SETTING UP INTENTIONAL FUNNELS + PAID TRAFFIC FOR YOUR BUSINESS WITH TAYLOR RAE

Today I'm doing an interview for you with Taylor Rae. She's one of my dear friends and we're going to talk to you guys all about funnels! I've not met anybody as cool as Tay who actually loves funnels and I know you're going to love her energy.

But there's also a reason why Taylor is super special when it comes to this topic because Taylor's actually best known for all the teachings around manifestation and teaching to her thousands of students about using the law of attraction to live the life of your dreams. And it's such a really special combination of the two. Have you ever met a funnels expert who's also all about spirituality? Well now you have!

Get strapped in, this is going to be so perfect for you if you're ready to grow your business through ads, opt-ins, nurture sequences while still being super intentional in the process.

So, welcome Taylor!

That was amazing! Literally like the best intro ever. I love it.

I know! I'm literally so excited because you and I are really great friends and you can always feel the dynamic as the audience when people know each other really well, don't you think? And it just ends up being such a great connected interview and we nerd out on this stuff anyway on our calls so we may as well do an interview about it too!

-> PS. I was also on Taylor's podcast. I'm going to leave the link below if you want to go and check out that one which we recorded in December, I think it was at Christmas. So go and have a listen to that one as well.

But straight off the bat, can you explain us Tay - what is a funnel? If we're just like brand new to this concept, we may have sort of heard it here and that sounds super scary. How would you describe it to someone who's really, really brand new to this topic?

Yeah, love this. Such a good place to start and I think it's important as well because even if you have heard of it before, maybe you have a yucky energy around it and being like, 'Ooh, like scammy or spammy or like ichy sales' and that's totally fair enough if you have that belief. I'm first to say that I understand that. I definitely had that certain points in my career as well where it was like, 'Oh, what is it? I don't really understand it!' and that can feel a little bit scary.

But ultimately the most important thing to me is seeing funnels as sacred and seeing them as being of service.

So ultimately allowing you to serve your clients and your customers no matter what stage of the journey that they are at and helping them to progress through their journey and through your value ladder.

So when we have a funnel, there's so many different types of funnels and we can go through what different types there are and how they can serve you inside of your business.

So for example, maybe someone's opting into something and then a funnel for them is to nurture them through getting to know you better, so taking them from being a cold lead and someone who has no idea who you are.

They've literally just stumbled across you, love your vibe and they want to opt in for whatever it is that you have. Then taking them through the journey from being cold and to having like and trust. First off, they just know you, they're cold and you want to take them through a journey that helps them to get to know you a little bit better. Then they start to like you, so they become more of a warm lead and to the point that they trust you and they become a hot lead and they want to invest with you.

There's different levels with funnels and things like that and I'm sure that we'll get into it, but that's like an overarching thing to understand what it is.

You're taking someone through a journey and you're giving them an opportunity to invest in you in order to expand themselves, in order to make some sort of transformation on whatever level of thing that it is that you help them with. That's the important thing that I want people to realize is sales funnels aren't dirty.

Sales funnels aren't sneaky. It's not scammy. It's literally being of service because the person who has opted into your funnel, they need you. That's why they're there. They're literally looking for you and the thing that you offer, so it's a disservice not to offer the things that you have.

Oh my gosh, I got goosebumps. I've never heard anyone talk about funnels as a service and a way to extend your message out to the world the way that you've explained it, which is why honestly, the way you talk about setting funnels up is so unique. I'm just so excited you're here and sharing this with the Own Your Hustle audience. But do you believe that everybody should be setting up funnels in their business and if so, at what point do we set that up? It's always a bit of a dance of - do you do it super early on when you don't have an audience or do you need one before you can start to really build that out?

This is such a good question. You're coming with all the fire and I love it cause this is all the stuff I just want to like debunk and break.

Ultimately I think that it's really important that you validate the services that you offer prior to building out these elaborate funnels. Right. And what I mean by that is making sure that you own your fucking stripes. You need to know that what it is that you do is getting someone a result and is providing some sort of transformation service. You want to know that what it is that you do is fucking killing it and you're doing a good job in providing for your people.

So I'm first to say - when I started, did I build out funnels? No. I did my due diligence.

I literally went out there, I got on free calls, I was making sure I was helping people with their transformations. I was listening to the pain points of my ideal client. I was hearing them and then I was crafting my services around that and what it is that they needed. And then I was getting people in and I did start with really low price points and things that and got people in and did beta testing and all that sort of stuff and scaled it up over time.

