Episode 83: Inside A Broken Funnel That Made A $25k Month Profit Comeback!

Welcome to the Create youe Laptop Life podcast, where entrepreneurs all around the world come to learn how to market and grow their online business right from their laptops, wherever they are. We don't have traditional nine to five jobs and we don't want them because financial and lifestyle security and freedom is too important to us. We know the world is changing for the better and that the freelance and entrepreneur economy is the cleaner, greener, smarter way to work for both families and businesses. My name is Julie, and this podcast will teach you everything you need to know about creating and growing your laptop life. Hey, everyone, this is Julie. Hope you're doing amazing today. I actually want to share a Facebook interview that I did with a woman. Her name is Jennifer. She's in my Digital Insiders, and her story is awesome. If you have launched a funnel that has flopped or failed you, you want to hang tight for this interview because in it we talk about her journey from starting with a very broken sales funnel and how she moved through over the next year to create a profitable funnel that was netting about 20 to $25,000 a month in profit. Now, lest you think she's in a super popular niche like make money online or something that has, you know, a lot of proven success, she actually is not. She is a belly dancer. She teaches belly dancing and her product is only $27. So I highly recommend you listen to this interview because it talks so much about the importance of sticking with it and micro optimizing a funnel. Tune in and as always, appreciate you all.

Hey, what's up, Facebook? This is Julie Stoyan. You know that I am here today with Digital Insider fellow friend, colleague Jennifer Savelle. She is in Bali this evening. It's like 9 o' clock for you, right? Right now?

Yep, yep.

So if you guys are here, say hello in the chat. I'm gonna pull up the Facebook chat. What I wanted to do is I wanted to bring Jennifer on today because she has just such a great story, a very, like, realistic story of what it's like when you have a broken funnel and you're on your way to fixing your broken funnel and creating a profitable funnel. So, Jennifer, why don't you just give everyone a quick little background on who you are and what your business is.

Yeah. So when I joined Digital Insiders, I had my digital marketing business for about almost four years at that time. And I had always wanted to create my own product. And I had had the idea to create a belly dance program for a really long time and had got discouraged along the way that that was even a viable product. And then I did the Click Funnels one funnel away challenge. And I thought, you know what? Let me try this again. And I did a test, and I had an idea. I remembered that one of my students had told me after belly dance class that since she'd been taking belly dance, she didn't have urinary leaking anymore. And I thought, you know what? I think I was at the gym and I saw a commercial for a drug, and I thought, you know what? Let me try this. Let me do, like, a Facebook ads test. Send people to a lead magnet. Let me just see how many people opt in and test the idea to see if it's viable. And so many people opted in. I thought, okay, maybe there's something here. I created my funnel and launched it. I thought, oh, my God, I'm gonna have these amazing sales come in. I was, like, super excited. I'm not kidding. I even bought, like, this, like, blessing candle. Do this whole ceremony. And then, like, I checked on, you know, Monday crickets. Like, nothing.

So this funnel. This funnel you built off of the OFA challenge, You weren't in DI yet. You had just. This is all free digital. Okay.

It was. It was, like, heartbreaking. And I thought, okay, I know there's still an idea here, but. So it sat for, like, three months. And I think. I don't remember what holiday it was. I think it might have been Memorial Day. My friend invited me to his amazing barbecue. He showed me what the menu was, and I just had this intuitive sense that, no, I am not going to go. I need to just think and reflect. And it was that morning on that holiday, after I had just gone for a run and done some stairs, I came home. I laid on the floor of my living room, and the idea popped into my head that I needed a coach to help me figure out why my funnel was broken and how to fix it, and that I couldn't do it on my own or I could try. And who knows how long that would take me? And. And who knows if I would get discouraged before I would ever even get there. And while I was laying on the floor, you popped into my head. This is a part of the story.

Even I didn't know.

Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't even really know very much about you at that time. I just kind of seen you in the challenge, and I thought, you know what? I went right to my computer. I went on, and I applied for di. So that's how it all started.

How it all started.

I was just guided I didn't even know.

