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Nicole Laino
Hello, welcome to the limitless entrepreneur show and I am here with IDA Baldwin. How are you Ida?

Ida Butwiin
I am great. Thank you so much for having me.

Nicole Laino
I'm so excited to have you here. This is a really important conversation, I think, for our listeners and for entrepreneurs everywhere. I think that a lot of people feel like and stop me if this doesn't feel right to you. But I think there's a lot of people feel like they're doing all the things. And they're just not getting the results. They're like, I bought this program, I implemented this strategy. I feel like I'm doing it right, I feel like I'm doing everything I'm supposed to be doing, quote unquote, supposed to be doing. And I'm still not seeing the results, I six figures feels to impossible to some people. And to others. They're like, it's so much work. I don't know how to maintain this without like losing my mind and never seen my family again. So I want to do this is sort of your specialty. And so I'm so excited for you to come on and talk to us about this, why don't you tell the listeners just a little bit about you and what you do? And then we'll dive into the conversation.

Ida Butwiin
Sure. Thank you so much. So I am an ad strategist, and also funnel strategist for coaches. So basically, you know, for me and a lot of people, a lot of people miss this a little bit like the funnel is actually the entire process. So including, as soon as they enter your world all the way through until they become a paid client. And so we look at that as a whole instead of looking at, for instance, your landing page or your your ad separately. It's something that works together as one it's one unit. And I think a lot of times what happens is there's a disconnect between those parts, because we have different people working on different parts of the funnel. And so sometimes we lose people in the funnel, and we're not exactly sure where or why. And then all that time and energy and work was put into this offer. This, you know, the funnel, the pages, all the tech behind it, and then they say it's not working. And they throw it kind of out the window. And they start over instead of looking at what they have, and figuring out where along the line is the leak happening in how to patch up that leak instead of you know, starting all over wasting that time, money and energy?

Nicole Laino
Yeah, absolutely no. And I always teach it to my people, like I'm constantly saying to them, I'm like, everything's a funnel. Think about everything as a funnel. And not because not for any other reason, then it gives you a mechanism and a framework to make sense of all the things that you're doing. It tells you where you need to fix things. It tells you where you're missing stuff. It tells you what people you need to hire. When you start thinking about that. That's the that's the CEO take a step back. Let's assess this. Like if you have a leak in your pool, you don't just go in and start patching and random places. You wait to see where the water is leaking out. And you kind of go through a process and figuring that out. That's, I love that you call that leaks, where are these things leaking? And because I think it's the same thing. And I think that and Kurt, you know, in your experience, have you seen this too, where a lot of people when you're starting out, and particularly the solopreneur because you're doing so much yourself that you feel like you don't have time for the strategy part. Because you're like I just have to do my to do list is so long, right? I'm so inundated with it that how can I even take time to see what's broken? How can I even take time to look at like a bigger strategy because I'm having trouble even just keeping my head above water. So So talk to us a little bit about like when someone comes to you, when they first come to you and they're saying like, hey, I need help. I need help with my funnel. I need help a lot of people go to ads right away because they're like, I have trouble with leads. I can't get leads. I just want to I want to buy them. Can you can you talk about what you walk people through and that cuz I know people are probably thinking that now like do I need to do ads?

