Ads, Ego, and Automation: What Most Businesses Get Wrong (and How to Fix It)

**[00:00:00]** Hello everyone. This is Presceno and welcome to the web talk show. Today we are here with Nina Brennan. Hello Nina. Hello. Hello. Thanks for having me. Yeah, welcome. Could you tell the audience a little bit about you so that they know who we're talking with? Yeah, absolutely. So, hi everyone. My name is Nina Brennan. I am co-founder of Scaling Lean, a marketing company based out of Denver, Colorado. Um, we've developed frameworks to build seven figure businesses through content, ads, and automation. We've been in the space for about three and a half years now. We've helped over 250 business owners break the six figure mark and go on to the seven figure mark within the first two years of business. It's all personal brands. It's all through content. And everybody is selling courses, coaching programs, and information products in the online space. And it's been a really awesome journey so far. Awesome. Yeah. the I as if for our listeners we've had this segment of training businesses that sort of thing and I thought this would be a fantastic opportunity to hear from someone who is actually helping other businesses build their training businesses in a sense um but the the whole part of content the creator the brand behind the business I think that's a very important conversation that we should be having and that people should listen to. So, thank you so much, Nina, for joining us today. I think we should start with expertise in turning our expertise, anyone's expertise into online education. Is that something that anyone can do? Is it just for technological things or is it is it just just spread the whole spectrum? Yeah, I'm a firm believer that anything that you have accomplished, you can turn it into **[00:02:00]** like a coaching program or a course. I've worked with people from the spectrum of doctors and lawyers and physical therapists that wanted to bring a brand online all the way down to procrastination coaches of somebody who was able to help themselves overcome procrastination and then created a course out of it. So, it really is like people are looking for information in any kind of world whether it's finances or business or just personal development there's space in it for any like everyone. But it how does a like a physician, how does that work? Because we're used to thinking especially those types of roles where it's very specific. They've studied so much. They have these particular talents. They got these certifications and they can only like practice these sort of things. How does that turn into something that that could be used like training? Yeah. So a lot of times with the doctors that we talk about, they just want to build a personal brand because it opens doors for opportunity to get on stages. So sky's is the limit. You don't only have to sell digital products and courses and coaching programs. It's really content and being a personal brand in the online space opens opportunity that one might not even fathom going to school for 8 to 12 years as a doctor, right? But we know people that have gotten on TED talks. Like we work with an artist who's literally somebody who teaches now people how to sell high ticket art. He gave a TED talk last year. And those are the kind of opportunities that content creates for people, right? Okay. Okay. So, it doesn't have to be that you want to sell info products. It could be that you're using it as **[00:04:00]** a launchpad for the rest of your business. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Nice. So, content very important. We hear it all the time and it is. What's your take on content versus ads? Should we do content? Should we do ads? Should we do both? Yeah. Um, I actually just had a live. So I do lives every Thursday with my business partner and we just talked about this. Scaling lean is standing firm in the belief that if you want to build a seven figure, eight figure, nine figure business, you need to do a mix of both. You have to have a solid personal brand that people understand the core identity of who you are, what your brand is about, but the only way to reach the masses is you could do the content game. It takes a long time, but ads accelerates the process. And mixing the two is how you're going to get to seven figures. just to be fully transparent. I did my first seven figures online with just organic. But it took about a year and a half to get there. But I was also young. I didn't have a family. I was living in Mexico without cutting. I cut out all distractions and all I did was content daily, posting three to five times a day, sending a 100 messages. So if you want to get to six figures, it's going to be a slow burn to get there in your first year doing content. Ads just accelerates the process. If you do solely ads, you have to be really good at copywriting and have a maybe not an outward content strategy, but a very deep nurturing strategy internally like CRM system, email marketing system. And that's what a lot of people don't talk **[00:06:00]** about. They just talk about content creation, but not the nurturing process that it actually takes to make the money online. That makes sense because people say, some people that ads work until you turn them off and then you're dry, right? Well, up to a point because if you're doing both, like you were say, I think that strategy is perfect. You do content, you use ads to accelerate, but then you fall back to the content. So, even if you stop the ads, if you had already some content growth, that keeps going. But also, even if you didn't have that site for whatever reason, what you just said is very valuable, you should think about the whole process of the nurturing because then you spend thousands of dollars on getting these leads and maybe they didn't convert initially and then you just forget about them and that's a ton of money spent nothing. Yeah. We had an experience really maybe I don't know 10 years ago where we had some people in the list. So this was just we were running ads, we had people come in the list, they would receive our emails, etc., etc. And there were people that never did anything. And you would think maybe after a while I'll take them off. I don't want to spend so much on my list. Let me get some people off of it. But if you just leave it. I remember this this really stayed with me. We were here at the library, like the city library. We're just walking around. And all of a sudden, I had a trigger in my CRM that would tell me when someone reached a certain number of points because of how many emails they opened, etc., etc. And so **[00:08:00]** the trigger comes in that say this person has 2,000 points or whatever. For