0152: Increasing Your Lead Conversions for Profit with Joel Luis

Ea interviews, episode 152, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week, join Mario Ficcini for today's Expert Authority Effect interview. Business has a lot of facets. You can be talking about profit, you can be talking about leads, you might be talking about Facebook ads or perhaps funnels. And I'm sure we're going to be talking about that today. But what I'm most excited about is the person I'm going to bring on, who he is. I can first off say firsthand experience. He is a very nice and patience to the hilt. I don't know what the hilt is. Maybe it's a hill or something, but it's. I've heard it somewhere. He is a really great guy and I'm so appreciative of him and he knows why. Thank you. And I can't wait to bring up Joel Lewis because he is a great CEO of Integrator and Company. We're going to be talking about funnels, but I'm sure what he's most proud about is his kids and being a father. And I'm going to have him share his story, what he did a couple years ago to be able to spend more time with them while still maintaining his business. I'm going to bring up Joel Lewis right after we thank the sponsor. How would you like to grow your wealth? Easier than you think with the change. You probably don't notice anyhow automatically. That's why I started the compounding interest Snowball investing with acorns and advise you do too. Get started simply and easily today at EA interviews.com forward/acorns. Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Joel Lewis. Joel, how are you doing today, Mario?

I'm great. Glad to be here.

I'm glad you're here too. And.

You know, I was excited when we first talked and I'm even more excited now because you, you were on fire last time, but it's different and I know you're just ready to rock. So take us into how this started and please do touch on why you wanted to spend more time with your family instead of less, but also maintain your business.

Yeah, Mario, thanks for having me on again and everyone who's watching live right now, thanks for tuning in and continue to watch Mario's show here, this awesome podcast that he has going on. So really quick, I'll fast track you guys through everything. So in two.

Oh, we got time. You don't need to do it fast. We got plenty of time. We're even ahead of Schedule. That's how good we are.

So in 2008, that was the catalyst, right? I think we all, you know, along this journey, there was something, right? Either it's a aha moment where you have this brilliant idea, or something happens in your. In your life that's transformed, transformational. And for me, it was my youngest daughter, my oldest daughter. Now my oldest daughter, she's 11, was born. And I had the fortunate opportunity. I was working for a great company, Intel Corporation, and I was able to take two month paid sabbatical. Two months paid sabbatical. And that was just awesome. And my wife is a NICU nurse. She went back to work after eight weeks. We had about two weeks overlap. And then I became basically my. The primary caregiver for my daughter. And I had six weeks where it was just me and her. And, you know, my wife worked 12 hour shifts, so I would get it from the morning until late into the evening. And we just went all over the place. It was just so much fun. And not only was I taking care of my daughter, but at the same time, my company was still paying, right? So it was a paid sabbatical. So I was still providing for my family. So after those six weeks, I was like, how can I get more of this? Right? Because prior to that, I was just, you know, looking to climb the corporate ladder. Climb the corporate ladder. And again, it was an amazing company and I loved working until it's just I wanted something more. And then that's when my journey began into entrepreneurship and listening to podcasts and reading books and all that kind of stuff and kind of like how I ended up here, which I'm sure we'll dive into a little bit more.

So you're saying that was all in 2008?

That was all in 2008, yeah.

And I know you had mentioned the company name, and it sounds like, you know, just something casual you do right after high school or college. It was, you know, nothing serious. It was only intel. And you wanted to walk away from that. What changed between 2008 and the next point? So that's where you got the idea.

Yeah.

But walk me through the next step where it was the next big thing that.

Yeah. And I think podcasts like yours, listening to people's stories to really understand, like, what's the backdrop. Because oftentimes we see the end result, but then when we actually look back and see Steve Jobs says, you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can connect the dots looking back. And the journey for me started in 2008. But there was multiple failures in between that journey, attempting multiple different things. App development. I had a animation.

Animation agency where I was creating those animated videos.

Really? You talking 2D or 3D?

It was using powtoons, so it was like 3D. So it was like, you know. Are you familiar with powtoons?

I'm not familiar with powtoons, but my background's in video production, special effects, and animation. Like with Maya.

Oh, I don't know Maya. So I was using an application that made my life a lot easier to do it, right? So if you go to. Where is it on Facebook, I think it's like your. Your avatar. Co. I was looking at something the other day, and it was like something was still available. Like, you know, with the Internet, right? You can never get rid of anything, so it's still up there. And I just tried a number of different things. And, you know, what I realized was that I was just. Anything that came at me, I gave it a shot, right? As opposed to figuring out what is my passion, what am I good at, what are my superpowers? And it wasn't until 2013 when I heard. So I was listening to podcasts, like I mentioned, so John Lee Dumas, Pat Flynn, eventual millionaire, with Jamie tardy. And in 2013, it was like, January 2013, I was listening to a podcast by Jamie Tardy, who's now Jamie Masters, and she was interviewing Dan Miller, which maybe some of your audience knows and familiar with. And Dan was talking about his book, 48 Days to the work you love. And then when I heard it, I was like, that's what I need. And I immediately got the book. Actually, I got the digital version of the book, and then the physical version came a few days later. And I just went through that entire. I think that was the first time I went through a book that was like, kind of like a workbook. And I actually sat there and did the work, right? I actually went through and did the work, because the whole idea behind it, and there's two parts to the book. The first part is you figuring out what are your strengths, what are you passionate about, what's your vocation, your superpower, all that kind of stuff, to become an entrepreneur, launch your own business. The second part of the book is like, hey, I don't want to be an entrepreneur. I want to know what my strengths are, and then take that to an organization that aligns with my, you know, with my strengths. So I didn't care about the second part. I was interested in the first part, and I Went through that. And that's when I discovered, you know, you know, really what my. My superpower was. And that is technology. You know, it's just. I love technology. It comes easy to me. I know it's a struggle for some people, but for me, even at an early age, when I look back to when I was even a kid, I'd be the kid that would take things apart just to put them back together, see if I can or recreate something completely new out of something that I took apart. So that was the next 2013, was the next kind of like leap.

