Joe: 00:00:04 Hey guys, it's Joe Troyer here from digital triggers and show me the nuggets and I'm super excited today to be joined by Alex Fedotoff and Alex. Man. Without further ado, I just want to have you come on and say thanks for joining us on today's podcast.
Alex: 00:00:19 Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Joe: 00:00:23 So Alex, you and I met at funnel hacking live in Nashville this
past year. And and we hit it off a nice steak dinner. I still remember that steak,
Alex: 00:00:34 Man. That's all good.
Joe: 00:00:37 And and, and Alex, your, your claim to Facebook or your claim
to fame is Facebook ads, I would say is, is that your secret weapon?
Alex: 00:00:46 Yeah, we, we've, we specialize in Facebook work mostly with eCommerce eCommerce businesses, some information businesses. And yeah, we're currently running close to some of our own projects for eCommerce and information products. Okay.
Joe: 00:01:03 Okay, cool. So my team did some research. They said that you've generated over a hundred million dollars in sales. You're obviously a two comma award winner as well. And they said that according to what they found, you could be the fastest e- com funnel in history to scale to to seven figures or that two comma club award.
Alex: 00:01:24 Yeah. yeah, I mean it's, it's, for me it's just, you know, it's like these are numbers that just yeah, just like, you know, you do something you'll do for a long time and then it's like just some of the things work out and some of those things like don't workout and yeah, we, we've scaled out to like last year four actually we've scaled up one funnel. You have to like one point $7 million in sales in three months. And I mean, since we, we, we've replicated that, but then it's kind of like, was it first, the first one like time that we've done, it's like an in such short timeframe, but before that, you know, there have been like hundred of funnels that didn't work out and then a lot of like wasted money or you know, like, yeah, okay.
Joe: 00:02:11 It's like, yeah. Overnight success story. Right.
Alex: 00:02:13 That's what they say. Yeah. [inaudible]
Joe: 00:02:17 You guys are managing we found about 40 million a year on
Facebook ads. That's crazy. About the same as us with google ads.
Alex: 00:02:25 Yeah. That's crazy. Awesome. I mean, yeah, Facebook for
Facebook for us, like is the main platform. I mean it's, it's, I mean, it's getting like, you know, it's not a perfect platform. It's like getting strict on the advertisers, like the accounts, like get shut down. But yeah, it's, I mean still would still go place to get traffic. We are looking into Google as well, but you know, I just realized that like, to figure it out, like, like you guys have had, like, it's probably like, will take another 5 years. So we, we don't, we don't touch it a lot. Like it's
Joe: 00:02:59 A whole nother beast and that's why we don't touch Facebook a
lot and that's why I'm excited to have you on it, to pick your brain a little bit. So before we dive deep, Alex if you could give us a little bit of background right before you stumbled into your agency, where do you come from? Tell us a little bit about your story and kind of set the stage for today's interview.
Alex: 00:03:20 So, yeah I'm from, I'm from Ukraine originally. You know, I've been through like difficult past, like I mean my country, poor country, it's like you don't get a lot of like you know, prospects there. So yeah, I, I graduated, I changed like thousands of jobs, couldn't, couldn't find like you know, anything that's like reasonable, because like for example, one of my jobs was like selling cookies for a company and I was getting paid like a hundred dollars a month and you don't, yeah, you don't get to enjoy life, like for $100 a month. And so, yeah. And I decided to, you know, to figure out like some of some of the guys, like I knew that they been like freelancing, you know, they've been doing like services for other companies and I saw, okay, so I need to figure that out.
Alex: 00:04:11 But I didn't want to do with like, you know, services for
companies in my country or, you know, I just wanted to go like, okay, so I go to, you know, US market where people have, you know, more resources. But you know, I didn't speak English at that time, so that was a little problem. I had to, I had to learn it and also I didn't have any skills, so I had to learn it as well. And yeah, I started as a freelancer, like on Elance which was Upwork previously. And yeah, I started to basically see like what kind of like projects people hire for you know, see what, you know, see what's in demand basically. Yup. And yeah. And then I started to you know, applying for these projects. You know, barely spoke English.
Alex: 00:04:57 So I would learn English, I would, I would learn some new skills at night. Then, you know, during the day I would apply for jobs and to fulfill work on the, you know, the projects that I was applying for. And yeah, it took some time to get traction. But yeah, exactly. You know, most more and more. Like I started working with eCommerce businesses, like naturally, you know, they'd been like hiring more on Upwork and and they, they'd been asking about Facebook and so I started to, to, to do that service for them. I didn't learn, didn't know that at first, like had to figure it out as well, you know, from courses, from YouTube videos, you know, wherever I could find some information. And then I just decided, okay, you know, I just focused on Facebook. I focused on e-commerce. That's kind of, you know, what, what it will do. And then you know, started starting that and that's where it started to get traction saying like, after we started to focus it started to get traction we started to get better clients and yeah, soon as that started to get better. And do you know if you were figuring out the commerce like drop shipping in particular for clients? You know, we've seen like how everything works and we started to do it for ourselves with our own products. And yeah, and here we are. So yeah. So,
Joe: 00:06:19 So that was really interesting. I think we've got three big topics that we can hit from what you just said, Alex. We talked about basically you got a freelance biz or an agency business, right? You also do e-com for yourself and then you're running Facebook ads for other people. So really there's three big topics that I would love to chat with you about. When, when you first started building out your, your freelancing business, so to speak, how many times or how many different things do you think you tried before you found Facebook and decided to stick with it?
Alex: 00:06:47 Hmm. I wasn't searching for it particularly, like I was just, you know, I was, I was like, for example, someone who searched, like for adverts experts, you know, I would, you know, I learned ad-words to like the sound with to some extent I was getting, I mean I was getting like, okay, results that not like, you know, very good results, but you know, I was delivering like on what I promised clients and and then they say, Oh, you know, like we also advertise on Facebook, can they do Facebook? And I said, yeah, sure. You know, and then I would like Google, what is Facebook advertising, you know, like, and then, you know I would just, I would just learn, you know, like I would just learn as much as possible, go and search for like courses you know, buy courses by, you know, whatever information I can find on that topic. And yeah, I wasn't specifically, you know, looking for this. It's just, you know, just naturally I guess. Yeah. And then,
you know, then I just decide, okay, so I'm trying to do like go, go, you know, like some, some content marketing, some, you know, this, this and okay. You know, just, I'll just focus on one, one Facebook on one platform and we'll build it for eCommerce because that's what we get you're getting the best results for. And that's, yeah, I think that's where it's kind of like started to finally get some traction.
