How to Build a 6 Figure Sales Funnel (Free Training Inside)

Welcome to the Business Without Burnout podcast. I'm Kirsten Roldan, and I help entrepreneurs make a lot of money peacefully. I'm a New Yorican who went from working in healthcare while cleaning houses and braiding hair on the side to building a business that's generated over $4 million and counting.

But there was a time I almost shut my business down because I had a lot of money but no peace. I managed to turn it around, and that's why every week I share the 4 strategies that help you grow without burnout: email marketing, team systems, and mindset. So let's dive in.

Welcome back to the podcast. I'm so excited because today's episode is a little different and I'm handing you an entire training. So here's the backstory. Before Million Dollar Email, before any of what you know me for now, I ran a successful funnel building agency. I built sales funnels for clients that made them an extra 6 figures a year in between their launches. And I did that long enough to see exactly what worked, what was a waste of money, and what people were being sold that they absolutely did not need. So I took everything I learned inside that agency Agency, and I ended up turning it into a coaching program called Finesse Your Funnel. And Finesse Your Funnel is what eventually led me to build Million Dollar Email. Where are the OGs, by the way? Where am I? Where are the people that have been around since Finesse Your Funnel? So what you're about to hear is a replay from inside Finesse Your Funnel. But listen to me now because I know y'all are going to ask. The program is not open. You cannot buy it. I'm not going to pitch you at the end of this episode about it, and there is no waitlist for it. It is an archived program. But I'm giving you a full training right out of it completely free right here on the podcast. Why? Because y'all are still as confused about funnels today as y'all were in 2021, if not more. Now people are still buying 12-step funnel maps they never finish building. They're still convinced that passive income and a sales funnel are the same thing. And people are still paying strategists to make something complicated that should be simple. So here's what you're getting in this training. First, what a sales funnel actually is, not the tools, not the tech, the actual thing. And once you understand it, you'll realize you already have one, whether you built it on purpose or not. Second, the different types of sales funnels. There are 3 main styles that we tend to see in the industry, and which one you need depends entirely on your price point. I'll walk you through all 3 so you stop trying to run a high-ticket funnel on a low-ticket offer and vice versa. And third, we're busting the biggest funnel myths. I'll also break down a real funnel for my own business at the end of the training. Real numbers, real conversion rates, and one upsell that converted at almost 50%. One quick note before we start. This was originally recorded as a video training, so there were visuals on the screen. I describe every single one of them out loud as I go, so you're not missing anything by listening.

You're good.

And at the very end of this episode, I'm coming back to connect this training to what we talked about last week on the podcast and to give you a practical do this today version of what you're about to learn. So stay with me through the end. All right, let's get into it. Go listen to baby Kirsten.

She's so smart.

She's such a genius. You're going to love her. Enjoy her, and I'll see you at the end of the episode.

All right, y'all, like I said, this entire program is designed to help you delete distractions and put laser focus on what works when it comes to your launch and funnel strategy. That means we need to bust some myths because there are a lot out there. In this section, I'm going to help you get crystal clear on funnels right here, right now. So let's go over some of the funnel myths that we're going to bust today. A sales funnel means email or ads. A sales funnel means passive income. A sales funnel means set and forget tech. A sales funnel is for courses only. A sales funnel needs to be mega automated to actually make sales or drive leads on autopilot. Here's the first truth. Okay. Does a sales funnel equal email or ads? The answer is no. Those are the tangible aspects that support a funnel. The truth is a sales funnel is the process of lead capture and conversion. Okay. And it's broken down into awareness, interest, desire, and action. Now I've created this visual. All right. And if you're not watching the video and you're listening to this, the visual says awareness, interest, desire, and action. And it's got these perpendicular lines, right, going up and down. To layer know under the awareness section, like under the interest section, and trust under the desire and action section. Now, where the desire and action section is, there is this loop, this circle, right, with 2 arrows just continuously going in a circle. And there's a reason for this that I'm going to explain. So there's the awareness section of a sales funnel, right? And this is the know. This is where people get to know you. They're like, oh, I know who she is, what she does, and okay, I'm aware now. Then there's the interest section of a sales funnel, and that's the like phase, right? Where they're getting to really know who you are. They're getting to know if they vibe with your personality and your approaches, etc. And then the desire and action phase where this continuous loop keeps happening. The reason why I put this there is because this is where people are building trust and this trust is ever moving, ever moving, ever flowing. Some people take longer to trust, some people take less time to trust, right? It all depends. Some people buy based on trust while some people buy based on know and like, right? It all depends. So this desire and action phase, people tend to like oscillate in between it. Like they just kind of like move around like, okay, I'm into it, but I don't know if I want to take action. I'm into it, but I don't know if I want to take action. But even more than that, even beyond that, they also can continuously take action throughout your funnel.