Kudos to you. I see someone saying, I'm blowing out my blessing candles right now. But it's so interesting because like you built this funnel, it didn't work. There was a lot of like expectation let down. And so then I remember our sales call and you were talking about this, that you had built this funnel and you wanted to optimize it. So you know, belly dancing is at. It's not a make money online niche. You know what I mean? It's definitely like a monetizable niche, but it's not like the home run niches. So I remember thinking, okay, like we have our work cut out for us a little bit. Like this is kind of super Nichy you joined and then I remember you relaunched. How long did it take you to get it all like redesigned and out the door?

So I was, I'm a speed person for the most part. I'm very impatient and I think same thing with walking, if I can get there faster, I'll walk faster. Why am I going to walk slow? So that's how I am in my. And so I was like, I'm going to get this thing going. I think it took me maybe six weeks or something like that. And I had to film my oto, which before was like a private belly dance lesson. And you're like, I don't think anybody's going to want to do that. And I think you were probably right. And so I created this whole fitness program that was actually more content than my core offer. And I literally almost killed myself filming like 50 videos in four hours in one day because I just wanted to get it done and I couldn't barely function for a week. So I think like I completed the whole thing in about six weeks because I really just wanted to get it out there as quickly as possible. And then I was scared as hell to do that thousand dollar Facebook ad challenge. I was having so much anxiety, seriously. But I just let it sit there for the weekend. And then Monday I opened it up and I had made a little bit of profit.

Yeah. So, alright, so your first thousand dollar ad test, after the first failure of the funnel, you had relaunched it. I'm going to show you guys the funnel here in a minute. You used funnel retro. I believe it was retro that you, you made a little bit of profit, which is awesome. Right? In the thousand dollar ad test, a lot of people don't quite do that, but you know, you weren't rolling in the millions. It was just like I spent a thousand and made whatever, 1200.

I was happy. I didn't lose money. Yeah, yeah.

So I remember there was. I feel like the story always ends with the thousand dollar Facebook ad test. And then it's like. And then they lived happily ever after. And then nobody ever says what happens after the thousand dollar ad test.

And.

And so you had a really big blow that hit your ad account somewhere in there. Right. It was like when ad account went, I launched.

Oh. So first of all, I was going to launch after the really ugly funnel. I was going to relaunch the new funnel on a Monday of a week. And the week before, I broke my wrist.

Oh, that is right. You broke your wrist.

I remember that. And that just completely threw things off. But I was like, I am not going to let this slow me down. It only delayed me by a week. And I launched with one hand and I was so scared because I wasn't feeling well physically. It was a really hard time. But Helen got me through it. I launched it with one hand. And then after that it was about, how do I make this profitable? And one thing that I want to say is that the best advice that you could have ever given me when I first started working with you in Di was I had two very different funnels, business ideas. I was working on extremely different niches, totally different. And you said to me, I was, first of all, I was thinking, yeah, I'm just going to launch this thing, let it roll, and then I'll move on to the next thing. And you were like, I'm just going.

To try this thing over here and then we're going to try something else.

Let this get some steam, and then I'll move over to the next thing. And you're like, you need to pick one, you need to pick one to start. And that was the best thing you could have ever done. Because I'm the shiny object person. When I get excited about stuff, I get passionate. But you made me stick to one thing. And that philosophy is what has carried me through to sticking with this one, baby. And not just keep working it, keep working it, keep working it. So after I launched it, it was like, okay, it was a little bit profitable, but not hugely. It was like 30% return on investment, 50% maybe some days it was 100%, but I wasn't really making any money. But I believed in it. I believed it was possible to earn money on it. I remember you kept saying, cause you were trying to manage my expectations.

I was like, we need a whole value ladder here.

Yeah. And you were like, you know, just so you know, most people don't make money on these funnels, so this is really just to bring leads in. You just kept managing my expectations. Don't expect you're going to make a profit, but I am stubborn.

There's candles all over your house.

Well, those didn't work. I didn't ever got those again. Not that I don't believe that they work, but I kind of had a bad association with them after that. But.

But what I want to. What I want to say about this, it's like. So you were like. You were, like, slow and steady. You were optimizing.

Optimize.

I'm going to show the funnel a minute. But then your ad account went down. Was it right around the time Mastermind.

Remember that was at. That was on the Friday that the Mastermind ended. Yeah. In Connecticut. And I looked in my clickfunnels, I'm like, why is there $0?why is there no money coming in? And then I. My personal ad account got shut down, and I. For three months, I could do nothing.

