When your business idea isn’t perfect from the beginning…

Get ready, because everything is about to change. There's a new way of living life and doing business that will blow your mind. This is a podcast all about the timing of life and the timing of success. It's what we call the Right on Time life. And you are listening to the Right on Time podcast with Amber McHugh. Zach Spockler. Welcome to the Right on Time podcast.

Hey, Amber, thanks so much for having me.

Oh my gosh, it's always such a pleasure. And I truly mean that. Every, like, little message, we, whenever we trade messages, whatever, any communication with you is just always a joy. So thank you for being here.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

We. You've got good stuff going on in your world world right now, I like to think. Yeah, I feel like you do. It's fun to watch. It's fun to see you in action. We've known each other. How long have we. We knew each other.

We were in astronaut six or seven years now.

Before that?

Yeah. Yeah, at least seven years.

I love watching these memory lanes. Seven years. That is wild. And in that time, you have changed your business model a good bit. You, you moved a good bit. So before we dive into like, what's working now, give us a little bit of your, your history of your journey and evolution in running and growing your business.

Yeah. So my name is Zach Speckler. My company is Heart, Soul and Hustle. And we basically work with digital based businesses that want to scale with Facebook ads and automation and launches. So my business has really evolved. I started back on Periscope. If anybody remembers Periscope, super old school U. We built that up. We had like 20,000 followers and everything was great. And then one day Twitter was like, we are buying Periscope and also we're shutting it down. And things really changed pretty dramatically after that. We really didn't do as much live video content. We started relying not exclusively, but very heavily on advertising. I've been a big advertiser with Facebook for seven or eight years now. And things were going really, really well. We had built it up. We had courses on automation, we had automated webinars. Everything was going super great. And I woke up one day and was like, this is really not fun anymore. Um, I do not enjoy this. I don't know what it is. It's just not lighting me up. And we took our email list of about 20,000, trimmed it down to four. Um, we stopped selling our courses completely. Um, we switched to an agency only model where we were one on one service provider. We hired a small team and after doing that for about a year and a half, I was like, you know what, I'm. I went from one extreme to the other of like completely reliant on launches to now I'm completely reliant on service based. And what we ended up doing was creating kind of a hybrid model. So now we have low ticket courses, we have a membership, we have a quarterly coaching program. The quarterly coaching program is our most expensive thing and our membership is only 50 bucks a month. So we're primarily low ticket in our kind of one to many services. We're mid ticket in our small group coaching and we have a cap on that. So that's not like a, it's not like a big revenue generator for us. I do it because I like it. I like to be plugged in. It's not a bad revenue generator, but it's really not, you know, it's not. The majority of our revenue is not our high ticket products. And then we still have the agency side of things. So now we've trimmed our agency down to we work with seven to 10 people at a time. I have a small team that manages that with me. There's crossover in the courses to the agency team. So the whole team kind of knows what's going on in the whole business. And now we rely really heavily on services, membership and coaching to really create what I consider like a rounded out portfolio. So I'm an open book, you can ask me anything you want. We have gone through evolution of like purely course, no coaching, mastermind. Like if you can sell it online. We've tried it and I think we've arrived at a model that we really, really enjoy.

This is so cool to hear this journey, this evolution. There are so many people I talk to who at some point in their business journey, whether it's online or not. This is not fun anymore. I need to change something. And what gave you the courage to like, no, I'm going to shut it down?

No. It's funny because I don't necessarily think I have the courage. I mean I did because I did it, but it was really funny because I switched from. I was like, I'm getting rid of my list. I trimmed it down and we actually moved right around that time. We moved from Ohio to California for a little while and like, I don't know, four weeks after we moved, Facebook shut down my account and I couldn't advertise, I couldn't access anything. I was like locked out. We had just been like, we're going to go all in on, on agency. And, and I couldn't use my account, I couldn't advertise my past business. I couldn't advertise. Like we actually ended up losing our page. We had about 21,000 likes on our first business page. We ended up just losing it. Um, we can still post on it, but we can't advertise. And as you might know, Facebook organic reach is non existent for most people. Um, so that was really scary. But I think the big thing is like, you know, just realizing that like once you develop the skill to generate revenue, like that is a skill you can't lose. Right? So maybe you have to change your approach. Maybe you do have to do Instagram or you do have to do more with TikTok. But once you understand the fundamentals of like, yeah, I can make money selling something. Like that is a skill set. And so that is one kind of through line that I've seen with everything we've done is like whether I have to do a sales call and sell something really high ticket, whether I have to do a webinar and sell something one to many, whether I have to set up an automated funnel. Like those are skills that you can just apply to anything. Um, and I know that because we also, I know, you know, we had a small candle business that we ran for a little while, um, and we're actually working on a new e commerce business, um, with some family members. We all bought into a, a new startup that we're doing and you know, that was a really cool experience. It was, I won't lie, physical products are not as lucrative as digital products. There's overhead, there's time involvement, there's making product. Um, but it was really cool to do because we ended up building that company up a little bit over the course of a year and then being bought out. And that was pretty cool. Just kind of seeing like, look, no matter what, like if I have to go sell widgets on the corner, I can do that. You know, that was a really big lesson for us. And so that I think is the courage that's developed over time is like you can, there's always more. And I think, I know. We're mutual friends with Denise Duffield Thomas. She likes to say there's always more money. You know, it's really easy to get caught up in like this. I have to do it this way and I have to do it that way, but there's always more money. There's always someone somewhere willing to pay for something. And as long as we develop the Skills to sell something quality. I don't think you can lose.