That is fascinating. And I. We have that in common a little bit. I know we were talking about the software in the machine and everything, and I'm happy to tell you it is an Intel CPU that's running this and 14 cores.

Nice.

I remember when dual cores first came out, it's like, wow, there's two of them now. I was like, how many can we jam in there? Because all this stuff takes a lot to process.

Yes. Yes. Awesome.

Why didn't you want to go back to intel or any of the other places? So what I'm hearing is you. You decided you wanted to leave in 08, and it took a good. Whatever the math is, four, five, six years to make the other shift. But you were still enjoying it, just trying to narrow it down. Why did you have no desire to go back at that this point?

Yeah, it was.

Even when it wasn't working as well as you had hoped it would.

Right. So two things. I think there's two answers to that question. So having intel was like a security blanket. Right? It was like a plan B. And what is Will Smith said is like, I don't think about plan B because what do you say? Oh, man, I'm missing. There's only plan A because something about plan B, like, there's Plan B is a distraction. Right. So when. When Plan B no longer became available for me, which was Intel. So that's kind of leapfrogging again. In 2015, intel announced that they would be shutting down actually the site here in Massachusetts. So they actually shut down in 2015. I think it was 2015, 2016, something somewhere around there. And it was no longer an option. Right. It was like now. But, you know, you've been doing all this work since 2008. You've been trying a number of things. You read the book. Back in 2013, I launched a podcast, which we haven't talked about yet. I launched a podcast which helped me along my journey. And in 2015, it was like, okay, are you gonna really, you know, are you serious? You know, now that there's no more security blanket, you know, we could have moved to the West Coast. Some of my coworkers went upstate New York to another company similar to Intel. But my wife and I was like, we don't want to move. My parents are in New York. Her mom is here in Massachusetts. It was like, we don't want to be so far away from family. And we decided to go all in on this. But fortunately, I had already started doing the work. I had already figured out a number of things. So by the time intel was gone, I had a plan in place in order to be successful.

And fast forwarding now, how did you get into the funnel building and repair and everything you do to help people, no matter what stage they're at?

Yeah, so the first, initially when I launched the business, it was a webinar production agency. Okay, so. And then take you guys back a little bit. So in 2013, 2013, what I decided is after I listened to that podcast, I went to the podcast with Jamie and read that book. I went to a conference called wds, which is World Domination Summit. And it's not what it sounds like, but it's a really cool conference out in Oregon, Portland, Oregon. And the person who runs the conference is all about World Changer and entrepreneurship and all this kind of stuff. And after that conference, I realized what I needed to do is to start a podcast to ask the questions about how do you start a business as a father, as, you know, primary breadwinner with a family? How do you start a business without sacrificing the family? How do you take such a huge risk without sacrificing your family? So I started interviewing successful entrepreneur dads all over the world. I did 140 interviews. The podcast hit new and noteworthy in all three categories. It was. It was awesome. I think it was just, like, really good timing. It was a conversation that was out in the space, and there was a lot of movement around dads being more involved and engaged and everything like that. I think Dove had come out with a commercial showing dads, as opposed to focusing so much on the moms and all this kind of stuff. So it was, like, a really good timing to come up with something like that. And that gave me the insight into those dads, you know, the successes and the failures. How do you balance? Right. How do you balance the two things? Does balance even exist? All those kind of things. And then when intel finally, you know, shut down, it was like, okay, now I'm going to take all of this information that I've been processing and gathering and then start. Start a business. And it was that webinar production company, which is basically, I saw a need in the market marketplace, where entrepreneurs wanted to sell their products and services, but they struggled with the technology. Right. Because if you think about a webinar, if you've ever done a webinar, there's like multiple moving parts to it. Not to mention you have to worry about the presentation, the delivery, and then there's all this technology. And then, you know, God forbid you get on your webinar, you're excited, you have everything ready, and then, as you know, people start to say, I can't hear you, I can't see you, I can't see your slide. And now you're trying to balance all of that and do a awesome job on your presentation. So my company basically took all of that off their plate, and all they had to do was literally show up. Actually, even the slide deck, they gave it to us. And I had the slide deck ready, uploaded. All they had to do was show up and do their thing and just really focus on their presentation. And I launched that business and I did some cold calling, cold call, sold messaging through Facebook to get new clients. That's all I did. I had no website, I had no official business name. I did a dba. So from Startup dad, the podcast, that was an actual llc. From that, I did a DBA as webinar production. And then I just. I just launched.

That is fantastic. And that's a great expert authority insight right there. Because so many people, you know, they come to me going, I want to publish a business book. I want to get more leads. I want to do this. Just pick something. And they have this like, I need to be all over. Would you do. But there's this order of operations that you can't tackle it all successfully at once.

Right.

And there's so many moving parts you got to knock out. And I go, all you need. And I've done this at seminars before where I'm training. I throw some pens on the table and grab a sheet of stack of paper, and everyone looks at me like, you know, I got the tie and it's all fancy clothes and, you know, the videos and all this crap. I'm like, we're kicking it old school. You guys are overcomplicating the crap out of this.