Joe: 00:08:06 All right, fantastic. So your agency now, what type of businesses do you, do you focus on? If we could zoom in on that a little bit. You said e-com, a little bit of info. Like what if a client comes to you today? Like what do they need to fit a, in terms of size, growth, budget, like what's the perfect client for you, Alex,
Alex: 00:08:24 And why that would need to be like at least, you know, seven to
nine figures. Yeah, I've consulted for some of the, like even bigger, like fortune 500 companies. I mean, those are the best work with like, the bigger the company, the easier it is to work with them. Like with smaller companies, like seven figures, I mean, even like mid seven figures, like just seven figures, it's maybe not, not like, you know, I, I think that's what, that's what kind, you know, that's a biggest, you know, change like who you're working with as an agency. Right. Because that will be like, that will either like throwing your life or it's like, we'll make your own, like, you know, you, you know. Right. Like I know. And then like, because if you work with like some smaller business, I mean it's, maybe it seems to you that it's easier to get started with but at the same time.
Alex: 00:09:18 Like they make money and for them it's like hard earned money
and they're attached to it. Right. So when, when it comes time to like the pay or like they're, they're monitoring your work it's, yeah, it just, it just, you know, it just more more stressful I guess. Whereas, you know, with bigger companies, you know, they have like, like CMOs, right? They have, you know, someone like senior, like digital manager or who's responsible for like social advertising and that person is, it's not their money, right? They have budgets. They, they obviously have to spend it properly. Work with right people, but they don't have this like personal attachment. Right. It's, you know, does that and also the KPIs for those businesses they, they might be like, you know, like more back then, you know, for example, you know, we need to get into like, you know, 10 million views or we need to get like 100 million views on this video.
Alex: 00:10:15 You know, obviously that's easier than to get like okay, let's get
like, let's spend half a million dollars or like $1 million in two months with, you know, return on ad spend with no less than
like 2.5, you know, in these countries. Right. That's, you know, these are different, different KPIs. And so I think that's, you know, everyone like should I mean not that, I mean people who like if you want to make basically have less stress, you have to evolve like, and work with clients who generate bigger revenues and also for them it's easier to pay you. Like, you know, so if like for me, like, you know, the agency must generate like from each client, you know, at least, you know, like 15, $20,000 per month, like, you know, from the service that we provide, you know, that's not just like, so so there's a retainer, there's like performance and staff that.
Alex: 00:11:08 But it has to, it has to be within that range because otherwise they just you know, it just doesn't make sense cause we have like account managers, we have copywriters, we have designers. So I think basically evolving is, is, you know, to, to bigger and bigger clients is is the biggest, is the biggest levers and the biggest like leverage point that you can have.
Joe: 00:11:34 Awesome. Yeah. So when it comes to prospecting then Alex,
how are you finding these agencies? How are you pulling on, or how are you finding these businesses? How are you pulling on clients? What's working for you in your agency?
Alex: 00:11:45 So I have a group on Facebook dedicated to Facebook
advertising, which scope Facebook ads rock stars who have over 30,000 people there. I think that helps. Yeah, we like for sure we've got like many clients from, from the group for sure.
Alex: 00:12:01 Like I know, I know that if that's kind of like having a group and
you know, basically providing information, providing value definitely, you know, had a great impact on the business. And then I have YouTube channel as well. With some like information Facebook, some information on like eCommerce, I think that's helpful as well. So yeah, I think those, those are two main channels. And obviously, you know, like personal networking, like some businesses refer, you know, of their businesses. So this is, you know, on that front and there's also the paid advertising, right? We have some paid advertising. We driving, we're spending money on ads to get people to have a, have like a consultation with them first. Yep. And that, you know, if it's like a good fit then we find some original to work together.
Joe: 00:12:59 Yeah. That's super interesting. I feel like so many marketers I
speak to that are on the verge of really taking off, they haven't gotten it through their head yet that like all their IP is really not IP, like it's available everywhere else and like giving content
away and adding value to them is still like a very foreign concept. Right. It's like, but you know, this asset and I can't give this away. And I find like if you can just start showing that and sharing that, like you're just gonna quite literally blow up.
Alex: 00:13:28 Yeah. I think it's like if you, for example, if you can share something and people can apply it without you even like knowing and they will get results then selling them. Like, for example, I have, I have like one of the, like one of the new clients we have, we have just started like working with like, like read some of like my articles or something. And he applied it and you know, he increased his sales, you know, from like 200, from 200,000 per month to like $500,000 per month in like two months. And you know, now like he doesn't like, he doesn't ask like, you know, like,uyou know, they have any like case studies, like, you know, he just says, okay, how, you know, how to make it work, how much do they like that said, like short conversation. There is no sales call just, you know, and uyeah, I think that's, that's a key like a, you know, helping people up front, like first,uidentifying like who you are going after and what kind of like information will help those people.
Alex: 00:14:30 Like so we have, for example, a guidance guide, some like
scaling ads or like CBOs, like, you know, those things that relevant right now for Facebook advertisers. And those, that's, that's basically what gets you know, like initial awareness, people know about you and then when they have, when they have this kind of a need like they'll come to you and now like you for, so a lot of the like, so if you first thinking about like a lot of the efforts, like we've put into kind of like this, you know, creating content and stuff at the beginning it might happen, might not have direct ROI, but then like, throughout, like, so for now it's end of the year, right. And companies have budgets to spend and they obviously want to make like a, you know, this like November, like black Friday, like huge months for them. So what does it come from? Well, you know, who does it come to like, you know, and, and so, yeah, I think just has to be like a priority, like to kind of constantly, I would, I would say like invisible prospecting probably.
