Ep. 83 Inside A Broken Funnel That Made A $25k Month Profit Comeback!

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Full Transcript:

I actually want to share a Facebook interview that I did with a woman, her name is Jennifer. She’s in my Digital Insiders, and her story is awesome.

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If you have launched a funnel that has flopped or failed, you want to hang tight for this interview, because in it we talk about her journey from starting with a very broken sales funnel, and how she moved through over the next year to create a profitable funnel that was netting about 20-25 thousand dollars a month in profit.

Now lest you think she’s in a super popular niche like make money online or something that you know, has a lot of proven success, she actually is not. She is a belly dancer. She teaches belly dancing. And her product is only $27. So I highly recommend you listen to this interview because it talks so much about the importance of sticking with it, and micro optimizing a funnel. Tune in and as always I appreciate you all.

Hey, what’s up Facebook, this is Julie. You know that. I am here today with Digital Insider, fellow friend, a colleague, Jennifer Sobel. She is in Bali this evening, it’s like 9:00 for you, right? Right now?

Julie: Yep.

Julie: So if you guys are here, say hello in the chat, I’ll pull up the Facebook chat. So what I wanted to do is I wanted to bring Jennifer on today because she has just such a great story, a very realistic story of what it’s like and you have a broken funnel, and you’re on your way to fixing your broken funnel and creating a profitable funnel. So Jennifer, why don’t you just give everyone a quick little background on who you are and what your business is?

Julie: So when I joined Digital Insiders, I had my digital marketing business for about almost 4 years at that time. And I always wanted to create my own product, again, I’d had the idea to create a belly dance program for a really long time, and I had gotten discouraged along the way that that was even a viable product. And then I did Clickfunnels One Funnel Away Challenge. And I thought, let me try this again.

And I did a test and I had an idea, I remembered that one of my students had told me after belly dance class that since she’d been taking belly dance she didn’t have urinary leaking anymore. And I thought, I think I was at the gym and I saw a commercial for a drug. So I thought, you know what, let me try this. Let me do like a Facebook ads test, send people to a lead magnet, let me see how many people opt in and test the idea to see if it’s viable.

And so many people opted in I thought, okay maybe there’s something here. I created my funnel and launched it and I thought, oh my God, I’m going to have these amazing sales come in. I was like super excited. I’m not even kidding, I even bought this blessing candle, I was going to like do this whole ceremony. And then I checked on Monday, crickets. Nothing.

Julie: So this funnel you built off of the OFA challenge, you weren’t in DI yet, you had just, this was pre-Digital….Okay.

Julie: It was like heartbreaking. And I thought, okay, I know there’s still an idea here. But, so it sat for like 3 months. And I think, I don’t remember what holiday it was, I think it might have been Memorial Day. My friend invited me to his amazing barbecue and he showed me what the menu was, and I just had this intuitive sense, I’m not going to go, I need to just think and reflect. And it was that morning, on that holiday, after I had just gone for a run, done some stairs, I came home and I laid on the floor of my living room, and the idea popped into my head that I needed a coach to help me figure out why my funnel was broken and how to fix it, and that I couldn’t do it on my own. I could try, and who knows how long that would take me? And who knows if I would get discouraged before I would even get there?

And while I was laying on the floor, you popped into my head.

Julie: This is part of the story even I didn’t know.

Julie: Yeah, and I didn’t really know very much about you at that time. I had just kind of seen you in the challenge, and I thought, you know what? I went right to my computer, I went on and I applied for DI. So that’s how it all started.

Julie: How it all started.

Julie: I was just guided. You know, I didn’t even know.

Julie: Kudos to you, I see someone saying “I’m blowing out my blessing candles right now.” That is the best part of the story. But it’s so interesting because you built this funnel, it didn’t work, there was a lot of expectation let down. So then I remember our sales call and we were talking about this, that you had built this funnel and you wanted to optimize it. You know belly dancing, it’s not a make money online niche. You know what I mean? It’s definitely like a monetizable niche, but it’s not like the home run niches.

So I remember thinking, okay we have our work cut out for us a little bit. This is kind of super niche-y. So you joined and then I remember you relaunched it. How long did it take you to get it all redesigned and out the door?

