Generating Quality Leads Using FB ads cost effectively - ft. Stephanie Dove Blake | TNS15

Hey guys, so here we are with another interview. First of all, let people join to this interview and welcome to Internet Entrepreneur's Freedom live interview, interview hosted by me, Dini Khilsai, and we are back with another 7-figure business owner and crazy Facebook ads ninja who have helped multiple businesses scale dramatically using generating high-quality leads, get their business scale using unlocking the true potential of social media and funnels and stuff like that. So let's welcome the Facebook ad ninja and 2 Comma Club Award winner, 7-figure business owner, helped multiple chiropractors dramatically increase their scale using Facebook ads and stuff like that. Let's welcome Stephane Doe Blake into the show. Hey guys, everyone is excited to have you on the show because, you know, like, everything is— especially, you know, digital entrepreneurs love Facebook ads and you are ninja in that, right? So we would love and we are very happy that you are on our show finally because a lot of my personal community are requesting for you. So So finally you're here. I'm excited to interview you. Yay.

Well, I'm so glad to be here. I'm super excited, always excited to get to share my story in hopes that it will inspire other people because just 5 years ago I had no idea that this world existed. And then here we are. Like, it's so crazy what can happen in just a couple of years.

Absolutely right. So first of all, everyone who is watching this show, please like and comment and ask any questions. Feel free because Stephane is ours for 1 hour. So absolutely you can ask any questions regarding client activation, lead generation, Facebook ads, anything you have, she'll be ready to answer. So everyone, please share this amazing valuable session because she's about to drop golden nuggets onto this show. So get ready for that and let's get started. Stephane, can you please start with your backstory? Like, how did you exactly get started? Like, how did it all start?

Yeah. Okay. So, gosh, it's so crazy. It seems like it was yesterday, but my background is actually in computers as far as network engineering. So I can fix computers, you know, create networks and help them talk together and stuff like that. But I hadn't done anything in my industry for, I started having babies and I wanted to be a mom, but I was trying to find ways in order to make money at home because my husband at the time when I started Social Sparrow, he was working 2 jobs and we were not doing very well financially at all. I had a bathroom that didn't work. Our fence was falling down in the backyard. It was really rough times. And a friend decided to hire me to help out on the techie side. and she introduced me to the whole digital marketing world and I was like, whoa. And she gave me courses so that I could learn and implement for her business. And one of those courses was Billie Jean's Clicks and the Customer. Shout out to Billie Jean, love Billie Jean. And that course was awesome. It was very pivotal and helped me really understand the beginning parts of Facebook ads. And so I dove into Facebook ads with that company, but the company ended up being sold. And so once the company was sold, uh, one thing I didn't mention is this business, this company enabled me to work from home with my kids. So I was also homeschooling. Um, my oldest son has some learning differences, so it was very important for me to be able to homeschool him. And so, um, anyway, the business was sold and I didn't know how I was going to have income coming in to help my husband. And so we're kind of stressing out and I I said to him one night, what do you think about me starting an agency or trying to do something online myself? And he was like, duh, do it. And so I reached out to a local chiropractor that had helped me before with my back. And I asked him if I could run some Facebook ads for him. And he very reluctantly said yes. And we blew it. I blew it up for him that month. He made an extra $60,000 that month. Just absolutely incredible. And this is, you know, 3, 4 years ago. And from there he was like, what do we got to do to keep this going? And so I told him, well, do a webinar with me. And so we did a webinar together. He brought some of his other chiropractic friends from all over the United States. Out of those 10 guys that he brought to the webinar, 9 of them signed up. And so I'm just like, okay, quick. Yeah, super fast. So I start building and building and making funnels like crazy and creating ads and like figuring out how do you track, how do you communicate well, how do you do this and how do you— and so just trying to learn really, really fast what it looked like to run a digital ads agency. And so over the years it's grown and of course we've done non-chiropractors as well, info products and coursing, courses and all sorts of things. Um, but it's been incredible. So now we have a team of 10, uh, that serve our, our, our, uh, clients all over the United States. We're a remote team and, uh, we just love getting to do what we do. So it all started there, but it was no easy feat. I had a lot of, um, mental hurdles, as all entrepreneurs do whenever you start your own business. It's a lot up here. And so, um, just had to do a lot of fighting in order to get this started. So it was pretty awesome. Pretty fun.

Absolutely. And you know, like from this story though, like everyone can understand who's watching this, that life is— that can be changed in a tap, right? That's how you do it. You know, you actually impacted a local business and this is what everyone should actually grab. If you really add value to someone else's life, people are ready to pay you big bucks and they'll be super happy to refer as well, right? That's how real digital agencies who are surviving still are doing the stuff, right? You did with one guy, then you multiplied it. Still giving results, that's how you scale. And the journey, you really see it's like a roller coaster journey, especially as an agency, because you always have that— you should have a strong ability to withstand, and you have done it well. Now people who are watching this should actually learn from this and withstand. And let's get to the next question. As you are generating tons of leads for your client, what do you think is like the best traffic source to generate leads? Like, what do you actually recommend for any local business? Because if you see, the traffic cost is going up like crazy, especially after this crisis, like after this, probably November times, the cost is crazy. So what do you think are the best cost-effective ways to generate leads for local businesses or maybe big companies like digitally?

