Is your funnel working for your business? In this episode of Art of Online Business, I’m diving into some of the problems I see people having when it comes to building a funnel for their coaching business.

I can tell you what buttons to press in your ads and give you templates to use, but that’s just one part of the process. It’s really important to understand the bigger picture when it comes to finding what is and isn’t working in your funnel.

I invited my friend Neill Williams on to the show today to talk about this. She specializes in helping coaches fill their coaching programs and has had a good deal of success with her own funnels.

Whether you are a coach or have a course or membership, this episode is going to be really helpful for you if you’re looking to optimize your funnel for maximum sales.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why you need to understand your target audience when creating a funnel
• Why you can’t outspend bad marketing 
• How to make a successful lead magnet that leads to more conversions
• The importance of your ad copy when it comes to the success of your ads
• The importance of having a testing mindset when finding what works and what doesn’t
• Why you need to get in alignment with what feels right to you for your business
• The first steps to selling out your program
• The mindset you need to have to create a successful funnel 
• How Neill helps people leverage ads and funnels

Links & Resources:

• The Art of Online Business website
• DM me on Instagram
• Visit my YouTube channel
• The Art of Online Business clips on YouTube
• Full episodes of The Art of Online Business Podcast on YouTube
• The Art of Online Business Podcast website
• Check out my Accelerator coaching program

*Disclosure: I only recommend products I use and love and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission.

Niell Williams's Links:

• Visit Neill’s website
• Check out Neill’s $100K Funnel Program
• Listen to the previous episode with Neill

Please support the podcast by giving an honest Rating/Review for the show on iTunes!

Other Episodes You’ll Enjoy:

Why YouTube is the Ultimate Platform for Finding Paying Clients | w/Karin Carr

From Zero to $25K/mo: How to Create a Passive Income Stream with Niche Sites | w/Kristin Hanes

Ask Rick: How Do I Verify if My Evergreen Funnel Is Working?

We can't outspend bad marketing like we can't. There's not enough money that we can spend on ads to overcome really crappy marketing. And in the same vein, there is no template funnel template or software that is going to make bad marketing work better. It just doesn't happen. So what we have to do is like, the softwares are great, yes, templates are great, but there are some things that you have to know that will actually make them work or not. And those core things are traffic conversions and fulfillment. If you don't know how to do those three things, it really doesn't matter what software you use, it's not going to work the way you want it to. 

All right. What's up, my friends? Jacob already here. Welcome to today's episode of The Art of Online Business podcast. We're going to be talking about funnels today and specifically some of the some of the problems that I see when people are trying to create a funnel for their specifically for coaching business. But this this this interview here is going to be relevant for you regardless of what type of business you have, whether you're a course creator or you've got a membership or a coaching program.

But we are going to be talking about coaching funnels here on the podcast today, and I want you to think about it like this. I can give you a template, I can give you a funnel template to use, or I can tell you exactly which buttons to press and which options to choose inside of ads manager, for example, to run ads. But that is just one very small piece of the overall puzzle. So if you're looking to get more people into your coaching program or sell more of your courses or what have you. It's just a small piece because you have to understand the bigger picture. You have to understand things like your target audience. You have to understand what pain points they have. You have to understand messaging and copy and offers and how to attract them. And then fulfillment. Et cetera. Et cetera. Right. And I think there is this this sort of like perpetuated message out there in the marketplace that, okay, there's one way to do this. 

Here it is. And you will have a successful business. And it's simply not true. And I've talked about it for years here in the podcast. Is it all works, my friend? Like whether you want to do webinars or email marketing or, you know, a video series or a live challenge launch or whatever, it all works. It has to align with you and what you want to do. And then there's all these other pieces that go into it, and that's where we've been talking about here on today's episode.

And I've invited my friend Neil Williams from Neil williams.com. Neil williams.com. And Neil helps other coaches fill their coaching programs through funnels and ads, but not just funnels and ads. It's like again speaking to all those different things that go into it in order to make you successful, not to mention the huge part of it that we'll talk about here today. And as you know by listening to this podcast, here is the mindset piece. So we're going to break it all down here for you today. Great discussion to listen in on. And again, whether you're a coach, whether you have a course or a membership or what have you, this is going to be really helpful for you. So without further ado, let's go hang out with Neil Williams. Neil, welcome back to the show. Catching you before you head to Costa Rica. Yeah, I'm so excited to be here. 