everyone who doesn't know what this is, it's just lead scoring. people interacting with your emails, clicking on them, etc. that you might have a system that scores them. So, this person gets to this point. I'm like, "Oh, wow. Yeah, they they they have been interacting." That same day, the person reached out on their own out of the blue and it turned out they needed like a full funnel build for something uh a multi,000 project. And I was like, weird scenario, but that just really stuck with me because it you need to nurture your leads. Mhm. No, I love that story. It's that's a very very common story that I work with my clients is they don't do the email like marketing on the back end and then we do a promo and it's like why did I just get 50 book calls on my calendar? And it's like there's people that are interested in who you are. And I'm a firm believer that famous quote, fortune is in the followup, but you don't have to do it daily. You could automate it. And it sounds like you have a pretty robust system and like your email marketing system. People think of email marketing and that they have to write emails every day. Somebody comes into our ecosystem. We have a 40-day email nurturing system without us having to touch anything. And the thing is is like it's very personalized because of the years and we used AI to like pull and extract what people were looking for and created our story. So now people know who we are, what we're doing, how we help our clients, obviously case studies and testimonials **[00:10:00]** to build that social proof whereas we had to write it once and now it's just sitting there for every person that comes into our ecosystem gets it. Wow, that's a long nurture sequence, but it works. It does. It does. Yeah. And and it feels like even in the space. So I I'm not in the digital marketing space so much now. We we do more software and automation work, but I was in the space a while back and know how it works. But still like it feels I don't know sometimes it's nice to be ignorant. I receive sometimes I receive the emails from um you know Alex Hosi and Leila. you get like that the the minute or most minute or whatever Leila sense and and it's like you know it's to completely automated but you get it and you're like oh that's a that's a good tip but just the way it's phrased the way it's set up you sort of faint ignorance and you're like yeah cool that that was a good insight and you just keep thinking of them so in the future if you want to sell a company I might sell it to them right just because of they're always there they're always giving you that content regardless right yeah and I'm a firm believer If you do something once, like repurpose it. Like we write newsletters in our company. I have a business partner named Jonathan. He's amazing. Just quick plug. He writes on Wednesdays and I write on Saturdays. And once it's done, we have 52 newsletters in 26 weeks. That full process is going to be automated. And it's like every single year it's just going to be like we'll update it like we'll read it and we'll **[00:12:00]** update it as like times come out because the market is always changing, right? You always have to. We're somebody who like we're ahead of the curve with a lot of the marketing because we love to just study what's going on with humanto human businesses, personal brands, algorithms, etc. But there's a base foundation that never changes which is you need to develop a brand. This is how you develop your message. This is how you understand the character of the message. These are the fundament like webinars have been rocking for five years. The strategy doesn't change really. The only thing that changes is algorith algorithm platforms. Other than that, like the backend marketing strategy, you can tweak a funnel, but a VSSL funnel is still a VSSL funnel and a webinar funnel is still a webinar funnel. Challenge funnel, I hate them. They're still challenge funnels. There's only so many things that we can really do. So, the frameworks that we teach are pretty lock and bolt. It's just the outside to pull people in changes a little bit because of the amount of content that's pumped out with AI. Now, that makes sense. And for those who are listening who don't know marketing speak a VSSL is a video sales letter which basically is a landing page that you maybe you came from an ad or some other place and it will explain what you're going to get. But it's a very well ststructured like a sales letter like you would get originally in the mail. and they would be very thought out and they will touch on pain points and then solutions and a backstory and just a whole thing to get you ready, build a whole rapport in one sort of sweep uh and **[00:14:00]** uh get you to be interested at the end of the of the video, right? So yeah, they and they still work like I find myself sometime watching I'm like man you want to buy and I don't need it but it's it's wellmade. So okay great. So you you work with Jonathan and you're a team of two. So we have more than two, but that's just my business. But that's your I mean Yeah. But do you do you think someone in in terms of team size to build a decentlysized contentbacked or creatorbacked rather I would say brand? Do you need a huge team? No. Um, so my company's name is Scaling Lean. We're firm believers that you can get to 100K with like two people on your team, like you and a VA. Um, I have a business partner. It makes it a lot easier because our skill sets are very complimentary. Um, so you don't have to go through the learning curve where we did, but it was fast-paced acceleration of like he was very systems minded. I was very like copy- based, human psychology, salesminded. And when we merged, it was like I could fill in the gaps where he was weak and he filled in my gaps. Whereas like but once you master all of those to hit a million dollars, you need a team of like seven. And I'm talking about like not even full-time employees. Two like full-time employees, maybe three, and then the rest are virtual assistants that you can outsource. Um, quick plug to We Assist if you're ever looking to outsource. Hi, high high. Like I use virtual assistants from online jobs.ph. PH um they were fantastic to do like simple tasks, but if you want a more **[00:16:00]** accelerated virtual assistant from the Philippines, we assist for a very low price. They'll place somebody who's rock solid. That's like having like an American employee, understands English very well, can do customer service, etc. And that's how we built our back end as like scaling lean, keep the profit margins high, get the work ethic still very high, and it just five or less, you can really just be on your way to a million-dollar