Here's what I mean.

They opt into your funnel, they get a free guide as an example, right? They get a free guide or they get results from a quiz or whatever it is. They go into your funnel and they have the desire to purchase that little mini offer that you put in there, that $7 offer. And they're like, oh, it's only $7, I'm gonna take action. Okay, then they get to the end of your funnel and you're pitching a mid-ticket offer, it's like $700, and they're like, ooh, I really want it But I need more time to take action. So they wait. Now let's say you send them an email like 2 weeks later. They miss the fast action bonus. They didn't buy, whatever. You send them another email. It's just saying, hey, I've opened up one-to-one spots or whatever it is. Do you want to join? And they take action then. A few months down the road, you, you launch something else and they take action then. So this is what I mean by you can keep people in your funnel and they can continue to stay in the desire and action phase if you're continuously nurturing them once they're in there. Okay. So when it comes to a funnel, it's layered with tangible and intangible factors. So an actual sales funnel is the process of lead capture and conversion. And then there are the tangible and intangible factors of it. So for example, there's the awareness and know phase. This could look like an ad, right? Like a Facebook ad that gets sent out. And, you know, you— a lot of people actually come into the industry from Facebook ads and they're like, oh, I saw an ad about how to grow an online business and it was my first introduction and, you know, to the, to the industry, et cetera. That's an example of the tangible aspect of the awareness and know phase of a sales funnel. The interest and like phase can look like the email marketing. and the launching. And then the desire and action phase is all of it coupled together. It's the email, the ad, and the launch to push people from desire to action. All right? With that being said, just because you have a sales funnel doesn't mean you're going to have passive income. There are different styles of sales funnels, right? And also everybody has one. Everybody has a process of lead capture and conversion, whether it's automated or not. You have a sales funnel already. It's just about what style you want. Okay. So let's talk about the different styles of sales funnels. All right. So I described the different styles of sales funnels, and I've included the 3 most common for the people that come into this program to understand. There's like the low ticket click to buy funnel. And I have a visual here where it's a rectangle and it says hi at the top with a line in the middle. And then it says buy. Hi to buy, right? Hi to buy, click to buy funnel. And that's most common with low ticket offers. Low ticket is relative. High ticket is relative. But for the, for the sake of this program, let's consider low ticket under $100. Okay. Click to buy. Then there's a self-liquidating funnel, most commonly used once you get into the mid-ticket ranges, into the $500 and up range. And that is You can see I have a triangle and then it's free line tripwire line program. Okay, so it's a free offer to a low-ticket, easy-to-buy, you know, high-and-buy offer, click to buy, and then to an offer pitch program, right? That's a self-liquidating funnel. And what that essentially means is that it's recovering the cost per acquisition. So basically the cost per lead. So if somebody comes in and they get a free offer and let's say it costs you $3 to get them because you're using ads or something like that, right? You want to recover that cost by having a tripwire or an easy-to-buy offer. And so in that case, you know, a tripwire is really good to self-liquidate the funnel and to basically pay for the lead acquisition, to pay for the lead capture. So that way you're profitable when you finally pitch them for the program. Then there's the click-to-connect funnel, and I have it to where it's like this circle and there's a huge— there's the word human in the middle. And that means the click-to-connect funnel is what's commonly seen when it's like click to book a call, right? Or click to apply. Okay. And that's normally used for high-ticket funnels. So with all of this being said, passive income is relative, right? When people say they make sales every day and built a million-dollar empire off their funnels, let's be real. It's because they are running an SLO or a self-liquidating offer funnel. The daily sales that they're referring to are probably the tripwires, which are recovering costs for the funnel to their high-ticket offer. They're not building a million-dollar empire off of tripwires. They're building a million-dollar empire higher off of their mid or high ticket offer and their tripwires are keeping their lead acquisition costs in profit. I'm just