Thank you. Thank you for coming back. It's always good to talk to you. Fun, fun conversation here today because this is something that is I feel like has become sort of more prevalent lately, this whole idea of, oh, we can just have one template funnel to do something and then we're good. That's all we need, right? Yeah, when it's completely not the case. So I look forward to unpacking this whole idea, this whole concept today. Now before we get into it, you've been on the show several times before, but let's just sort of recap what you do and who you serve and how you help people.

Yeah, So I help busy coaches build six figure businesses and ten hours per week. And the reason why I do that is because that's my story. That's what I did in working with you. And while I was in my corporate job, I made $210,000, working ten hours per week using ads and funnels. So this is an interesting topic for us to be talking about. And and it's really automated marketing, right? It's leveraging systems instead of time in order to create a successful business. So now I help other coaches do the same thing in their businesses. 

Basically helping them sell out their coaching programs on autopilot, basically. Yes, essentially. And that's one of those things that sounds like, you know, doing something on autopilot sounds all sort of like. Oh, great. You know, it sounds kind of like scammy, but it's completely true. Like, that was actually the first tagline of my very first Facebook ads program. It was You, which was the advantage way back. I'm getting nostalgic now, but it was leads and sales on autopilot because that's what you know, that's what ads that's one one thing that ads allow you to do. But where where most people fall flat with it is they think that with a template, with a template for a funnel, like just like, all right, here are the pages and you do it this way and it's going to work right very similarly to like, Oh, here are the buttons you need to press in ads Manager If you're setting up ads and it's like,

All right, I'm going to show you the buttons to press, that doesn't mean you're going to have successful, successful ads, right? You know, and what I'd love to get your thought on this. You know, I remember this is probably five years ago, I think it was when I had a very, very early iteration of at that point, it was wasn't so early. I'd been doing it for a few years, but I had an early iteration of my accelerator coaching program and I was here in San Diego and it was mainly focused on ads at that time. 

And I was sitting in a conference room with all the members that had that had flown in. And question after question was about my ads aren't working, my ads aren't working. And they're they're, you know, their thought was I'm setting something. I'm I know what I'm doing or I don't know what I'm doing inside of ads manager. I'm pressing the wrong button or I'm doing the wrong setting or the whatever. And with every single person, it had nothing to do with, you know, the buttons or levers they were pulling inside of ads. Manager It was you don't understand your target audience.

You don't understand what their pain points are, what their challenges are and how to solve them. Like that was like your lead magnet isn't speaking to your exact target customer, and you can have the you can have the best setup in the world in ads manager. But if you don't have these other critical things and understanding of these things, your ads are not going to work. Yeah. And I think that that's sort of what's kind of maybe being perpetuated a little bit, you know, from a coaching standpoint. It's like, all right, here's a funnel template, here's a funnel. Whatever. You go plug this in and boom, you're done. You're good to go. You're going to you're going to fill up your, you know, your coaching program. And it's simply not true. 

Yeah, I know. And I totally agree with that. Through experience of my own and with other coaches that I've worked with. And it's like I always tell my students, like, we can't outspend bad marketing. Like we can't there's not enough money that we can spend on ads to overcome really crappy marketing. And in the same vein, there is no template funnel template or software that is going to make bad marketing work better. It just doesn't happen. So what we have to do is like, the softwares are great, yes, templates are great, but there are some things that you have to know that will actually make them work or not. And those core things are traffic conversions and fulfillment. If you don't know how to do those three things, it really doesn't matter what software you use, it's not going to work the way you want it to. 

And there's so many elements to the traffic and conversions, right? Yes. And you know, and you're not saying that, you know, we're not saying that funnel like having a funnel template isn't helpful because certainly it can be helpful, but it's just having a funnel template doesn't doesn't get you clients. That's exactly right. And the traffic and conversion part, as you know, for y'all listening like you all know, like we have to understand our target customer.

We have to understand all these things about the entire like this is the big picture. I mean, this is the whole reason why five years ago, I forget, you know, something like that. I started to to go beyond just Facebook ads, because Facebook ads are just one piece of the puzzle to having a successful online business, whatever successful means to you. And so it's the same it's the same thing here. So let's unpack that a little bit, Neil. It's like, all right, for traffic and conversions. So for marketing and sales, what are the elements that we really need to understand in order for a funnel to work? 