business. Wow, that's good to hear. And that it's Thank you for sharing the platform as well. Just it's good to know. We I had that question the other day about like video editors. You're talking with someone that does a lot of content and then they talk about their video editors. You're always wondering, well, yeah, yeah, but where do you get a video editor that's that good and how how expensive are they and so yeah, thank you for sharing. We assist. I'll definitely look into that and I'll I'll put in the show notes as well for everyone. Okay. So, you don't need a huge team. No. Um, do you think someone, let's say a business owner has an they have a ton of expertise and it could it could be a business owner, it could be a trades person, right? Maybe they're a plumber, maybe they're an electrician, right? And they have tons of knowledge and there are few and far between. Like there's there's many, but for the amount of homes that there are, there are not enough. And so that why that's why sometimes it's very hard to find them and it's expensive but they can train other people to do that well right and so do you think that is a type of trade that can also **[00:18:00]** benefit of doing something like this and how do you think someone like that would start let's say if they don't have a ton of money because they're they're just just constantly in the work as it stands. Yeah, I could give a perfect example because we don't only work with coaches and course creators. Like I have a client who's a personal chef, only local. They could only really work like so I live in Colorado, they do mountains, so anywhere in like a 4hour radius from the Denver Boulder area. Um the way that we did it was just a robust CRM and it sounds like you're in the SAS space of like building automation and whatnot. Um, you can outsource and delegate very easily because like a skill is a skill and many people have skills and that's where a lot of business owners go wrong is they built a business around a skill not because they're a business owner and that's where a lot of people get capped because they think other people don't have the skills that they have or they're the best at their profession. Um, that's ego. If we can remove an ego and kind of realize like you are not now a plumber or you are not now a personal chef, you are a business owner and there's that quick mindset shift into I am a business owner and I can delegate. That's when people can really really grow a business. That was like the kind of resistance with the personal chef that I worked with is like you are an amazing chef and people will hire your company because of your name but not every catering event needs to be cooked by chef Steve. Mhm. So, it's really just like removing **[00:20:00]** the ego of being the best. It's like you started a business to make money. You are the business owner who drives the business. That's number one. And number two, as I mentioned before, is having a CRM, collecting all the data and understanding like so many people drive business through emotion where it's really just numbers tell the story inside of business. And when you step into that business owner role, if you learn how to read numbers as a story, it's just going to make life so much easier to making decisions and really removing any ego that's running and controlling from the emotional side. That's very useful for anyone listening. That's and I've heard it I just heard a few days ago from Gary Vee as well. He was somebody called in and they're like, "Ah, but but I can't like delegate." They they were thinking and he just put them in their place. He's like, "What? You're not the best in the world at I mean, you could be very good at what you're doing, but there's still someone who can do it as well as you and probably better." And that's how you grow the business. Like you just said, it's so important to get out of that ego mindset and think, "Yeah, I and I but I understand it." Like I sometimes I'm like, "Okay, so I I could delegate this to other paths, but will they do it right? Will they make mistakes? But if I really think about it, I make mistakes too. I'm not perfect. Like I'll I'll make dumb mistakes sometimes, but then I'll fix them. And I'm sure I can find someone who can do the mistakes and fix them too. So bring this here because I feel like **[00:22:00]** a lot of the ego comes from it's not just like I can do it better than them. It's the satisfaction of the client saying like ar you helped me with the project or Jonathan helped me with a project and it was like giving praise to somebody other than like the person who's like skilled professional and I remember having like I started as a copywriter that was my first first first business I launched back in 2020 and like when I had to start like delegating and hire I hired a copywriter I was just like there was a little bit of that ego of just like they're saying that he's doing it better than me and or not better. It's just like they didn't recognize me. And there was that ego resistance that I had to face of like I'm not growing because of my ego. And like once I checked it, it was like okay, the business is the business. And that's where a lot of people I see resistance. It's like the praise is not now direct, it's indirect. And it doesn't really sit well with many people. That's a good point. So not always about the skill, but the acknowledgement. Ah, I was I was just having so we recorded another episode today with Rahul Karan um about leadership actually and we were we were how it's leadership is sometimes misinterpreted with just yeah you're in control or you tell them what to do where it's more of an empathetic listening to them and helping them overcome rather than just giving them instructions, right? And so at the end of the day, a leader should be very happy that one of their reports did so well or was recognized like you just said. So **[00:24:00]** if you're going to business owner, you have to be a good leader in that sense that you're thrilled that somebody said or gave praises to someone that that works with you, right? So that's a good point. I didn't uh didn't see it that way, but it's a good one. So, for the chef, for example, did they end up doing like courses to help other chefs or were they more in the they grew with content such that then they can have a business that then has multiple chefs that provides service. So, we're not yet they're not looking to do courses. They're looking to just hire under. So, they have the infrastructure to hire under. It's not like one specific. They've learned how to do like rotational hires where it's like people that they trust they can call them on. Um we're working into the content zone now. So this is like the first