Yeah, so I still say Facebook is the place to be still. I know the costs are going up, but I definitely do recommend that you look at other platforms for local businesses like Pinterest, Even TikTok. I know a lot of people are like, oh, TikTok's just a bunch of young kids over there making music videos. That is not true at all. Um, there is a huge following on TikTok and it's one of the most addictive fun apps, or, you know, on our phones that is just so fun. And if you have this view of TikTok of being like only like kids dancing around, then you haven't cultivated your newsfeed. When I get on there, I see a bunch of digital marketers, I see a bunch of art, you know, things that interest me are what is in my newsfeed now. I don't see a bunch the other, other stuff. Nothing wrong with that stuff, it's just not what I choose to cultivate my newsfeed with. And there are so many users that are on TikTok that spend hours by accident because it's so addictive. So, uh, you've got TikTok ads, Pinterest ads, YouTube ads. And so I think that all those platforms, um, now where we are digitally in the digital marketing landscape, it's not smart to put all your eggs in one basket. It really never has been, but we've kind of had this window of cushion where we could really lean in and trust that Facebook was going to be there. Facebook's going to do this. And, you know, it's, it's a great place for lead generation and it still is. It's more troublesome and it's a little more costly, but there's still so much opportunity there. But we should always be diversifying. And so for me personally, for local businesses, my attention is on Pinterest, especially because my clients, a lot of the people that It's funny, the decision makers typically for my clients are the females in the family. And so Pinterest is definitely one place and TikTok is another place that I'm really putting a lot of focus and effort into. And so, yeah, definitely Facebook, I think, is the main answer still. But be aware and diversify.

Exactly. So, yeah, that's a great learning, actually, though, because when you're serving someone, you should actually understand the customer demographic, as you said. As the most decision takers are women, so you're choosing Pinterest because I think 80% of the traffic is completely women in Pinterest, right? That's great. And Facebook, it's 50/50. And then TikTok, it's like 18-year-old kids. And I've seen chiropractors who are killing it on TikTok, you know. And absolutely, that's a cringy content people say, but that's what they are choosing, right? They watch funny dance videos continuously, they get the same thing. You watch entrepreneur videos, you get the same thing. Because like TikTok, the AI is so powerful that you can actually cultivate and exactly show what you need, right? So you are choosing what you need, and don't blame the app, right? Don't blame the There is entrepreneurial content, there is books, there is like exactly what you want to see on the internet. You just need to find it the right way. And as you're already having the traffic source there, you just need to get the right attention using your ads. Yeah, that totally makes sense though. And as your Facebook ad specialist, we can call it as a ninja tricks, right? So like, why don't we get into some— like, why don't you share like 3 tips or rules which you personally follow to run Facebook ads? Because as that's your main expertise. Yeah.

So one thing I feel like, and I hope that everybody watching knows, and if you don't, here you go, is definitely just stacking social proof. So the idea is that whenever you're building out your campaigns, what we do as an agency is we create a campaign that actually never really gets used and it's called the mockup campaign. And so inside of the mockup campaign, you know, you just have an ad set, you can put whatever you want in the ad set. And then at the ad level, that's where you build your main ads. So that's— so it's literally, this is just where your main ads live. And so you do have to publish those ads. And once the ads are published, you can go preview the ad and it's going to pull it up at the link, and then you can grab the post ID. And so whenever you grab the post ID for that ad that you've already created and published but it's not on, you go over and create whatever campaigns you're going to be creating for, whether it's a, a reach campaign, a conversions campaign, whatever it is. Then once you drill down to the ad level, instead of creating the ad at level, you're going to use an existing post and you're going to use that post ID. And what this does for you is it stacks the social proof because technically you're running all this traffic to just the one ad even though you have multiple ad sets, right? And so at the ad level, you're going to have that, um, that existing post, the existing ad, and every time someone likes, comments, or shares, it's all on the same ad. And so social proof is a huge part of the buying psychology of someone. So if they can see that a lot of people have commented, shared, liked-vocalise, it's going to get more of their attention and more of their trust. And so it's really important to stack social proof, I think, is definitely one thing. Um, another thing too is just making sure that you know how to manipulate the columns in Ads Manager so that you're looking at the right data. Um, I don't know if this is a ninja tip, but I, I feel like it is because because that is everything when it comes to Facebook ads. And if you're not looking at the right data, you're really missing out. Now Facebook has the preset ones that will pull up, you know, performance and clicks, video views and all that kind of stuff. And that's good, but you really do need to make sure that you're thinking big picture. And so if you're looking at a customer journey, you know, let's just say you are running a VSL funnel, video sales letter type funnel, and you wanna make sure and see how many people watch that after they opt in. Do they click this button? Well, you can set custom conversions on different parts of your funnel. And then whenever you're customizing your columns, you make sure you custom and you pull in those, those columns. I'm sorry, you pull in those metrics and then you save that as a default and then name it. And then that way, whenever you come in, the right correct metrics are right there for you to look at and just making sure that that's there. And I think the third one, would just definitely be— this is a really fun ninja hack, okay? So if you have great testimonials, um, Facebook has kind of gotten a little— well, their bots don't like it. Like sometimes people will use 5 stars, like the emojis, like to show 5-star reviews. Facebook doesn't like that. They think that you're not being truthful or that you could be tricking people. And so we've had, uh, random on or off, uh, rejections on that based on different things. And so, um, but we were like, okay, how do we show these customers without having to go anywhere that we're trustworthy, we get great reviews, you know, that we're awesome and our product is awesome. Well, so all of your ads, what we do now as a standard is whenever our ads are running, uh, directly after our ad goes live, we have screenshots of reviews and we'll go to the ad and we will literally put in the comments the first, second, and third review.