Yeah, well, I mean first, like a funnel software is not going to get you traffic to the funnel, right? So you could have a funnel set up. But if you're not pouring traffic into it, it's really not going to matter because nobody's going to go through the funnel anyways. Yep. And so. That's really the role of ads, paid traffic. But in order to make ads work like you were just talking about, like we have to know our niche, we have to know what their pain points are. We have to know how to write copy in our ads that are going to like hook them and bring them in and even like get them into the funnel. So if you can't do that, like building the funnel is useless because there's nobody who's actually going to go through the funnel in the first place. So traffic like traffic is, I would say step number one, let's make sure that we have that dialed in.

And before you go on to step number two, like that brings up one thing I see so many times people are asking me like, all right, what's wrong with my funnel? And they're like, Oh, I'm not getting enough. I need to get more traffic to the funnel. That's what they say. And it's like, Well, wait a minute, you're getting traffic to the funnel, but the traffic that you're getting, there's like the funnel is broken in some way. Like maybe it's not all different areas, but there's, there's something broken. So we don't want to bring more people into a leaky bucket, if you will. Right. We want to fix the leaky bucket first. Yes. And we do that through all the things that you're talking about here. And then we open up more of the floodgates. Right. But we have to understand all the things that you're talking about here. You have to understand your target audience and and their their pain points. Et cetera. And how are you solving those problems? 

Yeah. And the first thing like, you have to have a lead magnet that people actually want. I see this all the time with coaches specifically. I think we tend to like, go way too big. And I always say to my coaches, think micro, think like little baby steps, little wins. That's where your lead magnet is. If you try to give someone something to make over their entire life, their entire business, it's too big. It's going to be too big, and it's not going to attract the right people. So yeah, having like knowing how to write ad copy with hooks, hooks are really important in terms of like the atmosphere that we have now in terms of the algorithm, it's not so much like what we used to do, which was like all this in-depth research on the right audience to target, right? Yeah, we spend a little bit of time on that, but not a lot.

The most important part is the ad copy, the graphics, the headline. That's what's going to make your ad performance. You know, the your ads perform the way you want. And in addition that the offer in the ads, which is your lead magnet, is something your people really want. So those are really important components of getting the traffic into your funnel. 

Creative is the new, creative is the new. And it's exactly right and it's not even new. It's like it's been this way for a while, but it's it's exactly that point is we if we don't understand our target person and what they're struggling with and how we can uniquely help them. Our ads are not going to work. That's right. We're not going to attract people to the funnel that we have this great, you know, this great template for. 

Yeah. And I have an example. Like I have a coach who just launched her first campaign. And this is so fun for me because I know that the coaches that I work with don't know my entire story, but you know a lot of it and like how much I struggle with ads and like I just it took me forever to make all this work. And so they'll launch their first campaign and they're like, I'm getting $9 cost per lead. I'm like, Do you understand how crazy good that is? First of all, you launched your first ad campaign and you're getting like something less than $10 as a cost per lead. I'm like always, like, mind blown.

Yeah. You know, like, I'm super excited for them. So they're doing amazing. But again, like the game with ads is like, can I beat that? Can I beat myself? I'm in competition with myself in my ads. And so for this one coach, I was like, okay, so you don't like $9 per lead? Okay, so let's let's make a change. Let's do something else here. And we changed out a graphic. This is what's so wild about this. She changed out a graphic. The creative and the ad went from $9 to $3 and her landing page conversion rate went up to like 60 some percent. It was like crazy. But it's those little things like you just have to have the testing mindset. 

Yep. Be able to make, you know, big changes with your ad performance. Yeah. So it's knowing what like, what metric do I track? And if that isn't like it's not where I want it to be, what are the things that I can try in order to get closer to it? 

Now you've, you've also seen. Because of where you've gotten your business to and all of the coaches that you help, you know, grow their business. It's not just one single funnel that that can work. No, and that's something I preach here on the podcast all the time is like people are you know, there's people that teach like, Oh, you have to do an evergreen webinar funnel, you have to do a challenge funnel, you have to do X, you have to do Y, It all works. Yes, it all works. And I've done a whole episodes on on that. But so like what do you, what would you say about about that when there's this or there can be a mindset among coaches it's like, oh this is the funnel I need to do in order to be successful. 

Yeah. And I think there are a lot of coaches who come to me with that idea because that's what we're preach. Like there is like, you have to do this first. Like one common thing is like you have to do one on one first. Well, no, you actually don't. You can do whatever you want. Yeah. So when we work with students, we want them to create like we have a whole blueprint that we walk them through, like their marketing funnel blueprint. And we ask them like, what do you want to do for each of the pieces of your funnel?