Ida Butwiin
Right? So when there's so many times when people come they're like you know because like you said they want to get leads and they think that ads are You know, this this magic wand and it's not always the case, the first thing we look at is the front end of their funnel, meaning the landing page, if it's a lead magnet, a free offer or the sales page, and we look at the the numbers, if you are sharing your offer your free offer your paid offer with your warm audience, you should have some stats that we can look at, looking on the back end of your page builder, whether that be you know, click funnels, lead pages, there are so many of them now Kajabi. And looking at number one your conversion rate. So that means how many people are actually signing up for whatever it is you're offering. We want to have a minimum of 25% to a cold audience. So if we are looking at that number, and you've been sharing it with your warm audience in your 25% or lower with a warm audience, then you're not ready for ads. So that's the very first thing that I look at. Once we know that number, then we look at the page and we try to figure out well, what could it be that is, you know, affecting the conversion rate, it could be something as simple as the opt in button, the call to action button is below the fold in this seems so silly, you know, to business owners like Well, why would that have anything to do with my opt in rate, it's just a proven fact that if your button is below the fold, meaning that you have to scroll either on your your desktop or your phone to see the button, people are less likely to take action. So it could be as simple as moving the button up above that fold. That's like a really big mistake that is so simple to change and increase your conversion rate. So you know, that could be it, it could be that your offer isn't really solving a problem that your ideal client has, you know, that gets we get a little bit deeper into it that like for those types of things, but the very first thing would be the button. The next thing might be your headline, is it compelling? Does it really hook them in and say, oh, yeah, I need this, you know, I want to give my email address to get this from you. You know, so there are a bunch of things that we could look at on the page to figure out if we can make improvements, and then increase the conversion rate to your warm audience, and then put it out to ads. I mean, if you don't have a warm audience, because you know, some of us started, we just want to go all in and that's fine. Um, we look at numbers in the ad ads manager. So we know what the conversion rate is, we know if people are actually interested in what you have to offer. And then we make adjustments based on those numbers.

Nicole Laino
Okay, yeah, no. The I love that. I mean, the, the strategy behind that stuff. And I always go back to like an old mentor who used to always tell us to be the scientist, that you're always looking and you're analyzing what's going on. And it's really important that you take yourself out of the because I'm all about the mindset of things as well, because we talk about mechanics, but there's always mindset behind all of this. And so some of us don't want to look in to the mechanics of what's going on. Because we're afraid we take things personally, we are faced with the things that we don't know how to do so well. And that's leaving us you know, and you get that negative self talk going like this is so hard. I don't know how to fix it. I don't know why it's not working. If you can pull yourself away from it detach from the results a little bit and not make it personal. You can see some of these things. I know one of the things that we had, we had something just a simple tweak. You talked about the button being below the fold. I never had it below the fold, but I had it been like I was more concerned with it looking pretty then necessarily doing what helps people by which was turning the stupid button. Orange.

Ida Butwiin
Yeah, right. That's, that is another thing just being I don't wanna say stubborn, but you know, this is these are my brand colors. Like I don't want a different color button. But orange actually is a highly, highly converted or that's not the right word. It converts very high. Look at Amazon. Amazon has dumped tons and tons of research into Do the colors that they use in their site. And what I use is called the Amazon orange or buttons. And that's exactly it. It's crazy that a color of a button would increase your conversion rates.

Nicole Laino
Yep. Now, and it's those silly little things that when you know that stuff, those are that's like when you get, that's where you can start picking off that low hanging fruit. And then you can get into the more substantive things like copy. Right? Right. And because if your funnel is broken, if you're having trouble getting people in, then it can be your ad copy, it can be the lead magnet that you're using, nobody's opting in, nobody's clicking on this, that tells you at that stage, right, like, Okay, this stage has a problem. And but I always think about I think about even organic lead generation is a funnel. You know, it's how are you bringing people into your social media feed? What are you doing with them after that? Because that's the thing you think that ads are the answer, or you think that 10,000 followers is the answer, but what are you doing with those leads once they come in to you? And that's that second part of the funnel? So I was wondering if you could talk about properly nurturing an audience and, and just what what you recommend to people, the different methods that you use? And you know, what do you find for for people who are starting out and maybe don't have a huge apparatus? They don't have a copywriter, and all of that, and they're trying to do this effectively, but efficiently as well? What would what would you recommend for them?

