like, that is really, really cool. Now, do you go like, you have these groups, are you spending time in them? Are you posting? You do anything? Or is it just kind of all member-run, user-generated content at this point?

You know, it's very highly user-generated. The group. I do though, I do, you know, I'll do webinars or I'll do lives, you know, and like a lot of times I'll restream them back, you know, use Restream and stream to all the groups. Now unfortunately, that's going away and it's apps. Facebook's taking away all the apps for groups, all API. I don't know if you heard about that. So no more scheduling groups, no more Zoom live streams, restreams, unless they figure something out. There'll probably be a lot of go-arounds to that, but it's been a great feature to be able to do that. But you know, you could still use Live Producer. It's a little more complicated. That's Facebook's. Yeah. Facebook has Live Producer, which actually has some cool benefits on that too. Like you can pin a post. So when you go live, like your first comment has the link to your product and you can promote your groups automatically while you're going live with Live Producer. They, they ask you which group do you want to promote in your live? So there's some cool features with that as well.

With Live Producer, can you push to multiple groups at once or just one at each time?

You know, I've, I, I've been using it through, I think, well, you could still use something like Restream with, because you put that key in, that RTMP key. So I think you could still use a software like you were talking about, Live Pigeon or like, or Restream. You probably can still use that. Um, you just can't like go through an app, like inside of it, you know how you add all the apps to your group? You're not gonna be able to do that.

Gotcha. Which, yeah, very cool. Now I know when people do join a Facebook group, you ask the question, get them on an email list. I'm assuming that's a big part of your strategy is building this whole process as well. And then is your goal with that to put— you push people back into the group, do you push them just the membership or what's, what's the strategy with the list you're building on the back side?

Well, you always want to push them, you know, always back to your group for engagement. Like, and even if you're doing a training or anything in the group, you want to, you know, get them back in, say it's inside the group. And one of the things I tell people to use like a deep link thing like URL Genius to like cloak it so that when— so frustrating, you get that email, oh, meet me in the group, and you open it and now you're not logged in. You're like, oh, forget it. I forgot my password. Right? So that like will get you right in. So that's really great. But yeah, so like another thing we've been doing lately is, you know, with pipelines is taking people from the group when they're new members, and then tagging them. You know, you can do your automatic tagging where Facebook gives you the tag. So we put that in Admin Assist now. So it does it automatically. So every 200 members, it just puts the post out. And we do mention like our membership, listen, this is the rules, you can't promote, but if you want to promote, here's, and here's our newsletter. And then the other thing we do is have the VA go in and go and tag them in the welcome to the group video as well. So they're getting new members are getting hit twice there. And then we can DM them them as well and welcome them and then give them a lead magnet. Oh, we got, you know, this automated webinar or something we give them to get them in and move them through the pipeline. So that's the way to get them on the backend is to use, you know, to use something like that. Yeah.

That's awesome. Um, man, I like literally so excited right now to go like relook at our, again, we don't have a group strategy right now. Then we've got a big group and we're trying to moderate and like spam, keep people, stop spamming, trying to do stuff. But it's like, it's almost like it's been chaos. Like Parv's like, wish we could shut this thing down. 'cause we didn't know how to use it as an asset correctly, you know what I mean? And it's a huge asset. Yeah, it could and it should. I mean, there's more members in our Facebook group than we have members using the platform. So it's like, how do we get these people to become users of the platform and how do we buy them, get them buy in more into our culture and all that kind of stuff? And right now it's just been more reactionary of just like, what did we create? And we didn't promote it either. Like it was literally when we first launched ClickFunnels, we never support people to handle support. So it was like ClickFunnels support group. Like if you have a question, post in here, we can all members help each other. That's how it started. Now we're at 350,000 members, whatever. Like, oh, what do we do? We don't know what to do at this point. You know, there's so many people coming in spamming and it's just been a, oh, the spam. Just to keep it going.

Oh yeah. Really hard. Yeah. And that's been an issue with Facebook groups in general. Like you'll see those Telegram spammers and stuff too. And like, you're like, how did these people get in? Like you wonder, like I've heard they're using, you know, bots, they're using AI to get in. Like there's, they steal profiles. So that's a thing we deal with on, on a basis too, as you And we always ask the members report the spam because sometimes they'll block the admins and all the moderators. And then you won't know. And then the members have to tell us, we'll say, have you, you know, because we can't remove them until somebody reports them and then we can see it. So yeah, it's a whole thing. Yeah, that's a whole thing. But it's still such a great opportunity for the new members coming in, you know, to put them through a process where, you know, you have to have that you're moving them along and you're, you know, getting them from the get-go and giving them new resources and exciting things so they can learn ClickFunnels.