Julie: So I was, I’m a speed person for the most part. I’m very impatient. And I think, the same thing with walking, if I can get there faster, I’ll walk faster, why am I gonna walk slow? So that’s how I am in my…so I was like, I’m going to get this thing going. I think it took me maybe 6 weeks or something like that. And I had to film my OTO which before was a private belly dance lesson and you’re like, “I don’t think anybody’s going to want to do that.” And I think you’re probably right.

So I created this whole fitness program, that was actually more content than my core offer, and I literally almost killed myself filming like 50 videos in 4 hours in one day, because I just wanted to get it done. And I could barely function for a week. So I think I completed the whole thing in 6 weeks because I really just wanted to get it out there as quickly as possible. Then I was scared as hell to do that $1000 Facebook ad challenge. And I was having so much anxiety, seriously, but I just let it sit there for the weekend, and then Monday I opened it up, and I had made a little bit of profit.

Julie: Yeah so, alright, your first $1000 ad test after the first failure of the funnel, you had relaunched it, I’m going to show you guys the funnel here in a minute. You used funnel retro, I believe it was retro. You made a little bit of profit, which is awesome. In the thousand dollar ad test most people don’t quite do that. But you know, you weren’t rolling in the millions, it was just like I spent a thousand and made whatever, $1200.

Julie: I didn’t lose money. I was happy I didn’t lose money.

Julie: So I remember there was, I feel like the story always end s with the thousand dollar Facebook ad test, and then it’s like, “and then they lived happily ever after.” And then nobody ever says what happens after the thousand dollar ad test. So you had a really big blow that hit your ad account, somewhere in there right? When was the ad account….

Julie: So basically, we had launched…Oh, so first of all, I was going to launch, after the really ugly funnel, I was going to relaunch the new funnel on a Monday of a week, and the week before I broke my wrist.

Julie: Oh, that’s right. You broke your wrist. I remember that.

Julie: And that just completely threw things off, but I was like, “I’m not going to let this slow me down.” It only delayed me by a week, and I launched with one hand, and I was so scared. Because I wasn’t feeling well physically, it was a really hard time. But Helen got me through it, I launched it with one hand, and then after that it was about how do I make this profitable?

And one thing that I want to say is that the best advice that you could have ever given me when I first started working with you in DI was, I had two very different funnels, business ideas that I was working on. Extremely different niches, totally different, and you said to me…first of all, I was thinking I’m just going to launch this thing and let it roll and then move onto the next thing. And you were like, “I’m just going to try this thing over here.”

{Cross talk}

Julie: “Let this get some steam, then I’ll move over to the next thing.” And you’re like, “You need to pick one. You need to pick one to start.” And that was the best thing you could’ve ever done because I am the shiny object person. When I get excited about stuff, I get passionate, but you made me stick to one thing, and that philosophy is what has carried me through. Sticking with this one baby and not just keep working it, and keep working it.

So after I launched it, it was like, “Okay it was a little bit profitable, but not hugely.” It was like, you know a 30% return on investment, 50%. Maybe some days it was 100%. But I wasn’t really making any money, but I believed in it. I believed it was possible to earn money on it. I remember you kept saying, because you were trying manage my expectations.

Julie: I was, I was like, ‘We need a whole value ladder here.”

Julie: Yeah, and you were like, “Just so you know, most people don’t make money on these funnels, this is really just to bring leads in.” You just kept managing my expectations, “Don’t expect you’re going to make a profit.” But I am stubborn. {inaudible} bless candles all over her house. How does that work? I never got those again. And not that I don’t believe that they work, but I kind of had a bad association with them after that.

Julie: But what I want to say about this, you were slow and steady, you were optimizing and I’m going to show the funnel in a minute, but then your ad account went down. Was it right around the time after mine, remember?

Julie: So that was on the Friday that the mastermind ended in Connecticut. And I looked in my Clickfunnels and I was like, “Why is there zero dollars? Why is there no money coming in?” and then my personal ad account got shut down. And for 3 months I could do nothing.

Julie: I was like, “You gotta go get a VPN, go sign a…” I was trying to give you all this advice like get around. I know. Do you know how many, and this is for any of you guys watching, how many people would’ve given up? There’s at least 6 opportunities that Jennifer could’ve been like, “Where is the exit ramp. This is hard. I’m out.” But you are stubborn, you are stubborn and fast and you kept at it. And you eventually got your ad account back.