If you're going to create a course, you're not going to create a whole course and spend six months building out a funnel and sitting there and hiding. No, get out there, take messy action. It can get really easy.

This is what I don't want people to do - is to like feel like they have to have all the systems and all of the funnels before they can be getting their offers out there. No, not at all! Funnels are literally like a second step.

So get your offers out there, have all the things, create your services, know what your value letter and your product suite actually look like i.e. have an idea of the different stages for your clients and different price points. Maybe you have a freebie, maybe you have a low level offer, a mid level offer and a high level offer. Do you have to have all of them off the bat? No, you don't. You can pick wherever you want to start. Some people love going high ticket to start off with in order to have that income coming in. Amazing. Some people want to go low and start there and serve a lot of people and then become more specific and more limited and build out to the high ticket.

There's no right or wrong and that's the really important thing to realize. People will tell you those are right or wrong. That is wrong. Everything works perfectly. You've got to pick what feels good to you and go, okay, cool.

If you start off with a mid level offer and a freebie that's two stages of your value letter right now, focus on that. Get that right and then build out the other thing. Maybe the next thing for you is a high ticket offer. Progress people who have been at that mid-level offer and they want to take that next step with you. So okay, higher ticket, maybe a bit more exclusivity, maybe it's a group intimate mastermind program, something like that. So that's the next thing and then you can create the low-level thing and then you can create the funnels that lead and link them all together.

What's really important is that we don't rush in and go, okay, I've got to have all of these things like systems and all this stuff set up before I can get my stuff out there. Again, no. Just get your stuff out there and then spend the time building out the systems that support you.

The only thing that I would add to that is, I will say this from the outset and this is something that I've done from day dot in my business is - build your email list. More than anything. Make sure that you are doing the lead generation things from the beginning. So that comes with creating something that is for free, set up the landing page and have it literally evergreen working for you. You don't have to have a whole big fancy funnel off the back of it, but you can have something that is generating those leads so that when you do have the funnel, going through a value ladder, you've got a beautiful journey for your customers to go through.

The very first funnel I set up was a checklist. This is going back two years ago and it was 'Find your personal brand on LinkedIn' and it was something I designed in Canva. I made it a PDF and basically said, 'If you want this, please email me and I'll email you back'. So basic bitch stuff. Like I'm not even kidding. That is how I started. I did not even have a landing page, nor did I even know I was building the start of a funnel and being able to tag people who were interested in LinkedIn and personal branding. But that's what you're talking about. It can be so easy. If I were to go back to my past self, I'd be like, 'Girlfriend, you did it! At least you started and you did something'. And as you said, grow the email list.

Yes! It doesn't have to be fancy to get these things started guys!

So true. And it's not actually until the last two to three months that I've decided to really invest into the business with hiring someone to help me build out my funnels. So we're talking two years into going all in. I mean, everyone's got a different amount of time, but it took me two years to actually go, you know what? I'm ready to invest some serious funds into it now. And to get a little bit more mature with the way that I'm building out my funnels. So it doesn't necessarily need to happen straight away and it doesn't have to happen in two years. It can happen when you feel ready for that to happen.

But a question I have, so your mega spiritual. I really was drawn to you for how you talk about the law of attraction and the way that you share your manifestation stories and your beliefs and your philosophies and weave that into helping people build bad-ass businesses. I don't think I've ever seen anyone do what you do, especially now. And I still remember we were having a glass of wine on Chapel Street in Melbourne and you said to me, 'I'm so ready to just build out these funnels, do it in a way that is so intentional and so infused with spirituality'. So how do you do this in your business? And also how do you do this for your clients as well? How does that look? Take us on the inside. How does that look with spirituality and funnels together?

So it's the intention behind it. That's everything, right? So this comes back to what I was saying before. Sometimes people have this belief about sales funnels and all that sort of stuff and selling in general being yuck and it's like I said - You've got to realize this is helping you to reach the people that need you. So how can you get intentional behind what it is that you are doing?

Chances are, if you're reading this, I know that you're someone that's ready to change the world. You are literally someone that has this huge message or this impact or this service or this product, whatever it is that you do. The world needs your light. And I'm just such a big believer and I think it's so important to highlight this in setting up a business that supports you and supports you reaching the people that need you. And that's the energy that we want to bring to it when we are setting up these systems. It's not from a me focused perspective, it's them focused. Them being your audience. They need you. And so you setting up systems, that is spiritual because that is in alignment. That is high vibe because you know that you need to get your messages out there. It doesn't serve you and it doesn't serve your audience if you're making it hard and feeling like you have to launch your face off and if you feel like if you're not doing that nobody's hearing about you?

