00:00:00 You are listening to the Scaling to Freedom podcast and if you are an online coach or course creator, you are in the right place. I’m your host, Christina Bernhard. I’m an Ads agency owner that gets an inside look every day on what’s working and what doesn’t in the online coaching space. I’m here to share with you what we see works in our agency as well as what we see happening and changing in the industry.Stay tuned to up level your coaching business to have the freedom you want. Let’s get started.

00:00:32 Welcome to episode 184. In this episode we are going to be talking about what I learned in my 1st 100 sales calls for the agency. So I was thinking about this concept the other day and I’ve done a ton of sales calls. I actually still do all the sales calls for the agency and so I’ve had a lot of conversations all mostly coaches and course creators. So these conversations and problems that I come across are very similar.

00:01:02 And if you do sales calls, you’re probably aware of this, that you see these trends and these patterns in just the phrases that people use, the problems that people have, but also just how they perceive their problems. Just all kinds of things where there are just these trends that you see over and over again, which is really great use of you can use this for your marketing copy and things like that. Which I absolutely do. But also it’s just really fascinating to think about as well. So I’m going to share with you because I also think that it will be helpful for you and other coaches to hear about this, to learn from the different misconceptions that people have, but also what it’s actually like for other coaches too.

00:01:50 It’s one of those things where we’re always curious how other people in the industry, how do we compare to other people. Not to necessarily try and compare ourselves to make us feel bad or anything like that, but to just understand what the norm is and kind of where we’re at and what we could do differently or not differently and also to feel good about ourselves too and just to know that we’re all just the same in a lot of ways where we are just doing our best and we’re all in the same boat a lot of the time. So I’m going to share what I’ve learned from these 1st 100 calls. We’re beyond 100 at this point, but I was looking through my 1st 100. I kept a document where I put together the different trends and stuff like that, and I kind of stopped doing that, which I should definitely, probably go back and start doing that again because it’s something that I’m always, I was talking to a client this morning and I talked to her about implementing this for a sales call.

00:02:50 So this is something that I’m always preaching and it is something that I did in my 1st 100, but I should probably readopt it and start doing it again. But I had that document and I just went over everything that I kept seeing over and over again. So I opened that document the other day and was looking through it. And so I’m going to go over four things that were just the biggest trends that I saw, or the biggest categories of the trends that I saw. So the first one is that there are a lot of misconceptions about ads specifically. So I wanted to go over what those misconceptions are. So the main misconception about ads, or the main ones, are that they can replace organic. That’s one that I heard a lot is that I don’t want to show up at all. So you have to understand the role that ads play. So it’s not that ads necessarily are always replacing one thing or another.

00:03:54 It’s complementing it and it’s all working together in some way. So if you use and it’s different for everyone. So for some people, instagram is part of their top of funnel. Their organic instagram strategy is very top of funnel. Their accounts gets a lot of reach, a lot of their reels and things go viral or “viral”. If you’re watching me in video, I have air quotes on, a lot of them go “viral” and they are able to get a lot of new clients that way, or customers. In some people that’s not the case. Their Instagram account doesn’t necessarily get this large reach. So what they use it for is more of a nurturing strategy. So all this to say is that all of these different tools, these platforms, these different vehicles that you’re using to grow your business and to market yourself, they’re all a little bit different, but they all play a different role.

00:04:50 So ads might be your top of funnel, where you are out there in front of more people and getting your work out there, getting more exposure, bringing more people in top of funnel, and then also having those leads being generated, depending on what you’re sending ads to. And then your Instagram, your organic marketing might be to nurture those people, so that those people go into your world and they learn more about you and you earn their trust and they get more and more nurtured in order to actually invest with you or buy from you. So that’s one thing, is that ads do not replace organic marketing to where you don’t have to show up on social media at all. Now, if your Instagram is your main and only top of funnel and you don’t use it for nurturing at all, which would be surprising, then maybe it can, but in most cases it cannot. It’s not so that you don’t have to show up at all. You might have to show up less because maybe it is your top of funnel and you want something to help that you want another avenue of leads coming in from somewhere else, then yeah, you might not have to show up all the time or as much, or you can take time off. Like maybe currently if you take time off, it takes a huge hit on your business and you don’t want that. So those are scenarios where yes, ads can help with that, but it doesn’t replace organic in all scenarios. Another one is that they are good when you aren’t making sales. This is a common thing too.