Joe: 00:15:32 I love that. I love that. Yeah, for sure. I think at the end of the
day, too many people as an agency or freelancer they, they don't narrow down to a vertical. Right. So then when it's like, what value can I add and how can I help people get results in advance? It's like, well, you know, I don't know. But obviously you've paid e-com, you build a Facebook group that's going to help you guys understand what the need is, what's happening in Facebook and really be on the bleeding edge. And then
ultimately now you're able to create content that helps people get results. That is ultimately a huge presale for your agency as well.
Alex: 00:16:09 Yeah, for sure. For sure.
Joe: 00:16:13 I lost your a video, by the way, Alex.
Alex: 00:16:17 Yeah, I'm trying, I'm trying. I don't know why it's a, yeah, I see.
Yeah. I don't know why it's a, why disappeared.
Joe: 00:16:25 Let's see.
Alex: 00:16:27 Is it on my side or
Speaker 3: 00:16:30 Yeah. I don't know.
Alex: 00:16:32 Maybe my internet is okay. All right.
Alex: 00:16:38 Seems like no, but you're going hear me, right? Yeah,
Joe: 00:16:48 But we use the video.
Joe: 00:17:09 Oh, there we go. Yeah, we're perfect. Or back. So yeah, I love that. You got that you've picked a niche. Obviously you stuck with e-com, you built the Facebook group. So like you're going to be on the bleeding edge all the time, right? You're going to know exactly what's happening cause you have so many people in the group. You're going to know what their deepest desires are, what their frustrations are, and then you're going to be able to build content to help them solve that. And that should bring you guys pre-sold customers, like you said all the time that I've already gotten results with your training.
Alex: 00:17:42 Yeah, I think it just like initially just trusting that, trusting the
process, like trusting that this is, this is the key that makes, you know, because you know, typically like how do like, you know, humans like the ones like instant gratification, right? Like you know, I send an email, I get a client or you know, whatever. But I mean you're sending emails and like 100,000 people sending emails, right? And you ask him for something, you know, like was the most, let's say not to say that emails don't work. It just like, for example, if you create a piece of content, like obviously you have to, you have to make it for the right market. It has to be well done. It has to be actionable. You distributed in the right places. Even put like some, you know, some ad budget behind it, like the distributed properly, then, you know, like the result
might not like might not come like instantly. But if it were like, after like some time into each we'll come, you know, like they do pay for itself many times over. Like for example, we had a guys like how to scale like Facebook ads, right? And and that guy was downloaded like a,
Alex: 00:18:50 Like I know like 5,000 times, you know, and maybe, I don't remember the exact number, but it was downloaded and I know for sure like it has delivered like ten clients, it's easily, easily like, you know, that's what from I know of like maybe there have been some people and it's even like ranking, like if you, if you Google like scaling Facebook ads, it's ranking like one of the first ones. And yeah, I think like, I think that's, that that makes a big difference.
Joe: 00:19:23 100%. Yeah. You don't need to do a ton of content marketing obviously to get great results either, right? If it really solves a problem and a great need, right? Like that's one or two pieces or a handful of pieces can be what gets you all the results. I use daily videos for the, like the last year I did daily content and I stopped like a month ago because I realized that about 90% of my results came from like five pieces of content. And I was just like, why am I, why am I spending hours like a week working on new content when I could just like create some better pieces or improve those and keep marketing those. So, so definitely I think that quality is better than quantity
Alex: 00:20:07 For sure. For sure. Yeah. And then maybe like putting some
budget behind those, like if you know, okay, so this is a good piece of content. It's validated itself like organically. So now we can put a budget behind that, you know, do just [inaudible] people like guys are, you know, on Facebook or distributed in some Facebook groups, you know, so you basically none then you need like more traffic obviously to that piece of content if that's, yeah, that's really good. Okay.
Joe: 00:20:33 100%. So with your click funnels case study, right, and you
become against two comma club member, you talked a lot about funnel scaling and obviously you guys were able to scale very quickly on that campaign. What do you, what do you think the 80 20 of scaling on Facebook, what do you think is like the, the thing that most people take for granted that, that haven't been able to scale or what, what aren't they thinking about?
Alex: 00:20:57 I mean, having like the right product is like, it's like major part of it. Like, you know, if your product is not good. And then like, you know, it's kind of like, so for example the product that we've sold tried that, you know, got into that two comma club. That
was a product that was selling like previously, like for six months before that. So other people have been selling it successfully. And so it wasn't like a problem, right? Like it wasn't like something that, okay, so let's see if that would work. Right. obviously that's sometimes also, you know, like you can hit something that works and if you can scale it up, but for me it's always like searching for a proven concept and for example, if people are naturally spending money on something, yeah, okay, sure.
Alex: 00:21:55 Your angle. Right. then you know, we might, we might, you
know, you might hear something like that is that it's working out very well. So I think about in the first place it's a product then it's you know, finding a good angle for the product, right? Because if your ads are just like, you know, maybe like feature oriented like a, you know, and then like there buy buy buy. You know, like that is that is not as effective. Right. You, you, you maybe like, you need to put a story behind the product, right. Do you need to sell the story? How your product is different. Maybe some of your customers' stories, like for example, you know, we sell a lot of products. I was like customer testimonials ads where people specifically in, in customers who are, is basically explaining what the product did for them.
Alex: 00:22:50 Right? Like basically changed that they have been through
because of the product. That's works very well. So kind of like getting, getting deeper into like emotional triggers that make people buy and and telling stories. I think that's once you have a good product, so that's another factor. And then funnel, right? So the funnel itself so the products that we get the most successful have good margins and they have typically higher average order value. So you know, some of the best, you know, funnels that we have and we'd be running for clients or you typically have the products that cost like $100 or more. So this way we can have like, we can spend more on customer acquisition. We can spend like a hundred dollars CPA, you know, and we can like you know, break or we can sometimes be even profitable. Right. And you know, are you someone who's competing with us and they can spend like $30 you know, on acquiring same customer. We have a huge advantage in that in that front,
Joe: 00:23:59 A hundred percent a hundred percent so with working with so many e-com companies, Alex, what do you think is, is working right now when it comes to backends and and average order value? Like what's, what's the thing that people can do now? Let's say that they have a seven figure store. They just got over a million dollars in revenue. Right? And they're starting to scale
up obviously you just said how important it is to have a good average order value and get, you know, the repeat customer value up. If they already have a high margin product they can spend 100 bucks plus on a CPA, then obviously the, the backend is the next thing. I think that they should be really thinking of what's kind of what, what's on your mind in terms of back ends, what are you seeing working, not working. What could people do immediately on the back end?