Because all of it works, right? So the way that I think about it is, okay, what are the skills that I want to focus on building this year? And those are the skills that I inject into my marketing blueprint. So for instance, last year I was like, I want to get really good at sales calls. There's there's this really annoying thing inside of my funnel that I really want to fix, which is I'm trying to get people to book a call and I can't get people to book a call with me.

And even when they do, I have like 20% show up rates. And I was just like so annoyed with that whole situation. I was like, I'm going to fix that. So I intentionally made my marketing strategy that on the back end of my funnel they had to book a call with me. And then my job was to go make that tactic work. And I did. I ended up booking 150 sales calls. They were not free. They were paid. And we ended up I can't even remember what our conversion rate is. It was pretty high, but we ended up having like 75 students from that. So it was like, you know, about 50% conversion rate. So I say that because to your point, it all works. It's I like to think about what are the skills that I want to build for myself. And then I infuse those into my marketing funnel because it gives me the the ability to focus my time and my attention on getting really good at those skills. 

I love that. And we did a whole episode about that funnel right there, by the way. So you all I'll link it up in the show notes for today's episode over at my site. Rick mulready.com. We did a couple in the past episodes that Neil and I have done together here on the show is talking all about lead magnets that that Neil mentioned earlier. We break down that entire funnel of the doing the live sales calls also the what was it zero to. 200 or 103,000, I think it was in like 90 days or 90 days. I keep hearing from people like, but wait, I want to do what needs to do down there. I want to do a deal. I hear that all the time, so I'll link all the episodes up on the show notes here.

How would you coach somebody who you know? Because we and I and I see this a lot with people coming to me for coaching is I've been taught one way how to do something. And maybe I've done that a little bit, but I'm afraid to go. It doesn't really align with me, but I'm afraid to go do something different because this is the way that I've been taught, right? How would you coach somebody who is having sort of those sort of mindset things come up where trying to get get them to, to, to understand like, number one, it is hard if you've been taught one specific way to do it. And it doesn't really align with you in some, some fashion, right? How would you coach that person? And then also showing the other opportunities that are there. Yeah. To do these things. 

So I would want to know, like what do they want to do? What does feel good to them to do? Because this is the thing about business and we know this from like coaching all the entrepreneurs that we have coached, like if it feels out of alignment, it's going to be very hard for you to make yourself do it. Yep, right. And so it's better to like figure out what feels good to me or what do I want to do? And the way that I like to think about this is what is the skill you want to build? Like, do you want to build skill in sales calls? Do you want to build skill in webinars? Do you want to build skill in in really great and effective email marketing? What is it that you want to build skill in? And then we just go focus on that thing. So I would want to know, number one, what is it?

And just reminding them like it all works. Like there's a million tactics that we can use here. You just get to pick and choose and that is the reason why we all start businesses in the first place, isn't it? Like because we want to be able to be in charge of those things and what we do, and if we wanted someone to tell us what to do and have to do things we don't want to do, we might as well go back to the corporate world and work for someone else. Right? Exactly. That's one of the amazing parts about being your own boss is the agency that you have in making those decisions for yourself. 

And I would imagine that a lot of people I don't imagine I know a lot of people say like, well, I don't know what I want to do because it's kind of a situation where I don't know what I don't know. Right. And that's where it's even more important to have guidance along the way to help guide that path rather than be okay. This is like being being told this is the one way to do it. Yeah, but yet. And go for it. You're on your own, but yet you don't have the understanding or the coaching on, you know, the niche or the what the offer is or the lead magnet or your coaching program or anything like that. 

Yeah. And I think, yeah, you're exactly right. Like if you're brand new and you're not, you're like, Well, I don't even know how to answer that question. What we do is we give like common ways to do this, common ways to do this. Here are some strategies or some tactics you can choose from. What do you think makes sense for you? What do you want to try? What do you want to build skill in? Because I really believe all of this is just fundamentally your marketing strategy gives you the opportunity to build really valuable skills. And the more of those skills you build for yourself, the more of an asset you become to your own business. 

Yeah. 
So I'm going to play devil's advocate for a second. So someone's like. I don't care about skills that I want to build. I just want to fill. I just want to make money so that I can leave my day job. Yeah. Then what? 