That's a smart one. Yeah, that's a smart move actually. Absolutely. Yeah, and that's a great takeaway. Absolutely. So hope you guys— these tricks are amazing if you really understand, right? Like, a lot of people look at the wrong data and they decide that ad is not converting, and they don't even give the warm-up time to actually, like, decide Facebook if it's working or not, and just kill it and blame Facebook is costly or Facebook isn't working, right? And the second thing, the third ad, like, the third trick was absolutely awesome. So people who are stuck with restrictions when you put stars or looking like a manipulative trick. Just go and post as a user, right? That, that would be a much better thing, and people will actually see comments, and that makes more sense to the people. So that was amazing. And what was the first one? Uh, let me recall it.

Uh, stacking social proof.

Yeah, the stacking social proof is really, really, really important because a lot of people actually dilute by having multiple ads. Actually, the image is same one, but they dilute with the ad set level, right? They don't really understand, like, yeah, exactly, they just duplicate it and they don't really see the post ID. Because starting the social proof can like, let's say if it's giving you 10% more ROI, that's amazing, right? So it can actually help you to scale. That's a very great takeaway from your suggestions though. That was great. I really appreciate that. Now, as you already know, in the market there are a lot of digital course creators, chiropractors, people who want to get Facebook ads, and there are already a lot of people who are serving Facebook ads. Do you think starting a media buying agency is a great idea? If yes, how to do it?

Um, I definitely do. I really, really, really do. Um, obviously I'm biased because I love my agency. I, I love running my agency. My agency has changed my life. Um, but I would definitely throw more caution to really thinking through who you're going to serve, because if you want to have a successful agency, it is crucially important that you are able to scale. And really, truly, and honestly, the only way to scale is if you pick a niche. And niches are very, very hard to find. I'm sorry, they're not hard to find. They're all over the place, but finding the right one for you and for the agency is hard. So right now, obviously I'm in chiropractors, but literally I joined an agency mastermind just because it, it, it pays to pay to be with people who have big agencies. And we can talk about these, you know, things of like team running and all these different things. And so, but literally one of the first things that this agency mastermind owner says is, do not go into chiropractors or dentists. Don't do it. And, and I asked him, I was like, you're saying don't go into chiropractors? Like, I'm in chiropractors, I've always been. He's like, but you have been doing this for years, you have an established reputation, you know, you know the ins and outs. He's like, I would never tell anyone who's just starting to go into chiropractors or dentists because it is just so— it's, it's bloody waters. I don't know if you're familiar with, um, you know, the blue ocean, red ocean analogy, but, um, it's really saturated. And so unless you're ready to really bring your A-game and like go hardcore because you're super passionate about chiropractors or dentistry or orthodontists or whatever, something like that, then it is— it's, it's hard to play in this niche. Um, and, and in picking a niche is very important because you can be super passionate about I don't know, what's a good, um, what is something, um, let's just say, um, local handyman. You, you love local handyman people. Well, a local handyman, whenever he gets a new customer, usually that can be anywhere from like a $40 visit or it could be a $200 visit. Whenever it comes down to it, if you want to have a real marketing agency, you want to be able to charge $1,000 to $2,500 to $5,000 a month for your clients. When that local handyman goes and he gets a couple little jobs here and there and he's getting $70 here, $120 there, that is not enough for him to afford your services. So that niche is not really a good niche to go into. Whereas if you go and you serve a plastic, plastic surgeon and one client can equate $3,000, $5,000, $10,000 $20,000, well, of course he's going to afford your services and he's going to love you and not bat an eye at paying you $3,000 a month for marketing services. And so it's really important to dive deep into these different niches and really find out, are they the right client for you, for you to get where you want to go? So if you can align the money side with your passion, like for me, I have a personal story with chiropractic. Chiropractic changed my life. I believe if chiropractic had been there for my mother, then she might still be here today. Unfortunately, she passed away from back issues and crazy stuff. Yeah. And so I have a personal investment in chiropractors and helping them spread their message. So if you can find where passion and money intersect, that's going to help you find that niche where you really should be and start your digital agency.