I was like, you got to go get a vpn. Go sign. Like, I was, like, trying to give you all this advice to, like, get around. I know, like, you know how many people I'm just. For any of you guys watching, how many people would have given up? Like, there's, like, at least six opportunities that Jennifer could have been like, where is the exit ramp? Like, I'm like, this is hard. I'm out. But you are stubborn. You are stubborn and fast, and you kept at it, and you eventually got.

Your ad account back.

I did.

And Helen's voice stuck in my head because it was. I think it was. It was right around Christmas. It was either the day after Christmas or it was Christmas Eve. And I remember her just give it one more shot. And I thought, it's the holidays, maybe the Christmas spirit. And that's when I contacted support, and I was like, is there anything you could do? And he was like, just keep appealing. And I appealed one more time. And it was that time. And they were like, sorry, it was a mistake.

And they put it back. Oh, my gosh. All right. So that was Christmas of 2019. Right. That was Christmas of2019. And so now it's been. We're. We're not quite a year later. And you hit a big milestone in May, right? It was May. Yes. Almost a year to the day of, like, Memorial Day, the blessing thing. And what was that big goal that you hit? And then I want to show off your Funnel.

So my goal from the very beginning, when I first launched it was my goal is 20. 20k was in my head 20k. I want to hit 20k a month. And in May, I believe it was, the total sales that came in was around 50k and my profit was around 25k.

Yeah, you did it. It was almost a year later, and you had finally done it. But that was not without some serious hard work. So I'm going to pull up this funnel. I want you to talk about how many iterations this funnel has gone through since you first launched it. And all the. I mean, you. I feel like you were sending this funnel to me for an audible, like, every week. And I was like, what could I say different? Like, I just gave you.

And I want to say something too, because I was making notes before our call of, like, all the different iterations that I did, and I remembered something important, which is that from the very beginning, that anticipating success spreadsheet that you have.

Yes.

Yep. That. And I was thinking about the words anticipating success. That's what I did. And I would just run numbers just kind of for fun. Okay, if I did a half a percent increase conversion rate on my sales page, what would that mean at the end? If this many people hit my page? And I just kept visualizing that, what do I need to do? What needs to happen for me to hit my goal? And I realized that a half a percent with enough people hitting that page would mean thousands of dollars. For me, a percent would mean even more thousands of dollars. And so I thought if I could just improve my page by those little percentages over time, then I'll get there. And it was that spreadsheet that really helped me to visualize that.

So you're, like, laying so much gold right now because so many people, when they look at their page and they're like, okay, it's converting at 1.69. And they're like, how do I get it to 5%? I'm like, do you realize that if you could just get it to 1.9 or 2%, just those.

And that's what I would do. I wasn't shooting for that. I was just shooting for a half a percent more than where I was right then? And then when I would get there, it was a half percent more from there. And what do I need to get another 0.5%? And that was it. I wasn't thinking any more ahead than, like, a 5%.

So good. Like, it's so good. And so you have made a tremendous amount of Changes to this.

I feel like this page might be.

Zoomed out because it seems kind of small. Oh, yeah.

I was like, why is it so small?

Let's zoom it in here. I love what you did with this. I remember you redid the product mock up shot a whole bunch of times.

A bunch of times, yeah.

I remember you added this awesome coupon.

Yeah, that was part of it. I added the provely that I think made a big difference. The little thing on the bottom with the sales so and so purchased. I did that. That was one of the first things I did that coupon. I looked at somebody's funnel who I knew was killing it because of their stats on, like, similar web or something. And I just tried to, you know, replicate some items that I thought, now this is a. I want to talk about this order bump.

Can we talk about the order bump and how much iteration happens?

Oh, my God. That was the biggest bugaboo because. Yeah, I think I tried four different things. And you were like, that. That order bump would really help a lot. It really makes a difference. And I was like, what is it gonna be? And then at the Mastermind, the last dinner of the last day, I was sitting with Dani, and she was like, what about like, belly dance in the bedroom or something like that? And I was like, I don't want to do that. Because I was like, I don't want people to associate belly dance with sexy. And. Because that always bothered me. But then she asked the waitress, well, you know, do you want to be sexy? And she was like, yeah. And I was like, maybe I'm being, you know, too rigid about this. And so I filmed a video in a way that I thought would respect the dance and would just help each woman connect with herself, not trying to be an object for someone else, which I'm opposed to because I think it's about you being the subject of your life, not the object. So I created something that I felt in integrity with, and it was the secret. It was the.