That's fine. I mean, that's how I started, right? I thought I was really money motivated, and it turns out I was not. I was money motivated in the sense that I wanted to be able to pay my bills and put food on the table, you know? But beyond that, I wasn't. And so that's a totally fine place to start. And so we do give like suggestions of like inside of our funnel blueprints, we lay out a couple different options that are like done for you, for a coach who's selling a one on one program or a coach who's selling a small group program or a coach who's selling like a course or a membership. Yeah.

So those are there to lean on if somebody wanted to just stay there. But I always want my coaches to know, like they have agency, they have choice. Sure. And really important for them to make those decisions for themselves. So you might start there. Yeah, totally fine. And then you can always change your mind again. That's the part of being your own boss that is so amazing. 

Yeah.

And just just sort of reiterating what we talked about before. Like if you have like the funnel examples that you all use in your program. You still need the other stuff. 

You still need to understand your target person. You still need to understand how to write copy. You still need to, you know, this, this, this and this. And it's just one piece of it's just one piece of the. Of the puzzle. Yeah. Because if you can't write words that connect with your people. I mean, on your landing page or your sales page, like you're not going to have conversions. Right? That's a really important part of overall marketing strategy, whether it's automated or not automated. Of course I'm teaching more automated strategies, but that you have to be able to do that. Whether you hire a copywriter, you have the ability to be able to do that or you learn that skill on your own. Yeah. And so just as a tip for everybody I hear from so many people, it's like, well, I don't know how to write ad copy. I don't know how to write, you know, landing page copy or whatever it might be. It's there's so many things that you can do. 

That don't require you to be a great copywriter. So true. I am not a good copywriter whatsoever. I've just been, you know, like sharing some of the things that I'll share right now. Like these are some these are the things I've been doing for years. It's like the best thing that you can do is listen to your target customer or listen to your existing customers. What questions are they asking? And use that language in your copy. Like listen to discussions. I mean, Facebook groups, you can look at what other what's happening in other communities. Amazon search on books, go to the reviews.

I mean, there's so many different things that that you can do that's literally just speaking to people or if you're like, Well, I don't have any customers, Rick Like, okay, well, could you. Get on Zoom for 15 minutes with your target person, the person that you would love to help, and just start asking them questions. That's your copy right there. And then not even to mention we won't go deep on AI today, but like. 

I was going to say, you could use AI to help. 

With this whole process. Right? But you have to know, I mean, just speaking to to to AI for a second, you have to know how to prompt it and to get the kind of copy that is going to help help be most helpful for you. You have to have the understanding of what we're talking about here today as far as your your niche and the problem that you solve. Et cetera. 

Yeah. 

And I think, you know, to those people who are like, I don't know, I don't have any clients yet, I'm not sure what they're saying. That's where it's like, okay, totally fine. We're going to just take your our best guess and we're going to run with that. And the date is going to tell us if we hit the mark or not. Yeah, very quickly. 

Yeah. 

And if not, okay, then we need to try something else and get some data and that's going to tell us again. 

So if so if there's a new coach listening or somebody who's, who's thinking like, Oh, I really want to do this, I want to be coach and, and create a business so that I can whatever, leave my leave my day job or. You know, eventually retire my spouse. I hear that a lot. Et cetera. Et cetera. Or it's a coach who does have a business right now and they're not getting the kind of traction that they want. Why don't we start with the first person who is brand new? What like what would be their initial steps that you'd recommend to kind of get going to be able to eventually sell out their program? 

Yeah, I think the first step, I always say niche. Yeah. And it's really important, especially if you're going to start investing in ads that you do have a niche that you work with. It just makes your marketing so much more powerful and more effective. We are inundated with too many messages at this point in our where we are in our society that vague things aren't going to land. People are just going to ignore them and scroll by. Right. So you need to have a niche that you're working with and then you need to have an offer to like ultimately, like the whole point of the funnel is to bring your niche in and market and sell your program on the back end. Like that's the dream, right?

That's what we want to achieve. So we need those two elements first and then it's a matter of, okay, what is the marketing strategy that we're going to use to bring people in and the journey that we're going to take them through to the journeys, just the marketing funnel that is then going to invite them to the paid offer at the back end. Yeah. So vision offer number one and I would say marketing strategy also a part of that is number three. Like what do we how do we want to walk them through this journey? 

And then for the person who, you know, does have clients right now, maybe getting a little bit of traction but not moving forward as quickly as maybe they they want, what would you say to that person.