Zach, I love that you're saying this. And I think the same thing as if you think about, like, the running of a business, like team communication, team management, structure, strategy, all of these skills apply in so many different ways. So whether somebody decides not to run a business anymore or whether you decide to change businesses, it's all transferable. I've had people say to me, like, I don't know how to do anything else. I'm like, okay, no, let's break it down. Like, you have the talent to do anything. And sometimes I think the harder part is deciding what do I want to do even within our businesses. Like, okay, I can run a membership. I can go high end. I can. Yeah, you have choice. And that sometimes makes it harder. How do you sort. How did you end up at and decide? All right, high end, low ticket, relatively speaking membership model, how did you come to those decisions through this trial and error period?

Yeah. So, you know, one of the things that we started thinking about is like, what, what do I struggle with in the industry and. Or what do I not love about the industry? Or what do I think people are starting to kind of be pressed about in the industry? And for us industry, it's really high ticket, low value delivery. Right. And it took me a while to really get clear on what that is, because when I started, I was very much like, why is everything so expensive and why is everything high ticket? And my message was very much like, speaking to the masses in the sense of, like, people don't want to spend crazy amounts of money when they're starting their business. Right. And that's just the reality of it. But I've really refined, I think, that messaging into. It's not that I'm not demonizing high Ticket. We have a quarterly coaching program that's multiple four figures every 90 days. Right. So I think when we started, we were very much like demonizing the high ticket model. And we don't really do that anymore. Now we're like, look, the reality is that you're at different points of your business and your journey, and not everybody wants to sell high ticket. And what I realized was that a lot of high ticket programs are selling the high ticket model. Again, nothing wrong with that if that's what you want to do. But what we kind of realized is that a lot of people are falling into like this sirens call of like, we'll just book a $5,000 client. Even if you've never coached before, even if you've never. Even if. Even if, even if. And we said, well, some people just like, are either doing one of two things. They're either sacrificing their personal integrity in a way that feels bad because they're like, I don't know what a $5,000 program looks like, right? We're not saying $5,000 programs aren't worth it or aren't bad. I'm in a $30,000 a year mastermind right now, and I have no issue with it. But I've been working with a person who's been doing it for years and knows what that experience looks like and has a team and has live events and does all this stuff. That's what I realized is that some people feel like they're sacrificing their personal integrity because selling really high ticket is the only way to go. And two, we realize that a lot of people feel a lot of pressure when they have to sell high ticket because it's like, oh my gosh, this person just paid me thousands of dollars. Now I've got to deliver. And we said, well, what if there was something that met people where they were and kind of challenged what we call, like, the high ticket phenomenon, right? Like, everybody and their. Their mother is doing one of two things. It's either buy my $37 product or buy my $10,000 coaching program where I'm going to show you how to sell $10,000 coaching. And we said, there has to be a middle ground. And that's kind of where the idea for our membership came from, is like, what if we just made something super accessible for people relatively early in business that are looking to create consistency and growth that they could access? So accessibility became really important to us. The other thing is, like, we. We had a team meeting and I jokingly said, like I talked who use like, the three eyes impact, income influence. You know, like, everybody wants to have the impact income influence. And then they're like, I just want to impact as many people as possible. And they do things that are counterproductive to that statement, right? Like, oh, I want to impact as many people as possible, but my program's only open for three days a year. Or, I want to impact as many people as possible, but it's 10k to work with me, and that's the only way to work with me. And hopefully that ripples out, right? And we said, well, if impact really is one of our goals, then we have to reach more people directly with our product. And so having a more accessible price point makes that possible. I'LL wrap all this up with a pretty bow to say that we also have the volume. We have the volume and we have the budget. And I do know that that is a big part of it. We also have the service side of our business, which we do charge 2 to $3,000 a month. That has made it possible. But now we have our membership built up to a level where it pays well. We take a lot of that money and invest it right back into list building and we're just consistently driving people into our ecosystem. And the really cool thing that I love about being a little more accessible and low ticket is the pressure is off to make it this phenomenal, five star, incredible experience. Now are we still doing things to try to make it that? Absolutely. But let me tell you something. Like something that we're working on internally is like sending out postcards to people after they've been in our membership for six months that are just like, thanks for being a member. We're so excited to have you. Doesn't cost an arm and a leg, but it's like that's something you would expect from a program you've spent way more money on. Right. So any basically in little tongue in cheek. But it's super easy to over deliver because people have really lower their expectations of what they're going to get at a lower price point. In my industry. Right. It's different for every industry, but it's like that's what we love about it. We can show up a few times a month and inside of our membership community at 50 bucks a month and people really appreciate the time and energy that we put in.