That really sounds great. And I'm really sorry for what happened earlier in your place. But yeah, that really sounds good because a lot of people do this mistake that they try to serve anyone and anyone and everyone, right? Picking a niche which is profitable when you digital market it, it's really important. You should validate it, right? Like, let's say if you're doing some, as you said, handyman jobs, if you're serving them, even if they can afford for first month, they don't get the ROI, they'll be super frustrated and you'll get into the trouble, right? You get into frustrations which will again be like, it will decrease your self-confidence and you maybe think that Facebook Ads is not for you and you quit. That's not the way, right? You just need to pick the right niche which you can actually passionate about and which you can actually do the research and put in your work, look at the data and optimize it. That's when you can give the ROI and your clients will absolutely love you and refer you, as happened to Belle. That would make sense. Absolutely.

And the best part, the absolute best part about it is because there was a season of time where I love to play. I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a creator, I love to help people, I want to help people. So when they come to me, they're like, can you run our ads? And I'm like, yeah, let's do it because it's exciting and it's fun and you're my friend and I want to help you. And for a while there was a time where we were growing the side of our agency that served infopreneurs, right? People who had courses and things like that. But the problem, every infopreneur is a whole different ballgame. And so you have to reinvent the wheel every time.

A complete new offer. Absolutely.

That takes my brain. That means that I can't go create anything else of my own. That means I don't have time for my team. That means I don't, I can't do this, I can't do that. And so trying to scale with that, I had to eventually just say, hey guys, here's another agency I'm referring you over here. And then every time I get them now, I have to say, I would love to work with you. I would love to serve you, but that does not fit my goals for my business and where I'm going. So I can't help you, which hurts. I don't like that. But I want to reach the goals for my team, for myself, for my family. And so I have to be smart about who I take on as a client.

Absolutely. So you need to think it this way, everyone who's watching, like, let's say if you're picking up a new client, which you never know the time and the money or the team efforts which you invest into, like, completely understanding a whole new niche. If you invest the same time giving results to existing client, acquiring new clients in the same niche, which can give you probably 5 to 10 times more ROI and more freedom as well, because you know the niche already, right? You have figured out the whole map. You no need to reinvent it, right? That totally makes sense though. That's amazing as well. So you still say that Facebook Ads is good, and I, I really like hear a lot of questions about Facebook Ads. There's a lot of misconceptions on Facebook Ads, right? And like, what do you think are the main misconceptions about Facebook Ads, and like, what is the best possible solution from your side?

Um, I think one of the major misconceptions, uh, with Facebook Ads is that they are just the end-all be-all solution and that you just need to have— I mean, Facebook ads, don't get me wrong, they're super powerful, but in reality, it should be a slice of your overall marketing plan. So, uh, whether, you know, you're doing info products or, um, you have a local business or you do e-commerce, uh, you never want to put everything in one basket because the reality is, I mean, I think I think just recently I saw, like yesterday, I haven't gotten to look into it. I was trying last night, but I think literally just last night I saw an article about Facebook getting sued because they're considered a monopoly and they're being supposedly being sued by, I think, 46 states in the United States. That's what I— I don't know. I don't know. We got— I have to look it up more. But, um, you know, there's all this false news and stuff, so I thought, is this real? And I started Googling. But, uh, anyway, so So the reality is, is that every single one of these platforms are a tool and you can't get married to just one tool. And so I feel like a lot of misconceptions that people just think, oh, Facebook is the end-all be-all and I can just get my Facebook ads going and you know, this is going to happen. And don't get me wrong, there's a lot of amazing stuff. One of my coaching students, she created a cookie course. She wanted to teach people how to make beautiful cookies. And we started doing that with her about 9 months ago. You know, we, I helped her, you know, get the course ready, figure it out, figure out her marketing plan, all that kind of stuff. And she's making $70,000 months right now with her. Yeah. And that's all Facebook. But I keep telling her over and we're working on it, you know, that you have to have different verticals. What's happening on your Facebook page? What's happening on your Instagram account? Do you have anything on Pinterest? And so it's not necessarily that whenever you start you have to have all these things, but you have to be keeping in the back of your mind that it's not just Facebook. You have to be smart about it.

