Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro-niche. So you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host, his membership sites serve hundreds of people from a micro-niche that is smaller than 5,000 people worldwide, Ziv Raviv.

Zivi:

Hello, and welcome Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. Today, I have the pleasure to interview Evelyn. Evelyn has a vast experience in creating funnels and helping businesses grow through paid advertisement on Facebook. She has 10 years of experience and have created a turnover of $30 million for her clients. And she eat the process of being really good in understanding funnels and ads and advertisement on Facebook. She has started her own business and have went through an entire roller coaster going from making $500,000 a year down to doing 50 and going up all the way to 150 and keep changing and trying to find your own micro niche. Evelyn Weiss thank you so much for being here. Hi, how are you?

Evelyn:

I’m good. It’s a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Zivi:

So first, before we start talking about your journey, I just want to say, I noticed your expertise on funnels on Facebook ads, but just, you know, consuming some of your YouTube channel content and looking through like your posts on Facebook groups that I was a part of, and it was just an immediate click, another standing for my sided, man, Evelyn figured that out funnels. She really knows her thing. And it was because of your own knowledge that we’ve started to create like a self-liquidating offer that was making us now he’s already profitable. It’s really amazing how, how knowledgeable you are with funnels and the 30 million turnover is mind blowing. Tell me a little bit about, what’s your point of view with like, how do you look back into your own journey and the topic of niching down?

Evelyn:

I think niching down is so interesting because in the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey, I couldn’t become an entrepreneur. I was studying marketing and one of my professors asked me if I can help him out at that time, SEO and Facebook Ads. I was on the side of the study. So I would study on the weekend working full-time for a jewelry company that had an online shop and I would teach everything myself. So I was completely in on the marketing. I had two amazing pulses, they were twins and they just gave me the chance to learn these things. And yeah, when I was studying, I realized that there’s a lot of demand for this online marketing things for Facebook ads. It was kind of new. And because my former boss has allowed me to play with budget and to figure these things out, I somehow became an expert in that and yeah, got hired and then had to found a company to be able to invoice my clients.

And it turned into building backsides and basically being the online girl for everything and for everyone. So people even asked me how they can connect the printer to the computer. So it was like, this girl knows online tech kind of, and somehow she managed to get a sale. So we wouldn’t tire. And that was back like six years ago, nine, I would say it was still a little bit of a different world online. It was not as professionalized as it is these days. And also want to say my or my country of origin is Austria. So compared to the United States, I think we’re a bit behind when it comes to e-commerce and digital marketing, but it was good enough for that time. And somehow I never thought about niching. It was just, I was just doing for others, what I was already doing and while solving problems, I learned more and I just kept adding solutions to my repertoire of how I can help people.

Evelyn:

So this turned out to be marketing and yeah, consultancy for, I also did websites and all kinds of stuff. And then one day I got offered a share in a project at that time I was head of marketing and e-commerce for Austria’s biggest Stanford wholesaler. So I was also kind of climbing corporate ladder while having my business was just flowing really well together. And it was an e-commerce project and it completely exploded. So I fought, I found my niche in e-commerce then, but I didn’t realize that there’s a second layer to niching down. So, so one part of niching down is knowledge and focusing on the problems that you already can solve and just expanding on this repertoire because it’s such a natural flow. And once people make progress with you and they trust you, it’s natural, that more business will come to you. So I was basically, I was never advertising. I didn’t have a website. I got so much referrals that I couldn’t handle that. And then even outsource said it kind of service arbitrage. It’s 300 websites in one summer, just outsourcing to a team in India, making a cuts up all kinds of crazy things that come with just helping people to solve problems. So it was beautiful and I never had to worry about finding clients or making money, but that that’s the problem solution part was already working really well for me, without me constantly knowing it. And then there was the second layer that had overlooked. And this is that if you want to work with people, long-term customers, clients, and you also have to make sure that they are a good fit when it comes to your validate, your values and how you want to do business. So I had a major issue with how employees were treated that the business was seen as just a short-term cash cow.

Evelyn:

There was no intention of building something that is long-term sustainable. It was just, you know, getting profits out of the company as soon as possible. And that’s not aligned with who I am. I love building something up. I love the community aspect that we had there in the company with the employees. And yeah, it just didn’t feel right to, it was almost feeling like exploiting them, although everyone was paid for it, but it just didn’t resonate with me. So I took a pay after we lost our biggest client, I took a pale and I went to Canada and I started over again with an advertising agency specializing in Facebook ads because I really felt like, okay, this is, this is what comes naturally to me, the whole messaging part. I really am an expert in that. So that was kind of the low hanging fruit, but I left my network behind and without my network and the stream, I couldn’t find new customers fast.