Ida Butwiin
Okay, sure. So first, the first part of that was, you know, the funnel it, a lot of times, when we think well, when coaches come and think about the ads, they're really focused on, in, they should be the numbers within the ad. However, if you are also nurturing your leads on social media, organically through your email marketing, so many times we forget about the email marketing. That just increases the effectiveness of the ads, when you're just throwing a bunch of money at the ads in, you're not nurturing them in different places, whether it be your Facebook group, your social platforms, your email, those ads are just going to be more expensive. It's almost as if you are the ads are there and the other things supplement the ads, so it brings more like they're seeing you now everywhere. And a lot of times email open rates are low, in some cases, you know, so that's something else that I also talked about, which is making sure you're looking at your email, open rates. And a really simple thing to do to help increase them is to test the subject line, if people aren't opening, change up the subject line, see if that makes a difference. But so those are just some things to think about that the ads themselves don't work by themselves. There are other things that, again, play into that whole funnel, it's the emails, it's the the organic posting, it's your group, it's, you know, if you're doing any DMS, it's all of those things. As far as people, you know, getting these things, you know, on their own. The biggest mistake I see, I guess, is because at some point, coaches need to hire because like you said, they're trying to do all of the things and they just can't, there's not enough time in the day. So the biggest mistake that I actually see is hiring somebody to help with whatever part of the funnel it is. It could be copy page design ads, and then letting them go do what it is having that blind faith that they know not what they're doing. They should know what they're doing, but they know what's best for your business and they're looking out for your best interest and unfortunately, that's not always the case. So for this the CEO level of your business, it's just really important to understand what you should be looking for in each of these parts of the funnel not necessarily being an expert in implementing all of the parts. For instance, you don't need to be an expert in Click Funnels or how to integrate Click Funnels with Active Campaign or whatever it is, but you do want to be able to be a leader in guide Your team and contractors, when you see something that may not be working, for instance, if you get a page that has that button below the fold, you can be like, Look, I know that this isn't going to convert as well as it could, let's move this up. They don't need to go in and actually do it. But just having that knowledge, looking at the the numbers or just saying, hey, what's the conversion rate on this page? You get it back? It's 19%. Okay, what are we going to do to improve that, because that's low, you know, our goal is 25%. So just having information like being knowledgeable, so that you're able to lead your team, and not, I mean, otherwise, you're burning money, you're just burning money, letting other people kind of take the reins in your business and not understanding what you need to know in order for it to work and guide them to make it work.

Nicole Laino
Yeah, that that's a huge, you can't expect experts to just come in and plug holes for you, particularly contractors, because they've got other clients, we always think that they're going to be the saviors, I'll hire someone to do that. Because I believe in higher over hustle. Like, I believe that you should not be implementing anything more than you have to, but that knowledge of, of knowing, and again, always into the mindset, always thinking about when we hire the mindset of hiring somebody who's who's the expert, and then just not paying any attention, when you haven't vetted that person, when they have not been a part of your team for a long, long time. And you've had oversight over them for a while, you know, taking that part out if if they're an established member of your team, it's different, right. But if you're just hiring someone and being like here, go run, take it, and you're not managing that and you're not watching it, that actually says something about your fear of that part of your business, you want to throw it away, you want to push it away. And when we do that, things don't work out because we're not facing something. There's something internally we're shutting off about that. And so it's it's empowering to go in, and you can even ask the expert, I'd like you to explain some of this to me, I would like you have to walk me through exactly what you're doing. And I learned this the hard way myself. Me too. I have spent a lot of money and not gotten results and been like, I can't believe I hired an expert. And this was what I was left with. And even even now in my business, I still have those where I didn't have time I hired it out. And I did not pay close enough attention to really get the results that I wanted. And that's about commitment that's about your commitment to making that thing work.

Ida Butwiin
It's true. And even to that point, I've had recommendations from people that I, you know, have close relationships with. And I kind of take those recommendations and just go with it. And it's not it, I've had things that hadn't worked out. And it's not that they're not a good contractor, or whatever the situation was, it's just they weren't a good fit for me in my business in the way that I work. So in those situations, I've also lost money, because it's like, the easy way to get a recommendation or referral for like a VA or somebody like that. And, you know, either the communication was off, or the quality of work wasn't what I was looking for, and the style was different, all of those things. But I just want I'm like I just need it now. So I'm gonna go ahead, I didn't go through the process that I should have gone through in order to make sure that it was a good fit. But doing that all is time consuming, but in the end will save you I mean, and that's the same thing with what we're talking about here with the funnels is like it does take you some time to learn what it is that you're looking for. But once you know it, and you're able to relay that information to your team or contractors, it's gonna save you in the end.