00:06:20 I don’t hear this as much, but I used to hear this a lot where I would ask them, okay, why do you want to try Facebook ads? Or what do you want ads for? And they’ll say, well I’m not making sales, so I need to make sales. So this is a huge misconception. And I think this is also why a lot of people have had these nightmare situations with ads, which I have a whole other podcast episode on those Facebook ad nightmares and how to avoid them. And a big thing is thinking that they’re going to sell for you. So I’m not going to go too much into this because I have so much content, so many podcast episodes. If you go on my Instagram, there’s a lot of this messaging and to clarify that ads do not make the sales because your sales process does that. Ads are typically your top of funnel channel. So you are getting people to come in and you are generating leads.

00:07:14 It’s a great lead generator, but you have to ultimately make the sale or your sales process, whatever that is, your sales team, your email funnel, whatever it is you are using as your sales process, that still has to convert. So getting in front of more people doesn’t necessarily make more sales. Your messaging has. There’s a whole formula of things that I won’t go into, but it’s definitely not the strategy that you want. If you are not making sales, meaning that you are not able to convert people to actually purchasing with you, that is a really poor time to start investing in ads. There might be some exceptions or some unique scenarios, but most of the time that’s not a good time to invest in ads. Another misconception is that they are too expensive or they don’t work. So let me just say that all the tools work, they all work. Some people just Instagram, only some people, their podcasts work. Some people doing Facebook ads, TikTok, all these things, they all work.

00:08:18 That’s why everyone’s on them or people are on them. Lots of people actually. But the problem is that your messaging and everything, all of those things, these fundamental, boring, basic 101 things have to be in place. So you have to understand the fundamentals of marketing and having your messaging really dialed in. The creatives have to be like they have to speak to your ideal clients. It’s not a situation where if you just put up the name of your program in front of more people, more people are going to buy. It’s just not that simple. And I think that it is sometimes simplified in that way that they think that if I put my program out there and I spend money on ads to do that and I don’t get a return, then it’s the platform’s fault. It’s the tool that doesn’t work. It’s Facebook ads. That’s not the case. So there are a lot of people, specifically coaches and course creators, that are making high returns on their ads. They’re making a ton of money off of their investments. And I know that because this is what I do for a living. So I see it every single day.

00:09:29 I’m an ads manager every single day looking at this. And not everything works 100% of the time, but the tool, the vehicle, like ads specifically, absolutely work. So that’s another misconception. The last one I’ll go over as far as misconceptions is that they’re only good for when you’re launching. So I have seen a lot of people say I want to run ads for my launch, but they don’t really have an ongoing ad strategy or any kind of long term vision for their ad strategy. They just want to run them when they launch. So this is really common and it does logically make sense. I can understand why people think this and kind of come back to this. But with ads they really do work well in a long game strategy and especially because their role is typically that top of funnel generating leads, getting more exposure and getting more people into your world as you build a brand. But you can also book calls on an ongoing basis.

00:10:29 Like this is how you can really scale the business by having them go ongoing and not just promoting a specific event and then turning them off and then promoting the next one. You really want to have more people to promote your events to. And where that comes in is that ongoing list building or lead generation strategy. So that’s the first thing that I learned was that there are so many misconceptions about ads, but not just that there are misconceptions because there are misconceptions about every industry and everything. But I was surprised by how many were the same. They were just kind of always one of these four. So that’s the first thing. The second thing that I learned was that many coaches have the same struggles. Wow, a lot of people are having the same struggles. And the first one is I feel like it’s being talked about more or maybe I’m just noticing it more, but is the fluctuating income.

00:11:34 So I almost felt like when I first started to build my business and be exposed to the coaching industry and this space of this online business bubble that we live in it was almost like I knew businesses fluctuated income. I knew that a lot of businesses were seasonal and it was normal to go up and down. But it really did feel like in the coaching industry or this online business space, that that wasn’t the case. For whatever reason. That’s just how I saw it. And I think that’s how a lot of other people saw it too. Because I know that people had a lot of they struggled a lot whenever their income struggled or fluctuated or their revenue fluctuated. And it’s just interesting. And I think a lot of it too was because in the space that I was in, seeing so many business coaches constantly market their 100K weeks or months or whatever, like all this money and they were constantly keeping up. This image of my business never goes down and it only grows.