Absolutely. Yeah, that's a great answer. So yeah, that's where you need to be like, it comes down to this thing, right? You should be checking like where people are actually paying attention because Facebook is not just the app which people are opening every single day, right? There's Instagram, there's YouTube, there's Google. There are a lot of websites where people look at, right? There is Pinterest, there's TikTok, and there are like 100 different platforms which are coming in the future and already existing, right? So if you like, I shout out to Russell Brunson, just read Traffic Secrets, you'll get 111 ideas on how you can use traffic effectively. And like, you will unleash the actual traffic secrets, right? That's where you can understand, like, think of your client or your personal offer. Who is the customer demographic? Where he's hanging out? Just try to be in the place, place ad. And you don't need to be technical or ninja of the complete platform. Just do it, you'll get results. Because if there is attention of your potential client, it's much likely you'll get sales. Amazing. That's a great idea and that's great answer as well. So let's go into the next like amazing question. I'm really curious to know about this as well. Like what is your go-to strategy to acquire clients? Like is that from referrals? Like, like what do you suggest to a brand new agency? Let's say if someone is starting out with no credit, like no credibility, no, no track record, no niche, like they don't know anything. They just want to do something like you and they started, right? They want to do something like how can they start? How can they actually get clients? To prove them.

So once you have picked your niche, my suggestion to you is that you think outside of the box. So yeah, you can go and start some Facebook ads for your agency and try to get clients that way. But I personally think you could go and say, these are 20 people I want to run ads for right here. This is the list of 20 people and I want you to strategically almost dream 100 of them. And you can read about that just like he said in the Traffic Secrets book. Book. But dream 100 of them. And so the way I got that first client was I sent a— back then it was Camtasia, I think, is what I used to record my screen. But I literally went ahead and built a funnel for this person. I put his picture on it. You know, it wasn't functional all the way, but I put his picture on it. I opened up his landing page in another tab. I opened up Facebook Ads Manager and I built out what I would do for him. And I had all this stuff strategically already put on my tabs and in my browser and I started recording the screen, I showed my face. So that was very important for trust factor, right? And I think you, if you're going to show your face, you have to be okay. You have to have a decent background, good lighting so they can see you. They need to feel like you're a professional for that trust factor to be there. So have a clear background, not a bunch of trash. Don't have anything in your background, have some good lighting and come into the camera where, see how my face is taking up this much space. You don't want to be like, way back here, like you want to pick up the camera. And when you do that, make your face visible and share your screen and make sure it's on their website. The very first thing they see, because you want them to go, why is that? That's my website. Why are you on my website? And they're going to want to know what you have to say. And so you can say, hey, my name is Stephanie. And I was looking— don't even tell them who you are, what you want. Don't, don't start there. My name is Stephanie and I was looking at your website and oh my gosh, I just wanted to say I love your branding. I was over here reading about your mission statement and do your research and this and that. And I just, I think what you're doing is amazing. And I just wanted to let you know, I am, I, this, I do this right here and these are the kinds of results I'm going to do. And I don't know if you know this or not, but inside of Facebook you can run that and you explain to them what you want to do. And in under 5 minutes, don't make them any videos longer than 5 minutes, but then I would send it to them. I don't care if you have to put it on a USB, thumb drive and deliver it to their office with a box of chocolates. Like, get the video to them and make an offer that they can't refuse. If you're just starting, whenever I started, I said, look, I'll do the ads for free as long as you pay for ad spend, and we'll just see where we are at the end of this month. At the end of this month, if it's looking good, I'm gonna expect that you would be okay with, you know, paying me this much. But let's just see. I'm gonna do all the work for free and you just pay the ad spend. And if that, that's a great way to get started, but the most important thing is just getting in the door and making sure that you can talk to the decision maker and really make an impact on them and elevate the trust levels.

That's an amazing tip. Like people who are watching this, you're still struggling with your agency to get your first client. Why don't you try offering it for free, right? Absolutely. That makes sense. So So let's get into the next question. Absolutely. So what kind of tools do you use to manage the products or check out your daily project productivity and stuff like that?

I highly recommend Asana. So ClickUp is a new project management that's kind of coming out and that's pretty good, but it's more robust. So Asana is pretty darn robust. So I definitely recommend Asana. The free account is very, very, very powerful. We still use it to manage all of our clients right now and absolutely love it. My team loves it. Accountability and a place for you to really be able to organize your clients over on the left side and then have tasks associated with everything that you're getting done, which it also is very, very, very important whenever you're looking at scaling and growing a team after you have, you know, 10 clients or so, 10 to 12 clients, you need to hire. And so you don't want to have a whole bunch of stuff on your, you know, your notepad. You're like, oh, that's here in my notes somewhere.

Like you need it.

