#149 - 3 things you need to track if you are trying to scale

This is a really, really crucial step. It was one of the biggest game changers for us and it is also for our clients when implemented properly.

This is the Doing It Online podcast with your host, serial entrepreneur, six and seven figure funnel strategist and Kate McKibben where every week we're here talking nerdy and sharing the things that actually work to help you do what you do online. But better, easier and with a ton more profit too. Are you ready? Let's do.

Hey there guys. It is Kate here from hellofunnels Co and welcome to the Doing It Online podcast. Today we are talking. Well, we're getting kind of nerdy, so get your no glasses on, get a pen and paper. We're going to be talking about some of my favorite things which is spreadsheets and tracking and metrics and I know that you know that will send a lot of people off to sleep just even hearing that. But for, for anyone who is really wanting to grow, really wanting to scale and do it in a way that is intentional and profitable and enjoyable, then these things need to be done. And we, we're keeping it simple. We're just talking about three things that I would focus on. I know there's a million things you could track, but focusing on that I did focus on and that we get our clients to focus on if you're really wanting to scale. So let's jump right on in. Alrighty guys. Now before we kick off today's episode, I just wanted to share something really exciting and that is that we have open the doors for our brand new program called Ecourse Elite. Now this is a high touch 12 month mentorship program for six figure course creators who are looking to scale to, you know, high six, seven figures and beyond. And but they want to do it in a way that is actually reliable, sustainable, intentional, profitable and preferably as automated as possible. And that is what we show you. We're going to show you the three systems that you need to install into your business. How they, you do them one by one and they stack on top of each other and how that creates amazing, amazing growth as well as creates a really solid reliable foundation that just makes business a lot more enjoyable too. So if you want to find out all of the details, if you want to grab yourself one of the seats because this is the first time we are running it, we're keeping numbers super low so we can make sure we get in there and over deliver. Then head to HelloFunnels Co Elite, get all the details put in your application and hopefully we will see you inside really soon when the doors open. So once you've done that, you've done it good, then come back and let's dive into today's episode. As I mentioned, there are three things that I recommend as we get our clients to do this. But I recommend everybody is tracking once they are sort of at that multiple six figure mark to help them to go beyond that. I don't recommend that these necessarily all things you track from the start. I'll sort of let you know for each one. These are definitely things you need to be paying attention to that you need to have some sort of dashboard or you know, whether you have a VA who even just sends you the numbers. We have dashboards that we give our clients. So this kind of, we call it the CEO system that they just get to pop, set it up once and it all comes together and it just gives them these reports that they need and these top line numbers that they need to focus on. So very first thing that we get you to focus on. And again, this is not, this one particularly is not for beginners. This one is only to be done at the right time in the right way. But the metric we want people tracking when they are at that sort of mid six level wanting to scale is does your marketing pay for itself or at least for most of itself because it will vary depending on your niche and your offer and et cetera. But for most of the clients that we work with, they should be able to get at least like an 80% of their marketing costs covered immediately by that marketing. So this is a really, really crucial step. It was one of the biggest game changers for us and it is also for our clients when implemented properly. But it is also one of the most problematic strategies I see out there because people are trying to do it in, in the wrong way and, or at the wrong stage of business. So if you add this, install this system into your business at the right time, with the right, you know, other setup, like, you know, do it the right way. This can be like a game changer. This can basically mean you now have a switch that you can flick whenever you like, as much as you like and you can start growing as quickly as you like. And it doesn't cost you anything because your marketing is paying for itself. Do it at the wrong time, however, and in the wrong way. It just becomes a massive distraction and you have people spending months and months obsessing over getting this thing working and it's not even giving them any profit again, even if it is Working and paying for itself. If you don't have the systems behind it to then be making sales in a regular reliable way, if you don't either have a funnel or you know, a really dialed in launch system or both, then all you're doing is actually a quite a slow way of list building. It's not actually making you any money and it's just taking up a lot of your time. So this is, you know, one of those strategies that I really, really love. When you do put in and you can do it quite quickly, like the way that we teach it, we kind of go through a five day process and at the end of that five days it should be up and running and then it's a bit of tweaking and testing. But for most people from then on it's just monitoring ads and testing some new ads, but done at the wrong time. As I said, it can set you back months because you've not, you know, because your business wasn't ready, you didn't have those other pieces in