Alex: 00:24:44 So upsells, upsells, like is a must right? Like every product that
you sell must have like several upsells. So if you sell, even like whether you do it with clickfunnels, whether you do it with like Shopify. So Shopify has like one click upsell a, there is a, there is also the plugin called inter cart for Shopify by, by 10 browsers. So it allows you to create like a customized checkouts and different flows and funnels with different like upsells. So that's like definitely plenty percent of the revenue if that's like well done. So imagine the difference, like a 20% extra in sales, you know, without spending extra on advertising. You know, this is like huge. Yeah. Well like, you know, now you can, okay, so now just to get to the break even point, you can spend like, you know, 20% more, right?
Alex: 00:25:37 Yeah. And so that's the key to scale. Like, how much can you
spend on advertising, right? Like basically, how am I, okay, so Facebook has, you know, so there's your company seven figure company, right? And there is like the tech platform that can get you to like eight, eight figures, you know, whether it's Google, whether it's Facebook, right? And you have all of these, how's their people competing for the same, you know, spots, right? So basically if you can spend more right on acquiring that customer and you can do like if you have multiple upsells, right? That's kind of like just the first like basic stuff by saying like that's, that should be must. And a lot of companies don't have it. You know, they're just like this, they have like one order and then like, you know, and that's it. Like that's kind of like how their relationship ends with the customer.
Alex: 00:26:22 And then once you, once you acquire customers, there is like email, you know. So, for example, for eCommerce you know, there are different like flows, like how you can basically ISRP if people opt in, but don't buy, there's like one sequence if people buy like under, you know, after like 30 days, there's another sequence, OK. Like buying another item at discounted because you, you're our customer and there was like a, you know, sequences for like VIP customers, so different sequences that basically allow you to extract more from, from, from each client that you get. And uyou know, that that difficultly, you know,
email marketing gets, you know, from 10% to 30% extra in sales for eCommerce businesses in particular. Uso that's another, you know, leverage point. So you have, so you have your upsells, which, which is, which could be like 20%, and then you have email marketing.
Alex: 00:27:12 So it's like 10 to 30%, right? So now you have like, from like, I
dunno, from 20 to 50% more revenue from the same customers. Right? so, and then I say every business must have like some buy high margin products. I mean like, so for example, you buy something for $1 and you sell it for 10, right? So I mean, your margin is high. It's like 90%. Right? But it's not necessarily, you know, high in terms of like dollars that you can spend to acquire a customer, right? So for example, if I can get a product for like 25. So for example, give you a specific example, the product that got through like two comma club. So we bought it for $30 and we sold it for $120 $90 margin, right? And the typical CPA was like, from 30 to $50. So do some, that's like on if people buy one and we have multiple upsells, right? So that's where, you know, these dislikes, you know, come from. So that's one st, right? Like, let's say you figured out this physical product stuff, then having info product I think is a must. You know, this whole like Russell Brunson, like I think it's must have like, because like even like today, today, today, I had seen the ad from let me see if I even still see it on my newsfeed. You know, the agency mute six.
Joe: 00:28:53 Yeah, yeah.
Alex: 00:28:55 There they're like huge agency. I mean, I, I know how big they
were. They, they, they grow into like 130 were a hundred, a hundred, 150 people in California. And the company was sold just recently, few weeks back to some, like a big like corporation, like that buys agencies, right? So they scaled it up. Now, like I had seen I have seen their ad today. There are running, some they're running some ad for for their course where, you know, okay, so we'll just, you know, we'll just share like everything that you do in our agency, right? And like our processes, how we optimize ads, how we structure, how we do creative. Like everything right? You can just get it. And I mean, the prices like thousand dollars or $1,200. And so, and that's, you know, that's it, right? That's, and I think that's an amazing way to acquire customers because first you can be profitable on the front end was information product margins like 90% 95 right?
Alex: 00:29:58 So you can, you can definitely figure it out. Second, you acquire
customers, like if someone goes through your information
product as an, you know, like again that is the same like as with standard marketing, just with resources, with information products like you can directly see, okay, so you're spending let's say like thousand dollars on advertising and someone buys your product for 1500 like information product. First you make a profit with $500 50% which is awesome, right? Then you acquire a person who can potentially become a client for you, right? Maybe they apply your course, they get their business, like the seven figures, you know, mid seven figures and they become your client and they pay you for your services and you don't need to sell to them. These are, these are the best clients that you can like just okay, how much, how much it costs to work with you. Here's the money.
Joe: 00:30:48 Yup.
Joe: 00:30:48 Yeah, that's, that's beautiful. Earlier this year I became a partner
in invisible PPC and we did the same thing. So I bought into the company, became an owner, and then we bolted on an info and training side of the company, traditionally of a service business. And I mean it's just crazy catapult because of that we added one new product, we added a training division and the company's like just, you know, frickin blowing up. It's like a straight lining craze. Like so yeah, I definitely think that that bolting on different types of businesses a high ticket or higher higher priced or higher margin product is great. What do you see working in e-com specifically? Like if you're selling a home decor item, like how can you sell an info product? Like what do you see working in some non-obvious type of scenarios? Right?
Alex: 00:31:42 Where's home decor and like you would have to be like more
creative, right? Like so there are types of ads like you might have seen like there was a presentation these guys have even presented at the conference. We've been to like the funnel hacking live. Yep. Harmon Brothers, something, right. Harmon Brothers, you know, these guys have made three like viral ads and stuff. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so and yeah, I think like you would need to create something like this, maybe not on, on the such high budget because I mean these guys like they charge, I don't know, like multiple six figures for the project. You know, basically being creative, right. Cause your products they created the campaign for purple, you know, this like mattress company I guess. So it's not like very well I guess if it helped them to like grow very fast.