being real. That's why you're in this program. I got you. If you were wondering, now you know. Then there's passive income versus passive lead generation, which is what I'm talking about now. Most of the time people are referring to passive income as what is actually passive lead generation. Passive lead gen is very powerful, so don't sleep on that. But it's not passive income. That's why I mentioned at the beginning of this program you can have evergreen lead generation and evergreen sales. Both of them are incredibly powerful. Neither of them is better than the other. The goal of the funnel is just different. So just remember that. In fact, we actually believe that passive lead generation is more impactful than passive income. Passive lead generation means less intense marketing. Think less Instagram stories, less DM outreach, more product delivery. So in my humble opinion, passive lead gen is actually more impactful than passive income. And that brings us to funnel truth 3, where people think that funnels are just set and forget. Here's the real, okay? For as long as humans and market behaviors change, Funnel strategies change. This program will update. Your funnel will never be set and just forgotten. Sorry, funnel fam, it's the truth. And then sales funnels are only for courses. Let's talk about it. First of all, I've shown you multiple case studies that were not just courses that had a sales funnel strategy. All right. There are a lot of ways to do funnels. In this program, we're teaching you one simple and effective way to implement a funnel inside your business. This funnel will be the standard style you use for any service or product you offer. But let's talk about the truth of is it only for courses? Every niche and style of offer needs a sales funnel. Every business needs a system of lead capture and conversion, whether you're an e-commerce business, a high-ticket or premium service, course, any business, especially online business. And with that, the question remains, do funnels need to be mega automated to run on autopilot and help you get off social media? The truth is no. We actually teach a very simple style of sales funnel for this reason. Remember I mentioned before that there are a lot of ways to do funnels, but in this program, We teach you the most simple and effective way to implement funnel marketing inside your business. So no, funnels don't need to be overly and mega automated to get you off Instagram. Okay? Remember, a multi-step, really intense, mega automated funnel means multiple levels of a funnel to track and optimize. But the truth is simple equals scalable. I have a visual here of the, the different funnels that I've described to you all pushed together. I have like the free to tripwire to, to the high and buy to the human to the program. And this is a very common misconception where people literally think, oh, I need to have a free offer that leads to a tripwire and then it's going to be like a one-time offer and then I'll have them book a call. It's like way too much and it's unnecessary. It really is unnecessary. And it looks simple in this visual, like, oh, that actually flows together really well, except when you start layering it with the actual build and management of this funnel. Yeah, from a strategy perspective, you can lay out the steps really easily, but when you start building, managing, and tracking this funnel, it gets messy. And that is the common misconception that SLO or self-liquidating offers or multi-step funnels are the best funnels to run when really it depends on who you ask. Like for example, SLO funnels are a great, great way to recover costs and maybe even add a little profit margin to lead acquisition efforts. However, when it gets overcomplicated, it can actually be the hardest way to sell. And that is the truth. But don't worry, I'm— I am going to share a case study of a highly profitable SLO funnel just to show you the power of simplicity. I have another visual here just describing the actual strategy of a sales funnel along with the tangible aspects of it and how it can get really messy. So there's like the free tripwire to the high and buy to the click to connect Right? And there's like the ads, the email sequence 1, email sequence 2, no buy, try again, right? It's like this whole thing and it ends up being those really overcomplicated funnels that you see that are really unnecessary. And I really— this is all about getting you out of your head and into action. I want you to feel like this is so simple. You join this program to focus, okay? This is what I call the Becky funnel. And Becky, the business coach, was taught by the bros to make funnels feel really overcomplicated and intense so that they look like this amazing multimillion-dollar strategist when really it could be so simple and you can make a lot more money doing a lot less. I got you.