That's like my favorite person to work with actually, because they already have some version of a program or offer that's converting. And so really it's like all we do is like, put fuel in the fire. We we could put some ads to it so we get more eyeballs and more coming through and it's just like then we're off and running. It's a little more challenging at the beginning with someone who doesn't necessarily have a niche or an offer.

Not impossible, but we need to get those two things done first and then start the ads and run people through the marketing strategy. But if you already have something that is selling, even if you sold one one of them, you have an offer that converts and you can. It's so easy to leverage ads and an automated marketing funnel to just kind of like blow that up. How long do you think it takes? And I know this is a loaded question because everyone always wants to know, like, wait a minute, how long is this going to take for me to sell out my program? 

Yes. 

And what have you seen? Right. Okay. I'm going to speak to this in 1 or 2 ways. If I had the crystal ball, I would be like a billionaire. Right. I do not. But do you have one. Of those magic eight balls that you shake? 

Like, what does it say? Yeah. 

Coming soon. Yes, exactly. Right. 

So last year, when I did the challenge for myself, really like, how quickly could I make this happen? And it was 93 days, which was really fast. That was way faster than what I thought. But here's the thing that I think people they hear that and they're like, Oh, that's what I want. Of course that's what we want. We all want that. But people don't see the time and the attention and the effort that I put into all of the testing that led up to that result. Please hear me when I say that. So to me, it's not focusing on the length of time necessarily.

It is the number of tests that you're willing to do in order to achieve that result. And you can test quickly or you can test slowly. That is 100% up to you. Yeah. So when I set up that funnel last year, what I told myself was, All right, I'm going to try and do 50 tests in this funnel, and I think that's probably going to get me to 100 K, but I might be low on that. And what I ended up doing was, I think in the six figure funnel testing journal which we mentioned in the last episode, it was like 35 that I did in those 93 days. That's a lot of tests really, right? So I just tested a lot faster. So of course my results happened a lot faster than had happened in the past. So instead of like, like the time I'd like people to think about the number of tests that they're doing inside their funnel and then they get to decide how quickly they're going to do this. 

And it's also it's kind of like one of those. It's like the iceberg metaphor. Right. It's like the overnight, quote unquote success where people only see above the water. They don't see what all the work or whatever that has happened that's going on behind the scenes or how long somebody was working to get to that point And all of a sudden, boom, you know? Yeah. So I'm so glad to hear you, hear you clarify that. And again, you all I will link that episode up in the show notes for today's episode because Neil breaks down that entire funnel.

Yeah. I think a big part and I don't think I know a big part of what you just mentioned is mindset 100%, which again, you have if someone's working within a template. Yeah, there's no mindset support on that when something isn't working. Yeah. What are some of the things that people are going to be faced with when they're doing a test and they're like, Oh, this is not working? I feel like I'm wasting money on my ads or what have you. 

Yeah. I'm so glad that you brought this up because I've been thinking about this a lot because now, as you know, as one of my business mentors, I'm trying to take that funnel that we created last year and get it to seven figures. Right? That's my goal. So I'm basically like trying to ten times it. And I saw myself do this and I just did a post about this. Thinking that I should be further along in the funnel than where I am. And I was like, Wait a minute, Neil, you're doing this thing that everybody does and you've underestimated the number of experiments, the time, the attention, the money investment that's going to be required for you to achieve that goal. So I think it really is like we're not good at as humans in estimating our time or the effort that's going to be required to achieve something. So I like so I just changed my mindset and I was like, okay, what if I ten times what I was thinking in terms of the things that I'm willing to try and the time and the investment that would probably actually get me there, right?

So when we think about the danger with thinking like a funnel software, a funnel template is going to achieve, the result for me is that when it doesn't work the way that you think, you're so much more inclined to quit because you decide, Oh, ads and funnels don't work for me, right?

Because you feel like it's you're stuck in one lane and it's like, Wait, I can't veer away from this because this is all I am, sort of quote unquote being allowed to work within. Yes.
 
But if you went into the mindset like, okay, this is the way the funnel is set up, but it's my job to make all of these pieces work. It's my job to make sure that this landing page converts at a certain rate. It's my job to make sure that I have enough traffic coming into the funnel. It's my job to make sure that the emails are open and being clicked on and that the sales page is actually converting on the back end. Yep. Then you're like then you have something to work with. But if you're like, this thing has to work and it's not, then you're like, okay, funnels don't work for me. Ads don't work for me, right? You're like, there's, there's nowhere to go with that. So I think that's the danger of it. 