Okay, this is so good. You're hitting on so many things and the first thing that comes to mind is how in alignment you are with your beliefs, your values and how you keep. And as for as long as I have known you, you've been excellent at this, but you keep your pulse on what does the market need and want.

Yeah.

And I don't think this, the name.

Of your membership is not your average membership.

And where can we find it?

Join.not your average membership.com.

Perfect. Because I bet there are some people who are like, okay, I want to learn more about this, I want to dig in more. So go there to check this out. And of course we'll link all of this up as well. But you know, when you were first building this, we had some conversations. You're like, this needs to be different. This is what people are looking for. You see it so clearly and you align these things so Clearly. And so what. What are you looking at? What are you asking yourself? What process do you go through to look at? All right, this is what the market needs right now. Because whether it's in our marketing, we're not changing our offer, or whether you are, in fact designing a new offer, you have to be able to listen and tap in to. To what your clients and customers are looking for. So how do you do this so well, Zach?

Yeah, I mean, I think the one thing is we just. We pay attention to what people are saying, right? And I think that sometimes when it comes to, like, market research, we think like, oh, I have to, like, survey my audience or ask my list. And I'm just honestly, in a lot of Facebook groups, and I pay attention to how people receive the messages that we put out there. So it's little things like watching open rates and download rates on certain podcast episodes. Like, we did this podcast episode called the 15 Minute Funnel Fix. And people, we're like, this is so good. I love it. We got great feedback. And that, to me, was like this big indicator that's like, oh, people care about funnels, right? Whether I think they're important or not, or I agree with the industry on how they work, people care about it. So it would benefit me to talk about that. So, like, one, the membership concept this month in May is like how to evergreen an offer, right? So people care about it. Evergreen funnel. We're using keywords. That's what people want. The other thing that I'll say is, like, I do like having a coaching program, and the membership has made it easier because people literally post like, this is what I'm stuck on. And I think a lot of times we get hung up on what we're good at versus learning, where people are stuck. And I know that stuck really is like an overplayed word. Like, I don't like to use stuck in my marketing, but it's like, from a conceptual point, where are people telling you, like, I can't figure this out, or, this is my big struggle. And you can observe, you know, you can do anything. You can do competitor analysis and see what they're selling. I don't do a ton of competitor analysis, mostly because there's so many competitors now that it's like, I don't know what's working and what's not working. But there are times where you can tell from the outside that something is just going gangbusters, and I will lean into that. So if I see someone who's like, I just welcomed my thousandth person into my program, I'm like, okay, what are they doing? How are they running it? Where are they working? I also stay really connected to, you know, people in the industry. So I'm not afraid to hop on a call and just chat with somebody and, and I am mindful of my time. So I'm not saying everyone who reaches out and is like, let's connect. But when I know, like, you know, I've got a friend of mine who was like, oh, I'd love to hire you for an hour to like work on the messaging for my launch. And I was like, don't hire me. Like, let's just chat for an hour. We're peers, by the way. I don't know why they offered to hire me. They were just being really generous. But I was like, yeah, let's get on the phone and or a zoom call. Because I know that with that call I'm going to be able to learn about their audience who's very similar to my audience. And we can brainstorm and I can ask questions. And so there's like understanding what your peers are doing, understanding what your competitors are doing, and understanding what your audience is doing. And honestly, there's just this level of skill to it, right? So it's like, it's like painting or riding a bike. You're not going to just decide one day to be amazing at it. This is something I've been doing in this current business for almost eight years now. And so I just pay attention now. Like it's, it's become second nature that I can see and I'm not afraid to test. So if I do something and it sucks, I'll deliver on it, but then I won't do it again. Right? And we've done that. We did. It wasn't bad. We actually generated five figures in revenue. But for me, it was not what I wanted to happen. We did a little launch for a six week boot camp and we wanted to get 75 people. We got 30. We generated about 10k in revenue. And I was like, man, this is way underperforming what I thought it was going to perform based on the size of our list and the offer and how dialed in I thought everything was. And I said, well, that just tells me that the offer is not on point and we have to tweak it and change it and correct it and course correct. And so if we launch it again, we will change up our sales page and our messaging and our positioning and you know, we wouldn't know that if we didn't try it. So there's also this element of, like, trial and error. We say business is just a big experiment. And we, we. I think we had a mutual friend. I can't remember who said it, but I feel like you were there when somebody said it was like, no one person or one thing is going to ruin your business. So it's like, whatever happens, if you're like, I did this big launch and it sucked or it failed or it was terrible, it's like, that's not the end all be all. It's just one little stepping stone along the way.

