00:00 You are listening to the scaling Freedom podcast. I’m your host, Christina Bernhardt. And this week, we’re talking about how ads don’t just make your business grow,

00:08 but they actually make your business better. So this is a really fun topic, because it’s not something that people usually think of when they think of Facebook ads, they think of scaling and growing. And that’s absolutely its role. But I will tell you something that happens without necessarily meaning to. So Facebook ads, they don’t just increase your revenue, but they also will reveal problems in your business, if there are some big problems that need to be taken care of increased volume will quickly highlight the areas in your business that need work. So ideally, these things are super solid before starting ads. So I want to point that out, that we definitely don’t want to, you know, have this feeling where our business like, you know, has all of these issues that we are aware of, and then we’re going to just throw a bunch of volume through as though we can see what needs to be fixed. We want everything to like the ship to be as tight as possible before we start putting volume in. But what does happen is when we feel like things are looking really good things are really tight. And seamless, is that whenever we do start ads, it does start to highlight all of those different areas and those different blind spots that we couldn’t see it before. So I’m going to talk about the four main ways that I see this happen. And the specific areas inside of a business that I see get revealed. Not in a terrible way, of course, like just it just opens up an opportunity to make things even better. Because whenever you do have that volume, and it does take a I guess a tighter ship, right. So let’s start with the first one. So the first one is going to be pretty obvious. So I’m just gonna get out of the way. But one of the biggest things that are the very first things that that happen and get revealed is funnel performance. So this is pretty obvious.

02:01 But you get some solid funnel performance numbers very quickly. And this is a good thing, because we need those numbers, right. And if you’re trying to get to a place where especially if it’s like passive income, specifically, if you’re going evergreen, or you have some evergreen products in the background, the funnel performance, and it’s not like it’s it is passive, but funnels do take work. So you want to be able to have that data as soon as possible, really, if you can, because that means that you are optimized, you can optimize a lot quicker. And so having that quick feedback allows you to do that. So you’re on a faster track to getting that funnel to be profitable, sooner. So if there is a break in the funnel, in I don’t mean like a technical break, but a place in the funnel where people are starting to drop off. And they’re not actually purchasing if it’s a certain landing page or a series of emails or something like that, you’ll quickly be able to see that and start optimizing it. And that allows you to get to that place where we call it the ATM machine where you’re just putting money in getting money out, you’ll be able to get there quicker and sooner. If you do have ads that are fueling that funnel with lots of leads, rather than having it happen organically, where even if you have a large audience, which you pretty much need to have, if you’re going to if you have like low ticket passive products, volume is super important. So if you do have a large audience, it’s still going to move a lot slower than it would with Facebook ads. So that’s the first thing is a funnel performance. And that’s huge. The second one that I think no one really expects is team support. And this is one of the biggest, this of all the four this one is probably the biggest reveal. And I think it’s also because no one isn’t necessarily expecting it like no one’s going to put people on their team and then expect them to drop the ball or expect that you know, this higher volume is going to stir everyone up. But it does, you know, adds do put speed into your business. So it will reveal how great are not great your team support is. And I’m specifically talking about support. I’m not talking about the individual people, but I’m talking about how they’re able to support you. So some examples of this too. That’s not even about the amount of leads coming through like this has nothing to even do with that. But even with whenever you do start ads, and we’re putting together campaigns, we are creating lots of different creatives and going back and forth and you know, it’s a process, right? It’s a big process, it’s not as easy as people think. So some examples are just helping you gather different assets, communicating with us having the ability to make funnel optimizations, that’s huge. Um, so having someone on your team that is able to actually optimize according to that speed and just stay on top of that, the ability to meet deadlines. So whenever it comes to ad campaigns, and we’re putting things together, there are lots of deadlines that like we’re always on a deadline. And so just their ability to meet those deadlines and have things together in time, and ability to keep your launches organized as huge entering launches, really, whether you’re using ads or not. But those are just some examples of ways that, you know, in a coaching business, that people are, you know, their teams are supporting them. I’ve seen so much turnover with admin support, like IBM’s, vas, operations, just any kind of operations role,

