How To Stop Funnels Being An F-Word In Your Business With Angela Tan

TRANSCRIPT AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED [00:00:00] Diane: Hey, Hey, today's guest Angela Tan is the ibuprofen for your tech headaches with all the focus on black Friday. At this time of year funnels become a different kind of F-word. So is here to help us ease that pain. Hey Angela, welcome to the show. [00:00:13] Angela: Hi, Diane. Thanks so much for having me. [00:00:15] Diane: So let's kick off with a bit about your business journey. How did you come to funnels? [00:00:20] Angela: Okay. So I started as a general virtual assistant in January of 2019 doing, I was new to city online space. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I worked for a business coach and a marketing coach at that time, just doing a bunch of different admin stuff like sorting emails, responding to customers. Emails, all that stuff. And after a few months I started realizing I really love the tech and automation side of things. And I had one of those coaches that I worked for was running a very successful funnel and I needed. you. know, optimize it, tweak it or whatever. And I spent maybe four or five hours working on this one automation thing for the funnel and four or five hours had gone by, and I didn't even realize it. It felt like 30 minutes. I had so much fun doing it, that my client was like, I hate this stuff. Like, thank God you love it. And then from there I was like, I think this is it. I think this is what my cause I had been wanting to niche down for so long. And I knew that I wasn't going to stay at general VA for much longer. So I, I found it then, and I've kind of stuck with it. And now I do VIP days, you know, building and integrating funnels in one day. And I, and I love it. [00:01:36] Diane: well, I have to say, I think that you are a bit of a unicorn in that [00:01:40] Angela: That's what I [00:01:41] Diane: I think, I think most people like love what a funnel can do for them, but they love like the actual setup a lot less. For me, I really like to complicate a funnel. So for me, it's about seeing all the options and I go into multiple nested if then's, and, and I'm like, you I'll lose hours doing that. But I don't want to test a funnel. I don't want to optimize a funnel so how do we make this easier on ourselves? Because I think a lot of people are very scared of them or a lot of people are like me and they've got severe complications syndrome. [00:02:16] Angela: You just want to do all the things And you get overwhelmed. So all the funnels that I build follow a four step funnel building framework, and I follow this framework every single time, because it just makes the process of building a funnel so much easier. I've learned this the hard way. So the very first thing is to finalize your funnel strategy. Before you build anything, it's like building a house you want to know what materials are you going to use? Where are you going to lay out everything? Where are you going to start digging ground? Because you don't want to waste time building and then realizing that's not what I want. And then tearing it down in a rebuilding. You're wasting so much time and effort that way. So for myself and my clients, I always tell them, let's finalize your strategy. First, figure out what's going to happen at every step of the funnel before. Anything. And a part of that strategy piece is also finalizing the softwares that you're going to use, because you don't want to migrate softwares halfway through building a funnel. And you imagine if you have like a 6,000 people email list and you decide halfway through you once and migrate your entire email list, you're going to prolong the process of building that funnel. So making sure that you re you know, you. Set on the softwares that you want to use before you start building them. If you want to migrate, migrate before you start building. And it just makes that process so much easier. So once you have that strategy piece finalized, [00:03:43] Diane: Can I ask a question on the finalized piece before we move on? Does it look like a workflow when you've finished? Does it look like a list of things? [00:03:55] Angela: I have a list of questions that I like to give my clients. Some people like to use like funnel Lytics to build out a beautiful map. I personally don't care much for the map. Doesn't do much for me. I like having the list of questions where I, I ask very specific questions of, okay, what do you want to happen? Step, what tagging do you want to happen? Like if this doesn't happen or just listing out all the different possible scenarios, and if you are a visual learner for analytics or a tool like funnel Lytics can be helpful for you to see it all laid out and you get like the overall big picture. But for me, I like to just ask, I have a set of questions that we can modify, you know, based on what the client needs. And that's how I get that finalized strata. [00:04:38] Diane: Okay. So basically as long as at this point, you know exactly what it would look like to walk through this imaginary funnel that doesn't. [00:04:47] Angela: Yes. [00:04:47] Diane: going for. Whether that's written down somewhere drawn the Sharpies, post-its on a wall, whatever works, but this all has to happen before you touch any tick, basically any like final [00:04:58] Angela: one rule. Yeah. That's my number one rule. I'm not building out anything until this is all finalized. [00:05:04] Diane: I'm like straight into ConvertKit going, can I do this? What if I tried this? How about this? Would this work? [00:05:10] Angela: Yeah. And that just takes, and that's, you know, that's fine in the beginning