Okay. This is—

we're going to teach you the finesse your funnel funnel. All right. With that all being said, it could all be so simple. And I want to give you an example. Here's an example of a highly profitable self-liquidating offer funnel. So this was a multi-step funnel.

All right.

So I, in my own business, had a paid lead magnet, which you'll learn more about. And that was a $27 email workshop. All right. That led to a $7 case study video upsell. Super simple. super high converting that led to a $1,997 program, which is this program, right? And so the gross revenue for the email workshop and the case study funnel is listed here at— it looks like the email workshop was $1,497 and then total with the $7 case study was $1,721. So $1,700 total. Between the email workshop, $27, and the $7 case study program.

All right.

And amazing conversion rates as well. The average funnel conversion rate was 35%. Okay. I generated $20,000 from this simple funnel. Okay. Basically, it was the $27 email workshop where I pitched my $1,997 program. But before they even got access to the workshop, If they bought the upsell, they ended up getting video case study lesson. It was a 45-minute case study video on how I used email marketing to sell 5 figures in 5 days through a course bundle offer. Okay, so it aligned perfectly with how to build profitable email funnels. And then it's like, wait, do you want to learn from a 45-minute case study video on how I used email marketing to sell 5 figures in 5 days through a course bundle offer? And then I just explained very simply, you will receive view access to my launch stats spreadsheet, my launch email and social media copy document, so you can analyze one of my most successful marketing campaigns for your own future strategy. Grab for only $7. Okay, this alone, this upsell case study alone was a 46% conversion rate. That's almost 50%. That is wild, right? And so with that, not only did they get the 60-minute workshop, then they got the 45-minute case study video. So the $1,997 offer was just easy at that point, right? I had really used that simple funnel strategy to sell them, and it was automated. Okay, I did the live event once, and then I sold the replay.

All right.

Overcomplicated funnels, we don't know her. Okay, by the end of this program, you're going to have a simple and profitable sales funnel without having to hire a funnels expert or agency if you don't want to, or doing it yourself with no direction. You will have the ability to ask us any and all questions related to your particular sales funnel strategy as well inside our live community. All right. We've talked about a lot of things already. So before you move ahead, go to the community and ask any questions about this section so far. If you've learned something you loved, tag me on Instagram @kirstenroldan.

Okay. Welcome back. What'd you think? So good, wasn't it?

Wasn't it so good?

That was the training. Now I want to connect it. Okay. So in the last episode, I told you that you need to build a rabbit hole for your leads to go down when they find you. And in the training you just heard, You actually got a live example of exactly that. I broke down my own funnel, a $27 email workshop that led to a $7 email case study upsell that led into my funnels offer. That's a rabbit hole. Somebody found me, they went in, they kept going deeper because every step was worth taking and exciting for them to go through. So what should go in yours? Listen, there are a lot of options here, and I don't want you to think that there's only one right answer. But if you're starting from scratch, here's the sequence I'd build. Step 1, provide a resource that addresses one problem for your ideal client, not their whole life, one problem solved well. Step 2, show them a behind the scenes of how you solve that problem. This is the part almost everybody skips, but it's— it builds trust really fast. So people don't just want the what, they want to watch you do it. And step 3, pitch your offer. That's the funnel that I set up for myself. That is the rabbit hole that was high converting. Practically, that looks like one opt-in, one upsell, a delivery email, right, that delivers what you just sold to people with maybe even a surprise freebie in it, right? Basically, think to yourself, a rabbit hole is where can I keep giving them stuff? Where can I keep surprising and delighting them? I'm breadcrumbing right now because you're going to hear more about that in the next episode. And then an email sequence that pitches your program. All right, that's it. That's the funnel. You don't need this 12-step build to make it work. And you'll actually finish this one because it's easy. Now, let me give you the takeaways I want you carrying out of this episode. One, a sales funnel is a process of lead capture and conversion. It's not your email platform. It's not your ads, not your landing page builder. Those are just the tangible pieces of the funnel, which means you already have a funnel right now. The only question is whether it's intentional and automated. 2, passive income and passive lead generation are not the same thing, and most people selling you passive income are actually describing passive lead generation. Passive lead generation is genuinely powerful. In my opinion, it's way more impactful because it means less intense marketing, fewer Instagram stories, less DM outreach, and more time actually delivering your product. Just know which one you're building. 3, match the funnel style to the price point. Click to buy for low ticket, self-liquidating for mid-ticket, click to connect for high ticket. Most of the frustration I see comes from people running the wrong style for the offer they're actually selling. And 4, funnels are not set and forget. As long as humans change and market behavior changes, your funnel strategy changes. Build it expecting to have to optimize it. That's not failure, right? You're supposed to maintain it. 5, and this is the one I want you— oh my goodness, if I, if I need to tattoo it on you, okay? Simple. Is scalable. Every layer you add is another thing to build, another thing to manage, another thing to track, and another place it can break. And is it enjoyable for your client to go through? Probably not. You can make a lot more money doing a lot less and doing it well. So here's your homework: pick the one problem you're going to solve for your ideal client. Just that, all right? Because you can't build the rabbit hole until you know what's at the beginning of it. And the next episode, I'm gonna do this Again, another full training, but this time on the behind the scenes of the funnel strategy that I implemented for my most successful clients. If this episode was useful to you, share it with someone who's been stuck in sales funnel overwhelm. Tag me on Instagram @kirstenroldan. I read your tags. I love to share them. Let me know if you liked it. Leave a review if you're feeling real generous, and I'll see you next week.