Nicole Laino
Yeah, and I think one of the one of the red flags for me when I'm hiring now that I watch for and myself, because like, like, I bring it back to mindset all the time, but because it's your the CEO of you first, and then it starts to trickle down into your business and it's how you're managing you that you're gonna start seeing those results reflected in your business good or bad. Right. And one of the red flags for me is when I'm hiring somebody do I know exactly the questions like real quality Questions to Ask them about the results that they have gotten about the way that they communicate about like, do I know what I expect of them? Because there's, there's a lot of of that predicate that responsibility is on me. Ultimately, you can blame the expert all you want, but it's like, is it Shame on them for being for not for not exhibiting behavior that you didn't check before that they had? Right, so so that that's usually so that's how I saved myself some money these days, it's like, I really have to make sure I put the time and the effort into the hiring process, making sure I understand if I don't understand enough to ask them the right questions, then maybe I'm not ready to hire them. Exactly. I haven't done enough work, figuring my stuff out. And that's my cue then to be like, okay, even a VA? You know, do I know the work that I want to give them? Because that's going to tell me if they're qualified or not? Exactly right. You know, I don't need them qualified people are qualified all over, are they qualified to do exactly what I need them to do?

Ida Butwiin
Yeah, and that's an A good example of when you do, I'm always bringing it back to when you do have people working on different parts of the funnel, and not I mean, I've had a situation I mean, it was so difficult to be in the situation. But, you know, the ads weren't working. And, you know, you can see the numbers, you can tell if it's the ads, or you could tell if it's the front end of the funnel, you know, the pages. And based on the numbers, it was the front end. And the team was like, it's the ads, and I was like, these are the numbers. And you know, and the CEO, the, you know, Coach, didn't know, didn't know who was right or not that it was a right and wrong situation. But there was no way to really dig in and dive in and fix it. Because of the communication between the ads team and the clients team, there was a disconnect, and the CEO wasn't able to kind of give us all direction, you know, we were just kind of bouncing this ball back and forth like this needs to be done. Okay, can this isn't working? Try this, it's like, we need more direction from the top. And that's kind of that is really that one situation. There's been many, but that one was really difficult, and is really the point where I was like, this has to be looked at as a whole. That was like my turning point as far as needing this message to be out there. It's not separate, it is a whole process.

Nicole Laino
Yes, no, it's all connected. And when you see it as a as a connected piece, and that the numbers tell a story, then the so what you were talking about, I'm guessing was that people were clicking through, and then they were dying at the page, they weren't actually opting in once they got there. And that that's what we mean. So it's the same thing with if you have a bunch of people clicking on your profile on Instagram, and but they're not clicking through to the link, well, maybe it has something to do with your bio, right? It has something to do with look at the content that you have. It's always telling you where the data is always telling you a story. It's always telling you where pressure needs to be applied, where things need to be changed. And so we can go in surgically and change things rather than that feeling of overwhelm. When you think like, I have to redo this whole thing, it's very rarely the whole thing.

Ida Butwiin
Right? And we know that just reminded me this morning, actually, my kids are virtual learning. My daughter, you know, she was in a class. And they follow their bell schedule. So they have the 40 minutes, they get their work and Google Classroom. So she's reading it, and she's, there's four or five bullet points. And she has like, well, what is that? I don't know, I'm like, one step at a time. We can't get to number four without finishing number one, you know, so it's the same thing. Just take a step back, break it up and work at it one step at a time.