Julie: I did. And Helen’s voice stuck in my head because it was, I think it was right around Christmas. It was either the day after Christmas or it was Christmas eve, and I remember her, “Just give it one more shot.” And I thought, it’s the holidays, maybe the Christmas spirit…and that’s when it, I contacted support and I was like, “Is there anything you could do.” And he was like, “Just keep appealing.” And I appealed one more time, and it was that time, and they were like, “Sorry, it was a mistake.” And they put it back.

Julie: Oh my gosh. Alright so that was Christmas of 2019, Christmas of 2019, and so now it’s been, we’re not quite a year later, and you hit a big milestone in May. Right, it was May?

Julie: Yes.

Julie: Almost a year to do the day of like Memorial Day and the Blessing candles.

Julie: Yeah.

Julie: What was that big goal that you hit? And then I want to show off your funnel.

Julie: So my goal from the very beginning when I first launched it, my goal is 20k is in my head. 20k, I want to hit 20k a month. And in May, I believe it was, the total sales that came in was around 50k, and my profit was around 25k.

Julie: yeah, you did it. It was almost a year later, and you had finally done it. But that was not without some serious hard work. So I’m going to pull up this funnel. I want you to talk about how many iterations this funnel has gone through, since you first launched it. And all the, I mean, I feel like you were sending this funnel to me for an audible every week and I was like, “what could I say different?” I just gave you….{inaudible}

Julie: I wanted to say something too, because I was making notes before our call of all the different iterations that I did. And I remember something important, which is that from the very beginning, that anticipating success spreadsheet that you have…

Julie: Yes, yep.

Julie: That, and I was thinking about the words, “Anticipating success”. That’s what I did. And I would just run numbers, just kind of for fun. “Okay, if I did a half a percent increase conversion rate on my sales page, what would that mean at the end if this many people hit my page?” and I just kept visualizing that. What do I need to do, what needs to happen for me to hit my goal?

And I realized that a half a percent, with enough people hitting that page, would mean thousands of dollars for me. A percent would mean even more thousands of dollars. And so I thought if I could just improve my page by those little percentages over time, then I’ll get there. And it was that spreadsheet that really helped me to visualize that.

Julie: You’re like laying so much gold right now, because so many people, when they look at their page, and they’re like, “Okay, it’s converting at 1.69.” and they’re like, “How do I get it to 5%?” And I’m like, “Do you realize that if you could just get it to 1.9 or 2%, just those small….”

Julie: That’s what I would do. I wasn’t shooting for that. I was just shooting for a half a percent more than I was right then. And when I would get there, it was just a half a percent more from there. And what do I need to get another .5%? And that was it. I wasn’t thinking any more ahead than like a .5%.

Julie: So good. It’s so good. So you have made a tremendous amount of changes to this. I feel like this page might be zoomed out because it seems kind of small. Oh yeah, I was like, why is it so small? Let’s zoom it in here.

I love what you did with this. I remember you redid that product mock up shot a whole bunch of times.

Julie: I whole bunch of times, yep.

Julie: I remember you added this awesome coupon.

Julie: Yeah, that was part of it. I added the Provely. That I think made a big difference, the little thing on the bottom with the sales, “So and so purchased.” I did that, that was one of the first things I did. That coupon. I looked at somebody’s funnel who I knew was killing it, because of their stats on similar web or something, and I just tried to replicate some items that I thought. Now this is, want to talk about this order bump.

Julie: Can we talk about the order bump and how much iteration happened.

Julie: Oh my God. That was the biggest bugaboo. I think I tried four different things and you were like, ‘That order bump would really help a lot. It really makes a difference.” And I was like, ‘What is it going to be?” and then at the mastermind, the last dinner of the last day, I was sitting with Danny and she was like, ‘What about like Belly Dance in the Bedroom?” or something like that. And I was like, “I don’t want to do that. I don’t want people to associate belly dance with sexy, because that always bothered me.” But then she asked the waitress, “Do you want to be sexy?’ and she was like, “Yeah.” And I was like, “Alright, maybe I’m being too rigid about this.”

So I filmed a video in a way that I thought would respect the dance, and would just help each woman connect with herself, not trying to be an object for someone else, which I’m opposed to because I think it’s about you being the subject of your life, not the object. So I created something that I felt an integrity with, and it was the secret.