Yeah. And, you know, so I don't know how much your audience knows about the disc profile. D I s C. So I'm huge on the disc profile now. That was one of the things I discovered about myself. So I'm a high C, high D. I tend to lean towards my C, which is the professional perfectionist, which is like, everything has to be perfect. Everything has to be detailed. So I think I shared with you before we went live, before I launched the podcast, like, I had this fancy mic that you see here. I had these two. I have a light thing coming on here. I have another one at home. Like, I had all this. I had a mixer, I had all this fancy stuff. It took me forever to put all this stuff together, right? And I think it took me about six months before I finally launched a podcast. And it was really me, one perfectionist to, you know, fear, right? Fear of, like, finally going out there. Fear of actually doing it, right? And again, one plan. Once plan B was gone, like, I was forced to. To take action. So I eventually did launch a podcast. So because I did all of that in full transparency. So I'm probably a lot like you, your listeners. Like, I had. Did all that fancy stuff. I had a beautiful website startup at headquarters. That website is not even up anymore. But, like, it's a beautiful website. The podcast is still available. The episode is still available. But the website was. I paid someone. It was like, amazing. And I was looking at all the. The experts, I looked at all the gurus, I looked at all the people that have been doing it for five, 10 years. And I wanted mines to look like that on day one, right? And I spent all this time, no money coming into the bank account, spending all this time doing all this stuff. So when I learned about the disc profile and that I was a high C, high D, I realized I needed to turn off my C and allow my D to thrive. And that's why I was able to launch webinar production with no website, no business name, literally just cold messaging, people in Facebook saying, hey, I just saw you did a webinar. Are you planning on doing another one? And then that was it. And people started responding back. And actually the second message I sent out in Facebook, first the guy replied back. We got On a call, 20 minutes, he became a client. And he was a client for three and a half years now.

On what webinar, on what training, on what seminar, on what course did you have to invest to have the expertise, knowledge of realizing I have a service, I can help you. And then ask someone if they want that service and tell them how much it is?

Yeah, great question. So again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect the dots looking backward. So, you know, and you know, with these podcasts we try to give, you know, we try to give you expert authority listeners, like, as much as we can. Right. So you can really get the story. But like, you know, obviously I'm jumping certain things and there's things that happen in between. So I actually did have an opportunity to work with Jamie Masters, who I mentioned. So my, my journey with Jamie has been like this very interesting story where I listened to her in 2013. So, you know, I'll always give her tons of credit for where I am today. And then I bought the first big investment I made, which was $1,000 was in her program. I was still at intel at that time. And then after that program, she was like, hey, I love the way you do things and the way you think. You know, I have a position on my team. It's like part time. Would you be interested? So it was like, it was a very low paying position, but it was like, I get to see behind the scenes of a successful entrepreneur. Let's do it, right? And again, I still had that plan B, right? So had that security. So it just means sacrificing my time and sleep and all those kinds of things. But I was able to see and I was able to get really, you know, like into her business and help her community and, you know, she deals with very successful entrepreneurs and that's. And I helped her with her webinars and her landing pages and her website and all this kind of stuff. And that's kind of like where I was getting that on the job experience, right? OJT on the job training and then the technology, of course, that just came to me naturally. And then, yeah, that gave me that, that gave me what I needed to see that entrepreneur struggle with webinars. And then I, you know, launched with that in terms of the pricing. You know, it's like all of us, right? We. Well, at least, at least I think most of us start like this. We start, you know, underpricing ourselves. Right. Because we're not sure. Maybe do a little bit of research.

Yeah, you just got to test the water.

Yeah, test the water.

I remember when I started, I was offering websites. I'm. It's like decades. It's like crazy to even think, but it feels like it, it was like 500 bucks. And then I go, oh my gosh, they didn't bat an eye. And actually my first one, I even made 6 or 6 50. I charged 50 for the photos and a hundred bucks extra for the extra page. Now, mind you, I was just out of high school a little bit. I was in college, and I was working at GNC for like a whopping six or seven an hour. So this whole thing was like six months income. I'm like, I'm a millionaire. The math was off, but it felt that way. But what it made me realize is you can rate. You know, I went from 500 to 750 to 1,000 to 12 to 15. And I was realizing when it comes to business, people aren't really batting an eyelash unless you're talking 10, 20, 30 grand in most instances. It's like businesses have more to, you know, you're not selling shoes for 20, but I don't even know where you can get shoes for 20 bucks. But it's a different industry. And when you've never done it, it's. You just want that first one. And now you have a baseline at least to work with. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs forget that. And it's why, while I joke about the pen and the paper and all that, it's like, when's the last time you followed up with the customers you have? When did you ever thank them? Jump on the phone instead of an email? Just, you know, see what they're doing, care. Because at the end of the day, you don't need all kinds of fancy stuff to start. You need clients. Should I have a website, a logo, or should I start a podcast? You need some clients, right? Because this mic was not free, and neither was any of that at all.

Right?

But it's easy to go to your strength. And like I was saying, we have that in common. On the tech. I was freaking out a few months after the show, and where did I go? Let's design and build a whole new computer.

I already had 40, 50 episodes, and I'm like, no, I need to make it better.

Right?

Well, did I? Yes, and I'm glad I did. And that's what you're seeing now. But at the same point, there's people that you could say maybe they're better off because they cranked out more episodes and they just stuck and they kept it very focused because it's very. You have to know how to go, okay, I'm going to expand. But also not lose the focus because it's easy to. A month goes by and you're like, what the heck happened? And the answer is, you got off focus and you're doing a million and one other things when the Thing that got you to this point was the simple basic steps that every business has to go through.

Yeah, absolutely. And I agree with, you know, just to put some kind of like story behind what you were saying in the beginning there. It's like, you know, like I said, if, I don't know if everyone heard but one, the second person, I. One I. Cold message. Right. So not a fancy website, not some fancy funnel. Even though I'm going to talk about funnels. Right. That's my thing. But if you're just getting started, like that stuff gets in your way. Right? That stuff gets in your way. It's actually putting, it's like putting a wall between you and the potential person you're looking to serve. Right. So like just get going right away. Number two, that person, that second person who became my client was my client for three and a half years. Right. That's a long.