Nicole Laino
Yeah. And I think that that's that's kind of a good note to sort of be wrapping this up, because I do want to give for everybody like the big takeaway from this episode. So so the entrepreneurs and solopreneurs in particular listening to this right now. I think that that's just a universal lesson is that you, you're going to get overwhelmed and feel like things are impossible and you're probably going to make mistakes when you're looking at the whole process. checked as your to do list, like, prepare launch should not be an item on your to do list. Because that's insane. That's going to put you back and have you sitting there going, how can I possibly do all of this? Is this day? And where do I start? You got to be kind to your brain, your brain needs needs to be able to chunk things up. And then it can solve problems incredibly efficiently. And the answers come real fast and real easily. Right? Like when you're looking at data, do this with my clients all the time. They're like, well, this wasn't working, and this didn't work. So I think that that means this and I'm like, well, what's the data, say?

Ida Butwiin
instead of guessing, and you do that on the motion, especially when it's your own business? And you're, you know, you really want it to succeed?

Nicole Laino
Well, it's your voice out there. If we think that people are rejecting us, I think that that's where a lot of this comes from, is that people feel rejected, they feel like, I put my heart and soul into this, and they didn't like it. And they didn't respond how I thought they would, and there's this part of us, that is wounded by that. And that's where I think that's the data saves me from that space.

Ida Butwiin
A really good point, that is a really good perspective to it is it does feel like a rejection in a lot of ways. But moving to the numbers, it's like this is these are the facts. So let's work with them instead.

Nicole Laino
Yeah. Because I mean, you start out and you're putting in your effort, and maybe you're not getting the results you want from your efforts. So you tell yourself, I just need more people to see it. So you put an app, you put up an ad, and you think you're getting in front of all these people, and then that doesn't work. Now you've put money in and your heart, and you're not getting the results that you want, that can be really crushing that can be that can make you feel like maybe this isn't gonna work for me. And that's just not the case, you just have more work to do. And when you see people that are making it work that have the big launches, that can be, you know, I hope everybody starts to and that's my goal with the show is that you start to see other people's successes as proof positive that what you want is achievable, and totally possible for you. And not be comparing yourself and being like, I'm not good enough to be that I love this. It's not really a quote. But this saying that if you recognize if you're seeing somebody is great, and you're comparing yourself to them, stop yourself, because what you're doing is you recognize you're recognizing the same greatness that lives in you. That's good. And it's a piece in you that's calling out saying we can do that. So embrace it. And then look at the data. And the data is going to tell you, if you recognize that everything is giving you lessons, everything is giving you some sort of clue to the right next step. And data is the most the most unemotional piece, which is why I love what you do that I do this with my clients to where I'm like, well, what's the data say? And then when we break that down, they always feel so much better. Right? Like someone was saying, like, you know, these these events didn't work. And I'm like, Well, how many people did you invite? 60 How many people came 25? And I'm like, and they bought 25 People bought? That doesn't sound like it's not a success to

Ida Butwiin
me. Right? Write down that way exact. Break

Nicole Laino
it down that way. It's like, well, invite more people. Yeah, want more sales, invite more people, but you didn't have five or 10 people buy it you have 25 people buy? That's more than a third of your invite list. That's, I wouldn't call that not a success. It just felt that way. Right. So So what are your thoughts for? Tell us how you'd like to how people can stay in touch with you? How can they continue to if they if they want to go forward with working on their funnels, thinking about things strategically? How can they go and move forward with you and stay in touch with you and learn more about what you do?

Ida Butwiin
Thank you. I have a workshop coming up called fail proof your funnel and basically it is going to go through, you know the most important parts you know, we talked a little bit about it here today of your funnel and how to prepare those parts before you invest in adspend. That's the biggest thing. I mean, I really don't want people putting in money when they're not ready. So looking at the funnel, deciding if it's ready, making sure that your offers working or your pages converting In all of those things, but it's the signup is just fail proof your funnel.com. And then you can also find me everywhere on social my handle is it about when and I don't know, I'm really, really excited to help people with this because like I said, there was that big defining moment where I thought, oh my gosh, this is so needed. Because one or two little tiny tweaks can change everything, when we're just looking at the right places.