Yeah, so interesting. I was thinking about the people that are doing all the spamming and stuff. Like, if you just took the same effort and ingenuity and just sold legitimate things, you'd be the best marketers on the planet. Like, right, all the loopholes they have to go through to like to spam people, which then it's like the, the success rate on that kind of stuff can't be that high.

Oh my gosh, yeah, it's like, um, Mr. James says, uh, there's a— and they, you know, contact him. It's like crazy stuff that they put there, like like, you know, it's like so spammy and like everybody knows that's spam, but then there'll be people who comment on that. I'm like, no, oh my gosh, come on. How did you fall for that? Yeah, how did you fall for it? Like, you know, it's something people do, unfortunately.

Yeah, so cool. I think this is awesome because I think, again, we're in a world right now, at least for us, where it's like Zuckerberg's charging so much money for ads. We're trying to figure out other ways, other things to do. And, um, and so for us it's been, you know, we've been redoubling down all the organic things we're trying to, you know, focusing on an email list and stuff like that. And so, uh, this is just such a unique different thing. And again, I haven't met anyone in our community who's really crushing it with groups besides you. So it's been fun to see you, to like watch what you're doing and understanding it. And, and so this has been super helpful for me to kind of figure out some ideas how we can, we can, you know, take the asset we have and actually monetize it correctly. Then secondarily is like, what's the future? Like, how could we create, you know, like we talked about the groups or things like that, or even just some of our other businesses that are coming in, you know, with, with our personality profiling company or with Dan Kennedy's company, like creating them. I've always looked at groups as like such a powerful tool, but also one that's like so scary that we just kind of like, it's like a necessary evil that we're not You know, we have somebody dedicated to it.

I mean, definitely even with Secrets of Success, you've got all the mindset people. That's a whole niche in itself. And that should be a community, a Facebook group for that, because those are all people loving to talk about law of attraction and all. I even have a small little group for that, just I'd made for fun, just for talking about, you know, like your future self and law of attraction and manifesting. And those people are very active and there's less— they're not spammers either. Those people just want to talk about— and that's the whole thing. It's like we have to understand that people are in groups for community. So as marketers, we always want to be marketing, or I see the mistake coaches will make when they start a group, it's they'll make it all about them. It's one-sided, and then people lose interest in the group. It's got to be user-generated. Members have to be interacting and being allowed to, you know, speak and to be able to have the, you know, connect with other people, because that's the reason that they're going to groups. They don't care so much about, you know, the group itself, but then they will see your stuff. And then if it's an enjoyable place, they'll buy. So it's gotta get a little bit of a different, you know, it's, it's really creating a community. That's the, the main thing with it.

Are there people, uh, like you can hire someone to run Facebook ads, you can hire someone to, you know, to run social media. Are there people that, is that a thing where people can hire people to run Facebook groups for you to manage them, do all the, all the stuff you're talking about?

Or is something, it's different where most people are just doing it on their own? I mean, it depends on what level, like on your own, as far as strategy-wise would be, you know, at a higher level. But like, as far as moderation, yeah, they have like, even you go on Fiverr, Fiverr. I mean, I had got two, two moderators from Fiverr who were— I've wanted— I took both of them off and they both work for me. Yeah. They, they'll say I'm a Facebook group moderator and they've experienced doing that, like moderating, approving. Oh yeah. There's people out there who would definitely do that, or Upwork that you could find that they've worked with other groups. They know how to do it. And those are the ones, you know, you'd want to, you know, vet and make sure they have good ratings and stuff and bring in. So you don't have to worry about, like, I don't touch any of that anymore, thank gosh. Yeah, because when originally, but they didn't even have— now we have software that puts the group members right into, you know, uploads them, puts them to, um, you know, wherever you want to send them the emails. But when it started, I had my hand— I would sit there for hours taking each group member, putting their name, their email address in a spreadsheet. Really? Until my hand was ready to, you know, be— oh yeah, it was terrible. Yeah, until then, like, GroupFunnels came out and this and that where it just shoots everything up. And there's so many different softwares that do that now, which makes life a lot easier, especially when you're getting a lot of members. So a lot of it could be automated actually with the technology that we have now, thankfully.