place. So as far as monitoring it and tracking those numbers, what you really want to is how much you've spent on ads for whatever time period, whether you're doing it. I wouldn't recommend doing it daily because things fluctuate, but weekly, monthly, and then how much of those self liquidating offer sales, those first sales, whether it's a downsell and again there's different ways of doing this and we like helping to advise people to choose one's going to work best for them for their offers. That feels really good for them. Not just kind of like a cookie cutter approach, but that whatever that sort of self liquidating offer is, how many sales you've got, like how much revenue you've earned from that and then what is the percentage? So is it a positive percentage and negative and how much? I said the goal really is like ideally perfect world, it's a hundred percent covered, if not a little bit more. So that can help you to scale up your marketing. And actually it's like making you money but in a realistic world with ads the way they are these days, even 80% covered. So that means that what maybe you were getting like $10 leads, $15 leads before and now they're like costing you three or four dollars. Even that in itself and particularly when you have a proper system behind it, which then is making you 5,000, 10,000, whatever with the next sale it still gives you a lot more room to grow. Like I said, it's that switch that you can flick and you Know, you can really start revving things up. So that's metric number one, does your marketing pay for itself and in what percentage does it do that? The second thing that you need to track, and this is something that takes a little bit more time to set up. Again, it's another part of our systems dashboards that we give to our clients and get them to set up right up front. But is you need to know, and this is particularly for those of you who have premium offers but still works for a signature course. It's still really important. But you need to know how long and how much contact does your dream client need before they buy. Because every client is different, every niche is different, every offer is different. And everybody will have like clients who actually need a slightly different journey. Like we always teach sort of what is the, you know, what's the gold standard? Get the gold standard in work and working. But then it's like, okay, now how do we sort of monitor that and see how your clients move through that gold standard and how do we then make optimizations and tweaks to make this work even better for you and for them? But you need to know when you are planning, particularly if you are planning on focusing on going really evergreen, as automated as possible. This is so, so important to know because, and I'll give you an example of this because you might be thinking, what were you even talking about? But is, you know, for example, some offers, you know, a lot of people will come in like we have clients who are like this and they'll find that 80% of their sales come from people who have had been on their email list for less than seven days. So brand new people. So that means that with that type of offer and that type of market, it's obviously clear enough, it's obviously a big enough pain point and the price and the value exchange is there so that people are happy when they go, oh great, there's a solution, I've been looking for a solution. Let's go. Other people with their offers, they find that actually the majority of their clients have been on their email list for six months or more. Now the thing with that is that if you, one of these people who, your clients do need a bit more warming up, then you might look at the numbers. Say if you had an initial funnel and your numbers, your sales would probably be quite low and you'd be like, well this funnel is not working for me. But actually the funnel is working. It's going to convert those people coming through who that 10, 20% people coming through who are ready now that is going to help you pay for more marketing, but that you need to then still have more touch points to allow the people to get that know, like trust factor, that 80% of people who need that bit more reassurance that knowing you a bit better before they will purchase. So it's just about knowing these numbers and the way that you do it. Like, it's. This is a simple spreadsheet that you can set up that as people come through, it starts to dump the data and then you can start analyzing it. But you need to know that like does when people purchase what, like, how much time did they need, how much trust did they need to build and how much contact did they need as well. Because again, if you're trying to map out your perfect marketing journey for your ideal clients and figure out how you can do that in a way that's as systemized, as streamlined as possible. Like, you might go, okay, well, most people who purchase had been in through three different things. They'd been to an automated webinar and attended two launches before they bought. Okay, great, well, now we know they need multiple touch points. How can you make that system work for you? So really important to know, as I said. And the reason is not just for designing it so that you can set your expectations when you were setting something up and say, look, the purpose of this webinar isn't actually to make, to make conversions right now. It's to add an extra, like tick in the trust box, add some extra coins into that so that your client trusts you more when you launch to them in a month's time. So this is the kind of stuff that if you are looking to scale that you need to start doing, you can't just be chasing the strategies that convert day one, because that's not always going to be actually the best strategy for your growth. It will get you some people. But that might be if you keep focusing on that going, why am I getting sales in the first