because especially when you start a new software, it's like, oh, look at all these new tools. I'm the same way. When I find a new software, it's like, oh, look at all these things that I can play around with. And it get distracted, but once you like know yourself, Then it's, it just makes that process so much easier. So then once you finalize that strategy piece, you go and set up individual pieces of your funnel before you connect them. And for me, I have a list of the different pieces. So it start with, you know, writing out all the emails. That you will need, and then creating all those email tags, building out all of your landing pages or your sales pages and your checkout pages or writing out all of your emails, building out your webinar. If you are incorporating a webinar if you haven't already set up your course platform, Setting that up. So just setting up all the individual individual pieces, and I like to do this in chronological order of your funnel, just to make things more streamlined. Because if you jump around from one spot to another to another, it it's just a headache. It is just a headache. So [00:06:17] Diane: For me, I have to see the funnel visually. My brain just works better visually, and then I turn it into a giant to do list. But often seeing it visually, I'll be like, okay, how is this piece going to get there? And then I'll be like, oh, I need to. [00:06:31] Angela: Um, [00:06:31] Diane: Draw that whole thing out first and then start to essentially build like left to right or top down. I build in the order that someone is going to receive where you build in the order of where each thing connects in the funnel, essentially. [00:06:47] Angela: Yes. And the key here, like I said, is chronological order because once you've set up all those pieces, those individual pieces and you move on to what I call the symphonies phase and you connect everything and again, do it in chronological order of the funnel. So you start from the very top of the funnel and you just keep moving your way down. And that just keeps things so much more streamlined because you're not jumping around. And I find that I have a checklist, you know, as I'm building this out and I follow this checklist every single time. And it just, it prevents you from even as like, I've built so many funnels at this point. And if I don't follow that checklist, I can still miss something because I don't think people understand there's so much that goes into a funnel. And one tiny thing that you miss can just be your entire roadblock to people moving down the funnel. I think having a checklist of once, especially referring back to that finalized strategy piece. And that's why I like to list it out as a question form, you know, you asked how do you get the strategy finalized? If I have it as a question form, I can refer back to it when. Integrating everything and be like, okay, did this happen here? Did this happen here? Or will this happen at this step? So once I've symphonies everything, everything is all connected. Then we go onto the showcase phase and that's essentially where we test out everything and hope that everything works out smoothly. And did you can launch your funnel after that? [00:08:16] Diane: Okay. So the testing. This is obviously an area of extreme boredom for me. Because now I've solved the problem. So I'm not that interested anymore. [00:08:25] Angela: You just pray to the tech guys, like, [00:08:27] Diane: no, no, no. I do test, don't worry. I do test, but it's not a space that, that is exciting for me. And so I wonder if there is like, what is the baseline testing that you would do? I normally opt into my own thing. On a couple of different emails, one, so I can see how it's going to come through Gmail. One that comes through like my, my other emails. So I'm kind of looking like as a jumping to spam, am I getting things when I'm expecting to get things, but that's kind of like, and then there's like pray to the tech gods and wait and wait for the first person who doesn't get whatever it is they asked [00:09:03] Angela: The email. Yeah. Hey, I didn't get it. [00:09:05] Diane: exactly. [00:09:07] Angela: So I like to, you mentioned, you know, testing it on Gmail. I like to, and I always tell this to people, test things out, not just on desktop, but also on mobile. A lot of people are active. Content through mobile these days. And I learned this the hard way because I had a client who was launching a live webinar. And the night before we realized that I didn't test the registration form for, the webinar on mobile and the button to submit after you've put your name and your email was not in view. And so they can't register for the webinar. So, you know, they're putting out tech buyers the night before, and she was on Pacific time and I'm on Eastern time. So I was dead asleep by the time we made this discovery and I felt so bad when I woke up. So ever since then, you know, you test out all of your pages, all of your forms and your email. Making sure that the button to submit or to purchase is in view so that people you aren't losing leads or customers. And then I like to test out all the different scenarios from I have three or four different email addresses to test out all the different possible scenarios of a funnel. And if there's a countdown timer involved, if the email says there's two hours left, so the cart close, making sure that when I click on the sales page at, when I received that email, the countdown timer says there's two hours left. this is why it's so important to have your strategy laid out. So you can refer to that when you are testing out your funnel is that just serves as a blueprint for what needs to