Man, that's so cool. So the moderators you're paying from Fiverr and stuff, do you still pay them or do you just give them the affiliate commission when they're promoting stuff or both?

Oh, well, the two I have, they do, um, those two don't get the affiliate, they do more, um, other things in the business too. So like we have, you know, we have two people just do approvals, uh, the moderators who like moderate and, um, approve or decline posts, those are the ones that do the, get the affiliate commission because they're in there like having to review because every single post has to be reviewed. So when you're getting a massive amount, it's a lot of work. So, you know, their incentive, they don't get paid. They get, they make money, you know, getting commission. Yeah.

On the back end, are they able to see who's a paid member versus a free member when they're seeing the reviews? Like, is there a way to see that?

They have to manually look at each person. So like, um, all of our paid members get a pre-approval. And we also make them group experts. So they've got the group expert badge. That's how they know that. Yeah. And then they know too, like they're supposed to put, um, for standout member, they put SOM in the post. So because other members will start reporting them for spam, but they're allowed to promote. So they put that, you know, at that little tag, but they love and forget to do that. So, yeah, but yeah, you want to identify too who's, you know, but the, the moderators, you know, will know that those people are on that list. You know, in the backend of Facebook, you can see who was, who has preapproval and who doesn't.

Is it possible, like if someone, like they cancel their $197 membership, that automatically will, uh, downgrade or whatever? Or that is it like a manual thing?

Someone's gotta go, oh, we gotta manually go in. Oh yeah. Yeah. We gotta, especially, you know, with memberships, you know, people took credit cards or they don't pay and then you gotta go in and yeah, you gotta go in and, and what we'll do is like, you You know, it's— will you say they haven't paid and they still post? So we'll take the post down, we'll put the note for them, you gotta update your billing, you know. So it's a whole other beast. Yeah, somebody doing that whole process in the back. Oh yeah, yeah. Well, you know, that's with continuity, you know, recurring membership. That's the part of the— part of the business, right? Especially with mine, we have to manually go and take away the pre-approval when they cancel. So yeah, it's not— that's—

yeah, it's not fun. Oh, it's so cool. Well, thank you so much for sharing this stuff. I think hopefully for anyone who's like struggling on traffic, struggling, especially people who are just getting started, it's like, I can't afford afford to pay $10 a lead to Facebook, right? It's like, hey, we'll make a group, start getting people in there, and all of a sudden leads are coming in for free or really inexpensive. And then it gives people the ability to have an audience to actually sell to and to talk to.

Exactly. Yeah, you just go out, you know, get your group, start off small, get— bring the right people. Don't worry about making it giant. Target, niche it, create it for the group, and then go into other groups where you can. You know, there's a lot of ones that do allow paid memberships. There's ones that don't that you can ask the moderator, hey, I'll pay you, you know, you even, you know, buy Facebook groups. I don't know if that's legal for, you know, Facebook, but people do it, you know, they buy Instagram accounts and stuff too. You get access to it through a business or something, you know, that's— I know people have done that and actually got built-in audiences that way. But going to, you know, going to other groups that you can and with your target market and inviting them to your group is just a really powerful way to, to grow your group.

And through your personal profiles, Wow. Yeah, such a cool thing. Again, I think it's like one of the best, like, let's get started strategies right out of the gate. Like everyone that should be like, create a group, start getting people in there. Now you have an audience. That's the biggest problem people have with me is like, I bought, I created this, I built a funnel, I created a product and like I have no one to sell to and like I can't buy ads, can't afford them yet. What should I do? And I'm like, so that's the hardest part, right? The hardest part is like, as you're creating your product, create the group right now. Start, start building it, start nurturing it. Tell stories about what you're studying or whatever it is that gets them excited about your content, your concept. And then at that point, by the time your stuff's done, there'll be, there'll be people who can actually, who will care, right?

Exactly. And that's the thing, you know, like you just said, telling the stories, getting to know people in your group and not worrying that, you know, like people have, we have this thing, oh my gosh, only 100 people saw my reel. Or, well, if 100 people were in your living room right now, would you think that's a little bit amount? Even 50 people, you'd be like, wow, if you were in person. But everybody has these hangups and they don't pay attention. They don't interact back. And I think that's, you know, if you have a very tiny group, you can still do very well with that and grow it. You just have to nurture and spend your time and give tons of value to the people that are there who are showing up and, you know, and make it about them more than you in the beginning so that it like, you know, they become interested and want to come back and give them tons of value.