Alex: 00:32:36 So yeah, I think always was those kinds like products you cannot go and say like by now, you know, get now you, you would have to be like more creative. Maybe like with like customer stories,
like customers selling or you know, like for example, a customer testimonial, you know, it was located like horrible. And then, you know, I arrived and I bought like my uncle stuff and I saved like so much. So yep. Maybe this kind of like advertising to drive like initial, you know, [inaudible] and I mean if you're a home decor, I mean if you're the local like home the course a store, like you don't need like a lot of advertising cause there's like so much, like there's only like limited area, like where you can advertise if you're selling on the internet. I mean Facebook like, so we specialize in Facebook and I can, I say like for other, you know, platforms, I mean you would have to see Facebook is about best platform for you. Maybe Google isn't bad. They're the platform you.
Joe: 00:33:36 No. So what I was saying is like the bolt-on model, right? Where
you're bolting on like a high revenue product or a digital product, you take something that doesn't have like a, I don't know, like photographers sell them how to become a photographer course or how to build a photography business when you're selling some type of digital product or even e-com. Type of actually buying cameras like that becomes easy to stack on something like that as an upsell or cross sell. But how do you take something like home decor, anything in home decor and add an info product or something really high margin? Like what else is working in this space
Alex: 00:34:17 Easily. So the, what, what I would do is I would identify like you
know, I would identify some kind of like for example, every, every home decor business should probably has some core customers, right? I don't know, maybe like like ladies who just like stayed home, right? Or, or busy or busy mom, you know, who want to like have like a, I don't know, beautiful interior stuff, right? Or like home design, I don't know. Like whoever they're calling core customer is, right. Then you know, the information product would be, for example how do, how did the current your home and depending obviously on one kind of like what these people want, right? So that would, that would have to come from the customer's side. And that's kind of like established business that was have, okay. So we have let's say 10,000 customers and 5,000 customers of these, you know, let's say people in this category.
Alex: 00:35:19 Okay, so here, here are like their demographics and
psychographics. Like here you like let's say they make so much money, they live in, you know, for example in these areas in like suburban areas and for example they're interested in I don't know, newest transfer design, right. Then that could be like, okay, so you know how to, how to, you know furnish your home
. According to those last like designs. Right? And, and then like there would be like a presentation with, you know, I know like even like ebook, you know with multiple like ideas on how to do it right. That you know, the people in that particular audience, a particular audience would be interested in. Right. It in every audience I say it would have to come from the customer. Like it's, it's not about like what's your, what's your salary? It's about like what, like who is the customer and what would be, what would be interesting for them. I think that if you, if people send from that perspective then, then there are so many ideas on what you own, what you can sell
Joe: 00:36:30 100%. Yeah. That's a great takeaway. Yeah. Simply finding out
from your customer base, ask them, figure out, you know, you could probably go out to some of the, like the data UPenn search sources where you could figure out, take your customer lists and then what magazines do they like, what are their interests, what are their hobbies? Right. And go pull some data on them so you can better understand your customers and then survey them like I was, can we help you? This is so this is like way.
Alex: 00:36:58 Yeah. This is the most like boring part, like the most like boring
part. And it's like, you know, in every, I know like because when I, when I'm framing like information product, like there's first like research bars, like avatar and stuff. Like, it's kind of like a lot of people like want to just skip this Bart. And then like, okay, so we need to like, you know, set up some saying and some more like sort of like the tricks and tips and then start with strategies. Like that's where they want to be like, but this is the most like important part always. Yup.
Joe: 00:37:27 100%. So I've seen people doing like buyer's clubs that seemed
like they work pretty well, pulling some continuity in, like there's no cost of goods. So buyer's clubs what else? Like member benefits, types of packages. But then I think people could also just do searches for eBooks like you said, or training. So the niche or the vertical plus that. And if they just go up a couple of levels, right. So th in terms of categories, they could pretty easily, I'm sure. Find somethings.
Alex: 00:38:00 Yeah. Like for friend of mine, like for example here on, it's like
an information business that so he was working in he was working in a Deloitte, which is you know, like big consulting company. And now, like he, he basically created like info product on how someone can get a job in big four consulting companies, you know, which is, yeah. And I, yeah. And he asked like you know, like few years ago, like he had, he wanted to, he
had his like this website, like generating traffic for it. Like organic because he doing to like, you know, for, for many years. And I told him like, you know, sell a training on how to do it. And and his and then, yeah, like took him some time, but he started to do it. Now it's like a, you know, seven figure business.
Joe: 00:38:51 Wow.
Alex: 00:38:52 Yeah. Crazy. [inaudible] he has like, almost like no competition. Yeah, I bet. So, yeah. I mean, yeah, there are many people that would, you know, pay for pay for, you know, what, what, you know, and and if you have established business than, you know, asking, asking your customers and communicating with them and you know, figuring out like what their challenges are and how maybe your products can integrate, you know, into what they want to know. Right? So there's ones I want to know, right? And what does it need to achieve, right. And what kind of like they need for that. And that could be that missing part of, you know, you can get them closer to your product and same time, you know, profitable, you know, information product for example.
Joe: 00:39:39 100%. Yeah. I love that. I love the idea of combining the, the
info and the in the physical goods. Such a great idea. I met somebody about a month ago now I'm on the West coast. I flew out for an event and they were doing still the free plus shipping, physical and then continuity model. And they were just destroying it. They were making money on the front. And then had like a 75% take rate on the continuity immediately as the upsell. And I was just in Florida. That's still working for you. Like you're still doing that. And she was like, yeah, every day. Like she's like, I feel so bad. Like we've been running this thing for 18 months. She's like, I set up the Facebook ads and like under an hour I set up the whole funnel Facebook ads, everything she's like, and I haven't touched it since. And basically now this is a seven figure business. And she's like, I, I, I think it's time that I get somebody in there and like start playing with it and running it and actually doing something with it. It's got some legs.