happen. And if something doesn't go as planned, you go back and you tweak it. [00:10:42] Diane: Wow. I just made so many mental notes of things that like, do not happen in my current funnels, a process that needs, that's probably like 90% of my headache. And if I just put a little more effort in upfront, Would pay such dividends [00:10:57] Angela: It's a lot of work. It is a lot. I don't think people, when you talk about a fun, I'd be like, okay, I want this to happen. It takes 10 things behind the scenes to make that one step happens. So it's a lot of, it's a lot of work. [00:11:12] Diane: Yeah. I think often when I'm talking to people, they'll be like, oh, in so-and-so's funnel, I saw X, Y, and Z. And I'm like, so-and-so is funnel with her 14 people building the funnel, testing the funnel, checking the funnel. I think it is that over complication or wanting everything to look super flashy. And special versus just getting it's actually work sometimes is needed. [00:11:36] Angela: Yeah. And I think before, like a funnel gets complicated and silly, cause I've seen some funnels where there's like four or five different countdown, timers where once one timer ends and it's another timer for another different offer. And I think if you have capacity and budget to support that kind of funnel, great. I think when you are first starting out with a funnel, just making sure that your offer converts first with a very simple funnel. We'll work great before you make, you know, if you want to make, add more bells and whistles to it. And I definitely, I can definitely see the over part. Cause you know, you opt into so many different funnels in this space. So I'm going to like sign up for my free to just sign up for this sign up for that. And then you start seeing their emails. Like I have clients all the time after we finalized their strategy, come to me, be like, well, I opted in and said, Amy Porterfield's funnel and she has this. I'd love to add that. And I was like, you're, over-complicating it a little bit, like, let's keep it simple. And then, you know, once we see how your funnel performs and you look at the hard data, then we tweak it from there versus like tweaking it on your feelings and like what you see and trying to compare what your funnel looks like versus other people who have way more like budget and capacity to be. A robust, complicated funnel. [00:12:58] Diane: and I guess also if you start with something simple, And you know, how it converts, then you can add one more complication and see if that adds to your conversion. And then add another words. If you add all the bells and whistles upfront, you don't actually know necessarily other than tracking, maybe which email it was, but you don't really know what the real big Tut or [00:13:22] Angela: Yeah. [00:13:23] Diane: on your funnel. Right? [00:13:24] Angela: Yeah. And if your funnels has only been up and running for like a week and at the end of that week, you're like, I want to add more things. It's like, you need to give it more time, give it a little bit more time, get more data before you add more stuff to it. [00:13:37] Diane: do you have like a, this is how many people I like to see go through a funnel before we start to make changes. [00:13:42] Angela: I think at least a hundred people, cause that gives you like an accurate percentage. If your funnel is converting great. And you wanted to add a trip wire or you wanted to add like go special one-time offer like then go ahead, but get that data first before you start adding all those things. [00:13:58] Diane: What's your favorite kind of funnel? What's performing really well at the moment. [00:14:02] Angela: I think the most simple. Funnel, just like an opt-in. I do a lead magnet as an opt-in to like a PDF with a trip wire of 25 minutes. And then if they don't, you know, if they buy the tripwire great, if not, they go down a series of emails. Don't sell to them right away. I like value or sending some value in nurture emails to kind of build that know like, and trust before you start sending sales emails of like, by my, by my mini course on how to build a funnel. And then I think also. Going back to that strategy piece, adjusting that strategy based on what your audience, behavior and lifestyle is like. So for me, I'm a mom. If I sign up for one of these webinars and you tell me that there won't be a replay and I can't pause the webinar as I'm watching it. So I have to watch it all and want to go. I am not, you are not going to be someone that I'm going to be purchasing from because I don't, as a mom of a very hyper three-year-old child, there is no way I'm going to be able to watch this whole thing in one sitting. Or if you know, your target audience are bookkeepers, for example, and your countdown timer is only set to 24 hours. Well, your audience are bookkeepers and you know, they like to do numbers and stuff like that before they make an investment. Yeah. Adjust that countdown timer, a timeline to something that you know, would work for them. So I think that, you know, adjusting your strategy based on what your audience behavior is like is so important to a good conversion as well. [00:15:43] Diane: Yeah, I think for me the webinar thing, I don't have kids, so that's not really my reasoning, but I can't watch anything at single speed. It's just a lack of appreciation. And like you say, what, what are your people actually need? And maybe we're just not those people's people. So it's doing its job, you know? [00:16:01] Angela: Exactly. You tell, if you can tell right off the bat, then, you know yeah. [00:16:06] Diane: So where can people find a cheat sheet to this chat? Because we have talked about a lot of