Oh, I love this. We actually talk about that within our team structures. People are worried, like, oh, man, I don't know what to do. I don't know how to do this. What if I mess it up? You're not going to mess. In the construct of what we are doing, there is nothing you can mess up so bad that it is going to break everything. And if we get to that point, know that. And this is where actually, I think coaches, mentors, guides are excellent to have someone copy colleagues that you're collaborating with around these things. And then within the construct of our business, with our team, there's no way I'm going to let someone do something so off the chart.

Absolutely.

Like, we're watching, we're connected, we're plugged in, and same thing. You know, one of the things that I wonder if you do that I do is when we're testing something new or like, for us, for example, at the time that this podcast airs, we will have completed our spring launch. And consistently, I'm sort of foreseen into the future. This launch will be excellent. This season, enrollment will be excellent. But I know that it will not be more excellent than our fall season and our fall sort of model because we just do things differently. It is something. The plan a thon is our fall event, and it is just bigger and we pour more into it and we hype it up more. So I have this knowing that, okay, you know, this knowing that things are going to do different, do things different, perform differently. And I plan for that. I build that into my forecast. I think that through. So I'm wondering, how do you sort of like, okay, I'm closing this business, I'm opening this new one. I don't know, how is it going to work? How do you sort of forecast your. Your financials and your thinking around, like, no, it's really going to be fine.

Yeah. I think the biggest thing is we are relatively mindful of our Financials. Now, realistically, I am in my. Oh, my gosh, I almost said early 20s. Now I'm in my late 20s, which people listening are probably like, shut up. But I, you know, I can be personally a little reckless. I do. Like, I'm still at that young age where, like, I like, you know, nice things and I'm still a little materialistic. But when it comes to the business, we're pretty mindful of our. Of our money and how things look. We use profit for first, and that's been really, really helpful. I also have, like, a backup savings account separate from the business. And I guess it's not really a backup. It's just my savings account that I keep a couple of months, you know, emergency cash in. And my thing is, like, I don't necessarily stress as much because I built a safety net. And, you know, when I first started business, there was this. Oh, my gosh. People used to say it constantly. I haven't, I haven't heard it in the last few years, but people used to say, oh, just burn the boats. Just burn the boats. Just, you know, go all in. Because if you give yourself no choice to succeed but to succeed, then you can't fail. And I was never really a big subscriber to that belief. I was kind of like, well, you know, if no one's chasing you, which the actual story is about, you know, people who. There was a battle and a war. I don't know the exact specifics, but they basically showed up. They had to cross the sea to get there. And then the. The general basically burned the boats. So their only way to leave was to win. And I was like, yeah, but you're not me. You're like, we're not at war with ourselves. We're not. No one's going to kill you if you mess up, right? So why not give yourself a safety net? So when I switched the business, I had a pretty healthy safety net. And I did eat into it a little bit when we were first getting started and figuring out how we were going to get clients and what that was going to look like. And that was all fine. And I think so many people have this mentality that's like, oh, you've got to be all in. If you even give yourself the possibility of an escape, you'll take it. And it's like, I think that's more about grit, right? Are you willing to just put the energy and effort in and take the risks? Right. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Like I said earlier, we're starting a secondary e commerce business. And I'm like, maybe it'll work, maybe it won't, but I'm going to take the risk. Right. And it takes some funding. Right. We aid into. This is super nerdy, but for, for tax purposes, we're loaning money from Hartzell and Hustle to a new business entity to start the business. So that's an expense and a contribution, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it basically means that Heart, Soul and Hustle has a little bit less money in it than I would like, but it's to take a calculated risk on something new. And so I think that's what it comes down to is those three things. One, having a clear revenue system like profit first, two, building yourself a safety net, and three, taking calculated risks. We don't, we don't go into a new launch or a new product going, this is so good. I'm going to throw $15,000 at the launch. We go, okay, I feel really good about this idea. Let's try to get 10 to 15 people in. Let's test things out. We can always scale later. And one last thing I'll say is, I think so often we see the big flashy numbers and we see the people with the new car and we see the people who bought the house and we're like, I want that and I want it now. And it's okay. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter how old you are listening to this. You've probably got more than a couple good years left in you, I'm hoping. And like, a lot can happen over the course of a couple of years. So, like, when we started our membership, we were, I was like, we just need to hit this number and we need to do it. And I want to hit this by this day. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we're definitely taking steps to achieve that. We're being aggressive. But I'm like, I'm not going to kill myself or my team to try and hit X number of people in the membership by this date. If, like, yeah, I want, like, we're at about 335 members right now. We want to hit 500 by June, but I'm not going to launch seven times in two quarters the first two quarters of the year trying to achieve that. Because I'll be unhappy. My team will be unhappy. I'll be trying to balance like all these launches with client work. Like, it's just not worth it to me. So I get like, I get that I'm spoiled In a sense that I get to say that and I recognize that, but I also worked my butt off to be a little spoiled. So, you know, it's just this element of, like, setting yourself up with, with financial and psychological safety and then doing things that feel good to maintain that is kind of, I think, what we've been able to do.