Alex: 00:40:40 Yeah, for sure. For sure.
Joe: 00:40:43 So I wanna chat a little bit about AI, Alex when it comes to
Facebook, how do you think AI is working? What's the current state of automations with Facebook and where they're going? And I have my opinions about, about Google and in certain scenarios it's, it's great. In other scenarios, you really got to watch yourself.
Alex: 00:41:03 Can you can, there were periods, yeah, Kevin, repeat please.
Because I'm
Joe: 00:41:09 No worries. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So what are your thoughts with Facebook when it comes to AI? So with Google, right, and AI, some situations, some types of AI are working really, really well, other forums are or are not working well at all and you got to really be careful. So I'm curious like on any type of automation with Facebook, when it comes to running ads, what are your thoughts? When do you use it? When don't you, what's kind of the current state?
Alex: 00:41:37 It's, it's getting better, like, so overall like a, you know, I get
invited with like Facebook headquarters many times. And so like they always say that, you know, all of this stuff like so on, on Facebook for example, you know, when you, when you run you know, like all of these like tactical details, okay. Targets like bidding, like age, you know, like all of these things. They just become like easier and easier over time. Right? And over time there will be just like very few simple settings. So just this, you just like put, okay, so I want to target, you know, this is my product, this who's, who's my customer approximately. And Facebook will do all of that for you. Right? It's obviously not there yet, but the system is, is already like very efficient.
Alex: 00:42:25 So for example, some of the best performing campaigns we
have on Facebook, they have zero targeting. Like basically just gender, age, country. That's it. Right? So let's say 40 plus man in United States, this is it, right? This is the pole targeting know, kind of like interest, no lookalike audiences, just that, right? That, that these are the most efficient and the most consistent campaigns that we have currently. And I'm this way as well, like with CVO, which is like the new kind of like a structure, which is, I guess it's similar. Do I guess it's similar to Google where it has like budget on the campaign level or Google has on the asset level. Google has on both.
Joe: 00:43:21 Well yeah, you can do it by ad, but you can also do it by
campaign. Okay. So on Facebook, it's the budget is for the total campaign, but you can set cost per click, one campaign and on the ad.
Alex: 00:43:31 Oh, okay. Got it. Okay. So I'm with Facebook right now it's like
[inaudible] you still own the asset level, you will say, okay, so $20 budget per ad set. Now there they introduced basically the campaign budget, right? So we'll say campaign has a budget of $500 and then Facebook distributes it basically among these different ad sets. And so it's also one of those like a quiet
consistent things, right? So for example, you know, you can have like a, I dunno like say $501,000 budget per campaign and then Facebook will just optimize it. It's not 100% efficient. You have to keep eye on it for sure. For sure. Like, you know, every day like you, you should have, you should keep eye on it. And I mean if you're spending a lot, let's say you have like thousand two thousand five thousand dollars budget per campaign, then you need to have some kind of like automation in place. So if it's not profitable, then you know, and it's like kind of like goes over your KPIs, then it would have to be killed. Right. So,uyeah, so that's, that's very like,uI mean I would, I wouldn't trust it like 100%, but it's definitely getting better and getting like more straight forward, but I wouldn't trust it 100%.
Joe: 00:44:47 Gotcha. Yeah, that's how I feel about Google. Sometimes it
works really, really well. Sometimes it works really, really bad. I think any type of like branded campaign, I think any type of things like that. Like they'll put your max bid way up here and you could be paying a third of the price right. And then they'll just like murder you on the cost per click and then put the budget at the top. So like, it's, it's a little crazy. You got to watch out for it. I think overall it works pretty well. But like to think that you can just set it up and forget it and walk away, you're definitely like, you're losing your ass for sure.
Alex: 00:45:23 Yeah. The same. Same with Facebook.
Joe: 00:45:26 Awesome. So Alex can you talk about your use of micro funnels and profit funnels and how they fit into your personal strategy?
Alex: 00:45:35 So for me like, you know, like I, I want to like was everything
that, you know, we sell, I want to make sure that we, you know, maximize like each, you know, opportunity, right? So for example, if we sell a product like, so for example, when you buy a product through your through your, let's say you go to the lab set to buy something, right? Only some percentage, like maybe like two, 3% of people who buy like right away, right? So for example, you know, we are collecting emails, you know, from people, right? So for example, if you didn't want to like buy it right away, right? There might be like some direct response offer like 20% off or there might be something like, okay, so once a week we'll have like a giveaway of like I dunno, a car or you know, like $10,000, you know whatever the offer is and just put your email to be part of it, right?
Alex: 00:46:33 And so that puts, you know, those people who are not like
directly interested in, in buying, right into this like micro funnel where, okay, they're, they're already like in your ecosystem that
provided you some, some information and you know, based particularly they have they have provided you this first like step, they made like this small commitment. So they providers this like email and then what I mentioned previously, you, you can set up like welcome email series, right? So for everyone who gives their email would say there were a series of like three or five automated emails that go to that person and basically they, they might educate them about your product, they might give some, you know, some information and they also ask you for a sale and might give you some discount as well. Right? So, and that's like, you know, that applies.
Alex: 00:47:24 So typically, like let's say you have, you have 3% conversion rate
on the website, like eCommerce, then you have like 97 using like 97% of the traffic, right? So if you put difficult like optin right on these kinds of like email, you know, collects, you know, collection like pop box would be like, I don't talk to 10%, like five to 10%, sometimes 15. So let's say 10%. Right? So you just got like 10% more of, you know, potential customers, like you put them into this sequence, right? And this like welcome series. I mean, typically they have like good, you know, EPC, they have good you know, they basically making money and it's, and it's done once, right? So yeah, this is just like one example of, you know, of this of this, of this funnel.