00:12:44 And so that was just kind of the image. And I started my business right before the pandemic started. And so I feel like during the pandemic, it just felt like even more. I don’t know if it was because online businesses were such a focus, because everyone was at home and it was all virtual and all these things. A lot of businesses were going virtual. And so I just felt like this messaging. I just kept seeing it over and over again. And it’s not true. I think more people are talking about it now. But even an online business, a coaching business also has fluctuating revenue. Also sometimes, depending on your niche, will have different seasons and things like that. And it’s all very normal. And being on sales calls where people are telling me their struggles and what they’re dealing with and the kind of solutions that they’re looking for, fluctuating revenue was definitely one of them. Another struggle is webinars or funnels that aren’t converting well. So there’s always, again, this image where everything just looks like everything is working for them.

00:13:46 And I know it’s really like it’s naive to say that I was watching these things and thinking that this wasn’t happening, but the specific ones, because sometimes bigger coaches in the industry would come to me and get on a call with me. And I was just shocked because I’m like, I know that it happens, but not to you. And it was just really interesting and I wish that more people knew how common it was. Again, I feel like people are talking more about this, which makes me very happy because I have also seen the shame and the struggle with the people who were experiencing these things. I’ve definitely experienced these things as well, especially through pregnancy and postpartum. It’s just kind of part of it. Especially when you are a personal brand and you’re in a season of your life, your business is going to be directly impacted when you’re like a one person. We have teams, but the business is you, the image is you. And so same with coaches. It’s very personal, brand focused kind of business model.

00:14:51 So people go through things and it impacts the business. And I’ve seen the struggle and the shame behind it. So I do wish that more people talked about it then, which I didn’t see much of it, but I do see more people talking about it now, which I think is great and just kind of normalizing. That because I was very surprised in the beginning of my business, seeing how common that was. More specifically with the people that were really good at upholding the image, which of course it’s marketing, but they were really good at making it look like that wasn’t the case. The third struggle that I’ve seen is really small profit margins due to either like ad spend or a sales process that doesn’t work now with profit margins in the online space, especially coaching or where you’re offering a service where it’s you our overhead is very small, right? If we have a virtual business, we don’t have office buildings with all these employees of all these different professionals and things like that that are so much more expensive than software and then some team members and things like that, our profit margins are like other businesses dreams. They’re much bigger. But seeing that some people because their funnels weren’t necessarily converting properly and they’re spending a ton of money in ads that maybe they’re making 100K month, but they are spending sometimes that or maybe a little bit less in ads. I have been shocked at the things that I’ve seen and you really do have to know that it’s not we all know that social media is not like completely real , I mean, it can be real, but it is definitely the highlight reel of everything.

00:16:42 And there’s often a story behind it, especially if it’s a marketing if it’s marketing content. But it really is crazy what some things are actually behind the scenes, which goes into my third thing that I learned, which was how different Instagram can look. And again, this is something that we know because this is something that people have talked about so much over the past few years, about social media and how people feel like it’s not real and all these things. And it’s true that it’s not completely real, but it’s also true that it’s not completely fake either. Even my personal the business Instagram, but I also have a personal Instagram and I’m a single mother and if you look on my Instagram, you would think that my life was perfect. But I don’t mean to do that if I’m crying because my daughter is not sleeping or I’m so overwhelmed or whatever the case is, I’m frustrated with something. I’m not going to pull out my phone and post my stories that I’m crying because I’m so tired or whatever. I also personally don’t do this and I would consider myself a very authentic person. I just don’t think to pull out my phone and document something like that. So sometimes it is intentional, but sometimes it’s not intentional.