Set the things up that help people to hear about you even when you're sleeping. Like that's amazing. Set your intention behind it, take messy action, get out there and do what Ruby and I did to start with where you even just get people to send direct messages to get email addresses if need be. Do all of that but also realize that setting up funnels and stuff like that (especially if you are doing it by yourself and you don't necessarily have the team doing it for you) while you can do the other things does take a big energy import and time.

It takes time to build these things out and this is where we do see a lot of the belief is that it feels easier to launch quiet, launch, quiet, launch quiet because it's easy to just get out there and launch. And when you launch it has got an instant return on investment ... instantly you put your energy out there and instantly people are enrolling sometimes - this happens has happened for me and it's happening for me right now.

Whereas I'm building out a funnel right now and it's not doing anything, nobody knows about it, it's all just happening in the backend. It's not an instant return on investment - it's going to take time and it's going to take energy. But here's the spiritual piece of it -everything is an energy exchange right? So you put your services out there, the money that you receive is the energy exchange. Sometimes people go, 'Okay, but if I have a funnel and it's evergreen and it's running for me all the time, how is that an equal energy exchange? I'm not doing anything for that?'. The answer is that your energy is infused and recorded in that evergreen piece of content from the beginning. The amount of time, the energy that goes into building that, to creating the course, to recording the videos, to writing the welcome sequence to literally having all of the nurture emails, all of the things, building the copy on the landing page ... your energy is in every single step of that! And that might mean that it is a week, two week, three week, four week or six week process to actually building out this entire system.

That then gets to bring in evergreen sales and money coming into you through your business because you put such a huge energy out in the beginning. So that's the spiritual piece of it. You put so much up at the front for no initial return and then those little things continuously trickle back to you over time. So that's where the energy exchanges.

I love that. You're taking me back to me building out one of my funnels, which is still running and it's super successful and it brings in maybe like $500 a week. You wouldn't laugh at that. It just does it's thing! And I remember sitting down, bit of a winery theme here, but I had like a glass of wine and I was writing out all of my nurture sequences and all of my emails and, I don't know about you, but when you're really in that zone of thinking about what someone is going to receive when they read those emails, rather than just like bashing out an email formula, it's so different. It feels beautiful. Like I can't wait for people to read my nurture sequence and to get into that customer journey and to feel really nurtured through it! I mean it's called a nurture sequence so why the fuck do we always just put like these horrible blueprint type formulas to the way that we write emails?

Just write from the heart, you know, write from that place and I think it's so beautiful the way that you talk about it. So thank you for sharing that!

Now, some of my clients have really struggled with balancing calling in the right clients organically and feeling guilty about doing the ads because they're scared it'll fuck up the energy of believing your people will come to you. What are your thoughts about this? Have you ever faced this? Have you struggled with it? Have you had clients talk to you about this - where they're feeling scared and confused and weird about balancing manifesting and also putting ads out there?

Okay, the guys, let me lay it out for you. This is important. It is not out of alignment. It's not not spiritual. If you're putting money out there, you're investing, it's energy again because you're literally getting yourself out there in front of the people. This is the thing with manifesting. Sometimes people get too caught up in the idea that it almost has to be a big fluke, like 'if it happens it happens'. And I'm like no!

When I first started my own business, all I taught was manifestation and my biggest thing with it (and this is why I really stood out in the manifesting world) was that everybody else was just talking about the law of attraction. That's only one half. Like the universe is one half, you are the other half. So you get to take action that supports what you are manifesting.

I preach on this all the time and I see it a lot where people are like 'just set the intention and see the number of clients and then that's it'. And I'm like, ah, excuse me. There's a whole other piece to this that is being missed. What about the actionable steps that actually help you get the clients? Get in front of the people - that is so important! You are speeding up the manifestation process! If you are doing things that support you calling in the people, that's good!

A lot of people are like, 'Oh I organically grew to this point in my career or I made this much money organically' and I'm like, good on you! That's terrific and I celebrate you for that BUT I do also know that the reason that they are saying a lot of that is because it appeals to an audience that doesn't have money for ad spend. Like it's marketing on that end. Like it's literally like, 'okay well I can help you guys cause you don't have the money for that'. But here's the thing ...

You do have money for ad spend because if you can afford a fucking coffee you can afford a $5 a day ad.

Boom. There it is!

So when I see people saying 'I did this all organically', I'm like well that was silly. Why aren't you reinvesting back into your business to reach more people? Like good on you for doing that organically but you could now go bigger. I'm not saying you have to do ads from the beginning, but when you are in a position to start investing back in your business, capitalize on that!