seven days? And most of your clients need 30, 60, 90 days. You are never going to move past that point. You're only ever going to convert those that 20% rather than converting the 80%. And you want to focus obviously on that bigger number too. All right, the third thing that you really need to be tracking here. And again, this one is a bit boring. And if you can outsource it to someone on your team, if you have that sort of level of trust with them, I would. But you need to make sure that you have a budget and it doesn't have to be like a crazy complicated one, but that you, in that budget, you are giving yourself enough space to be investing enough to be able to grow. Because if you don't invest in your business, if you're wanting to grow, it won't grow. You're just, you know, we spoke about this in our last week's episode, but it is one of those most really common mistakes I see people making. They sort of, they get really scared about spending more and spending before. Like they kind of think I'll start making money first and then I'll spend more. But you actually have to usually spend more to get, you know, that next level of income. And again, I'm not talking about going into debt, I'm not talking about being irresponsible. I'm talking about sitting down at the start of the year knowing your numbers well enough to go, okay, well I think we should pretty safely make X number of sales. That's what this is going to look like from a marketing perspective. And if we do make this number of sales, how much do I then need to be spending on team, on marketing, on our own growth? And I'll actually give you a quick little breakdown now. And I know there's lots of people out there and I'm obviously not an accountant, I'm not a financial advisor. This is just a ratio that we've used ourselves that I've been advised on a version of this and heard very similar versions of this from multiple people who I really respect. So take this, make it your own. Everyone's will be slightly different. But this is roughly the ratios of investment that we recommend, particularly if you are sort of in that sort of six figure range already wanting to grow. So first of all, owners, owners pay profit, whatever you want to call it, but basically the money that you end up, you take out of the business should be around 30%. Some people make that a bit less, some people make it a bit more. You know, again, feel free to, to fiddle with these slightly. Team costs about 25%, marketing costs around, again around 25%. Now those two are ones that want, some people go, oh, I want, I want to spend more on marketing and less on team and vice versa. It depends on again, size of your organic traffic, all of that stuff. So you can kind of play within that 50% to the team and marketing to make those ratios work best for you. Education and coaching, 10%. A lot of people don't have this as a line item, but you need to be, particularly if you're in A stage of growth, you need to be investing in yourself, in your knowledge, in your support, in your feedback loop, making sure that you are getting that next level one that you are learning the next things you need to know to get to where you want to go. And then operations cost another 10%. So that's things like paying for your, you know, your software, your tech, any postage or whatever, you know, depending on what it is that you've got. So like the cost of physical, cost of running your business, business, your website hosting, all of that. So to go through it again, in case you were kind of writing it down, you missed anything. Owners pay 30%, team cost 25%. Marketing cost 25%, education and coaching 10%, operation costs 10%. So like I said, feel free to, you know, tweak those slightly to make them work better for you. But that's a really good baseline budget to set yourself. Make sure you're checking in with that every, every month. Some months will, will fluctuate. You don't have to be super, super strict on it, but just make sure the trend is keeping you within those buckets. And you know, realize for a lot of people I find that when they kind of do actually sit down and work it out, they go, actually I was not spending or investing anywhere near enough in like my marketing or my team. And that was actually a thing that was stopping them from getting to that next level because they needed that team, they needed that extra marketing to be able to grow. If you've been nodding along to this guys, if this has been like oh I'm not doing this or I need to do this or this is going to make a super big impact on my business, then you probably going to love our new program. As I mentioned at the start, Ecourse Elite, it's a brand new program. It's for six figure course creators who are looking to scale to that multi. Six high six sevens helping you to set up and install those three systems that you need to get there and give you oodles and oodles of support, feedback, templates, everything you need to be able to do it is easily and stress free and as enjoyably as possible. If you want to come and grab one of those last seats, go to HelloFunnels co Elite. All the details are there, put in your application. As I mentioned, we are only keeping this intake really, really small and intimate guys because we want to come in and over deliver, make sure this program is as amazing as possible. So our founding members will get so much like if, you know, if it was me, I'd always want to come into a founding member round because you know you're going to get loved up to the moon. So head to hellofunnels Co Elite, grab the details, get in your application, and we can't wait to see you inside. Bye.

Thanks so much for listening to the Doing it online podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. And if you're ready to take your online course sales to the next level with your own six or seven figure funnel, let Kate show you exactly how today@Stealmyfunnel.com.