Because you probably served them over the moon and back.

Right, Exactly. Getting on.

I still have a couple clients that I've been going with over a decade now. 10 years in one instance and 11 in the other. And I love them. But ever since day one I kept, you know, I have fun and I goof around and you know, I'll experiment with things but I always at the core and it's why I love sharing it with people. Just serve them and actually care.

Right.

And the funnels, like you're saying, and I, and I want to dive into that because, you know, it's kind of good to put up a wall, you know, at some point.

At some point.

But when you're talking about the cold, the other thing is the unlimited possibilities.

Right.

The entire world becomes your potential maybe, Right?

Yeah. And the other thing I would say if I don't know where everyone is who's listening and watching, you know, at least from my experience.

Service based business, if you have a skill that you could deliver, I think you would website me with the webinars and now funnels. It just seems like a very, at least in my experience, it seems like a very easy transaction. Like I'm going to deliver this to you, you're going to pay me, right? Versus trying to create digital courses and all this kind of stuff. Maybe it comes easy to some people, it just doesn't come easy to me to create those digital stuff and then do webinars and sell them and all this kind of stuff clearly does for my clients. But for me it's just, hey, I'm going to deliver this service. This is the results you're going to get right, this is what I'm going to deliver to you, and then you just pay me for that. And I think it's a great way to start if you're looking to figure out, you know, something as an entrepreneur.

Yeah. And even now, to this day, with a business, book publishing with my clients.

It'S still that service that we can provide for you, but it's a very succinct, hey, it's going to take eight weeks. This is what it involves. This is what it entails. Here's what took expect. Boom, boom, boom. You know, we're not focusing on the websites as much anymore, but at the end of the day, I've always kept the offers clear. I've never messed around with pricing. I keep it even, you know, the whole $97 and 99 and 9 99. And it just screws up accounting. I mean, just round up. If someone's going to gravel over a dollar, they're probably the wrong person, if you ask me, because we're not talking about, you know, there's a lot of people that listen to this. They already have successful businesses. But I think it's a good reminder to go, especially like you're saying, when did you reach out to them? You know, oh, I need new clients, I need new leads. What are you doing to capitalize the ones you already have, that you have their private info and you can text them, Right?

Absolutely.

You know, putting some context or I have nothing against webinars, funnels, or I, you know, I have this stuff set up for my business, too. But do realize the context is you're not going to just throw something up tonight and magically have 100 million new leads tomorrow.

No.

And if you do, you're probably Oprah with a giant list who's just buying because it's more of your influence than any doing proper tweaking of the funnel. So let me ask you about that. What? Set the stage with a proper expectation. If someone's going, all right, I want to do a funnel. I've been hearing about these. I do believe I'm ready. What is a reasonable expectation they should set to go? Here's how much time it's going to take to refine it, get it set up, and actually hone it in while, you know, before we crank up the juice on it.

Yeah, that's a great question. And so a couple of things I'll say before. And you know, there's absolutely. You can absolutely launch a funnel from scratch from day one if you wanted to. If you have the money, the time, the investment. And you have just, you know, you just have a really good feeling about your thing. Right? You can absolutely launch a funnel, but usually to get really good success with a funnel is you've delivered the product or service, you have testimonials, you have results, you know, the languaging, you know, the avatar. You've really narrowed down and figured out your avatar and you've created an amazing offer, which means that you took something from, that is potentially something that's in a red ocean, let's say real estate, and then you figured out a blue ocean offer from that red ocean, right? So you've created something unique, something different, something that stands out where you're not competing in this bloody water. Right. So if your audience, I'm sure they've read, what is it? Blue Ocean, Red Ocean, Red Ocean, Blue Ocean, that book, Right. So there's a couple of things that you have to already have in place in order to increase your chances of success when you launch your, your funnel. And those are the things I kind of listed. Then once you. In terms of the actual funnel itself, the design of it is very important. I know a lot of people say the copy is the number one thing. Copy is absolutely important. But what we found is that we get higher the industry average conversions. When we have good copy and good design combined, we're able to get, of course, a good offer and everything like that. If we combine all those things together, we tend to get really great results. In terms of what they should expect, it depends. It is drastic. Depending on whether you're doing a webinar ebook, you know, directly to sales, depending on what type of funnel you're doing. Acquisition, funnel activation, funnel, ascension, funnel. It could, it could vary quite a bit in General, like a 5%, like on the front end of your funnel. Like, let's say it's a sales funnel. 5% conversion rate is considered, you know, industry average is considered kind of like good. It's a good number to aim. So like.

So out of every hundred people that go to the page, you're saying five of them to opt in is good and losing 95% is normal.

Yeah, it's considered good. 5% is considered good on, on the front end of your funnel. That's correct.

I just want to be abundantly clear. I don't refute that at all. I just know that there's people that think, I'm going to try this funnel thing. It's not converted. Someone told me, they're like, yeah, it's only going at 60%. No, they're their email. Oh, I only have a 60% opt in rate. Are you talking like this decade or last decade?

That's right.

And I'm like, oh my gosh. You realize that's incredibly high.

Huge.

I know direct mail for years and it probably still is. It was 1%. I've had clients who say they're doing direct mail and they send out 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 flyers. They're like, wow, it was great. We got 40 people to walk in or whatever the math is. I'm like, yeah, so. So realize it's a different game.

Right, Right. I think that the, what, you know, people forget is that prior to funnels and online, what were. I mean, people still do it now. Businesses still do it now. There's a billboard that they spent however much amount of money on the side of A highway is 10 TV ads, Super bowl ads. They're spending millions of dollars to get some. You know, I don't even know what the percentage conversion rate is on that. It's probably very, very low. Right. And they can't even, they most likely can't even tie it back to that ad. Right. So now we're bringing it online. Yes. It makes it more accessible to everyone. Right. Like the small guy, the entrepreneur. You could now do things and advertise. Like, you know, you don't have to be a.

NBC or Fox or, you know, a large corporation to be able to advertise. Yeah.

A large drink manufacturer or distributor or whatever.

Right. But the percentages, it's still someone, I mean, think, if we think about it, someone is scrolling on Facebook. They're just going about their business. Facebook is meant for people to engage and see what's going on with their friends and all this kind of stuff. Right. I mean, it was called, it was started in college or to connect people in the college. Right. To socialize. And now you have your ad on there. You. They're scrolling through, trying to enjoy their day. Maybe they just had a hard day of work. They're scrolling through, they see your ad. They don't know you at all from anywhere. You could be anywhere in the world. They see your ad. You did a good job with the image and the wording. They click on your ad. Just that alone is huge. Huge. Because you have someone who doesn't know you at all. But they actually stopped whatever they were doing. You disrupted whatever they were doing. They clicked on your ad, went to your page. Now on the page, if you, if you have a good continuity, where it's like okay to add in the page. They see that they're still dealing with the same company and it's not like some kind of spam or someone trying to get the information. If you did a good job with that transition from the ad to your page, now you have the copy. Did they now they read through your copy, they watch your video and then they opt in and give you their name or an email or maybe some cases just the email. Some cases. For some of our funnels, it's name, email and phone number. That is map. That's a huge ask. And you're getting a 5% conversion rate, 10% conversion rate. I mean we have some of our free plus shipping book funnels. You're looking at 15% conversion rate. That's huge numbers. But sometimes people don't realize that and they're thinking they could turn on an ad and they're, they're supposed to get 60% conversion rate. Now we've, we've had opt ins at 60%. We've had, you know, one of our clients webinar registration was 85%. But that's not all the time. It's a numbers game when you're doing.

This because again, and let's add some context here because I, I, I know you can get it to 40, 50, 60, higher percent and you should, should.

Right.

But let's give them some context for how long does it take to do that? If you start at five as the baseline day one, month one, how much refining does it take? And I know it varies, but how much refining should be expected to even bump it to 15, 20, 25, 30? Because I know that 65% wasn't week two. It magically bumped.

Right? Right. Yeah. I mean 65 is not on a sales that would be like a opt in like an ebook type of thing. Right. So if someone gets 65 on sales, maybe it's that's amazing that they should just continue as long as they're profitable. I don't know how much they're spending on the ads, but if they're getting that they could, they should just throw like a bazillion dollars. Yeah.

I mean they totally nailed their list of 20 people.

Okay.

That are existing clients probably in that scenario. Right.

I mean there's a statistical, yeah, like you could, you could turn on something and like I was watching something from Frank, Frank Kern the other day. Frank Kern is like this entrepreneur, mega entrepreneur and he was showing like his book funnel and the conversion rate was like astronomical. It's like really good but he prefaced it by saying like, look, this doesn't happen, right? Like this 300% return on investment doesn't happen. And it was like 45 people, right? So there's like, there's a number of like, we usually don't make decisions until we see. So to answer your question, number one, we usually don't make any decision until we see 100 visitors. So however long it takes to get 100 visitors to the front end of the funnel.

Now are you saying viewers or opt ins?

No, viewers. Like just click on the ad, land on the page. Okay, so 100, that's where we kind of start. And that's still a small number. But that, that usually if you have your analytics in place, if you have your heat mapping, if you have your, you're looking at your, your.

Your. We use click funnels. So you're looking at your click funnel stats, right? And you're looking at all the different analytics that you have available to you. Then you can make some decisions off of those hundred visitors, depending on how it breaks out, right? Then more, the more visitors you have, the better decisions you can make. But sometimes we've made, we've seen. So for example, I'll give you a classic example. We were working with a company, local brick and mortar, they do stem cell and their audience is a little bit older, more mature demographic. And we built a really beautiful page and it was, it was one of those name, email, phone number type of deals, right? Beautiful page, everything was going great. They started running ads to the page and we were seeing again using, we use hotjar often. Another one is, oh Jesus, a crazy egg. We use hotjar, which is the heat mapping tool. We were seeing people enter their name, email and phone number. So like a really nice percentage, like 14% entering name, email and phone number, but then not clicking the actual button to submit. And we had some fancy wording on the button, like no cost because you can't say free, right? Like it's like no cost consultation or something like that. And I was like, I was racking my brain, like, what is going on? Why are they not, they're putting their name, email, phone, why didn't they not clicking the button then? You know, we met with the client, which is what we do every single week we meet. This is how you make decisions quickly and you move forward. And the client was like, hey, you know, our audience is actually a little bit more mature. Maybe they, maybe they can't see the text or something like that. We're like, what? So we changed the button to just say click here to submit. Boom. And made a big text. The button nice and big and then the, the conversion rates skyrocketed. So sometimes it could be really quick if you have your analytics in place so you can see what's going on. Sometimes it may take you, sometimes with Hot Draw, you may have to watch the record recordings, right? And just sit there and watch recordings and recordings and recordings before you could finally start to see the trends. But I mean you're not talking about six months, right? You're talking about again, depending on how fast the traffic is coming into the funnel. You're talking about days, weeks. I mean just from a Facebook standpoint, you have to give like four days I think, right, to kind of let the algorithm do its thing. Then you make a change, you give it a little bit more time. So there's no, you know, it's not like overnight, but it doesn't have to take if you're doing it right, it doesn't have to take multiple months to start to improve your conversions. If your offer is good and your copy is good and your video is good and you know, you look at.

And that's, and that's the baseline you have to start with. I, I, I'm launching one of my newest books on book publishing and the same exercise I take my clients through with changing the COVID design. It's not drastic. You know, we're not changing the offer, we're not changing the title, we're not drastically altering it. But it's funny you talked about making the text larger because that's exactly what I did today. And I kind of did it as, alright, let's see if anyone notices. And everyone's like oh yeah, for sure, the second one. And I personally thought it was too big and I'm like, like whatever they have spoken, you know. But that's the thing with the buttons. It's reminded me of a couple years ago I was, I had some video shocking. I had videos and I was looking at the heat map through Wistia and I will tell you, I changed one thing and it took it from a drop off rate at 53 seconds into the video to over six minutes in. And, and it was a stupid cartoon picture of someone riding a horse and I put a real picture in. The cartoon stock image was horrible. Everyone was dropping off before the first minute and then just by changing that one image and then testing it again, it took it to over six minutes. I was like, wow. And once they got there, then it started going up and you know, you can see all that. But it's so interesting because is when people go, oh, you know, you got to do all that tweaking. It's like, welcome to life and business. It doesn't mean it has to take 9 or 12 months to see results, but when you're checking it daily or bi weekly, right. There's not enough time to pass. You know, And I think that's what it is, is some people just tweak it once a week, once a month. What should we do next? I don't know. It's going too slow, right? You just got 500, a thousand more people, but you don't know what the problem is. You, you know, you got to tweak it and refine it, like you're saying.

Yeah. So I, I also, for one of our clients, I do high tick. I, I do coaching in her high ticket mastermind. And one of the things I've been doing is doing these funnel reviews. And so I, I'm like, give me a Google Analytics, give me your hot jar, give me your Shopify store. Like, give me all this stuff. And then like, they, they sometimes you don't, you don't know what you don't know. And I get it. And if you're not a data person, and I know typical entrepreneur, they just want to go, go, go, go, go. You need to find someone who's going to dive into the data because the data is going to give you information. You just got to know what to. Sometimes I don't even know what I'm looking for. I just go in and I just sit back and I'm just looking and I'm looking and I'm looking and like, ah.

And then you look for the pattern and find the irregularity, right?

I find irregularity. Right. And then I, then I start digging in deeper into that and I'm like, like, okay, what's happening here? What, why is their bounce rate so high? Sometimes you could go in with certain questions when you see like, bounce rate high or like, you know, people are not, you know, people are landing. So you see people coming from your ad, so the ad is working, but they're not opting in. What's wrong? And then is it desktop? Is it mobile? That's a whole nother thing you got to look at, right? So, so you got to just look at the data and really make some, try to try to get some information and then make some calculated decisions and then give it a few days to have more traffic go through and to see if you if you see any results even before starting to split test. Right. People tend to let me start split testing from day one. It's like you don't even have enough traffic. Let the initial funnel run first, get traffic, make some tweaks. When you get that first version, converting, you know, to a profitable standpoint, then you can start split testing and doing a, you know, a version B in ClickFunnels is very easy, easy to do that.

Now, earlier you had said, we noticed that they were clicking and going, you know, just viewing the page. And I thought of the, you know, one of the cookies for Page View, and I want to make sure we touch on that. How do you track people through the funnels, knowing how far they're getting into. Into it? We've covered the design and, you know, changing the elements, but how do you really know they're going from the ad to page one to page two to three and ultimately checking out or signing up for the strategy call or, you know, going onto the webinar, whatever the end result may be.

Yeah, so we don't do the ad side of things. We partner with Facebook advertisers and Facebook agencies and Google agencies because we just focus on the funnel side. Like, that's what we've gotten really great at. Facebook and Google is a whole nother beast in itself. So I just create really good strategic partnerships. So whenever our clients need someone, if they don't have someone already, we just partner with them. And then we. I just meet with them and we just, you know, they put all their pixels in. Sometimes I install them if they need me to, but they put all their pixels in so they could track all the way through inside of clickfunnels, I can see what's going on because all the stats are right. ClickFunnels is beautiful. That's why.

Sure.

You know, I used to use another platform. I don't want to say any names. I mean, it's a great platform. It just doesn't lay out page by page by page all in one space, at least the last time I checked. Whereas clickfunnels, I could see all my stats right there for the entire funnel, if I'm keeping them in that one funnel, which usually it's built out all in one one space. And then I could toggle between desktop and mobile. Really easy to see my mobile stat versus my desktop stat. And then I could see date ranges and all this kind of stuff. So that's how I keep track. And then I meet with the Facebook ads team to confirm, but then the Heat mapping, Google Analytics, everything like that that I have control of. And I look at all those things on our end to make suggestions on what to tweak and adjust. I typically run, once we take on a project I typically run, I become like the project manager for the project. So I'm bringing in the team together and we're meeting along with the client to make sure things are moving.

It sounds like a great process because I know, especially when you're dealing with a lot of moving parts like that you're mentioning the Facebook ad side, the funnel side, the client side. It's no joke. And it's why a lot of people don't enjoy doing it. Or I would say they probably don't enjoy it, but they also don't stick with it because it's. This is too time consuming, whatever the excuse is. But it's like when you can learn how to take a dollar and turn it into 2, 3, 4, 5 plus.

Why wouldn't you commit everything you can to learning that instead of going, oh, it took two hours longer than I was expecting it. I can't, whatever.

Right.

But you've shared a lot of great insight here and I'm appreciative of that. Tell me one of your biggest success stories from someone that you've helped so far.

Oh, okay. So we have, you know, our, my favorite client, you know, we all have our favorite clients, right. So my favorite client is someone who already has funnels. Right. They're not new to it. They know the jargon. They've already, you know, they already built out funnels. They have some success with their funnels. So one of my clients is a seven figure business and had a funnel, automated webinar funnel that was running for about two and a half years. Very successful. Started with the one thing emphasizing that. But everyone who wants to build a bazillion products and services, they had one thing and ended up building a seven figure business with that one thing. Turned it into an automated webinar after doing it live a number of times. Sold $997 offer. And after running two and a half years, that's a long time if you think about Facebook and, and ads and all this kind of stuff, right. And you know, finding more people that, that fits that, that perfect audience. And it started to decline, the sales started to decline and you know, the client had brought on multiple different agencies. And then we, we came in, was a referral through one of my strategic partners, who, she does messenger bots. And her conversion at the time was at 0.7. So the webinar was converting at.07. Right. That was the conversion rate.07%. Right. And still doing well as a business. So again, going back to the.

So even 1% would have been a 30% boost.

Right. So the client brought us on and was like, look, if you get us to 2.5, I'll be above the moon happy. And literally within a few weeks, maybe two months.

We were already well above 1.8, heading towards 2. And now we're between, we toggle between 2.5 and 3.1% for that client. In addition to that, while we're doing that, there were some other funnels that, you know, some other people had built that were not working well, like the, you know, technology. They were broken. They were, it was causing more headache for the client.

That can happen.

That absolutely happen. Right. So, and, and again, this is where my C comes into play because like I'm, you know, cross those eyes, cross those T's, you know, got those eyes, make sure everything is set up properly. Properly. And we were able to bring up other funnels for this client. That low ticket offers all this kind of stuff and then at the same time increasing the conversion rate on that main, that main thing. And since then, the client has now expanded and done. Now they have more room to, they're not worried about firefighting, they're not worrying about every single launch. And because of that, the client is able to expand the business even more. So that's one.

And in term of revenue dollars, what did the.07 to 2.5, 3.1 translate into?

I don't know the exact numbers. I don't get into. We, we. I don't get into the exact details of the client numbers. I could see it on click funnels obviously, but it's, I mean, 0.7. They were good as a business. Right. I mean they were profitable. So at 2.53, it sounds like five.

And six figures in revenue. Because if you're selling a thousand dollar product.

And you're basically double tripling, quadrupling it.

Yeah.

You don't need 10,000 sales of it for it to be a good day, week or month.

No, I mean, I'm talking about six, seven sales per day.

Per day.

Yeah, that's.

So again, to the point I made about if you don't want to spend the time tweaking it, what would you do with another five to ten grand a day? Yeah, again, once you get it to that point. But.

I'm just gonna do that.

Like really.

All right, well, I have one more question for you before we go. Thank the sponsor. And that is, where is somewhere you'd really love to go, whether for personal with your family or business? Let's do personal with your family. Where's somewhere you'd really like to go personal with your family you haven't been yet?

Italy.

Heck yeah. Italy. Can't go wrong with Italian.

My wife is half Italian, so we've been talking about it and going and we actually, we had this master plan where we're going to start homeschooling the girls and we did. And. But the oldest daughter, we kind of caught her too late and she was already used to school and friends. So this year she ended up going back to regular school, which jacked up our entire plan. Because my wife only works two days a week. She's a NICU nurse, so she works two days a week. So we were like, we had this master plan where she would just take two weeks off, three weeks off, and we just like homeschool them in Italy and travel all throughout. But now we gotta figure out a different way to make that happen with school, so.

Well, Italy is a great choice.

Yes, sir.

Do you have a specific area in Italy?

No, we were going to bounce around. Honestly, my wife is, I think, looking at all those details and everything like that. But, you know, the plan was to bounce around and be there. Literally. Like we have a timeshare, so we could, we could go multiple different locations.

Nice. Well, I hope you get to do that in the next year or two. That sounds like a lot of fun.

Yeah, we wanted a few people that are, are happy with our timeshare. I don't know, a lot of people are not happy with their timeshare for some reason. We, we love ours. It's great. It's been, we've had it for a number of years now, so it's been awesome.

Well, I, I've been telling everyone that, you know, it's a brand new, it's a brand new not only year, but decade and we get to live through the roaring twenties. So.

Yes, sir, I plan on doing more travel myself.

Yes. Yes. Awesome.

All right, we're going to thank the sponsor and come back for the imperfect action round. Invest automatically, save for later and spend today. That's why I love acorns. I used to think spare change didn't make a difference and saving and investing was an old fashioned manual process. It's not. And it's a game changer if you're not leveraging compounding interest in your business. And life automatically you're missing out. Acorns not only make safe saving and investing easy and automatic, it makes it even more valuable by investing with diversified portfolios, spare change, extra cash and rounding up everyday transactions. You can even set recurring monthly investments in the amount you desire to make. Good. Great. There is also a debit card option that will continue to help you save and invest even further when you spend plus no minimum balance and overdraft fees. Now for the cherry on top. They have part partnered with 250 plus companies and brands and growing with their found money program to invest back a percentage into your account with the everyday purchases when you shop. Two of which you're probably listening to this right now through an Amazon or Apple device. Get started profiting from your everyday life and business simply and easily. Today at eainterviews.com acorns once again, that's eainterviews.com ac acorns and we are back with the imperfect action around. Joel, are you ready to take imperfect action?

I think so.

Oh you've, you've been doing it the last 10, 12, 14 years. Nice rapid fire responses. I got three questions. First one is what is the fastest path to the cash service based business?

All right, good answer. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

Trying to build multiple things at the same time, products, offers, services as opposed to just focusing on the one thing.

But what about the mastermind in live event?

What do you mean?

In addition to all the other things, shouldn't we do all of it simultaneously?

Right.

We're ambitious entrepreneurs, we can't miss anything.

Like Russell says, make first make a million dollars. And before you think about launching that second product or service, just make a million dollars first.

Excellent. Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Oh for me it's just being personal and like meeting with the customer and well I guess getting them results right. And then doing that in a, in a human way where you know we, we talk with our clients, we, you know, we, we don't always jump on the call and we start talking about business right away. A lot of my again because of the whole startup dad, I'm passionate about being a father. CrossFit faith.

And a lot of my clients I guess just attract that. Right. And you know, typically my clients are in that same mindset and we end up having those deeper conversations. I'll have times where we will jump on a call, I'll get on call with A client for a weekly call and we don't even talk about businesses at all. It's just amazing. It's just amazing. So the other thing is that I didn't share this on the, on the podcast, but my, my three daughters have medical conditions and when, like my youngest daughter was in the hospital for 22 days back in November and December.

Sorry to hear.

Yeah, yeah. And it's really rough. And you know, we have a whole conversation about building a business where you're not stuck in the business. I'm sure you've had guests talk about that. But you know, my clients, you know, we, we posted something and said, hey, this is what's going on. Joel may not be available. And my clients were completely, you know, supportive and like praying for us and all this kind of, it was just amazing. We didn't lose any clients during that time. And I was, I was out of pocket for quite some time.

Wow, that's great. That's, that's who you want to attract and everything. And you know, I saw something recently and it was, I mean, it's funny. It's the picture of the horse where it looks fantastic on one side and as you, as they're drawing it to the right, it gets worse and worse. Or the lion one. And it's I think a shot from Life of PI. And it's like client, clients expectations and it's like, you know, he's all victorious and it's like clients budget and it's a cat with like a kitchen floor or whatever and you know what I'm talking about. And people joke about it, but at the end of the day it's like, I get the joke, but you, it shouldn't be a joke because you shouldn't be dealing with it.

You shouldn't.

You know, I've said for years, you don't have to take on anyone you don't want to. Just because you're in business and can help someone doesn't mean that they get to take advantage of you or anything. I mean, you control who you say yes to and take the money from.

Right?

And if you don't like them, it's your own fault as far as I'm concerned. You know, 2013 was a pitiful year for me. I finished up 38 simultaneous client projects and I honored everything. And you know, but over that six months.

I was like, I'm not doing this the same way next year. I over deliver. We provide a great service, top, top notch experience. And I was like, it was just not the way I Envisioned it and moving forward since then, it's like. Any red flags? Nope. It's not worth it. You can't get the time back. You can't ever get the time back. And especially with your family.

Yeah. And you know one. You mind if I go for it? Yeah. One thing I learned from Jamie Masters was that, you know, the way she approaches looking at avatar because everyone says like, you know, identify your ideal avatar and like, you know, create a whole. There's a document, you fill it all out and all that kind of stuff. And that's great. Right, because you don't want to just say everyone's my, my perfect client. So you want to at least make a kind of calculated or educated decision. But then once you actually start to work with people, then you re. You start to re. Redefine or refine who your ideal avatar is. And sometimes it takes some time. So I get it. When you're taking on, you know, potentially back and you could, you start to actually sense the red flags as you do those sales calls, you start to, you understand based on how they communicate, the emails and all this kind of stuff, you start to really pick out who is a good fit and who isn't. But then eventually, over time, you start to really know who is your perfect avatar and who you want to serve best and who you could make the most impact with. Because yeah, we could build.

Appreciates it too.

Yeah. Because we could build a great funnel. But if the client doesn't have the budget to run ads, it doesn't matter. Right. If you build it, will they come? So we've, we have some funnels that they convert extremely well, but the client won't run ads to it. They just won't turn it on or whatever. They don't have the budget, whatever the case may be. And it's very unfortunate. So that's why I said, you know, the client that, that I mentioned earlier is like a perfect, perfect client for us. Yeah.

And a lot of the times it's the intangibles because, you know, I'm pretty forgiving and have some leeway and Lord knows I'm using it, use it and have used it, you know, between clients, you know, VIP guest. Thank you again. And even with my team and just everyone, it's like no one's perfect stuff comes up. Relax a little bit about it. We're all going to be here in 10 years. You know that that's at least my philosophy on it. And I'm thankful because like I said, there's been many times I've used it and there's many times I've given it so it all works out.

Yes.

So don't be.

Just be a good person is what I'm hearing.

I'll leave it with that without going too comedic and negative. But yes, I have thoroughly enjoyed this and it's so great seeing you again. Thank you for sharing with Expert Authority World.

Thank you. Thank you for having me on. It was great to have this conversation and go really deep, so I appreciate that.

Yeah, it went really well and I'm I can't wait to start telling more people about you. There's actually someone I thought of in the middle of it when you were saying I don't do the ads. Well, I know some people, that's all they focus on.

Awesome.

So always look happy to make introductions there too. All right, Expert Authority World. We have another great episode here. I'll see you on tomorrow's Have a great day and God bless. Why Every Business Needs a Book, including yours Would you like to save five plus hours with every prospect? Generate more leads and profit in your business? Now? Visit businessbookchecklist.com and learn how you can implement this in your business today. Spare change? How's that going to make a difference? I know that's what I thought before I started investing with Acorns, throwing change in a jar is not very leverage and time consuming. But what about all the transactions you don't use cash for? You know, like majority, Acorns not only invest your spare change automatically with roundups, it also lets you add a preset amount to each transaction. Regardless, it's pretty inspiring to see how quickly and easily you can end up with a pile of cash instead. A pile of receipts. Get started simply and easily today@eainterviews.com Acorns Once again, t that's eainterviews.com Acorns hey, thanks for listening to today's episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven't done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show and also be sure to check out eainterviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview, video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you tomorrow.

I'll.