Yeah. I literally just right before we started this interview this morning, I was coaching one of our accelerator members on, you know, she's running ads into it's a fairly straightforward funnel. It's an evergreen webinar funnel for it's a fairly inexpensive product. It's a great offer. It solves a very big problem. But she's noticed over I mean, it's March 3rd right now that we're recording this. She's noticed over the past two months now that her lead to sale conversion rate has dropped by 1.5%. It sounds small, but that's actually a when it comes to lead to sale conversion rate, that's a big percentage drop. And so that's a perfect example of, okay, there's there's the overall funnel is giving this data. Now let's try to figure out the like which aspect could be could be causing that. And so we start checking off the boxes like, all right, what's been done differently? What has stayed the same? Et cetera. But it is that mindset because because she could be like, Oh, this isn't working anymore.

Ads aren't working anymore. My funnel doesn't work anymore when it's, you know, not that at all. It's like, okay, let's try to figure this out. And, you know, she was asked, I was so, so proud. Like she was asking the right questions, which was great. And I was just sort of coaching her on, okay, if it is this, then potentially it could be this, But it's that mindset around, okay, like I'm in I'm in this for the long term, the long haul. I'm going to try to figure this out. 

Yeah. And I think that's so important to what you just said is being in it for the long term versus like, I'm just I need to get three clients this month. Yep. I'm like, Well, it's really hard to make funnels and ads work like that. It's like it's not like these artificial short timeframes. I wish people would just like, let those go and really just think about over the long term, what you want to do with your business. And this is why I love ads and funnels is because they create consistency and long term sustainability. Even though you're constantly working your funnel. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that, but it's more it's the long view of your business versus like the 30 day. 

And, and just going as we wrap up here, like going back to what you mentioned before, Neil, about it's the skill set that you're learning. Yeah. If Facebook and Instagram were to disappear tomorrow and there's this brand new amazing platform that you can run ads on, you take all you take your entire knowledge and just move it into that and say, okay, I understand my target customer. I understand my, you know, the offer. I, I know how to speak to them. I've got a great lead magnet. So you're just taking all that knowledge and you and you and you put it into whatever the platform is to to to get in front of your target audience. But you got to have the people first to know how to talk to them in order to, you know, it's like this I've been talking a lot lately about.

To the accelerator is about very simplifying business down. And the question I ask them is what is business? And they all kind of look at me like like, you know, they think that it's a trick question. And I'm like, no, no, no. This is a very simple question. Like, what is business like? Okay, well, business is like to generate revenue and profit. Okay, cool. How do we do that? Well, we sell we have to sell something, whether it's, you know, a course or coaching or our time or what have you. Okay, great. We sell a widget.

And then how do we sell the widget, right? It's like, how do we sell more of the widget to create the revenue and profit? Et cetera. It's like, okay, well, we have to get people to it. Yeah. And then how do we do that? It's like breaking it down step by step. But yeah, full well it's. It's simplified, yes, but full well knowing that the actual sales process can look like can, can look, you know, umpteen different ways. And it's not just like one like railroad track that. Right. 

You know, that's what I think. I think like in our minds it's supposed to be like this straight road. Yeah. When really it's like this zig zag. Like it's messy. Yeah. A lot of times, right. It's not like, so cut and dry or vanilla. Yeah. Yeah. And so me, I mean that used to really bother me, but now I'm like, that's kind of what's so fun about it, right? We just get to try things and like, we learn from every single thing that we try. And the way that it all ends up working out in the long run is probably not the way that you thought it should work out. Oh yeah. First set out a plan for it. 

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I don't know. If I've met anybody who was like, Yeah, I made this plan and then I followed it every single step of the way A to Z, and it worked out exactly the. Way I planned. I had no hiccups. And. I was doubling. Doubling my ROI on day one. And no adversity at all. No super simple. Show me where that is. If somebody is listening right now and is experiencing that, please. Reach out to me. I want to know. Yes. So you have the 100 K funnel program and you know, everything that we're talking about here today.

This is how you help people inside that program. Tell us more about that. 
Yeah, so I created a K funnel course really as a way for coaches to learn how to easily leverage ads and funnels, marketing funnels inside of their business. And so yes, there is an ads component. We have a Facebook ads made easy component of the course, but I don't sell that as a one off. And Rick and I are very aligned in our viewpoint about this because ads don't work in a vacuum.