Yeah, I love this. And, you know, you said you worked your butt off, but you also took the steps to learn and understand, okay, this is how I want to run my business. You're making hard choices, you're evaluating the options and stepping into it. And sometimes, I mean, you just. I feel like part of it feels like you have a knack for this, and then also you step into it, learn. And that's one of the things that I see. Like people will step into things and not look to learn how to actually run a business. I know we've talked about this and we talk about the elements of running a business, and you get it. You get these elements and these are the things, the skills that you can take with to absolutely any business.

Yeah.

You also said something else that really struck me about the burn the boats. I'm not a burn the boats person either. That causes me levels of stress and anxiety. That there's an element that gets my adrenaline going, but then I cannot sustain. I, a coach of mine who I absolutely loved very, very, very early on in my business, adore her, but she would say, you got to hustle like you need crack. I'm like, I don't want crack. I don't want.

That.

I can't. No, no. This is not aligned for me. So you've got to find what it is and see that way forward for yourself and match things up. Which makes me ask you a question. This leads me to another question for you. You've got the membership going, you've got a high end. You've got these two things to look at, because you've looked at, okay, what does the market need? Where can I support my community, my audience? And you've also been running and ads, your Legion ads about Legion and how to do Legion. What is this? Because I know that a lot of people are in that space of. To your point, you've grown your audience, you've grown your community. You have built this up over time. And some of us, we're in any number of phases. Some people are at the beginning of this as we listen, other people have built it up. But we're hitting a stuck point because the landscape is changing online. So where are you seeing success in that? And what's that lead gen strategy all about?

Yeah, so one thing that we've started doing is running what are called Facebook lead gen ads or lead generation ads, which are very similar to like your typical drive people to a landing page, they opt in. Now they're on your email list, except all the opt in sign up page, you know, thank you page. All happens on Facebook. These are called Facebook lead forms. And if you'd have asked me like a year, two years ago, like, when they first rolled out, I was like, they're terrible. They are low quality. The leads are awful. You're not gonna get anything good from it. Um, but that's how everything is with Facebook. And I think sometimes as marketers, we kind of hear something and we take it as dogma forever. Um, and so that was like, I don't. I. For anyone who's been in Facebook ads or Facebook ads world for a long time, like, I don't know if you remember, Amber, like five years ago or so, lookalike audience came out and everyone was like, don't use them. They're terrible. They're the worst. Facebook doesn't know what they're doing. These audiences suck. And now, five years later, those are like, some of the best audiences you can use. So that is something that we've seen shifting is the value of lead generation ads. And basically what we do is we just spend, I mean, 100 to $150 a day growing our email list. And it's not a. I mean, some people, it's subjective. It's not a crazy amount compared to what we're bringing in, but we're always growing that email list. And as a byproduct, we're always growing everything else in our ecosystem. So our Instagram is growing, our podcast is growing, our customer base is growing. And when we roll something out, we're not saying, oh, who are we going to market to? We get to promote to our email list. And a perfect example is we tested something new. We did a paid challenge. We used an old sales page. The last time we tried to use it, we had issues with advertising, um, because it was the week that Facebook went out for like 24 hours, if anybody remembers that. Yeah, ads were just so wonky for the next week. Um, universally, everything was just really not, like, not optimizing, not working. Um, we saw it with ourselves, all our clients. So we just stopped. We stopped running ads. We did it again and we were like, okay, now we've got the position to run ads. We're going to crush it. We spent, I want to say, $1,600 for eight, eight signups at $15 a piece, which was, you know, anyone doing the math? There is like, so you spent sixteen hundred dollars to make ninety? Yeah, that's about right. That's what we did. And we were like, we can't, like, we can't keep going. Like, we don't have the time to keep testing. Clearly we've missed some sort of message within the market for cold traffic. Like, let's stop doing that and let's focus on our email list and we'll focus on our organic social media. And that's what we did. And because we had this big email list, we've been growing for months. It was great. We still ended up with almost three. We ended up with over 300 people in the challenge. It was $15 to attend. We gave it free to the people in our membership as like a retention engagement strategy. And then we had 227 people pay to be there. So even though our ads weren't working, we sold 227 spots in the program or in the, in the challenge. And then we ended up converting 23% of those people into our membership. So, you know, there's just so many numbers to look at there. But I share that not to be like, oh my gosh, look, we had such a great launch. We had such a great launch because we brought all those people into our email list so that no matter what happens when it's crunch time, we still have the potential to promote our products.