You know Gary Vaynerchuk talks about this all the time. If you knew what you knew now about the property market for example and you could go back 50 years ago to the investment property market of our parents or our grandparents, you could literally get like a house for $5,000. Do you reckon you might buy up a beachfront? Oh yeah, you fucking would. It was so cheap in comparison to what it is now.

That's what the ad landscape is. It is not capitalized on enough and the demand isn't there is not enough because of this belief that we're breaking through right now, so many people have it! They feel scared of ads and they don't know what to do or they think it's like sneaky and I'm like, no, it's not sneaky. You are literally taking a tool that is available to you to get in front of more people. Like why wouldn't you do that?

The ad cost for that property on social media is so low right now and it's only going to increase, increase, increase and increase. So if you're in a position right now to maybe forgo a coffee a day (and maybe invest in a fucking home coffee machine) and spend your $5 a day instead on a Facebook ad - that's going to grow your audience. It's going get people to opt in for your freebies, it's going to build your mailing list so you can nurture them through a sequence to then offer them your services and help them transform their fucking lives. So do it.

Michael and I are just learning how to do Facebook ads properly. And it is such a little minefield with all the things that you can say and that you can't say but, but it's really fun actually. So I recently did an opt in and there was an ad that was running to the freebie. You would have been so proud of me Tay. And if we did $25 a day for seven days and then brought that back once the freebie started, because it was a live freebie, and dropped it down to $10 a day. So the ad spend was super low and it resulted in 500 new people on my list.

The reach is incredible and so generous and you know, not all 500 will become paying clients and customers. Maybe some of them will. Hopefully they will. But it's such a beautiful way to continue to send your message out there, grow that reach and can you grow organically with 500 new people on your list in seven days? Maybe. But the ads were a beautiful booster to that. So this is it and like you said, $5 a day makes such a great difference.

I really want to ask you, what's the number one mistake you see with Facebook ads that attributes to someone thinking, 'Oh, ads just don't work for me'.

It's the fact that they don't know what the end goal is. Like they don't know what they're actually directing someone to. And this like literally links into not just ads but content in general. I say this to all my clients - What's actual end goal of you creating this piece of content?

Like you're making this, are you doing this just because?

And then it's just like crickets, or 'Ummmm ... no one's asked me that question like ever ... it just looked so pretty in Canva!'

Yes and it might be beautiful but what's the next step for your potential client? The internet is allowed place man. There is so much stuff in your face all the time, you can't expect someone to scroll, see your posts, be like that's pretty, double tap and then know the next step if you're not giving it to them. So tell them what to do next.

Do you want them to like again, do something, download a freebie, schedule a call with you, tag a friend. Like what do you want me to do? Right? What is the objective of the piece of content that you're creating?

And again, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, any ads, it's still content that you're creating. So what is the objective? What is the end point of it? Where are you directing them? Do you want to direct them straight back to your profile in order to grow your audience and have them become followers for you? You can definitely do that. Do you want them to register for maybe something that is live like a master class or a three day training or something like that? Do you want them to go to a sales page where they can purchase something from you?

Maybe it's not your highest end offer because again, guys think about it, if they're really a cold audience - it can happen, but it's not as easy I guess and it's not as common for someone to be like, 'Okay, I've never seen you in my life, here's $10,000'. They need to know you. So you know, often it's going to be something that is more of a low to mid sort of range and taking them to some sort of sales page.

With your ads and stuff, you can also literally target your warm audience, you can target people based off of your mailing list. Like you put your email list into your Facebook ads platform and target people based on their email address. They already know you, they're on your mailing list. So then your ad there in front of them being like, 'Hey, cart is closing.' So creating like a sense of urgency and they know so of course they're more primed to want to actually work with you. So that's an option for it.

Then obviously there's also the freebies that you just looking to build lead generation.

So I just break it down to three things. Is it lead generation, is it sales or is it awareness? Those are the three things you want to be thinking about in terms of what your objective is. Have that clear in your mind and then look at setting up the ads and deciding what your budget is.

So good. So lead gen, sales or awareness. Quick question there. I've heard a common thought in the industry that Facebook ads should not directly lead to a sale because it's less successful. Do you believe that? Would you say to most of your clients, let's stick to awareness and lead gen? Or is it just like up for grabs depending on their strategy?

I love a low ticket and tripwire sort of thing.