Julie: What’s it converting at?

Julie: Like 30-35%.

Julie: Yeah, you had, I remember one time the order bump was like the urinary incontinence interview series or something like that.

Julie: Yeah. {inaudible} as the bonus. You know.

Julie: I don’t think so. Good old Danny, our miss our in person masterminding so much.

Julie: That was, I am so grateful for her, because she, that is the idea that I needed.

Julie: Yeah. Interestingly, this is not a two step, you know it’s funny, after Offer Cure came out, everyone’s replicating the two step order form and lots of people like the two step. And the two step is grate but you have been really profitable on this funnel, no two step, just straight up sales page order form.

Julie: Yeah, I mean for me it was just like that promo video there at the top, at first it was just a video of me talking. And then after I got my cast off, I filmed this video and that made a huge difference in my, again, huge, I think it increased it by a percent, which is huge.

Julie: It’s huge when you’re working on a tenth of a percent.

Julie: Right. So that was a big thing that I did, adding those Facebook screenshots, with the yellow highlighter that I saw on someone’s funnel.

Julie: Yep. We talked about those, we literally just talked about those in FG Society yesterday, about the importance of highlighting your testimonials, because it’s just like this big wall of text and people can’t, they don’t know what you’re trying to communicate with it, unless you point and be like, “Read this word right here.”

Julie: Yeah, and I just would look at other people’s funnels that were performing well and borrow what worked. And then the final thing that I did, that went, I think it went, it took my page from an average 3%, I would say probably average 3% to 4.5%. Because I had a copywriter fix up that sales page, and just make it better.

Julie: Yeah, you finally had, it was a full copy audit right, or was it a full rewrite?

Julie: Yeah, it wasn’t a full rewrite, but he just took what I had and made it that much better. I mean I think it’s good to write your own and instead of them having to create it from scratch, which would be a lot more expensive, they just make it better, what I’d already done. And that made a huge difference.

Julie: Yeah, well it’s crazy because in one of our Digital Insider group calls we were tweaking headlines, and everyone was pulling their headlines up and Christine was on there, and she’s into selling again, another make money online. I said, “Take this one word out of that headline, because that could be intimidating people.” And she messaged me and said, “My conversion has gone up.” So I, you embody this unbelievable anti-shiny object syndrome. Even though it’s funny, I know you are, you said you have that, because you just continue to care about the small percentages and over time it has made a significant difference.

So you are now finally working on a new funnel after whatever it is, a year and a half. Do you want to tell people about what you’re doing next?

Julie: Yeah, so my, I sent out an email to everybody after they purchased the program and I asked them why they purchased and of course not everybody responds to me, but you start to see themes. And so many people that purchased, they purchased just because they wanted to learn belly dance, not because they wanted to strengthen their pelvic floor primarily. And I thought, God, I didn’t know so many people just wanted to learn belly dance.

So now this program is called Feminine Fire: Awaken the Belly Dancer Within. And it’s going to teach women not only how to belly dance, but how to create their own belly dance routine by putting different combinations together, like a lego modular system. And I want to empower them to become creators in their own bodies, and just create a movement of empowerment for women.

Julie: Yeah, I saw, I’m so excited you’ve been working on the logo. I can’t wait for this to come out. The world desperately needs what you have. Women, there’s something about belly dancing that’s such an empowering movement for women. Especially in a culture that hates bellies. Like we hate…

Julie: I know.

Julie: It’s ridiculous. We need to fall back in love with our amazing bellies that do incredible things like grow babies.

Julie: Yeah, it’s just all the different shapes that women have, because I’m ‘in Bali right now, and even being here, I’m having more comfort in my body. Because it’s really, America’s got to be one of the worst countries in terms of this standard for what women should look like and it’s really destructive.

Julie: Yeah. Well, I can’t wait. I can’t wait to talk all about it when it launches. Jennifer, thank you so much.

Julie: Thank you.

Julie: Guys, if you are interested in belly dancing, you should go to Belly Dance Solution and go buy her product, Jennifer is amazing. And for those of you watching because you are funnel nerds, let this be a lesson in persistence and consistency and staying the course, and caring about those little percentage points, because those make a difference.

Julie: Thanks Julie, thanks for all your help.

Julie: Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us, and guys, have a great day. Talk soon.