Joe: 00:48:15 So really when you talk about these two different things, they're
really just things to maximize, right? The, the earnings for every single click that you're getting from, from your traffic,
Alex: 00:48:24 Your must you must, maximize like every click that you get. Like
it's a, you know, because if you want to be competitive and especially like on higher budgets, you, you, you have to maximize, you know, everything say when you, when you have like a very strong final, like you can just go and buy traffic. Like whenever you want. Like, okay, I want to buy like traffic on Google. You know, I know my numbers, I know my conversion rates, I know my, like, EPC, I know my, you know, conversion rate, the average order value. I know the [inaudible] as you mentioned, was your friend where you know, they know the uptick rate on the subscription. You know, it just like, they just need to buy the traffic. That's, you know, that becomes, you know, easier part
Joe: 00:49:06 A hundred percent. Awesome man. So I want to be respectful of
your time and I really appreciate you spending almost the last hour with me here. So I wanna start wrapping things up. When, when you see new marketers coming into your Facebook group, right, when you see new people with e-com stores coming into
the group, what's the one or two things, one or two things that you try to, to really put in their hand that it, you think is going to do the best job enabling the next few steps of, of their journey?
Alex: 00:49:40 I like one thing is I would, I would just tell them though, I do
approach it as you know, send different, brought zone, a lot of people, same, you know, because how some people positioned like Facebook advertising or Google, it's kind of like, it's kind of like you do something like, you know, and then like you suddenly, you know, you make a lot of money. I say a lot of people have this like mindset or like let's say the, they put like some one ad and it has like 100 ads on , but it only span like $2, you know, so kind of like show them that it's all like scientific process. Right. And so if you have like, let's say you, you have as a beginning, you have like unknown parts, right? You have unknown like whether, my product will sell whether.
Alex: 00:50:29 You know, like my, my website, you know, will convert, right? Whether, you know, my ads will convert, right? Whether, you know, Facebook will match, have down my account and basically breaking down those parts into like smaller elements, we'll say, okay, so the product, you know, we'll do the research for the product, right? And there was no, like, there was no like magic, right? And some products sell, some products don't sell, right? If you do competitive research, you see what's selling, right? Then you have higher chances of figuring it out then with your ads. Right? So let's say if, if that's one creative you have like either it works or it doesn't, right? But if you have three, five different creatives, right, then your chances just increased, you know, like five times. Right? So then let's say you fast like one, one audience, right? Okay.
Alex: 00:51:19 So you have like one chance of figuring out, like if you have like
ten audiences, okay. Like nine of them might not work, but then you have one that might be promising that if you start like digging deeper, okay. So that's the audience I can start with. I can find some similar audiences to this and I can start my process from there. So that's one thing. And then another is you know, like, like Google, like Facebook ever classroom. It's, it's, it's learning like, it, it needs to accumulate some data, you know, and if someone comes into like advertising don't have like $200 or $500 to spend on advertising problems, they shouldn't do like advertising at all because you know, it's, it, it requires like, each requires like bigger budgets to figure out like any offer, right. If they don't have, like is that even like have a product, then it becomes another unknown part.
Alex: 00:52:13 Whereas I don't know the product, they don't know the offer.
They don't know. They don't have the budget. I mean, it's difficult. Right. so yeah, and like understanding that it takes budget to figure it out, whatever platform that is. I think it's very important because, okay. So I need to have, I need to have this budget dedicated to it. It's like my learning budget that I'll spend, you know, figuring this stuff out. But once I figured it out, you know, it might, you know, build, you know, seven, eight figure business in the process. Yeah, I think this would be like the major to those things.
Joe: 00:52:49 So you're going to hate the next question man. You're going to
hate it. But I have to ask, cause I get this question all the time too. And to be honest, I'm never sure how to answer people. So when somebody says, Alex, what's that learning budget need to look like? Right? What's that testing budget need to look like? How do you help people come up with that number?
Alex: 00:53:07 Hm. So for me, like for example I can, I can say for drop
shipping, so drop shipping is a, you know, the business model that we use. You know, to sell products. We don't own products, we just sell them. Once we get through auction, we basically put some branding on them. We put some more you know, like we, we work on, on getting the faster shipping times since the beginning. So like from China it's a, I mean it's quiet like, you know, it's quite like you know, a different business model. It's deciding to like shipping the product from gas and shipping from China, but it can be profitable if it's done right and for drop shipping, I know that people would need to spend like two to $5,000 on advertising as this kind of like learning budget right before they start to get traction before they start to get profitable.
Alex: 00:53:57 That's what I'm seeing in my, you know, in my experience. Some
products, you know, like for example, I have, I have a, I have a student, right? So the lady like she works, so she's from LA and she, she basically started like e-commerce. Like she started like running e-commerce, right? E-Commerce is like drop shipping business and she was doing it for like a year and she has tested like 40 or 50 products. She spent like 10 or $15 on advertising. Right. Then it seems like, okay, it's, you know, it's fricking doesn't make any sense. Right. But then like she hit like one with product and then and another product. So basically in like few months, she generated one point $5 million in sales, you know, and so, but you know, she had that patience, you know, she had that patients. It's kind of like just approaching it from that perspective.
Alex: 00:54:56 I obviously, you know, when, when there is like a, you know, it's
kinda like a golden rush, gold rush or something. [inaudible] Okay. There was like my hands, everybody have, everybody runs their, you know, like it wasn't this like drip the cards is, and so there's like Google ads, you know, everyone runs their, or like Facebook has everyone runs there, but it just like approaching, it's like, okay, so here's a budget. Like I would say like five to $10,000. Like you can probably figure out like 90% of offers. Some offers might cost even more to figure out. But yeah, but you, you have to, you have to be prepared to spend money to learn and to, to figure it out.
Joe: 00:55:37 Yup. We have the same thing with Google ads, so we just call it minimum viable spend and ultimately we figured out what the average cost per click is. We come up with a good average in terms of what we think conversion rate should be. And we know that we're gonna, you know, it's going to be rougher to start. The cost per clicks at the beginning are going to be harder with Google and and, and so we have kind of a little formula that we use to come up with minimum viable spend but I've never really heard anybody break it down, so thanks for that explanation for Facebook anyway. .
Alex: 00:56:06 How about how much is that will go typically?