05:43 I’ve seen so much turnover with a lot of my clients, and then just struggling to find people that are really able to support them in a way where they can really just take care of it and own it, and really help them in that way. And so it’s so important to have these pieces in place before ads. But you know, even if you feel like you do have these pieces in place, if you don’t doing doing this process of getting together campaigns, and just adding that element to your launches is definitely going to reveal that it’s something I see really, really often all of our clients have some sort of like operational support. So it is always there, it’s always present. But one thing I have seen quite a few times is that there are situations especially during launch periods, where there’s just a lot going on, and they end up getting like less than reliable some support from some other team. And it falls on the client to meet the deadline. And I’m specifically just talking about like gathering things, approving things, you know, stuff like that. And it’s something that I see. And I mean, it’s a lot when that’s my RSI like for ads, anything that’s going on with ads, if my clients are launching, like one of my top priorities is protecting their energy, like they’re showing up in a launch. So they’re doing lots of lives, they have a hype event that they’re doing, they’re having lots of conversations with people, like they’re really showing up during that time. So I we make sure that it’s very hands off for them. So you know, a lot of the prep and everything is before the actual launch during the launch, you won’t really hear from me that much you’ll get your reports and things like that. But I’m not going to be bothering you with anything to protect your energy. And I’ve just seen them in the middle like I, if they have a really good solid team, anything that we need last minute, or we want to try out or pivot, we can work with their team on just getting what we need to be able to do that. And whenever their team like, you know, fall short or something, it can fall into the client. And it’s just really not an ideal situation, especially when you’re in a launch. Like there’s already a million gazillion things going on. If it’s something that your team can do, ideally, like, they will just take care of it right. But yeah, that’s just a struggle that I’ve seen. And almost everyone like eventually finds the right team members and people to play a role and it ends up working out. But I do see the messy middle a lot of the time, the turnover, just trying this person and this person is I’ve seen my clients go through so many OEMs it’s insane, I feel so incredibly lucky to have an OPM that I love that’s so good at what she does. And also all of my team like all of my admin support, I feel very, very grateful because I see the struggle. And it’s, it’s so stressful to have that kind of struggle. The third one is customer support. So this is about just having the back end for your customer support for your programs. Especially if you’re doing that like high volume, if you have some lower ticket things as well, that has a lot of people through it versus like a high end mastermind, where you maybe just have a handful of people that what I’m specifically talking about is, you know, like people like saying that they didn’t receive something they purchased or billing stuff, cancellations, sales support, like questions, things like that. So whenever you are pushing that volume through with ads, you’re gonna have lots more, a lot more of that. And so just having a plan for that to expand. If you already have someone that’s dedicated to that, just make sure that they have some capacity to increase that because that will increase if you know everyone’s different as far as your product suite. But if you do have a part of your product suite that will have that volume, that is likely going to increase. So that’s another thing too, just that higher volume of people might mean you need an extra plan for support.

09:51 The last thing, which I think is super huge, especially for coaches who launch is launch prep in Oregon. session. So this is something I see a lot. And you know, it’s basically just if you are currently winging launches, it just gets harder and harder. And you might have already experienced this before, especially if you’ve launched multiple times. And I mean, every client that I’ve ever worked with, that launched more than once, like, you know, launching a second or third time or sixth time or whatever, it’s certainly easier because they already have lots of stuff together and, and things like that. But a lot of them don’t actually have systems that are super thorough, and plans for their launches. So they have stuff together, but I’m talking about it, they’re still kind of before the launch, like putting things together and sort of scrambling. In I’m not talking about all all clients or anything, this is just something that I’ve seen. And that it doesn’t mean that the launch goes bad or anything at all, it actually just means that it’s more stressful for the client. It’s more stressful for the business owner is what I mean. So you know, you really want to create lots of systems and plans for your launches. I’ve also had clients who had they clearly either them or their OBM clearly had like a very, like analytical or organized brain. And it really shows whenever they have these super thorough launch plans, it is so amazing to watch, because everyone is so stressed free, like you just follow these systems and they have an SOP for everything. The biggest thing or some of the biggest things is like organizing all of your assets. So having links to you know, all of the actual links that are involved into the, into the launch, photos, branding, different promo graphics for like feed stories, Facebook ads, all those things, different pieces of copy, having your captions in one place, sales pages, like everything that you’ve used, all organized together, all of the actual content, maybe the content for the program, or promo content, like webinars lives or podcast transcripts or outlines, things like that, having all of that together and organized is like amazing is a lot. That’s one thing, I don’t see a lot of people organizing in one place, it just having all of that stuff together that way every launch, you’re just pulling from it and then adding to it. And then also having step by step SOPs for every little piece of the launch. And then having like an organised or organized, who does what So preparing for team changes as well, because like I said, having or seeing turnover is something that I see a lot, and just having manuals for each role. So whenever you do have a tendency to turnover, or that turnover, every launch that you have, you’re not having to like, completely retrain the person, it’s all just kind of in the manual, and it’s in the SOPs, and they can just you can point them in the right direction, and they can just take it on. And so and then also having a template for collecting data, that’s huge as well. That way you can have reports at the end, and you’re making sure that you are tracking everything for each launch, you’re tracking the same metrics so that you can actually see how things are going as far as any patterns, or anything that is related to something that you did differently in the launch. And so you can really compare. So having that consistency with every single launch, it just helps you not have to like kind of be on a hamster wheel, but also just like progress and make the launch better and better. So those are the four main things that I see that ads really do just start revealing these different blind spots or different ways that the business could, you know, just just be more seamless, and then also increased performance. So increase that revenue based on, you know, those KPIs for the launch, having all that organized, the actual funnel performance and optimizing that. So we have our funnel performance, that one’s huge team support, and customer support, launch prep and organization. So that is what I have for you this week. I hope that this gave you some insight into how ads can actually reveal different blind spots and problems in your business and make your business better beyond just simply growing it. But also, I hope I gave you some ideas on maybe some blind spots that you haven’t really thought about or things that you could do better just to have the business more stable for ads and for that next level of growth to really scale it and bring that volume through to be able to support that volume. So that’s what I have for you this week. I will see you guys next week.