00:18:02 We just don’t share everything like that in our lives, especially on social media. Maybe we tell our friends or our family or people that are close to but we’re not blasting these personal things out to the world. And same with our businesses. We’re not posting about our businesses struggling, like maybe after the business struggled before and now we’re better. Maybe that’s when we’ll post something like that. But in the thick of it, people are typically not posting that. So I’m not blaming anyone and I am going to be the person that’s vouching for the other side of it too. But with fluctuating revenue and issues. If you look at Instagram, the people that are struggling with some of these things, you would never know it. You just can’t tell on Instagram. And it’s kind of fascinating. Again, something I already kind of knew. But to see it, to look at someone’s Instagram and then get on a call with them and find out that there’s so many things that they’re struggling with, it’s just fascinating to see. But again, I am happy that more people are talking about that. So that’s something that we can all kind of relax on and just kind of assume that everyone’s human and we’re all kind of in it, maybe at different seasons and different times, but we’re all in it at some point.

00:19:19 So that is the third thing. The last thing I’m going to go over that is something that I learned that was shocking to me is how many 7-figure coaches don’t know their numbers. This is really common. And what I mean by don’t know their numbers is in simplicity. I mean that they don’t know their metrics, but also they have no idea, most importantly, what the biggest driver of their revenue is, where their leads are coming from, not knowing exactly where they’re coming from. And they have an idea, but they don’t have numbers, so they don’t have data. It’s really easy to assume things based on, like if something happens, like you get like three people from Instagram in one day or something, you might think, most of my leads are coming from Instagram or maybe that happens more often. But if you looked at the data, you would see like, no, actually more people come from referrals or something like that. So it’s really important to know your numbers so that they’re actually accurate and you know for sure that you’re not misunderstanding something. And this reminds me of when I was in the corporate world.

00:20:29 I worked for a law firm and we had lots of different offices all over Texas. And every office had attorneys in that specific office. And because I was the marketing director and it was my job to make sure that all of the phones were ringing for all the offices and it was a big job for sure. And there were attorneys that would call me and be like, no one’s coming in from PBC, I know it, and this isn’t working, or this is working, or whatever. And we did all kinds of channels and I would show them we had all the data. We had lots of data at the firm that I worked at, and I would have to show them data that that’s not true. But they would have this gut feeling and they would be so certain of it. But the data proves otherwise. Sometimes the opposite of what they’re certain about. So it’s really important to know your numbers because you really can be off because it just seems a certain way.

00:21:28 So important to know your numbers. And I’m really surprised by how many people don’t know their numbers. They have no idea where most their leads are coming from or what in their business is actually moving the needle. They’re just like all have a podcast and Instagram or doing YouTube and doing TikTok and all this stuff and they’re not really sure what’s actually moving the needle and making the difference. Another thing too is not knowing what their funnel or sales conversion rate is. Really difficult to make decisions without knowing your numbers. Definitely difficult without knowing your conversion rate, because we can’t project anything. We can’t figure out what a sales process has multiple steps. So to know which step needs to be optimized to help, that the only way to know is to have the data and to know what those conversion rates are at each step. All of these things are super important.

00:22:21 So that was something that was really, really surprising to me because without the numbers, you’re kind of just swinging in the dark all the time, which is not ideal. Another surprising thing that I’ll just add is how much money you can make without knowing your numbers. I will say that. But there is going to be at some point it’s going to be different for everyone that you’re going to plateau and you’re not going to be able to scale past it because you just don’t know what to ramp up. So, super important again, to know your numbers.

00:22:48 But I was very surprised by how many people don’t know their numbers. So those are the four main things that I was surprised by and that I learned in my 1st 100 sales calls for the agency, is that there are so many misconceptions about Ads that a lot of coaches are struggling with the same things, but no one’s really talking to each other about it or admitting it. And how different instagram can look. I mean, we kind of already know this, but super surprising to see the actual real realities and also how many people don’t know their numbers. And just another reminder to figure out what your numbers are and start measuring those things and make decisions based on the data and not how you think things are going.

00:23:35 So that is what I have for you this week. I hope that you all have a wonderful week and I will see you guys next time. Thank you for listening to the Scaling to Freedom podcast. If you are a 7-figure coach looking for ads management with an agency that partners with you to get your work out into the world and amplify your impact. See if we are a good fit by applying for a spot in our agency at christinaburnhard.com/apply. Find the link in our show notes.