stage was he already has leads coming in because of different things like Thumbtac and Zola. So he had like lead generation coming but he didn't have a centralized system. So we we're building a CRM system is the first foundation. So it's like fully automated. So, when we do turn on the content and the ads, being that he already has lead generation coming in, it's just going to be a very streamlined process. Um, I've worked with him a couple of times to like do photo shoots and things. It's super fun. Um, but we're just dialing that up now. Sometimes a lot of people, they don't start with service businesses. And if you have a question, just let me know. But service businesses like plumbing and website design and personal chip, very easy to get leads because they're usually in **[00:26:00]** demand. Whereas like a lot of times in the digital marketing or the course space, it's like you kind of have to psych psychologically convince people like what they need, right? So having that like fast content strategy and those direct response ads very much help. Whereas like if you're a service business, you just have to go online, get on Thumbtac, get on like Google SEO, get ranked in the AI algorithm. It's not that hard. It just takes a little bit work. You're pretty pretty solid. We work with an accountant very similar. He wanted to go the content route and I was like, let's go SEO route first. Build the CRM. They build a baseline of about 250K in six month 12 months, excuse me. And once they hit that 250K, it's like, oh, now you have like disposable cash. Let's build like content, ads, etc. Oh, well that's also very helpful. So when you're talking with clients, sometimes recommend start contentwise plus ads. Sometimes if local business, maybe do local SEO strategies first because it's just the thing with local a lot of people don't realize especially people like in our space because we we're not in brick and mortar and we're not in local business. It's it's very easy to forget the instant rapport that just being a local business gives you because I can just go there. I can see the building. So at least I know they're not going anywhere some so soon that compared to like a a virtual digital product. Exactly. Okay, that makes sense. Local like what's the first thing that you do? You don't go on Instagram and type in like I need a plumber. It's like you go on Google and it's like if you are on if **[00:28:00]** you have Google reviews that's really helpful. If you're on Yelp, if you're on what's the other one that this is very similar to Yelp, I don't remember. Trust Pilot or No, Trust Pilot's a good one, too. But like the Yelps and the Google reviews, like those all help. Yeah, definitely. I I read them. So, whenever I'm looking for a service like that, I I'm always checking all the reviews to see and what they're talking with people because some some people leave wrong reviews, but the responses are important. Okay. Now you talk about communities in your content as well. How does a community fit into this whole space? Yeah. So if you're a digital creator who's looking to build courses, coaching programs, digital products, info products, getting on stages, etc. Community is a foundation to build trust, especially there's such a noisy market right now. And the whole idea is to find your people. So you could be right room wrong people. You could be wrong room right people. And you could be right people right room room. And the idea of community is breaking through the noise of the algorithm which is really like right person right and wrong room because there's just so many people that are consuming. Pulling them into a community. It's like an email list but accelerated because it's still social media. bring them in and nurture them through post, share wins because if they're in a community, they're going to get notifications. Whereas like if you post on the algorithm, your followers, one in every seven post, an active follower will see. So if you bring them into the community, you can nurture them with live events. We I've been doing lives for 5 years once a week. Doesn't matter **[00:30:00]** what community I'm in. I had women in entrepreneurship, I had digital marketing roundt, I just do weekly lives. is people come and they seek out the information. And if you don't go live, like last week I was in California, we had two people message us like, "Hey, is there a live this week?" Because they're actively following. And I'm a firm believer that long form content is the way to properly nurture true leads. Like just because someone follows you doesn't mean they're a lead. But if somebody comes into a community and they're consuming your content, they're a lead. And those people are going to consume. And the more that you show up, especially in like a very confident way, you're very clear of what you're saying, you're doing it consistently, it's going to build that trust and rapport. And from the get-go, don't tell anyone with everybody watching this. My first business online was in the mindset space. And in the first four months, I built a community. And actually in that pool, and I did the content on social media. I did the DMs that we're supposed to do as a content creator slash like creatorled business. The people that came into the community were faster to convert. And then when I launched my copywriting business, same thing. I had the following on TikTok. My first I think I had like 12,000 followers in the beginning cuz one of my videos went viral. I did not land 12,000 clients, but I started driving people into a community. And when I finally launched my first offer, I landed 58 people into a cohort. And it's like it's because of that community. They there was that trust. They saw us going live. They like the energy and **[00:32:00]** they were able to get to know you a little bit more. Plus communities like Facebook and school, there's access to DMs. And I know that there's Instagram, you could do DMs and stuff, but like once you're in this community, it's like here, welcome. Welcome to the community. Introduce yourself to the community. So you make people feel involved. And most people, especially postco, are just looking for a space. And I hate saying the C word. People hate that, but people are looking for community and involvement and a place to engage. And once they have that, if you're able to like hook in the right people, right audience, right room, you can convert them as long as you know what you're talking about. Fabulous. Yeah, definitely. I I let's touch on live in a bit because that's a big one that that I really like talking about. But communities, I see it very clearly. School, you mentioned for those who don't know, school is a fantastic