So if you're putting an ad out there, like I said, you don't want to be like, 'Hey my name's Ruby and here's my $10,000 package'. People would be like, 'What? I don't know who you are', but if you instead you say 'Hi, my name is Ruby and here's this bundle that I have and here's all of the value that's inside of it. If you total up everything that's inside it, it's worth (let's say) $500 but because you've found this page, it's $27!'

The thing with this, if you're going to set up an ad that's going to run to something that is a sale, you want it to be a no brainer. So it's literally like 'Holy shit, I can't believe this is so good. I'm so excited that I stumbled across this!'.

It needs to solve a particular pain and give an actual solution. So not like the fluffy marketing words of like you'll get to your next level - like next level in what? This needs to be a proper pain point that somebody has and give the solution for it. And really over delivers on it so that if someone reads through it, they go, 'Holy shit, there's so much in this, this is exactly what I need and it's $27 because I'm on this page right now. Like I get this for 27 bucks, like fucking great! I'm so excited about this!'

Often with that sort of stuff, and this is totally your choice, whichever way you want to go with it - but with me when I have my low tickets or my low ticket on my trip wire, I put a 100% money back guarantee on it. I believe in it that much. I over-delivered that much. And I've never had somebody come back and say I want my money back for like the low ticket stuff. Never. Because that's what happens when you over deliver. It's a pillar in my business and core value for me to have things be value driven.

So I put the 100% money back guarantee in place and say - if you do this and you go through it in 30 days and don't like it, keep it and I'll give you $27 back. No worries. And it becomes a no brainer for someone.

And then of course at the back of that you can do an upsell.

So this is the one thing that I will say with the sales piece, direct to something that's like $7 to $27. You're not don't doing this to sky rocket your profits. It's still an awareness piece that's leading people towards what will later be your higher ticket, your mid and your higher level offers. That's going to come from if you do an upsell literally right off the bat or you do it over time through emails and actually launching the things that you're launching anyway. But you then have that exposure and those people are qualified buyers. Then they've said to 'I'm someone that wants to invest in myself'. So they are someone that likely is going to be interested in something later on down the track as well.

This is like opening up so many more questions that I could go so much deeper in. But I know that you have a way that we can work with you. I know that you've got some incredible How-to's that are coming up that we were talking about before we jumped into this interview, but how can we work with you? If we wanted to find out more or if someone's listening going, 'Oh my God, I need to get in touch with Taylor right now'.

Please just send me a message! I really want to give you guys, you hustlers, a little lead generation bundle as well. I'm just going to gift it to you. It basically breaks down different ways to create lead generating titles and whatever you want them to be. So if it's a freebie that you want to create, giving you the structure to just build out the freebies and then I'm also going to give you guys some swipe files.

What we were talking about before where it's like, the templates for emails and stuff like that, I'm with you. Fuck the things that are like so none of your personality and, the way I'm speaking to you on this right now is how I email. I swear my email and I've had all sorts of shit go down to my emails because I show up as myself and if people don't like it, no worries - 'you're not for me and move along. I'll make room for someone else'. So inject your personality and do not be a carbon copy. Do not think that because you're in business, you have to have these corporate, very prestigious emails with very formal writing, where no one likes it. It gets to be you talking to your best friend. That's really important to me.

I also I come from a big sales background as well. I've done so much sales in my time. Prior to having my own business, I did a lot of copywriting and in journalism, like all this sort of stuff, so language, copywriting, all that sort of stuff - I love it.

I'm the same as you when I write a nurture sequence, I've bawled my eyes out writing nurture sequences before because I'm so emotional about the pain point of a person because I remember that they are a before version of me.

So I've put together a welcome sequence that has everything structured out, but you get to put your bits in. It's literally a swipe file, it's super easy to follow, you can just put your story in and it will be you. I just want to give that to you guys as well so you can get home.

My gosh. Call her Oprah. Take this and take this ... this is amazing!

You get a swipe file and you get a swipe file! So you can get that here. And then please come hang with me and send me a direct message on Instagram here. Tell me that you came from this interview and honestly, Instagram is the best place you can find me or on Facebook. But seriously guys, I'm so down to just help anybody that is ready to change the fucking world. So I would love to connect with you.

Thank you so much babe, this was so informative and so much value. And I know how many people are going to be like, 'Alright, I need to sketch out this funnel now and download those opt-ins in the swipe files'. So thank you for your generosity, for your time, for your energy. I love you so much, girlfriend, and we'll need to do another interview soon so we can go a level deeper, like a part two or something.

Yes. Oh my gosh. So down. I love you. Thank you so much for holding so much space and you're just incredible. I so appreciate you. Thank you!

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