Evelyn:

So I made a mistake and I wanted to solve everyone’s problem. I wanted to run ads for everyone that wants to run ads and Facebook ads of course evolved. Also since I started to run them first, 10 years ago, and there are so many micro niches now, so you have to be, if you run Facebook ads for a dentist, it’s a completely different game than you’re running Facebook ads for local restaurant. Then you’re running Facebook ads for e-commerce or you’re running ads for a coach, or you’re running ads for questions for yourself. There’s so many micro niches and what has become more important than the traffic part is the funnel part. So customer acquisition costs keep rising and only if you have a good funnel in place that doesn’t only focus on the front end, but especially on the back end and helps you to acquire this customer lifetime value fast.

Evelyn:

I would say within your first half year, you should have a substantial amount acquired. Then it will be really hard for you these days to survive. So that was my biggest mistake was not niching down. And then if you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one, I went into price floor. I went on the typical platforms to get clients, just undercutting myself overworking. And the first line would say, oh, and can you also do our social media content? And can you also build our website? And can you also write our emails? I would say yes, yes, yes, of course. And of course you’re not a specialist in everything. So I was also, you can’t be good at everything. So I realized that, and the first thing I thought was it was a problem of the agency. I didn’t understand that I had a niching problem. I felt I had the problem that I’m a service provider. So I thought I want to transition into coaching where I can leverage my time a little bit smarter and where I can help people on scale, which you actually can. But if you don’t niche down, you end up in same bucket

Ziv:

Just to clarify, basically you got to experience getting results on Facebook ads and funnels. And do you, you’ve noticed that as Facebook girls and matures as a platform and these days it’s very mature and it’s started to go through like a professionalization phase where people need to be professional to use it. There’s like very Micro specific niches in, within paid advertisement. And when you say yes to everything, yes, I can build your funnel and the write content, add to social media and fix your painter connection. Then you don’t pay a lot of transformation for people. You just water down your, your efficiency. And when you focus on the stuff that you’re really good at, which, which is funny, little ties meant for specific thing, you, you actually provide more value. So what happened next? Once you realized that you, you have a niching problem, and it’s not about the business model of being an agency versus being a course creator or a coach, what happened next?

Evelyn:

So to be very honest, I didn’t understand that that time that I had an niching  problem, I just knew I wanted to transition into putting people, but I’m a new coach in that basically don’t have any proof. I can show that I’m able to run Facebook ads, but I can show that I am able to get people results coaching. So what I did was there was like a little trick that I leveraged a thing that I kind of discovered when I fought the first fight that I had was I want to grow a community and an audience around my brand fast. And I realized that the fastest way to grow a community is to have a Facebook group. And then I thought, okay, I want to use my ad skills to grow the group faster and up until this point, what everyone was doing. And I really think that I disrupted the industry there a little bit, what everyone was doing was they would send people because you can’t advertise to Facebook to grow your Facebook group directly.

Evelyn:

They would send people through a bridge page to their Facebook group, which would create cost per group member of 10 to $20. So only if you have a high ticket coaching offer, that really makes sense for your business. But I also didn’t feel like I am a high ticket coach yet because I strongly believe that you have to be able to deliver on the value that just didn’t have the confidence yet. So I found a much cheaper way, and I was getting group members for below $2 using a lead ad approach, everything happening on Facebook. And basically what I did was I created a living case study with the Facebook group, showing people live, how I grew it to a thousand members keep talking about, look, this is what I’m doing here. And now you’re all here. Now I can show you how this actually works. And that was building that was creating a lot of momentum for me and a lot of trust, because I think also because I did it. So in a sense, without knowing the coaching so much, I think he was just refreshing for people to see someone walk their talk basically, and have this truth. And I was not out there on the Lamborghini telling them I help you to get to six and seven figures fast. I was basically just telling them, if you want to grow a Facebook group, this is how it works. And so

Ziv:

This is a very meta it’s like you’ve created a Facebook group that teaches you how to create a Facebook group through Facebook ads. And then you were doing Facebook ads and showing them what you’re doing and growing as a result, and people could go in and see how they can create Facebook groups for relatively low, a low budget. And like, did you, how soon did you know that your system actually works?

Evelyn:

So the first thing I knew is I have to have a strategic lead magnet that just talks to my ideal clients and my ideal clients were okay, where am I at this point? Because I can totally understand this person. I’m like, I want to coach people. I want to eventually create a course business and education business, but I have no audience. So actually the first thing I did was I tried to use my knowledge of Facebook ads to sell a pre-sell a course, and I blew $500 out of the window and I’ve never experienced something like that because I was so, so confident in my skills, you know, I could press a button and make a couple of thousand dollars a day for a plan, but I was looking at my essence, what the heck does this not, this is not working. How do I she’ll be so, okay.

Evelyn:

Me troubleshooting, understanding, okay, we need an audience. So what do people need that need an audience? I need a lead magnet. So I created a lead magnet builder template because I knew, okay, I need to create a lead magnet. And then I use the templates that I created as my lead magnet, because that was also kind of method because I knew, okay, this is something I would have fought and needed at this point. So I think it’s when niching down, it’s always great to ask, what would you have needed at this point? Or what do you need right now?