platform. sk it was uh it's imagine what Facebook groups started out being where people would create a group for all sorts of things and have a little micro community and everyone would collaborate and talk and chat etc and they're great and they're communities for everything. I even know a lot of businesses that have these micro communities on Facebook. U but you again you're you're filtered by the algorithm at the end of the day. Facebook even if you're in a Facebook group then you are dependent on they're going to see it or not because of that platform. You don't own any of it. Now on school you can create a community and you can have people come into that community and they're there and they're captive in **[00:34:00]** the sense that you can send them an email broadcast. You can actually get their email. Um, you can have DMs like you were saying. You can have a calendar with events. You can have courses for them. It's just so wellmade for these micro communities. And what you were saying is spoton because I I'll give an example. I'm in a community like an automation community that Steven Pope made that really engaged community and everyone just loves it there and they're all talking and and but but something I noticed just out of I don't know it just happened if someone sends me a DM they're part of the community it's like sure you just start chatting with them because you feel you're sort of in this oh you're in this group too yeah okay cool and then you just and so um it It's a whole different experience. It's no longer a cold message. It's just like, oh yeah, you're a peer in this other thing that we're in together. And so that goes across here and LinkedIn even like someone just reached out to me on LinkedIn. They're like, oh yeah, I'm from this community. And you're like, yeah, of course. Yeah, let's chat. And so it it builds that on top of it, which is great for your members, but then like you were saying, it's great for you because then if you launch something, So live I well congratulations on going live every week. That's that's a big one. The I used to go live every day a few years ago for we did it for I don't know like 160 days or something. Uh but it was through Facebook Live originally. And the problem back then was that like you were saying only **[00:36:00]** a specific part of your audience will see it and it's a declining percent. It doesn't necessarily go up. However, nowadays the algorithms are changing due in part by Tik Tok and love it or hate it, their algorithm is really good. And so what happens there if you go live there then all the time people are just coming in. random people are just spinning through and some stay, some go, but they're there and like you were saying, you can just I mean you you can talk long form, but people are actually there and so you can spark a conversation in real time. Yeah. Do you do lives on like do you stream to multiple platforms at the same time or do you have a specific one that you really like to work with? Yeah. So, we typically focus on our Facebook group solely and then we repurpose it to YouTube. Um, we used to go live on Instagram and Tik Tok. Tik Tok was my platform that really launched back when I had my first business, which was not mindset, my first copyrightiting business. Um, and there's a reason that I moved away from the platform, but I would go live twice a week on that for over an hour. And I would just sit there and like I would record my live events just very similar to this, just talking back and forth with my business partner. We had digital marketing round table as I mentioned and women in entrepreneurship and people loved it. We lended so many clients from it like in one year not to be I'm very transparent about like money like we made $650,000 just from Tik Tok in one year and that was with like we posted three to five **[00:38:00]** times a day and we went live twice a week and that's like what it took to like really get into the algorithm swing. Granted, we were spoiled because it was the COVID boom of like 2020 to 2022 where people were home, they were consuming. Times have changed. I'm not on the platform. I don't want to speak for the platform anymore, but what you're saying does work. Like people are constantly rolling in. People that know you are going to engage with you. It's it's such a great platform to go live, at least back then, but now we're focused solely on building YouTube and Facebook groups is always just a staple because it's like they know who we are already. We drive ads into our Facebook group. We drive organic into our Facebook group. We filter our Facebook group so it's only active people. So it's like an email list on steroids. Yes. And okay, let's talk about Facebook specifically because many people recently I've heard a bunch of times that they they hear Facebook for ads or for whatever as a business owner and like do people still use Facebook and is it is it only this is a funny one. it's only older people or it's only like moms and ads or whatever. But then but I mean who do you think is buy who do you think has the money right now? So it's a it's a funny one. But this is how I see Facebook is every generation is tapped into it because Meta owns both Facebook and Instagram or Meta is now Meta and Instagram. So, in terms of ads, like we run all Facebook ads both on Instagram platform and Meta and I I've gotten corrected many times. It's Meta, but **[00:40:00]** Facebook will always be in my heart, of course. Um, but there are certain brands where it's like, okay, don't build a Facebook group. Two ways to go about it. My sister's a musician, Instagram and Discord. Discord is big amongst her generation. She's 23 years old. Anywhere from the ages of like 16 to 23, they're really big into Discord. They're not going to be hanging around in Facebook groups. That's just what it is. But school was new. It was juicy. A lot of people fell into it because it was a new platform and the user face was very friendly and easy to use. So that generation also taps into school. So if you are in the younger world, Tik Tok, Instagram, and school are a good trifecta to use and you could do it through the meta platform. Nice. And then for for everything else, you've got practically the meta platform covers it for for many businesses because they've got all these properties. Um, do you think any of the other like someone is in well visual I would say businesses. Do platforms like Pinterest for example still carry some weight in some types of businesses? I'm sure they do. I will never speak on something that I don't use. I've never mastered platforms like Pinterest. Um YouTube definitely if they're visual like long form content, easy way to grow with ads on YouTube. Um I don't want to speak on something like Pinterest though that I've never utilized. I I'm terrible at Pinterest. I would not speak of it either. I I'm sure it works in some cases, but myself I've never understood the platform because I don't use it. So I know where you're coming from. I'm not a visual. Like I can't do **[00:42:00]** like graphics or copyriter. Yeah. Well, copywriting is a fantastic ability to have. That's like a golden ticket in some scenarios if you use it wisely, of course. But it is it is I I love the art form of copyrightiting it because it is an art form. That's like what I tell everybody to master. I was just talking about this this morning. I love the uh what is it? Synchronicity between the two. Um, copywriting is the best thing that you can master. I don't care if you're doing video content, if you're doing ads, if you're doing written style content. Everything in business from marketing to sales for one, it's one unit. You cannot look at marketing and sales as two different units inside of business. And even client fulfillment, the entire process is just getting somebody to take the next step that you want them to take. And that's all foundational copywriting. That's moving somebody from Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, whatever post it is that you're posting to the next phase. You're not trying to sell your product and service from this awareness phase. You're just trying to sell them into the community onto your email list to consume your video sales letter, etc. From that space, you're trying to move them to maybe a sales call or a product page or whatever it is that even on a sales call, you're only trying to make them see the next step of like I am your your solution. And I think that's the foundation that a lot of people miss in terms of copy. They think of copy and they just think of like posting content on social media, but copywriting is like a string of just like small micro yeses until you get to the incentive **[00:44:00]** of the the big yes that you're looking for. That is powerful. I think we should drill down on that a little bit. You mentioned earlier about obviously ads being a faster way compared to content. Typically there's always virality. But if it's just a typical scenario, I want to do content only. It'll take a while. Ads can accelerate it. We talked about that. But a call that is not going to work anyway, right? And so is it? Well, it can, but just the percentage is very So yeah, but what you're I now an ad that's a call that but that is contentbased or with a content strategy within it that has good copy that takes you to that very easy next step that is not a sale but rather get them into a group, get them into the webinar, get them into the right and then from there maybe you have retargeting that gets them to the next tip and then etc etc Right. So, how does someone just for someone who has no experience in this? I I can see wheels spinning in some people's mind saying, "Okay, so you tell me, not you, but in general, like, oh, I shouldn't just sell from my ad because it's going to be really expensive." But then, but copy content is going to be slow. So what's that middle ground to like can I run an ad campaign that is fast in getting me that booked appointment but using the right strategies. Yeah. I just want a lot of people are scared of ads and this is what I tell my clients that want to push into paid ads and only see it as a cost. Ads are an investment and a definite ROI or an ROAS. **[00:46:00]** So, a lot of people they approach ads like, "I don't want to spend $2,000." Three. I'm a firm believer that if you're doing VSSL, video salesletter ads to book a call and your incentive is to close a deal from ads, you should have at least a $3,000 budget to test. If you're looking to just like build a community, you could do it with $1,000 a month. So, it really depends on the strategy. And the mindset shift before going into ads number one is it's an investment because you're buying data. So, you could either invest your time via organic content to quote unquote buy data, and time is still a cost, especially in business, or you could invest a little bit of money and get the same amount of data in an accelerated amount of time. And it really just depends. Like, if you don't have money, of course, you're going to value money more. Personally, like I have very slim time at this point in my life. Ads just tell the story faster. And I rather spend a little because at this point, we'll know it's going to be an ROI. If you have an offer that you truly can like it's already proven or a process that's already proven to get a result, I would say go into ads, buy the data and simple tweaks, but don't buy ads unless you or buy ads. Don't get into ads until you have a proper system. And a system is not hard to build, but there are numbers that you need to track. And until you learn the numbers, do not turn on ads. That's very valuable because then it's just money down the drain because you're not getting the data. You're just spraying it out **[00:48:00]** there and see if it catches. Yeah. And uh I don't want to go over I don't know your audience very well, but I do know mine. Um there's five elements that you must look at for ads. Like a lot of people look at impressions and they look at reach and they look at all like the vanity metrics. The numbers that matter in ads, especially if you're looking to close a deal from ads, it's cost per lead, cost per show, so there's like no shows. Obviously, people will book calls, cost per show, and your show up rate, cost acquisition, cost per um cost per qualified lead. So, I know there's lead, there's qualified lead, there's cost per call, cost per qualified call, and cost per acquisition. And if you are able to track those numbers, which is not that hard, like anyone in your audience who wants to run ads and wants a tracking sheet, we built one. I'll give it away for free. Those are the numbers. And when you learn how to read the numbers and you know what you're looking for, that's when you can run ads. It's not a complex system, but it is a very strategic way of looking at the numbers. That makes sense. And I I appreciate the the sheet. Yeah, I think some some people might hit you up on that because it is um it is so valuable because also these a lot of these platforms give you some stats and like you say the first front and center stats are the vanity metrics, the reach, right? And and so you're yeah well I reached this this amount of people but but did you but did they buy? Did they buy? Did they register? Did they did **[00:50:00]** they show up? Right. They're so and and the whole system tracking, but then also seeing where they drop off is