Yeah. So just like funnel software can't work in a vacuum, all of these things work together to create a really beautiful marketing system that can be super powerful and really easily generate leads and sell out your marketing or sell out your coaching program for you. So that's the whole goal of it, is to be able to launch your ads and your marketing funnel in just 30 days, and we have a specific schedule that we lay out for you to be able to do that, to get through the content, plus to implement all the things in 30 days to launch it.

And if 30 days is too fast, we also have 60 and 90 day schedules. So the idea is it's a course. Yeah. So there's a lot of DIY, but we have tons of support that we offer in a private Slack channel and then we have monthly workshops on all of the ads and marketing funnel topics so you can get your questions answered live, get coached, live with me or anybody else on my marketing team. 

And you created this and we've talked about it on past episodes. Like you've created this because this is exactly what you've done yourself. Yeah. In your business and you this is how you help your coaches. And so it's like, All right, let's create a course to help other coaches do the same thing. Yeah. So this is my. Way of having like an affordable program that really grows with your business. So it doesn't really matter what stage of business that you're at. If you want to leverage ads in a marketing funnel to help you in your marketing, it will grow with you.

So we have like this isn't just a basic ads course, like this is a very heavy duty. We have an advanced strategy section with all kinds of things as far as ads for launches and ads for podcasts and ads for webinars. And so it really will grow with you inside of your business. And we are offering lifetime access for the life of the program. You get to be in it. So there's no like you buy it once. It's one investment that can work with you for the entirety of your business. 

And it's not just just to reiterate, it's not just the ads that you're teaching in there. It's all the things that you need in order to create a funnel that will work on autopilot for you, bringing you new coaching clients. 100%. So like the first thing that we're going to ask you to do is make sure you have your niche. Yeah. So we're going to work through your niche and then we're going to make sure you have a really amazing coaching program offer that is going to basically sell itself inside of your funnel.

And then we're going to dive into the marketing funnel itself in terms of assets like your lead magnet, and are you going to do a sales call or are you going to do a webinar or are you going to do a workshop and your email marketing and your sales page and all of the assets of the funnel then put it all together, build it, launch it. And at that point, like I always tell my students, there's two pieces of this. There's the building and like of the funnel, like that's getting stuff done, right? That launching that.

And then there's the second part, which is the optimizing and scaling, and that requires a testing mentality and being open to collecting the data, understanding what the data is telling you and how you can leverage it. So there's really kind of two pieces, get it launched and then use the data to optimize.And scale, which. As you said, the testing method, the testing mentality. I think this is the most important part. I agree with you like setting up like honestly, anybody can go into whatever tool that you're using to set up a landing page and a thank you page depending on what you're doing. Like that's the easy part, right? It's the like everything we're talking about here today, it's the messaging. And then going into like then you become the detective, right? And sort of piece things together. That's the fun part. Yeah. So where can people learn more about and also sign up for 100 K Funnel? 

Yeah. So they can go to my website at Neil williams.com. I also have a brand new lead magnet that I have which is the Facebook ads made easy for busy coaches walking you through step by step how to set up your first lead generation campaign. So if you're not sure about getting into ads, this is a really quick and easy training for you to dive in. So that's the free thing. And then and they can get that on my website as well. And then if you want to enroll in 100 funnel course and get our help to really automate your marketing, to get leads and sell out your coaching program, kind of on that autopilot idea funnel course would be the thing for you and you can access that on my website. 

Neil williams.com. Neil williams.com. And again I'll also link up Neil's site in the show notes for today's episode. Neil thank you so much for coming on and chatting through this. I think this is a really, really, really important conversation to be having for coaches. So thank you for sharing your expertise here. 

Yeah, thank you for having me. So excited to be back. Absolutely. All right. Hope you got a ton out of this conversation I just had with Neil. If if you're a coach and you are looking to fill your coaching program in on on autopilot and automated means through proven marketing strategies and funnels and ads, also teaching you on ads, go check out Neil's hundred K funnel course go to Neil williams.com. Neil williams.com.

And again as I mentioned earlier I'll link it up in the show notes for today's episode over on my website Rick mulready.com. Hey if you've not yet left a quick rating review for the podcast over on Apple Podcasts, it's still very helpful. And also make sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you don't miss any episodes that I've got coming out here two episodes a week, coming out here on the show. If you listen like on Spotify or whatever, whatever, click that follow button and that'll make sure that you're getting all the episodes here that I put out for you. And as always, my friend, thanks for listening to the episode, to the podcast, I should say. I really appreciate you. Until next time, be well, my friend, and I'll chat with you soon.