Joe: 00:56:09 So the way that we look at it is like at invisible PPC. Like we
focus on more local businesses, so, and service based businesses. So we know what conversion rates look like for our customers and like hundreds of verticals as well. But we just take like average conversion rate. We take the average cost per click data that we can pull actually from Google. We add a multiplier to it just so that we're safe. Right. And then we say we need X amount of clicks in order to get there. Right. So then that formula gives us our minimum viable spent.
Alex: 00:56:43 [Inaudible] Cool.
Joe: 00:56:46 So awesome man. So I want to wrap it up with one last
question. Instead of asking you to recommend three books like [inaudible] podcasts, do at the end, I want to ask you, what's the book that's made the biggest impact on the way that you do business?
Alex: 00:57:03 How to get rich. Okay.
Alex: 00:57:06 It's a by. Felix Dennis.
Alex: 00:57:10 Okay. Do you know who's this guy is? I don't, I've actually not
heard that, that book.
Alex: 00:57:14 So you know, they, you know the Maxim magazine, Maxim, like man magazine, like, yup. So that's a guy who's created it. Okay. Felix yeah, I'll type it. Yeah. My Pronunciation. It's like,
Joe: 00:57:33 'Ll find it, throw it in the show notes for everybody.
Alex: 00:57:35 Very brilliant guy. Like very smart. I mean, he was yeah, you're like, when he died? Like, he had like a net worth of like around like $1 billion. Wow. and so he built like basically just like publishing business from scratch and yeah, it's very good book and it's not like a, so the name like suggest it's about money. But then, you know, there are a lot of like you know, like psychologist things, you know, in the, in that book, like for example, you know, kind of like if, let's say, so it's kinda like if you, if you want to, you know, to achieve something, let's say.
Alex: 00:58:15 So in this, in this particular case, it's about like you know, do you
want to like make money right? If you, if you like care, for example, what like your neighbors think of you, you know, if you are not prepared, like to be embarrassed. If you're not prepared to kind of like fail like that, then you will not get there, you know, because you'll just like consider like so many like different opinions. And so you will just like, you'll be afraid of, of doing many things. And the other thing is kind of like yeah, it's, I mean some of those things are, they're easy. Like they're easy to say, but fucking hard to, you know, to comprehend like you have for example. It's like you says you know, like basically the armies and the governments like they're most afraid of people who have nothing to lose. Right. And then, you know, a lot of the things that we do or like don't do is because like we are afraid of losing something and
Alex: 00:59:22 If you just don't have that fear, right, it's like, you know, it's like
you know, like there is a guy like that is the, you know, the Trump president and that he has his like a, that Kushner and the, his son-in-law and his dad basically made a, made a fortune in like real estate and his is that, I mean he had absolutely like zero. Like he has like absolutely zero, like a fear or like you know, when you have like this when you're afraid to lose something, how it's called loss aversion or some sick, right, loss aversion. Like you don't want to lose something and he has zero it. So he will just by like buildings that other people are, you know, like afraid of buying, you know, and like he would just like go like heavy, you know, like loans and stuff and you know, like, and that's like, that's how he made his, like his fortune.
Obviously, you know, he's, he's provided this like good ground for his, you know, for his sons and stuff who are now in a good position. But yeah, I think like most of these things, they're mental you know, and so does this book is about that kind of like those things? Um yeah. I mean
Joe: 01:00:45 Life is all about mental challenges. Businesses is all about
mental challenges. I was at a mastermind recently and a, at the very end, everybody went around and shared their number one takeaway from the event. And this guy stands up and he was kinda quiet the entire time and he stands up and they're like, what's your takeaway? And he's like, ah, my biggest takeaway is I didn't invent business in this room, didn't invent business. And basically like we all have challenges, but they've all been solved before. Right? And all that you need is the discipline to go find who has the answer, right? And then you'll be able to conquer, you know, and get past whatever it is that you're going through. So I love books like this that make you think differently. So I'll definitely be be buying it and and going taking it for a read.
Alex: 01:01:30 And there's another one from, from the same author, like from
the Felix uh it's called Narrow Road.
Joe: 01:01:35 Okay.
Alex: 01:01:37 There's something like important principles on on like running a
business making money. I, I think it's very good. Sorry, go. He's, he's not like a, you know, when you like when you read like Richard Branson like for example, you know, is like very like positive and this guy is like, you know, very like blunt and like very like, you know, like his yeah, those are my favorite. Yeah. And they're not, you know, like Dan Pena, right?
Joe: 01:02:04 Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure.
Alex: 01:02:06 His, yeah, he has, he has a good book too. Like like it's, it's like
your first 100 million or something.
Joe: 01:02:13 Okay. Yeah. I haven't read that.
Alex: 01:02:17 Yeah, I'd put that one. Yeah. Also like these are like, I think
these are like, because a lot of the books that are like very like soft and like obviously they want to be attractive to this audience and [inaudible] audience and does that audience. Right. And these guys are just like, you know, fuck it. Like we'll just, you know, just their right, what they saying.
Joe: 01:02:37 Yeah. We'll, we'll say it like it is and not sugarcoat it for
anybody. I love that. Yeah. Those are the books that I get through and I can't put down in like one session or two sessions. So, so definitely love those books. So thank you man. Alex for jumping on here. I really, really appreciate it. I know that the my audience and my crew and my subscribers are going to get a ton of value out of this for everybody watching. If you guys got a ton of value out of this, go follow Alex and Alex, where's the best place for people to reach out or to follow you? Maybe that Facebook group or your consulting site or can they learn more and interact with you? Man.
Alex: 01:03:11 Yeah, it's my group, so it's called Facebook ads rock stars. Okay.
And yeah and, and my, my yeah, my email. So that's my personal email.
Joe: 01:03:25 So cool man. We'll, we'll link up your, your email in the chat that
you just send over and then also the Facebook Facebook group. I really appreciate it man. And hopefully we can link up at another event here soon.
Alex: 01:03:35 Yeah, yeah, sure, man. Sure.
Joe: 01:03:37 All right boss, take it easy, man. Have a great day. Thank you,
man.