How is it?

What's it converting at, on, like, 30, 35%.

Yeah, you had. You had like. I remember Bump was like the urinary incontinence interview series or something. And I was like.

And I added that as a bonus.

I don't think so. Good old Dani. Oh, I miss our in person mastermind so much.

That was. I'm so grateful to her because she. That was the idea that I needed.

Yeah. Interestingly, this is not a two step. You know, it's funny, after Offercare came out, everyone's Replicating the two step order form. And lots of people like the two step. And the two step is great, but you have been really profitable on this funnel. No two Step, just straight up sales page.

Yeah. I mean, for me, it was just like that promo video there at the top. At first it was a video of me talking, and then after I got my cast off, I filmed this video and that made a huge difference in my. Again, huge. I think it increased it by a percent, which is huge when you're working.

On tenths of a percent. Yeah.

Right. So that was a big thing that I did. Adding those Facebook screenshots with the yellow highlighter that I saw in someone's funnel.

Yeah, yeah, we literally just talked about those in FG Society yesterday, about the importance of highlighting your testimonials. Because it's just like this big wall of text and like, people can't. They don't know what you're trying to communicate with it unless you point them and be like, read this word right here.

Yeah. And I just. I would just look at other people's, you know, funnels that were performing well and borrow what worked. And. And then the final thing that I did that went. I think it was. It took my page from like a average 3%. I would say. Yeah, probably average 3% to 4 and a half percent.

Wow. That's.

Was. I had a copywriter fix up that sales page and just make it better.

Yeah, you finally had like a full. It was a full copy. Full copy audit. Right. Or it was a full rewrite.

Yeah, it wasn't a full rewrite, but he. He just took what I had and made it that much better, basically. So, I mean, I think it's good to write your own. And then instead of them having to create it from scratch, which would be a lot more expensive, but just to make it better what I had already done. And that made a huge difference.

Yeah. Well, it's crazy because, like, in one of our digital, like, insider group calls we were doing, we were tweaking headlines and everyone was pulling their headlines up and Christine was on there and she's in the sewing niche again. Another not make money online. I said, take this one word out of this headline because that could be intimidating people. And then she messaged me and she said, my conversion has gone up. And so I like you embody this just unbelievable anti shiny object syndrome. Even though it's funny, I know you are. You said you have that because you just continued to care about the small percentages. And over time it has made A significant difference. So you are now finally working on a new funnel after whatever it is, a year and a half, you want to tell people about what you're doing next.

Yeah. So I sent out an email to everybody after they purchased the program, and I asked them why they purchased. And of course, not everybody responds to me, but you start to see themes. And so many people that purchase, they purchased just because they wanted to learn belly dance, not because they were wanting to strengthen their pelvic floor primarily. And I thought, God, I didn't know. So many people just wanted to learn belly dance. And so now this program is called Feminine Fire Awaken the Belly Dancer Within. And it's going to teach women not only how to belly dance, but how to create their own belly dance routines by putting different combinations together, like a Lego modular system. And I want to empower them to become creators in their own bodies and just create a movement of empowerment for women.

Yeah, I saw. I'm so excited. We've been working on the logo. I can't wait for this to come out. The world desperately needs what you have, women. There's something about the belly dancing that is such an empowering movement for women, especially estate, especially in a culture that hates bellies like we hate bellies. It's ridiculous. We need to fall back in love with our amazing bellies that do these incredible things like grow babies and just.

All the different shapes that women have. Because, I mean, I'm in Bali right now, and even being here, I'm having more comfort in my body because it's really. America's gotta be one of the worst countries in terms of this standard for what women should look like. And it's really destructive.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I can't wait. I can't wait to talk all about it when it launches. Jennifer. Thank you so much. You guys. If you are interested in belly dancing, you should go to Belly Dance Solution and go buy her product. Jennifer is amazing. And for those of you watching, because you are funnel nerds, let this be a lesson in persistence and consistency and staying the course and caring about those little percentage points, because it does make a difference.

Thanks, Julie. Thanks for all your help.

Thank you so much for joining us. And, guys, have a great day. Talk soon.

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