Yeah, that's really cool. Oh, you got me excited. Okay. Every business, we're going back, re-engineering our group strategy. It's going to become a big central focus.

Oh, I can see it. Especially the local groups that once you run the promote to group ad, like getting people in there locally, I mean, it's so easy to do to people who like the certain interests that, you know, already, and you just run those ads right to the group. Group because it's, it's like it just says join group on the ad. They're not going to a funnel, they don't have to give their email address. All they do is press the button and they're in the group. So I think it's, it's easy. Lower—

you almost run the group like that because our big question too is like, do we find someone in Arizona and in Florida to, to do it? But it's almost like you create the group and then I'm assuming those people rise to the top, right? They're the ones who are commenting, who are moderating, who are always there. It's like, right, they— you find out who the leaders are by them being a leader versus, you know, I have a friend who does something similar but he sold access, people were buying their cities, but then the person who bought the city wasn't actually the person who was good at running it or anything. They saw the opportunity. And so like the whole thing crumbled because he had the wrong people. Whereas this way around, I feel like you could do that. And also you start seeing who the rock stars are and then you can approach them like, hey, do you wanna run local meetups now? Or, you know, whatever that version is.

Yeah, you'll see who the people rise. Yeah, you always see that in groups, who's commenting all the time, who's posting, who's, you know, the natural leaders will. And then you could approach them and say, listen, would you, you know, like to be the leader and they'd probably be thrilled. And then, you know, and then if, or you, it didn't necessarily, yeah, you could find the locally, which is great cuz then they live there and then they can do the meetups and find the locations and be the ambassador for that city and town. And it's a great benefit for them because it puts them in a position of authority. Give them a badge to put, you know, that they're the official ambassador or leader.

You give each of those ambassadors the, the right to like use their affiliate links for ClickFunnels or whatever to all the members. Like you sign up everybody now and you're, whatever. Oh yeah.

All those, that could be cool. Right. Their events, that could be the goal. See, that would be the key. Like, literally the event they're having, they sign everybody up that night, and now they're getting all the affiliate commission on it. So that's more, even more motivating. So cool.

All right, I got to go home now and just work on this. Like, this is number one thing. So, uh, well, thank you so much for sharing all this stuff. So those— if anyone wants to see your group in action, where can they— how can they go find it?

What's the best— Sure. So the group, you just go to womenhelpingwomen. .group, and, uh, that's where you'll find Women Helping Women Entrepreneurs. That's another tip: get a URL for your group.

I know there's a.group extension now.

That's— there's a.group extension, so everyone should have one for your group, um, because this way you can shout it out without the, you know, Facebook slash—

nobody remembers. So— oh, that's awesome. And if you're a man, you can't get in the group, I'm assuming.

You just boot us out. No men.

Yeah, we are all—

my wife's coming in there. Yes, you could. But you could have any woman come come in to represent you.

Yes, we— that's allowed. That's awesome, man. Well, thank you so much for coming and sharing this stuff. And, um, yeah, I'm excited for you. I'm proud of you. Like, it's the coolest thing in the world to see. And, um, and, um, yeah, hopefully if anyone wants to learn how to do this, follow her, watch what she's doing. Do you teach this to other entrepreneurs as well?

Do you have programs teaching this stuff? Oh yeah, definitely. I have different courses that I— and programs that I teach of how to grow, you know, um, 7-figure communities and Facebook groups. So yeah, I definitely teach this all in, in detail. I geek out on all this stuff. This is like, oh my gosh, you can do this, you can do that. All the tools are coming out and how to use them and all that kind of stuff. Oh yeah. That's the fun part. Trying to hunt them down and think of what you can do because you know, Facebook's always changing social media. So you gotta keep on top of it.

Yeah. That's awesome. Thanks so much for being here. Appreciate you. And thanks for sharing this and everyone looking for a way to get traffic to your funnels, building an audience ahead of time for free groups, the way to go. Christina is one who I know who's doing the best. So thanks so much for being here.

Appreciate it. Thank you, Russell. This is wonderful. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks.