Laurel Portié - Social Media Strategy

And just like that, technology man did it again. We are appearing everywhere we're supposed to be, everywhere, all at once. Hey everyone, I'm Scott Perry. Welcome to another episode of Creative on Purpose Live. This is a kind of a special bonus episode where I am having conversations with some of my friends and mentors whose ideas, principles, and practices really inspired and influenced some of the ideas I shared in my latest book, The Coaching Business Prescription. And so we've had conversations with Nick Peterson, we've had a conversation with Dan Nicholson, we are talking to Laurel today, and Monday, stay tuned or check in for a conversation with Seth Godin. But I could not be more thrilled today, Laurel, to have you on the broadcast. So just, just, it's been a while since you've been on. So maybe just remind our viewers who you are, where, what you're up to these days and where people can go to learn more about you and the difference you make.

Yeah, absolutely. So I am the founder of a very cheap Facebook ads program. Actually, we have expanded it to YouTube, TikTok, because it is super important that we make ourselves visible everywhere these days, right? Because a lot of times people, uh, get poo-pooed on by Facebook. And so it's good that we're everywhere. So if Facebook shuts you down like they've been wanting to do to a lot of people, Um, so we've actually added in other platforms to that program, but, um, I have been working in television almost 2 decades and I just had this idea. What if I could make advertising affordable for everyone? And so I created a $7 a month program. Um, it's not do-it-yourself, it is done with you. Um, I just thought that there was a gap in the marketplace for that sort of thing. And, um, Before I knew it, I was making more doing the online thing than I was working in television. It broke my heart to have to leave, but that's kind of the way you want to do it, right, Scott? Like, is you want to, you know, go off on a high note and just make sure that you're having fun no matter what you do. And that's the whole point of how you help other people step into their power doing things that they love. So I love that.

Yeah. Well, and I love that story because it is very resonant with my story, which is I was already doing work that I really loved. I was a professional musician and a guitar teacher. And then I transitioned into being a head coach at Akimbo Workshops. And then I was transitioning into my own coaching practice. And Laurel was instrumental in helping me really not just raise the floor, but raise the ceiling on my monthly earnings so that I could retire from Akimbo and go all in and full out at creativemarpurpose.com. So I love that aspect of your story as well. I think, you know, there's the work we have to do and the work we get to do. But if you can, if the work you have to do is the work you get to do, you're living a pretty good life. So, Laurel, I would love for you to— one of the things that I really wove into my book, and I know that the Bible is coming out soon in October, your book is coming out. I'd love for you to talk a little bit about that, too. But You know, those, actually, a lot of the organic strategy is what really helped me move from having, you know, I always, I joked with you when I came to you, I have a, I don't have a love-hate relationship with social media. I have a hate-hate relationship. And I actually started working with you as like, this is my last-ditch effort to figure out how I can use this tool and leverage it to, you know, make it a force multiplier for my business. And if it doesn't work, I'm just going I'm going to get off social media altogether. And you really converted me to, um, you know, because your approach has so much integrity, it's so authentic, and it's, um, also really affordable. But, you know, your philosophy, as I remember it, is let's get your organic stuff working, because ads are just good organic content that you amplify with money. So maybe share a little bit about your approach with that.

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, it is exactly like what you just said, right? Like a lot of times people are trying to— what do they say— put the cart before the horse. But a lot of people are, you know, getting sold into these programs where I'll just use you as an example, right? Like, you know, if you would have went to one of these big box coaching programs and you told them, hey, you know, I have this, you know, a lot of experience in this coaching background, I want to go off and start my thing. I need to generate appointments, the first thing they're going to do, they're not going to talk about any type of content other than probably doing some type of webinar, right? Which is the most expensive form of advertising, right? Your lead costs are high, your watch— your watch rate is really low. It's really hard to get people. There's so much friction in that type of thing. And so my philosophy is, and I've always heard this, and, you know, especially like having a television background, because I would always have my salespeople coming into my office and being like, you know, who do I need to talk to? Who do I need to talk to? Because conversations, fastest path to cash. And just kind of growing, you know, kind of growing in my career in television, I just heard that phrase over and over again. And then I heard it again whenever I came into the online marketing space. And it's so like, why are people putting so many friction points in front of a conversation? What if we can just put out the right type of content that would get people to say, hey, I want to talk to Laurel about doing that. And so to me, it just made more sense to just run low-dollar ads to content that was already getting people saying, hey, I want to talk to Scott because I watched that video and he talked about everything that I'm feeling. He like— I feel like Scott knows me, right? Why would you put a huge-ass funnel in front of that between you and that person and having that conversation. And, you know, and this has been something that we've been doing for 5 years now with people just like you, is just helping people create the content that's going to literally draw out their ideal clients and then just use low-dollar ads in order to amplify that conversation and get it in front of more people.

Yeah, and I just want to amplify what you said. Conversations are the fastest path to cash. That was probably the first immediate takeaway that I learned from you. And for those of you that tuned into the broadcast with Nick, we talked about system reliability and Seneca's barbell and how coaches are so complicit in their own failure because we do all these tactical things, you know, get the logo, get the website, get the funnel dialed in, get the lead magnet, get the email list going and the sequence, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Why would you do all that when all you have to do is generate quality content that gets someone to raise their hand and say, hey, could I learn more about that thing that you just shared, man? It's super powerful. And it's actually, it sounds slow, but slow is smooth and smooth is fast. And it's actually a much faster path to a conversation that you can convert into a call that you can convert into a client. So that was That part of it was super, super powerful for me. So can you give us maybe just— you have these 3 templates that I've shared over and over and over again with people, but what would be an example of a piece of content that you would put out there or encourage someone to put out there that would initiate a comment that could lead to a conversation that could lead to a call?

Absolutely. And I will give you guys a very clear example. So a lot of people are creating content like, you know, video marketing, because everyone knows video. And you know, this has been going around for a while. Like, if you don't learn how to do video and you want to be in the digital marketing space, it's going to be hard if you don't learn how to get really good at video. But here's the thing, because a lot of people think that the market is actually saturated. The market is saturated with a lot of awful content. And here's why. If you've been putting out a lot of content, here's why it's not working. Too many of you guys are trying to solve situations where you really need to be solving problems. Okay, I'll give you guys an example. So if I'm a relationship coach, right, and if someone comes up to you and says, hey, my husband and I are not communicating, that is a situation. There are problems that have led up to that situation. Maybe Every time they go out, the husband is talking to every other woman but the wife, right? That is a specific problem that leads to their lack of communication, right? Maybe whenever the husband gets home from work, he cracks open a beer, goes sits his ass in front of the TV. That is a problem that leads to the situation that they lack communication, right? Another example in the online marketing space is if you are not making enough money in your business, That is a situation. That is not a problem that you will solve with one or two pieces of content. What you want to do is you want to create content that is centered around those small problems. If someone has a situation where they're not making enough money in their business, so let's say someone's only making $5,000 a month in their coaching business. A lot of you guys are trying to teach people how to go from $5,000 a month to $20,000 a month. Well, that's a situation. What are all of the problems that you need to help that person solve in order to go from $5,000 a month to $20,000 a month? Maybe you can teach them how to turn their Instagram followers into clients. Maybe they're not having enough Messenger conversations. Maybe they don't know how to get Messenger conversations. So these are all problems that lead to the situation that that person is not making enough in their business. And that is the framework that I teach my clients inside my program on how to do that. Because if you can figure out a way to solve those small problems, people are going to start raising their hand saying, yes, I want that, right? And don't be afraid to actually give away the farm. Like, if someone doesn't know how to get Messenger conversations and you show them how to get 100 Messenger conversations in the next 7 days, you might think that that's giving away the farm. But guess what? Once you help them solve that problem of not having enough Messenger conversations, who are— who do you think they're going to go to when they need to turn those Messenger conversations into actual sales? And so if you just kind of look at the way that you're putting out content right now and ask yourself, am I putting out content that is trying to solve the situation? Or am I actually putting out content that's going to solve a problem? And I can almost guarantee almost all of you guys are like having an aha moment right now and you're like, crud, like, that's my issue.

Yeah, well, I just had it, had it again. I have it every time I talk to you. So solving problems, not situations. And what I, you know, just to give a quick example, In the Coaching Business Prescription, the prescription is you don't need a funnel, a website, uh, an Instagram strategy, or any of those things. What you need to do is get 3 things right: an irresistible offer, an audience that's eager, and a 30-minute-a-day sales strategy that puts that offer in front of that audience. And all you have to do is get those things dialed in well enough, and you will have a thriving business. So it's, you know, the You're saving coaches time, effort, energy, attention, money, because they don't have to buy all those things the gurus are saying. And I want to circle back a little bit to that piece of it, Laurel, because your story around the gurus is really fascinating to me. You know, you came on the scene, at the time when every guru— and by guru, I mean someone has somehow miraculously instantly become a digital marketing expert, uh, just because a new tool has come up and they've figured out how to use it. Now they're going to teach everyone how to use it the way they used it, which that's a problem in and of itself. But all the gurus were saying high ticket, and you said, screw that, I'm going low, low, low ticket. And every guru threw rocks at you and tried to poke holes in your strategy, and you committed and persisted, and you, you built an empire on this idea. And now I see some of those gurus on camera with you because now they are your clients, or you are helping them dial in their low-ticket strategy all of a sudden. So speak a little bit to that piece of your story and, um, maybe as a cautionary tale to people that are watching, like maybe they should think twice before they buy that next high-ticket program.

Yep, absolutely. And I'll even give a little bit of context because, you know, a lot of people want to replicate what I've done with the $7 program. But here's the thing, and this is something that Scott Perry and I were talking about at the beginning of this call, right? I put out— so I was back in 2018, early 2018, I was still working in television. And, you know, my wife wanted to start a t-shirt shop. And so long story short, we went to a Damon John entrepreneurial workshop, and the guy who was looking at our Facebook ads was like, why are we talking about t-shirts? Who's doing your Facebook ads? And I was like, me. He's like, we need to put this t-shirt thing aside because you can make a ton of money just doing Facebook ads for business owners. And I was like, huh, that's kind of interesting. But I had never thought about being an entrepreneur or having an agency or anything like that. I didn't even know how to start, like didn't even know where to start. I did what I thought I knew best, which is going on camera and just teaching people how to do Facebook ads for fun. And I decided I was just gonna let this roll and see if I could test this kind of like what we learned, Scott Perry, micro stepping, right? I micro stepped into I'm not gonna go full on and build a website and launch this agency. I went live with a free thing, right? Facebook Live, and I taught people how to launch these simple $5 ads that we were utilizing at the TV station. I was the social media director for a syndicated television show, and we would use these $5 ads in order to launch these TV shows. And so I just decided to go live and be like, hey, here's this cool $5 ad strategy for a business owner here in Phoenix, Arizona. This is probably gonna help you out a lot because we see people spending $2,000 for a spot in Dr. Phil. You can literally reach the same amount of people with a $5 ad. And consistently going live, I was able to build up an audience. What do you think happened? I was solving problems, people were reaching out, I was able to get 3,000 Messenger conversations in that year. I had, what do you think happened whenever I was going live and teaching ads? People asked me, can you do my ads for me? And whenever I filled that, people were like, well, can you teach me to do ads. And so I had a higher level thing, but then I had this large audience of people who couldn't afford agency, they couldn't afford the $2,000 for my 45-day Ads Accelerator. I was like, what do I do with all of these people? Yeah, I can keep giving them free value in Messenger. Again, I took a micro step and I went live on Facebook and said, hey, I'm launching this $7 a month ads program so that I can get all of you guys help that you need without spending, you know, tens of thousands of dollars. I created it like a high ticket, but it's going to be low ticket. So I wanted to give your audience that context because I think that that's important because I don't want someone to watch this video and be like, well, she started a $7 program. And so, you know, maybe I should do that. But two nuances there. One, I generated cash flow right, with my agency and my high ticket, I had all of these people in Messenger, I had an audience. So when I launched that $7 program, but here's what happened during that, I launched it on Black Friday, here's what happened. A whole bunch of, I actually became the butt of a joke in one of the biggest coaching Facebook groups there were, and we're talking 200,000 people in this group, and someone did a screenshot And they asked the question, would you trust this expert, um, in or buy her high ticket after she releases an offer like this? And everyone, I mean, comments started coming in, yeah, no, she's, you know, no one's ever gonna value what she does at high ticket, no one's ever gonna— I mean, it was, it was not a great feeling, let's just say that. But I knew in my gut, I was like, I'm helping a whole bunch of people, and who the hell cares what anyone else thinks? Right? Like, I'm making decent amount of money at that point. I was making the decision to actually quit my job at the TV station because I was making 3 times the amount in a third of the time. And so if I would not have had those high— that high-ticket income, I don't think the $7 program would actually be a thing because I don't think a lot of people understand how much time and energy But what I want you guys to take away from this conversation is F what anyone advice ever has to tell you, because I will say this: if I would not have launched that $7 program, I would not be standing here where I am in my business today, because it allowed me to reach all of the people that all of the gurus were ignoring because they didn't have the money.

Yeah, well What that really speaks to is the importance of strategy over tactics and tools. But also, your strategy has to be informed by— and I'm quoting our mutual friend Lucas now. So when you join Laura's program, you also have access to Lucas Roszczewski, who is a fantastic copywriter. And he has this concept of, you know, philosophy, principles, strategy, tactics, tools. And the philosophy and principles are the things that are kind of timeless. And that's the higher, you know, more visionary type of things. And then strategy, tactics, tools is how you execute and get closer to your strategy. But we all, as coaches, get so enamored because of our hardwired biological and evolutionary wiring to seek more. We just want to collect tools and collect and, and try the new tactics. And the more things you do, the less efficient you are at doing it, at getting what you want. And so Laurel strategically used low ticket after she validated and, and brought in some cash with her high ticket and was able to build a huge, uh, I mean, for lack of a better word, it's not a funnel, it's a pipeline. She's got all these people that are dying to work with her that are entering through this $7 program, but the right ones, right thing, right time, right sequence, are going to work with her eventually. So that's super, super powerful. And it reminded me of one of the other things that helped me the very, very most. And you kind of alluded to this already when you got started, you just started solving problems for people. And I remember you saying, Scott, just solve 100 people's problems and you will never lack for business again. And that's what those— my early content was, was I just— I'm gonna spend 3 months and I'm just gonna go online and try to help people by sharing information. Everybody says— and like everyone else, I said, oh, I can't give away all my intellectual property, nobody will buy from me.

BS.

Information is free. Knowledge is free. What people pay for is access and implementation. And that— so you basically reframed— we had Dan on just a couple days ago. You reframed Dan Nicholson's solvable problem, trademarked intellectual property, dannicolsonriggingthegame.com. But you You massaged it into to, to be a really powerful strategy to help the people in your system and in your program, um, get really good at creating content and solving problems. Talk a little bit about your kind of 90-day solvable problem strategy.

Yeah, absolutely. It's one of my favorite things to talk about actually, because a lot of people will try to sell you on the idea that it's 90 days to success. You see all of these offers, 90 days to $100,000, you know, like I'll show you how to do this in 90 days, right? In my head, I think not 90 days to success, but 90 days to data, right? Scott, I hope you don't mind that I'm going to use you as an example in this case. So Scott came to me when he first started his, his coaching business, right? And I had him put out consistent content, and we tweaked it as we went for 90 days because it's an instant feedback loop, right? If I have Scott do a piece of content and he's giving away a free thing and people aren't raising their hands for it, we're looking at two things. One, are we reaching enough people? We're getting enough volume for that piece of content. Or two, is this a piece of content that someone wants or not, right? And so we spend a lot of time just trying to figure that out. But after 90 days, and I remember this so clear as day, Scott, I had my marker board out and we were doing the 90-day review. Right? And I was like, Scott Perry, how many Messenger— how many pieces of content did you post? And you were like, I did one a day for the last 90 days or whatever. We put 90 on the board, right? And I was like, how many total comments did you get? And I put how many comments, right? And then I was like, how many Messenger conversations? And we did Messenger conversations. Cool. How many of those Messenger conversations did you get to book a call with you? This— cool, you got this many booked calls, how many people actually sold, right? Now that's super important for those of you guys who are listening here, because notice Scott did one thing for 90 days, and all of a sudden we had all of the data that we knew exactly how to fix. I remember Scott said, I closed 2 clients. I was like, but you got all of these phone calls, and we should be closing at least 20 to 30%. I was like, but there's 2 things we can do. We can either push and correct content up here so that you get more comments to fix that low call rate, right? Because even if Scott had a low call rate, more volume of comments would actually get him to his goal. But the easiest thing that I could have ever helped him do was actually close more of the phone calls. And so instead of sending Scott across all of this journey to create more content and more more and more, I was like, let's just work for the next 90 days on fixing one thing. And that's your call rate. And him being able to know that— I don't even think it took us 90 days to fix that. I think it took a month to fix that. And then Scott was on track. But here's the thing. Most of you guys— I'm doing an invisible thing right here, right? But most of you guys, you don't want to take the time to do this. Who wants to go and count every piece of content, every comment, every Messenger conversation, but you should. That is what I still do to this day. And all we do with this strategy right here, put some $5 and $2 ads on it to push more volume. Most of you guys who are watching this video, that one strategy would fill your business and you would have never have another problem again.

Beautiful. Yeah, so I just want to give a shout out to Humble Viewpoint, who is a fan of the show and is saying this is super valuable. And just to, um, again, I want to amplify the thing about running a thriving business where you're filling your programs and reaching your monthly revenue goals is you have to do the right things in the right order at the right time. And Laurel is so absolutely correct because what ended up happening, actually, just to, to go a little bit beyond what you just shared, is I got really good at doing the content. I got great at, you know, creating comments and answering comments. I got great at moving things to the Messenger. I was— but, and I got good at getting people up on the calls, but, um, didn't— wasn't closing those sales. And, and Laurel and some other people in the program really helped me with that. But one of the things about that strategy is every— Laurel mentioned microstep— a client Journey begins with, I don't know who the heck you are. So you just have to get their awareness. That's what the content does. Then you have to get their attention. That's what quality content does. Then you have to get their permission and trust. That's where the comments and the Messenger conversations go. That's all marketing. That's just spreading the word. The sale begins to happen when they express interest in what you do, are enrolled in the journey that you can take them on, and then will invest in the solution that you can help provide them. And that sounds like a long causal chain that's prone to breaking. But what you're doing is they are stepping toward you every step of the way. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. You're earning enrollment, you're earning investment of time, attention, energy. And then, you know, people stop looking around at other options because you're being so helpful It's like, well, the gurus don't answer my questions. The gurus don't respond to my messenger, uh, messengers that some bot does. But Scott Perry has been helpful every step of the way. So by the time they get to that sales call, it's almost a foregone conclusion. I actually started calling it a decision call. Here's the 3 things that you can buy. Which one do you want to buy? Um, Laurel, you've been so, so generous with your time. And, uh, again, I can't thank you enough for the, just the way you transform my business by helping me transform my mindset, by helping me change my behavior. So thank you for that. I always like to end with just like, what would you challenge anyone that's listening? You know, what's the next micro step that they should take if they want to start to make a little bit more progress and close the gap with less effort in less time with less risk between where they are and where they want to be with their business?

100%. I think the best micro step that anyone can take right now is going back through what we were talking about. Am I trying to help people solve a situation? What are the specific problems that I need to help people solve so that I can help them create a better situation? Like, if you haven't taken the time to actually go and do that, if you don't know that, anything else that we talked about, as easy as it is, it's not going to work because you have to be clear on who you're serving. I'll give you one example to bring that home because, you know, I know we're wrapping things up here, but yesterday on, on a call with some of my students. I had a mother and son combo and they target real estate agents. And they were putting out a lot of content that were helping real estate agents generate leads. And I asked them this one question whenever we were putting together their irresistible offer, as Scott Perry calls it, right? And I asked them one simple question. I said, So I have a Rolodex of over 1,000 real estate agents that I've done master classes for and everything. I said, if you needed to make $10,000 in one weekend and I could bring you the perfect client in order to get them a result that would be worth $10,000 plus, what type of real estate agent would you have me bring you? And what they actually said was, well, they need to already be having a lead generation campaign. It's actually still here on this board right here as I'm looking at it, right? So they have to already be bringing in 60 to 80 leads every single, every single month. So did their— do their clients have a lead generation problem? No. They're not following up and they're not getting clients, right? That's the problem. And so if we are not clear on the specific problems of our audience, we're shooting a lot of content and it's not reaching our ideal clients, right? They were, they were saying in their offer that we're going to help them get leads, but when I asked them, who's your perfect client? They're already getting leads. So putting out a message to help people get leads is not bringing them the client that they could actually get results for.

Amazing. Going to pull up one more comment because it's on LinkedIn, and I know that Laurel has a really hard time with LinkedIn, so I'm doing it just to say, see, it can actually be a place where things can happen. So Liliane, also a big fan of the show. Laurel, that is really super fantastic. I love your, just your discernment. I love your directness and, you know, just clear, direct, and respectful approach. Clear-eyed to, you know, engaging in this marketing sales thing. Before I let you go, I got a sneak peek at a pretty nice piece of literature that I would like you to kind of give everyone a little foreshadowing of what's coming up in October.

Yeah, absolutely. So I am launching a book, it's called Super Duper Cheap Ads. And, you know, a lot of people told me they, you know, weren't big fans of the book, but I'm going to take Dan Nicholson's advice and play my own game. And it's, it's essentially a playbook of everything that I did in order to grow my business to over $2 million without even spending $100,000 in ad spend. As a matter of fact, I made my first million. And I, and I show screenshots and everything inside the book But it's literally, I wanted it to be a playbook. Like I did this, we go over the solvable problem, like what we were just talking, I call it magic math. And I literally just lay it out there. Like here's a screenshot of my ads manager, you know, when I started, when I finished, when I made my first million, when I made my first million, less than $36,000, right? How many of you guys ever hear that you need to spend all this money to make, you know, like I even showed it to a couple of experts, I'll keep their names hidden. But when I first told them that, like, look, I made my first million and they're like, what? Like, that is crazy because so many people are so used to having to spend so much money. And so this book literally lays out the playbook. It is not meant to be an upsell. This is meant to be an actual playbook that anyone can pick up. If you have a coaching or consulting business, I wrote it specifically for coaching and consultants, but you could literally pick up the book. And what Scott Perry and I talked about today, it goes in detail. There's screenshots. You know, I wanted it to be something that, something that people don't just read, but they actually implement it. As a matter of fact, in the last chapter, it's like, here's the checklist of everything that you need to do in order to get this entire system up in just 7 days. And so I wrote it as a really cool action plan, but you can literally grow your business for as little as $300, $500 a month. If you have the right type of content and you just have a little bit of ad spend to amplify that great content.

Yeah. And I know that I was working with you a year ago this month and you were working on that book then. So this book is a labor— it's a very— it's a— I would call it a handbook or a guide of step-by-step. This is how you can grow your business and you've really worked hard on it. It is really fantastic. So Follow Laurel at adcoachingforseven.com. Pay attention to what she's up to. She is a bona fide genius at what she does. I am thrilled to call her not just my, my mentor, but my friend. Laurel, thank you for spending this time and sharing your wisdom and experience with us today.

Any time, Scott. I'm always happy to give value to everyone because honestly, it's a strategy that everyone needs to know how to do.

Absolutely.