stuff. I've overcomplicated the discussion as much as I possibly could. So where can they grab a resource of yours and watch your funnel in action. [00:16:22] Angela: yeah, so I have a blueprint call the funnel tech blueprint, and it follows that same exact force four step framework that I talked about. And you can find that at the systems, rx.com backslash blueprint, is it backslash or forward slash I feel like I always get that wrong is a forward slash. [00:16:40] Diane: I think it's a Ford slash [00:16:42] Angela: slash [00:16:42] Diane: backslash backslash goes backwards forward slash cause I'll put it, I'll put it in the show notes. We know exactly which key we would hit on the keyboard. Both of us were looking down at our keyboards to answer that question. [00:16:56] Angela: forward slash blueprint and you get download that blueprint there. [00:17:01] Diane: Great. Okay. Well, I'll put it in the show notes, just so that we're so we're super clear. Oh yeah. So to finish off pirates, like to ask my guests the same two questions, first app, what is your number one lifestyle boundary for your business? [00:17:15] Angela: Ooh, turning off notifications past business hours. I struggled very hard with this in the beginning of. When I was the VA, I would respond to emails and slack notifications at like 10 o'clock at night on those weekends. And I've learned that I need to separate business? and mom, life, home life and set that boundary there. And that helps me a lot. So turning off those notifications and also I found recently, something I've been doing is not checking my emails before a certain time of the day in the morning. Because once I start checking emails, I don't know. My mind just goes into a frenzy. So not checking emails before like 10:00 AM really helped. [00:18:00] Diane: It's kind of like, what's that expression about like, nothing good happens after 1:00 AM or something like that, but it's kind of the same for business. Like nothing good happens often like 5:00 PM on a Workday. Right. [00:18:13] Angela: Exactly. [00:18:14] Diane: you that drastically, they will call you. [00:18:16] Angela: Yeah. And I I'm starting to realize nothing in business is an absolute emergency. Like nothing [00:18:23] Diane: know we're not doctors. [00:18:25] Angela: Yeah. [00:18:26] Diane: like we are not saving lives, so it'll be fine. Even if your funnel crashes, maybe that's the wisdom of today is like, even if you'll find all crashes, it will still be fine. [00:18:36] Angela: Yeah, it will [00:18:37] Diane: You know, it will still be fine. It'll mean that you didn't follow the formula that we just set out beautifully for you, but we'll try not to judge you. Okay. Finally, what's the worst piece of cookie cutter advice you've been given as an entrepreneur? [00:18:51] Angela: Oh, to invest in softwares. Other people who have affiliate links recommend, especially if they don't use the softwares themselves. I think that there's a software that some of these seven, eight figure entrepreneurs get a lot of money from, for promoting. I, one of my passions is to opt into different people's funnels and see what softwares they use. So when I see on your recommended tools page that you highly recommend this one software and there's an affiliate link for it. And you're constantly posting, you know, sign up for this stuff where, but then I opt into your funnel and I know that your emails are coming from a totally different software that bugs me. And that goes back to. You know, when you finalize your, your funnel strategy or even anything for your business, like what your budget is for softwares in your business and your funnel when, especially when you are first starting out, it looks completely different than someone who has been running a business for six or seven years and has, you know, a higher budget to afford. Many different softwares. And I think that's what people, especially when they first started out in this space, they don't realize it. And so, yeah, follow look at what your budget is and choose softwares that suits your needs, not what other people tell you to get. [00:20:16] Diane: yeah, like get the software that covers basically what you need without any bells and whistles, because, Hey, you won't overcome. B it's harder to break it and see that person is probably selling you that software. Yes. It works magically for them and they want you to copy exactly what they do, but they're doing it because they get paid a lot of money. [00:20:34] Angela: Exactly. And at the end of the day, you are the one that's going to be in and out of that software, maintaining it, not that person who just promoted it to you. So make sure it works for you and your business before you, you know, invest in something that's going to cost you a lot of money. [00:20:50] Diane: A hundred percent. That is actually such a good one. Oh, this has been so much fun. What is the best place for people to find you on social and carry on the conversation? [00:21:00] Angela: Yeah. so you can find me on Instagram. My handle is the systems are ex I haven't been as active lately. I just I did not just, I, I am pregnant. I just passed the 12 week, 12 weeks mark. So thank you. So I have a little bit more comfortable kind of sharing it. So hopefully I start getting some energy and hopping back on social media, but. That is mainly where you can find me on social media is the system's RX. [00:21:27] Diane: Awesome. I will make sure to link that as well so that everyone can dive in and congratulate you and then tell you their final nightmare stories. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. [00:21:36] Angela: you for having me. This is so much. fun.