You need everything documented. And you haven't asked me this question, but in Asana, one of the first things I did whenever I first started was making sure that I made Loom videos of everything that I was doing. Actually, I guess again, back then it was Camtasia, but, um, you know, Loom videos of me doing whatever I was doing, even though I didn't have any employees at that time. I started documenting what I was doing. So as soon as I did need help, I could say, I say, this is great. Start with this video, watch this video, watch this video, and now let me do it with you. Okay. Now let me watch you do it. Okay. Now you do it by yourself and I'll check it. Okay. You're free to go, go do it. So that process and Asana helps with all of that, keeping all of that organized.

Absolutely. That's a great tip for everyone who's watching out just to manage your things, use Asana. And like, how does your daily routine look like? Like, how do you start your day? When do you wake up and stuff like that?

Um, so I have been in and out of a whole bunch of different morning routines. Um, I know the value of a morning routine, but I also know the value of knowing yourself. Um, and so I am a huge personality test advocate. So, you know, the Enneagram, the Myers-Briggs, the DiSC personality tests— all of these different tests are absolutely incredible for helping you know yourself. And for myself, I struggle with having to have a rigid schedule and having to do these certain things. And so, um, and so because of that, I actually, um, have a very flexible morning routine. So I will typically get up in the morning, um, and on my more structured days when I'm actually doing what I want to do, I get up and I, um, listen to music. Music is the big deal for me. I think it's important for you to find out what is best for you. And for me, music is that. I absolutely love the music side of things. It helps me going, helps me focus my brain. And so I have a lot of different tips that I can give you, but I never have it set hard and fast. I know a lot of entrepreneurs are like, no, I get up at 5:00 AM, I do 10 minutes of meditation, I drink my green juice, and then I— I don't, I don't work that way. I've tried for years to make that be my way, but it's just never worked out. So I will go back and forth between different things. But one thing that's really, really good whenever I'm struggling with mindset for entrepreneurialism as I go— and you will throughout the years of entrepreneurialism, it's a roller coaster ride— um, there's something called morning pages, um, and I highly recommend that. Sometimes, uh, I'll get up and I'll do like 7 days, and every morning I wake I have a notebook and I will literally— what you do is you write anything that comes to your mind. So basically stream of consciousness, anything and everything. I'm tired, I want to go back to bed, my feet are cold, I don't know what else I have to do today. And you just write stream of consciousness, 3 pages until you fill 3 pages. And usually by the second page and you get to the third page, stuff starts coming out that you're actually worried about or fears that you have. And if you can identify those when you start out in the morning, it helps those things not kind of be gnawing at you while you're going throughout your day. So morning pages is a tool that I use for sure. And then also too, music and just figuring out you, what is the thing that lights you up in the morning and really gets those creative juices going?

Yeah, that really helps us to sort out the whole day and the important things to do and, you know, just look at the vision we have and, you know, that, that gets a very clear vision of what we are up to. And I'm really sorry for the little disturbance. in between. It was just my camera died. I didn't have a look on that. I'm really sorry about that. Yeah, let's get started with another simple question. So like, we actually had a good background about you, your services, your previous success, and your story and stuff like that. Let's get into some little things about more, more like you, like knowing your personality and stuff like that. Like, what would be your suggestion to a 20-year-old you or someone who is getting started? Like, what is your number one piece of advice? With it.

Um, I think the number one piece of advice that I would give myself is that, um, I would, I would teach myself that it is going to be a journey, and you can't begrudge or be mad about the journey. So the journey to be great at anything is hard, right? And so you have to be willing to be terrible at something in order to become great at And so in an entrepreneurial journey, when you're first starting, there's pitfalls. You mess up, you know, things don't look— you're like, man, it should look like this. And it's like, but it looks like this. And I know it should look like that, but you don't know how to get it there yet. And so you have to have grace for, for that journey and just being okay with like, okay, it doesn't look great, but I'm going to do better next time, or this happened or whatever. And so being able to really like tell that 20-year-old Stephanie of like, hey, it's gonna get ugly. It's gonna be hard, and you're not gonna feel like you're up for the job. You're not gonna feel like you have what it takes. You're not gonna feel like you're enough. But the reality is, is if you just keep putting one foot in front of the other and you don't give up, you will reach your goals.

Exactly. That's a great piece of advice to everyone who's watching. So it's like, it's gonna be that way. It's a roller coaster, and you should never give up. That's the only piece of advice where you'll be successful. That's a great one. And as you said already, you had mentors and a couple of people who actually push you, like, personally, your team? Like, would you like to give shout out? Like, would you like to name some people who actually— like, uh, oh, sorry for that. So would you like to name some people who are actually trying to push you into the next level? Like, some people who actually help you throughout the journey?