really important, right? Because they might go to the VSSL, they might even register for the call now. Are they coming to the call? Are they opening the email? If they came to the call, were they did they watch the video? Do they know who you are? All that, right? So, if you don't know where they're dropping off, you don't know what to fix. Yeah. And that's where a lot of people are just like, "Oh, ads don't work." But they don't know why they don't work. And it's like a very I love this. Like it's a process. And a lot of people don't see ads as a process. They see it as a solution. But the thing is is like everything works. I don't care if you're doing outbound calling, if you're doing direct mail, if you're doing Facebook ads, or you're doing organic content. It's the strategy always works. there's something broken in the process if it's not working. And I feel like a lot of people are just like, "Oh, ads don't work." Because like their landing page is not converting. I had a client who she was like driving leads and she was like, "Adds don't work." I was like, "Let's look at your landing page." And it was like a 1% opt-in. Yeah, ads don't work cuz your opt-in page doesn't work. It's like that was the first bottleneck. Then I had another client of like, "Oh, ads don't work." And then we looked at the numbers. It was like, "We're getting calls on the calendar for $125. Anything below 250 is like in KPI. You took 35 calls and you **[00:52:00]** closed none of them. Like sales is the problem. It's not the ads. So, it's like that's why it's so important to track the numbers because you get to see the bottleneck. How to fix that solution. You suck at sales. Let's replace you on the lines. Your landing page is not like working. Let's use a different landing page structure. Maybe your audience will increase. In one week, we were able to increase her conversion rate to 20%. It was 19.7 just by That's a good percentage. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, from like, you know, 1% having somebody do it themselves versus like us looking at it and tweaking it in one week, that was pretty decent. And it was like 125 leads coming into the ecosystem. So, it's just simple tweaks. And if you look at it as just like not a process and just a solution. Same thing with like you know the investment of time versus the investment of money. It's just the way you think about things like everything will always return as long as you continue going and continue optimizing. But that's where that again the ego has to check out and you have to be more data driven than emotional driven inside of business. I love that there's uh we mentioned that this morning also which is the any investment you make even in a coaching or other scenario and we can go into that as well. um it might be a very good investment and I've seen some of your experiences. It might be a very bad investment in the scenario but at the end of the day it's not a bad investment because you learned what not to do right you learned what was not the best practice or at **[00:54:00]** least you learned what you don't like but it it's never a waste. Yeah. What is but I've invested in a coach my first coaching investment and they ghosted me. So, but other than I learned my lesson. Don't go with somebody who doesn't have an established business. Right. Right. But I I imagine you then had different experiences. Yes. That worked out nicely. Yeah. And I think that's a problem in the whole coaching space because uh the industry gets gets burned because of people doing money grabs. And so you then really really really like someone because you're following their content and everything and even then you're like I mean I know they're going to help me but then you've you've either been burned before or have heard so many things that you're wary about it. But I think a great I heard this recently uh I think it was Alex or again he said if you get burned once then yeah you got burned but if you then don't buy from the person who really will actually change and help you for the better then that original burn has cost you twice right because it I mean because you're not going to get better just by not doing it and and you're giving it more value. So yeah, I want to just say this of a lot of people they're scared to invest in coaching and they want to do it themselves. I had this is bad. I had like $3,000 to my name. Actually, I had $6,000 to my name when I first graduated college and that was my first investment in myself was to Sam Ovens Consulting Accelerator and it was one of the best investments I ever made up until that point in my **[00:56:00]** life. still probably to this day, just based on the mindset and how I follow and see business, I attribute a lot to him, I did not make more than $15,000 in my business before I invested another $18,000 into myself. And like I didn't really have the money. I put it on credit. I took out a business card, etc. But the thing is with that is at this point I've invested over $200,000. It always comes back to seven to 10fold whatever I invest. And the thing is it's like you cannot rely on the the coaching program or the coach to teach you everything. Take the small bits and pieces that you need from the program because there's some there's a reason that there's very successful coaches and people out there, right? Don't invest in like the person that doesn't have case studies and testimonials. If you are to invest in someone like that, make sure they're doing done for you work rather than coaching. If they haven't achieved it yourself themselves, don't listen to them. Anyone who's promising you fast results and aren't teaching you the long-term mindset of a sustainable business, don't invest in. And I think that was something in the very beginning I was looking for those fast results. So, I had that shiny object who invest and invest. But business is a long-term game. It's a marathon. It's not a sprint. And those people who are like, "Oh, like scale to you can do it. Trust me, I I did it. Go to zero to 10K in like 30 days." But the thing is, it's not sustainable. And if they're only teaching you the tactic to get there and not the tactic to stay there, they're not a very good coach. And **[00:58:00]** you have to think about everything is longterm. And there's going to be es and flows of like you scale to 10K, you have to consolidate. You scale to 50K a month, you have to consolidate. You scale to 100K. It's like different levels of the game. And it's not just going to be an upward trajectory. It's going to be like we hit 30K and we had to consolidate and then we hit 60K and then we had to consolidate because each level has to have like that infrastructure of a new foundation. It's