That's awesome. Do you think that this is, you know, people talk about growing your email list and people talk about social media and people sort of pulling off of social media or not engaging quite as much. Would this be a strategy? You'd say, do this to build those relationships and connections with your community and your ideal audience. Or what else would you say to layer in as people sort of, what's social? It's a little bit unpredictable.

Love this question. We just taught this in our membership in April. But what we do is we integrate an engagement strategy with advertising. So what's really cool about lead form ads is anyone who's heard about iOS 14 knows they're like, you can't track people or tracking is off with Facebook lead generation ads, because it's all happening on Facebook. It's all what we call first party Data. So it's 100% trackable. Right. Unless somebody has explicitly opposite of advertising. So we say it's 95 to 99% accurate. What that means is that when somebody signs up to your email list, you can retarget them with pretty much 95% plus accuracy. What we do is a two to three tier engagement strategy. So we have the opt in, which is tier one. Tier two is we retarget everybody who just opted into our email list in the last three months, which is the longest you can go, and we run them to an Instagram post, and we run them to a traffic post, which is either a blog or a podcast. Then after those 90 days are up, we take another or the same, just kind of depending on what the strategy looks like. The third tier is everyone in our ecosystem gets retargeted on Instagram because Instagram is really like a really hot platform right now within the Facebook ecosystem. And what we do is we say everybody who has visited our website, engaged with us on Instagram, engaged with our Facebook ads, or is on our email list is going to get an ad on Instagram. And we basically swap those out every one to two weeks. So that once you opt into our email list, you are always going to be seeing social content. And for the first 90 days, you're going to be seeing a traffic and an engagement. And after 90 days, you're going to get an engagement ad. Because with Facebook, I know this is really nerdy, but with Facebook, you can retarget everybody for a year who likes your post on Instagram. So once we get them over to Instagram liking our post, they're now retargetable for a full year.

Wow, this is good. I was actually. You're watching this and, and for those of you that are listening, my eyes were like, okay, trying to visualize. I close my eyes for a minute to see it, because that is something I want to write down. That's an approach and a waterfall. And that multi tiered strategy is really smart and savvy. Does that reduce your cost per lead over time?