Nicole Laino
Now, I couldn't agree more. And that was why I was so excited to have you on because this is a concept like funnels, building a funnel, you think of it as a technical thing, but it's a skill. And it is a, it's an overall strategy for everything in your business. And if you start to make that shift in the way that you think about things, and not about, I have to do social media, and I have to be on this, and I have to be on that. And I gotta write some emails, because everybody's telling you to do these things, or you've heard from all these people, email lists are the way to go, or Instagram is where my people are. And, and when you start thinking about it as what's the strategic funnel, and you build one funnel at a time, or you build different sections of it, leading to the same place where that's when your effort starts to pay, like multiplied dividends, it's not, it's not this grind. And you can actually start to have things work and empowering to know when something breaks how you can fix it.

Ida Butwiin
Exactly, yeah, and not necessarily having to do it yourself either. But knowing how to delegate it, and knowing that it'll get fixed the right way,

Nicole Laino
right, and investing in something like the knowledge, the overall knowledge of how to how to manage a funnel and the different pieces of it, that is going to save you a lot of money in the long run, because experts charge a lot of money, because they know what they're doing. But it doesn't mean they know what they're doing for you. So that's that bit of education. And then it's going to save you from wasting money on those expensive lessons. hiring experts and realizing that they weren't the right one, you they didn't understand your brand, they didn't understand your funnel, or you hired one piece. But you've hired someone to write emails for you, but your copy was totally off on your landing page, your copy is totally you know, your your ad strategy is off, that's going to affect them, you're not going to get the bang for your buck out of out of the email money that you spent so, so very, very expensive lessons. So your workshop is definitely Is it a paid workshop? Is it No, it's

Ida Butwiin
free. It's a free workshop, this one starts October 19. And it's just five days in the group live trainings. And we go through everything I'll answer your questions live. And you know, bring your funnels bring anything that you have to look at, and we'll go over it.

Nicole Laino
And for anyone who listens after October 19, because these will be out forever. How can they stay in touch with you? Is there a group that they can join and just be in constant contact with you? Where you post things? Or Where where are you most visible and present that people could stay in touch with you if they you know, listen to this in November or something? Yeah,

Ida Butwiin
I have a group on Facebook called next level marketing for coaches. So you could go ahead and join the group and I have weekly trainings on funnels, and then I also do weekly q&a is on ad specifically in ads manager. So you sign up for a 10 minute space. And we share your screen and we go through the campaigns. And I suggest tweaks and you know, hopefully most times it helps with your results.

Nicole Laino
Wow. That's a great, that's an amazing service that you do. That's awesome. Thank you. I've

Ida Butwiin
been doing it in other people's communities now for over a year. And I thought Why am I not doing this in my own country? So it is a new, a new addition?

Nicole Laino
That is awesome. Yeah, so So guys, we will link all of this up in the show notes for you. So you'll be able to easily find that. So just hop on over to the to the to the page and go to the shownotes search section. And you'll see all of those links in there. So you can stay in touch with Ida and definitely sign up for that workshop or get into her group because that's some amazing value that she's offering for free. And I would certainly hop on that. I bet thank you so much for coming in and for for sharing your knowledge with us and for just being so open. This was really I think this is an important conversation and I hope that entrepreneurs are sharing this with their other Your printer, your friends, because understanding your funnel and coming at your business from this space is really powerful and truly put you in that role of CEO because this is what you should be doing. You should understand things from a high level and rule from on high understanding exactly who needs to be where and how they need to be doing their job. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate being here. It was a great conversation and I hope to see your viewers in the group. So then we will we I hope that they that everybody joins, I'm certainly gonna go join the group actually after we get off because that sounds like a great place so much value being offered. And I'd love to stay in touch with you too. Thank you so much. All right. Have a great one, everybody. We'll see you on next week's episode.