Oh, absolutely. Um, I would definitely say, you know, Billy Gene was my first mentor. He is this crazy guy, and, um, I definitely recommend following his stuff and getting his courses. Matter of fact, he just sold all of his stuff like super cheap because he's changing directions. Yeah, I think Billy Gene is awesome and he was hugely impactful for my whole journey. If it hadn't been for his course and what I took from it, I don't know what I would've done. Like, I don't know how the journey would've been. And then also Russell Brunson. He has just been the voice for my entrepreneur heart for so many years. When I signed up for the ClickFunnels Certified Partner Program pretty early on whenever I started my agency. And that was so pivotal for me to be engrossed in the Funnel Hacker community and just hearing Russell talk about entrepreneurialism and what it was and to believe that you have a purpose and that you just have to figure out and learn how to unlock it and put it out there to the world. And so massive shout out to my friend Russell. He has been such an inspiration and continues to be so. So just in everything he's done in the community. Also too, I have to say Julie Stoian. She is one of my current mentors, so I'm in her mastermind and I love her. I've been in her mastermind for a couple of years and she has just been amazing just as a woman in the industry and just standing for integrity and for doing things well. And so, and I just love her strategic brain. She's so smart and nerdy and I love that. And also too, I would say I'm currently in Nick Robbins Mastermind. I love his Mastermind. He is a high-level agency player and just, just definitely someone to follow and to watch for sure. But yeah, all these people have just been hugely influential in, in my journey. Also Rob Bailey, love Rob Bailey. You— he kind of flies under the radar a little bit, but you got to get into Rob's world. He He's absolutely—

Absolutely. Yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing. So that's great that you learn from multiple people in time. And you know, that's what people should actually look at, right? They should listen to a lot of people and learn from their mistakes. Because if you do it yourself, if you don't want— if you want to do it for yourself, it's going to cost you more, a lot more, like 1,000 times more, right? Just learn from their mistakes. And as you said, it's not just like that you bought a course from Billie Jean. I probably think he has like a million customers probably. But not a lot of people are successful like you. It's like the courage is taking action on what you've learned and you've done it, right? That's absolutely amazing. So Dove, can you name some of your biggest achievements and any bigger next goals, what you want to achieve in the next short period of time?

Yeah. So obviously my team and my agency is obviously the biggest goal. I mean, and having the Two Comma Club Award, that was a vision. And this this is for my agency, right? So a lot of agencies will get 2 Comma Club Awards, but it's because they earned their client $1 million. But it was, you know, a very big source of pride for myself and my team that this agency is actually for Social Sparrow itself earning that, earning that reward. But the biggest thing I think that means the most to me is that I did this while being an intentional, present mother. And so it took me a lot longer than a lot of the the, uh, the other agency owners I know because they were popping out these 2 Comma Club Awards like crazy. And it took me longer, and— but it took me longer for a reason that I'm very proud of, in that, you know, I was homeschooling for part of that time. Um, I spend time with my kids. I don't sacrifice events and birthdays. Like, I, I love my children, and I don't want to build a business to lose my relationship with my family and my husband. And so, um, I think that's probably the biggest biggest accomplishment that I could say is that I still have my kids' hearts and I still have a great relationship with my husband. And, you know, yeah, has there been ups and downs? Yes. But there— but, you know, I still believe that. I think that's the most important thing. Um, and I don't have to look back and go, man, I really screwed up these relationships because of work, work, work and hustle, hustle, hustle and money, money, money, you know. Um, and then the, the, the The next goal for me, right now we have some SLOs that I'm launching for training stuff with training things. I've got a coaching program I'm growing. You know, I just, it's a very small, only take like 3 to 6 different people to coach them. And, but the really big goal that I'm hoping towards the end of 2021 Q4 is I want to create another business called Dream Hackers and it's going to be for entrepreneurial parents. Parents who have entrepreneurial kids. And so my goal is to help create resources to facilitate connection between the parent and the child and help the child to be able to find their entrepreneurial bend and resources for those kids. So I'm super excited about that. I'm just kind of chomping at the bit, but I know when it's the right time, it'll be the right time.

Uh, but yeah, that's an amazing reason. That's an absolutely amazing reason. You know, a lot of entrepreneurs, like, even like you people, right? We don't really have a great support. Of course, our kids, like our parents and everyone, are mad. Like, everyone loves us, everyone wants to support us, but still they limit our resources and they limit our expectations of what can happen, right? But as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, you know that what can be done, right? And if you know what can be done, if you do it in the right way, and that can happen when the loved ones support us, right? That's a great reason. I definitely appreciate it. And absolutely, like, a lot of people go into this burnout and they, they make the business as an excuse for not being on time for the events, for the family, for all the things which is going crazy. And they blame the business and they don't have the freedom and the money at the same time. And they're going to burn out with the money-making machine, I mean the business as well, right? They should learn from the journey and manage everything in the right way. And you did it well, we need to appreciate that. And a small clap for you, absolutely. I really love it. Appreciate that. And like, no matter how well you did in the whole whole game till now, probably you've done one or two mistakes and I know what it cost you, right? I can imagine. So can you name one or two mistakes which you have done in your life so that we can learn from that mistakes and never repeat them from ourselves?