We haven't really found it reduce our cost per lead. If anything, it probably drives up our cost per lead, but I think it improves the cost quality of people and it grows our social following. So, like right now, like, we're leaning into Instagram reels, um, and we are finding that a byproduct is our Instagram reels get more hits. Um, we have noticed that. And we've also noticed that we generate Instagram followers. So it's, it's like it's been a little muddled the last couple of weeks. Cause we had an Instagram reel go viral which was super cool. It got us like a thousand followers in, like, a week and a half. But even, like before that happened, we were gaining 10 to 25 new followers a week. And now that it's slowing down, we're kind of back to that 10 to 25 followers a week number. And we know that's because of the advertising. So anyone who's played this Instagram game where you're like, using hashtags or you're using, you know, that kind of thing, it's like you go up two followers and down three, and then up seven, and then down four, and then up two. And like, at the end of the month, you're like, So I gained 500 followers and I lost 495. Um, super fun. We don't really have that happen to us anymore because we're always taking the newest people and we're really strategic with what we advertise. We don't just take, like an Instagram picture of, like, me or my dogs or my podcast, though one of them is the podcast. It's what we call a stance post. And it's basically something that we stand for. So, like, in our business, we stand for, like, ethical and integrity based marketing. We stand for, you know, life outside of business. We stand for, you know, that business sometimes takes work, right? Like, a big pervasive message that we've seen right now is like, oh, it should all be easy and flow and work 20 hours a week. And I'm like, that's all good and, well, four to five years in. But those first few years, like, you know, could you imagine if Sarah Blakely started Spanx? The first year was like, I'm just going to work 20 hours a week to start this company because I feel like flow is way more important, you know, and some people don't agree with that. And that's fantastic, because the people who really don't resonate with that message won't follow us. And the people who do, at least for us, are the people who are willing to put some work in. And so we get better results, right? So that's kind of what we do. We're not just blindly taking Instagram and running it to people. We craft posts that speak to our values and our. Our beliefs, and we run those as Instagram ads so that people are like, I like this guy. I'm going to check him out, I'm going to watch more. And then reels are like, very much my personality. Anyone who follows us on Instagram knows, like, I'm very tongue in cheek. I Make jokes. I have fun. I use fun audios. And so people get to know my personality. So it's like, you know, you're gonna see this ad that's like, here's what this guy is. And then hopefully you're gonna go down the track and kind of get sucked into our reels. And it's not uncommon for us a few times a day to get one person who clicks on our reel and then just scrolls through them all like, like, like, like, like, like, like, and then follows us. And that is the goal with the strategy.

That is incredible. I do just have to say it here on the work hard 20 hours a week. I am a big fan of balance. I know a lot of people are a fan of balance, but my balance, like, it is not today. I need balance in my life. But for me, it is seasons. Like, I am in a season right now where I am working. My days can't be crazy long because I have chronic illness. So I hit the end and I'm like, my brain just stopped working, so I can't go along. So I have to spread it out. I work some weekends, but that's only for a season. Then I go back to write 20, 30 hours a week. So it ebbs and flows. And I think part of what I love about your approach and what I firmly is like, you get to design it. I mean, you've been talking about this for your. The entirety. I don't want to do this anymore. So I stopped that. And you've set everything up in a way that you can make these decisions for yourself and not be driven by an external variable. And there's a whole lot of privilege in that, as I'm sure. Yeah, yeah. But it's nice to be able to step into this, learn it. So for someone who's like, I'm in the season of hard. Yes, Ben, there. And do you think that there is a season where it got easier for you?

Yeah, I do. You know, I think honestly, we've been in, like, a really hustle, heavy season for a long, long, long, long time. And probably about three months ago, I actually reached out to my team. So I do have a team. I have to give them kudos because I couldn't do anything without them. I tell Jessica all the time, who's like my integrator. I'm like, please don't ever leave me. Please just please don't leave. And she's really great. She's amazing. She's been with me for four, four and a half. Ish years. And A couple. Couple, three. About three months ago, I messaged her, and I was like, does everything just seem like it's super flowy? Like, I just want to make sure that it's flowing for you guys, because, like, for me, it feels super easy. And we moved it over to our leadership team chat, and she was like, yeah, everything is just, like, going so well. Like, like, we're. We're hitting deadlines. Everything's kind of just happening. Um, we still, like. And. And that is, like, the overall goal, right? And everything is just flowing really smooth. We're hitting deadlines. It feels like we don't. Like, some days I don't do much, and it's like. But it's still running and it's still going. And that is largely thanks to them. They are like, seriously, like, if you guys are listening, like, could not do without them. And. And I make sure that they know that and. And are appreciated. Um, and I think really, it started about three months ago. And, you know, the biggest thing is, I think worth noting is that even though we're in this season of, like, flow and ease, there's always something. And I think that is where people get really tripped up, is they're like, oh, it's all supposed to be easy all the time. 24 7. For us, it's our podcast. I'm always behind on the podcast. I'd be lying if I said I haven't woken up on a Thursday morning at 6am when they're like, hey, two, do you have that podcast? And I'm like, I'm recording it right now. Please help me get it out by 11. Um, you know that that's just the reality. But our customers are taken care of. Our content is being dropped. We're showing up for calls. Our clients are happy. Everything is flowing really smooth. And so that's just the reality is, like, there's always gonna be one or two things, but if you focus on that, you're always gonna feel like you're hustling instead of focusing on, like, our clients are taken care of. Everything's going out on time. Our customers are happy, the membership is growing, the funnels are created. And I think when you focus on that stuff, sometimes you do feel inspired to, like. Like last weekend, my partner, we have somebody who comes over and helps us clean every week, and they were like, we're going to organize the closet. And I was like, I will make myself scarce because I do not want to organize. And I just wrote emails for a few hours, and I wasn't like, I have to write these emails on a Sunday, Saturday, and I can't believe I'm working on a Saturday. I just, like, I felt inspired to do it. And I think that inspiration, that flow comes more as it starts. So if you can just find those one or two things that are flowing really well and be like, this is great, more of this, please, and just lean into that. That is where I think that the balance really starts to come in. And we really started leaning on that. And that's whether you're a team of one or five. Right. Even if you're all by yourself and you're like, man, everything is falling apart around me, but I'm reading every day for 15 minutes or I'm reading my book every day, or I'm putting my phone in airplane mode at 9 o' clock so no one can get in contact with me. Those are the little things that you get to kind of be in the flow around.