not going to just be the same foundation that you started with. That's a golden uh anyone who's listening that is very valuable because you think of it, you're projecting and you're like, "Oh yeah, of course we're just going up." But that's not true because now this means at this level now you need more cost associated with the delivery of whatever you're doing and then it goes up and now this might might be even more so you might dip down to that original level even though the income is higher the the right so that's that's a very big one I love that there's there's a there's many misconceptions in in running a business. And that's why I like doing this show just to get people another view from other people that have done things. And that's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on. There's many people think of like online training or things that yeah, I might do some money. I might do a little bit, but but the numbers that you've been you've done well and it's just getting rid of those limiting beliefs of I can only do this much with my talent or with my **[01:00:00]** experience because I mean like you just said, you can get to a very big number, a reasonable number relatively quickly if you put in the work. But before doing that, just realize what it's going to take to get you there and whether it's sustainable. And there's something I love that you posted that I actually have here and you wrote I think about a month like starting the year um that you I don't know you were at I'm going to paraphrase but you were at a certain point where you're going to still share the tactics and strategies and everything you know but now you've got this other whole knowledge base of as a business owner the different things to look at. And so now you're going to be sharing stuff like that. And I and I thought that was really good because I would just saw another person recently on on Twitter. Now they disappeared, of course, that they were doing this program and they were just saying like, "Yeah, and then we're going to get to a $100,000 month and then when we get there, we're going to close the program. No one else is going to come in and it's just going to be this group that's going to be." And I was just there thinking, what are is there no churn? Like what are you think everyone's just going to stay there and love it forever? If you do that, then you're setting up yourself for flavor. First, you're you're not sharing your content, which is a little uh but but also, I mean, it's not going to stay there. Like you said, you have to do a sustainable model that keeps bringing more in and then servicing whatever you're doing, right? Mhm. **[01:02:00]** That's that's great. So, what is uh what is it that you love the most about what you're doing now? Is it the delivery of the actual service to your clients? I people some people like like the copyrightiting in your case. Is it seeing the results or generating the content? What what is what part of it do you really enjoy most? Yeah. So, it's definitely client resultbased is a very big satisfaction. Like we have clients that hit 100k months and it was like, you know, it was a one of our clients was a construction worker and like he lives in Montana and he had he lived in a trailer park and he hit his first $100,000 month and it was just so like astronomical to not see the result like money in the bank but more so the personal development of the people of what they go through and like I used to be where I worked with a lot of clients in a oneto many kind of fashion but now I get to work with like very driven people very tight-knit and the community that I fostered and the person that like this is a selfish like the community that I've fostered and the people that I'm surrounding myself with and the person that I have become and still am becoming every single day and week. The rooms that I'm in, the mindset that I have been able to expand beyond what I ever thought possible and being able to share that with the masses. It's like I could only help so many people in like a container of like my time gets the result for XYZ or my business partner's time or my team's time. Like we don't want to be a mass burn **[01:04:00]** and churn business. We're scaling lean. Like we have a small team. We have companies that do very well. We have revshare. Like that's how I built my business. So now like the business mindset can be shared to the masses. So I think that's like a couple years ago I almost passed out giving a like a talk in college like because I was so nervous to get on stage and at this point it's like I want to aim like we hosted our own live event last last year and I was invited to do stage talks. It's just the person that I'm always becoming to know that I could impact and give back to more people. I think that's the most beautiful journey about business is it becomes like a selfish endeavor becomes a selfless endeavor if you do it correctly. You have money to give back. You have time and knowledge and expertise to give back and it's not like direct because like I do this so you get result. It's this is what I've learned. I don't even need to see the results that are being generated because of what I'm sharing. And I think it's like such a beautiful thing that for one, I'm grateful people will listen, but two, it's just like you become a person that you never thought you could even become. And it's always that state of becoming into another level that you never even imagined. I don't know if that makes sense, but I think that's beautiful. It's that's that's how it should be in my opinion. And I and I really thank you for sharing that, Nina. Thank you so much for coming on the show, for sharing your insights. I think a lot of people will have **[01:06:00]** their their wheels spinning thinking what they can do and if they do where can they reach you how can they learn more about these strategies and also about the mindset of the whole thing where they where can they find you? Yeah. So I'm not big on Instagram but that is the best way to reach out if you do want to message me on Instagram. It's Nina Brennan and it's its nina Brennan my full name. Um, that's the best way to get in contact with me one-on-one if you want to message via DM. Um, you could also follow me on YouTube. I do weekly videos or you could join our and it's also it's Nina Brennan on YouTube. Or you can follow me on Facebook. Um, just type in my name, we could become friends and I'll invite you to our Facebook group. Awesome. Excellent. And I'll post those links in the show notes so people can find you. Again, thank you so much, Nina, for joining me on the Web Talk Show today. and I hope we can talk again soon. Thank you for having me. I do