Yeah, I think one of the biggest mistakes in my life was not leaning into knowing myself even more sooner. So a lot of times, especially when you're young, it is very self-focused, but it's self-focused in a way of like, how do I get that? And what do I do here? And like, me, me, me. But it's not like actual healthy self-focus where it's like, what makes me tick? And I think it wasn't until my early 30s, maybe mid-30s, that I started really starting to understand the power of unlocking who I am, who I'm created to be, um, what's inside of me, what makes me tick, why do I love that, why do I love that. Because is if you can learn what your strengths and your weaknesses are, it propels everything you do moving forward. And I think that I just, I didn't choose to spend the time there because it didn't feel as productive. And I didn't see the value of it. And I think if I had unlocked those things earlier in my life and chosen to spend the time there and recognize the value, I would have exponentially grown even more because I think I mentioned mentioned this at the beginning, the entrepreneurial journey is so much more about this and your heart and like, what do I want to do? Why am I built this way? Why do I lean that way? And then furthermore, not only understanding your strengths, but understanding your weaknesses so that as you build a team, you can hire people that will help with those weaknesses and carry that weight where you're deficient and it's just not your thing. And that way you can exponentially increase your, increase your ability and your reach and your goals by focusing on your strengths. So I think that— yeah, I look back and I'm like, dang, Steph, why didn't you just pay attention to that then? Because I've made so many decisions based off what I've learned since then, and it's made a huge impact.

Absolutely. So no matter what, whatever you're doing right now in your point of time, just make sure that it matches your vision. Don't get into a maze and be confused of where it is going, right? Just have a bird's eye view, right? That's when you can understand that where you should go. And the practice which you mentioned will actually give a clear vision of what can be done. And though we would love to hear like where can, where can our audience meet you or find your mentorships or get into your program or stuff like that? Where can my audience can actually get mentored by you? Do you have any option for that?

Yeah, absolutely. So in Q1 in January, we're going to be opening up the coaching again. And so we'll have, I'll have just a couple of spots to fill. I only do, I love to go really deep with whoever I'm working with.

I can't do that with 20 people.

So very small amounts of people. And so if you will just follow me on Facebook, I think is just the best route is what I've been doing. Just because it was very low key, it's application-based only. And so it's been so awesome. It's the most, one of the most rewarding things that I've ever done, just because, you know, the lady with the cookie course, and then I have another guy who sells wallets and he, okay, this is crazy, you guys. He had a $100,000 day last month. Month because of Black Friday, of course. And then also a $1 million month, $1 million month in revenue, and the profit margins on it were good. So anyway, that is like the most amazing, most rewarding thing, because whenever he first started with me, he had— he was not making money at all. He had to put my coaching fees on a credit card. I don't recommend that, but that's what he chose to do. And so anyway, It's— that is one of the most rewarding things, um, period, is the, the coaching side of things. So anyway, small groups of numbers. So if you'll follow me on Facebook, if you have any interest in, you know, learning more, I also have hourly coaching fees. So if you wanted— hey, I just want to talk to you and ask you these questions or whatever— I also have that one-off 1-hour consult that I do as well. Um, and so yeah, just reach out, just say hi to me on Facebook, friend me, follow me on there.

I would love to put your profile link in the comments. So make sure to add though, she adds amazing value. And make sure to join her groups as well and also like her page. She has amazing content on there, testimonials and stuff like that. And that's really great, you know, like impacting other people's lives. That actually drives you to impact more, right? Like people who are making no money or struggling in the business, now you're scaling them to 7 figures in a month. Yeah, that's a, that's a game changer for like indirectly thousands of people, right? You're impacting thousands of people, maybe millions on a long term. Right. That's a great vision and amazing, amazing. We love the whole interview. And do you have any last words to conclude before we say, like, before we end the show? Do you have any last words to say to the audience?

I would just say if you are at the beginning stages of this journey, like, just know that it's a really, really amazing journey and it's awesome. And just as awesome as it is, it can be just as hard. And so just don't give up. And You know, if it's something that you want, you have to be able to have a vision for it, right? And that vision is something that usually other people can't see. So you have to identify as someone who creates things that no one else can see. You have to know that it is your vision and you have to carry it through to completion. And that's hard, but everything that's worth doing in life is hard. So like, just go after it, don't give up, and just keep going.

Exactly, that's a great, great, great end. I absolutely love it because, you know, you should be in the process if you really want the end goal to happen. If you really want $1 million joining your bank, you should be putting in the work, at least put a system which can do it for you, right? You can't skip the process and just expect by just thinking of it. There should be a process for you and you should be in it to get it. That's amazing. And thanks for opportunity though. I really enjoyed the whole session. I hope I my, all my community, and especially you enjoyed the whole session as well. Thanks for the amazing opportunity. I'll be looking forward. So everyone who is watching, let's give her a warm thank you and just stay tuned for the next interview. Thanks for joining though.

Thank you. Bye.