Oh, Zach, I'm so grateful that we kind of kept going into this space and conversation was not my plan or intended, but it's so beautiful because what you're talking about is like prioritizing and keeping your focus. And the other thing I heard is there's always going to be something that comes up, so leave space for those things. So when they do come up, and this is why I'm a big fan of not like packing our calendars and our agendas to the max, because you want space for the unexpected, both the good stuff. Like, hey, let's do an interview. Hey, are you free for this big event? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, those are the things that you want. And then there are the things that we don't want that come up, that leave a little space for those things so we have the capacity to engage on them when they do happen, as they inevitably will when we are running a business. Yeah. You are incredible. I am so grateful for you and your time before we wrap up. Because if you can't tell, like, I would just keep asking Zach questions and listening and learning. But there is an easy way to keep learning from Zach in the membership link again, Zach.

Yeah, join.not your average membership.com.

So stinking fun. And before we bring this episode to a close, I want to give you the stage for any final thoughts or any remarks, anything that's top of mind for you right now.

Yeah, I think I'd love to just put a bow on it by saying, look, it's never going to be perfect. And the sooner you can, like, just let go of that and be like, mistakes happen. Things happen. You know, I sit here and everyone's like, oh, my gosh, let me learn from this guy. It's great in the sense that, you know, Amber has brought me onto her platform, and that gives me some sense of borrowed authority. But I don't want it to ever come across like, oh, my gosh, everything is so perfect and light and airy and beautiful in Zach's world 24 7. And all I do is wake up without an alarm and my coffee in my hand and go for a walk. And then when I feel like it, I show up for work. My calendar is packed most weeks. Um, I am, like, crazy busy a lot of the time. Not in the, like, oh, I'm so busy, but, like, in a good way. And that's okay. Like, it doesn't. It doesn't have to be perfect. We. We just had a client where I. I took notes on a client call, and then like, a week later, she messaged me and she's like, hey, I don't think these ads are running. And I was like, oh, no, they start next week. And she's like, these ads start next week. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry. I took the wrong notes. Luckily, we weren't in a launch. Um. Cause with our launch, we were, like, crazy organized when we were, like, month to month, we're a little more casual, and I'm good friends with this client. And I was like, yeah, yeah, I'll take care of it. Let me just write it down in my notebook. And we just were like, hey, you know what? We totally messed up. Totally are bad. Here's a week free on us. Like. And they were like, yeah, no big deal. I totally get what you did. I would have done the same thing with my notes. But, like, I think we're so convinced when we listen to people on podcast interviews that we're, like, learning this dogmatic, beautiful, everything is wonderful. Like, I'm not going to sit here and tell you all my failures for the past three months. That's not really going to help my authority or, you know, getting you interested in working with me. But the reality is we all have them. And I think if. If. If you take one thing away from this interview, it's that, you know, it doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be perfect 24 7. It's never going to be perfect 24 7. And you have to find what works for you, what feels good for you, and then just continue down that path until you, you know are at a point where things, things do come easy and things do come simply and when they don't, thank goodness everything else is because then you can focus on the problems at hand and let the non problems kind of fix themselves.

Oh my goodness. As I said, you are incredible. Thank you for spending your time with us and sharing and giving us a peek behind your curtain. Find Zach. I will link you up in the chat. Oh wait Zach one more link to give your Instagram handle.

Yeah, I'm on Instagram over Heart Soul Hustle.

Yes, we'll see you there. Check out his reels. He is indeed funny and such a joy when you pop up in my feed.

All the love.

Have a great afternoon everyone. And Zach, thanks for being here.

Thank you.

Anything that's top of mind for you right now.

Yeah, I think I'd love to just put it.