Zivi:

That’s so meta and like your most successful lead magnet was a lead magnet about how to create lead magnets. It’s it’s wonderful. So tell me a little bit about the numbers when it was

Evelyn:

It was insane. It was the coaches and course creators from United States and Canada for 34 cents. So to put that in perspective in the niche I am in, which is making money online and especially focusing, they talk about the coach coaches, I’m a coach coach. So they say that $5 leads accurate. As I told you, I’ve seen people in those groups itself, high ticket coaching, mainly they are grateful if they can get a group member for $10. So getting 35 cents per email address, and then around a dollar 40 to have a group member, especially in the United States and Canada and call that wasn’t cool. That really hit hard. The markets or the costs started to rise. It was really great. And it also did a cool thing for me. It would seasoned my ad account and anchor my, my quality as really high, which ultimately gave me really low CPMs.

So it was really working in my favor also for the conversion ads I would run after. But at that point, I didn’t even know, you know, what I was going to sell. I only knew I want to show people that I can solve the problems. And I think that’s the way to think if you genuinely care about people and you genuinely like solving problems, you’ll never run out of business. It just starts with this one problem you solve. And then there, there’s more that you can solve, but you have to kind of know, okay, this is my toolbox. Like, okay, this is like, I’m here to paint the walls. I’m not going to repair the toilet. Right. So you kind of have to also be able to say, okay, this is, this is going out of my scope or out of my range. I can give you a basic outline of how it would tackle this, but get yourself an expert. Yeah. But I think if you start with, okay, I’m just solving one problem. And then what other things do my ideal clients bring along my way. It basically becomes this never ending stream of product ideas, course ideas. And eventually once you start to work with clients one-on-one, and you understand where they are and the transformation they’re looking for, you can start to work on your signature framework.

Ziv:

So you started with a group that people can join for free and with a lead magnet that they can download for free. But you’re investing into your business on your audience. You’re creating this tribe in this group and teaching them how to do it too. And then what was the point where how many people did you have in your group when you made your first sell?

Evelyn:

Around thousand people? So my goal was also to get a thousand people within the first month, and I was very willing to just put money on the table to get to this point. Cause I also, for me that looks like a magical number. If it’s a big case study, if you can say, I went from zero to thousand people, but of course you also need to monetize it. So everything I’ve learned during this month. So for example, what kind of content do I need to share that resonates with my audience, which was surprisingly not the knowledge, content or component at all. I realized there that knowledge is doesn’t create connection. What creates connection is sharing from your genuine experience. And I don’t, I wouldn’t say being vulnerable, but being open, like being very open and don’t, don’t be concerned about what light it sheds on.

Evelyn:

You kind of just be speaking your truth. That would be the content that works really, really well, who connect me with my audience. I got the first coaching requests within the first week. So that was really interesting. There was going fast. And then after this first month, and during this time I also hit the first version of my website. I also updated my whole visuals and those kind of things. I prepared my beta launch and I eventually did a very boiled down version of a launched. I just posted in the group. I got people on the phone. I spoke with 14 people and I had 10 people saying yes to a 997 offer of basically doing the same for them, helping you find this one problem you want to solve growing your Facebook group around it, nurture people, connect with people and at the end, make a better offer. This would work extremely well for my beta clients. For example, Laura, she did 20K in sales in her first month. Julia did sevenK euros. Uh, my beta students, Thomas did 4,000 years in his first month. Uh, Sarah did 7,000 yourself all around the system and all would invest around the same amount per ads, I would say around a thousand dollars in ads. But if you think about it, it’s a four to 20 times. So it’s good. Laura even did it without ads. She just followed organic strategy. So,

Evelyn:

And we’re talking about something, like repeatedly walks for people. And if you look at the math, if the cost of each group member was $10, like it is usually, you know, for other people that would have been killing the entire thing, the entire business wouldn’t lift off. But because we were able to teach people how to get the Facebook group for an expense that is really reasonable. And if they make seven or 10 K within a month or two, that’s really nice. That’s like a, the beginning of an education business or a coaching business. And what happened next to you like that? You started to, to make money from the group. What was the next day

Evelyn:

Before I jump into that, I quickly want to say why this was so important for me. When I started this journey, I also, you know, looked into some courses and all that, and everyone would tell you, you need a high ticket to make this worth your while and to make that math add up. But I didn’t believe in that because I thought there must be smarter ways to reach more people. And this is something I’m still focusing on up until the state, because I think it’s not fair. If we put the risk on the client, we need to grow as a coach first, before we can charge a premium on our client. I think that’s really important. And I think that resonated with that 90% of the coaches that help our new coaches. And I think this resonates with them as well, because I think that most people that think about starting a coaching business, aren’t in there for the money as the main mode, if they really want to help people and make a living, educating and helping.

Evelyn:

So the money is like a nice side effect, but it comes with that. And that allowed people to do, to start the business in a way that is aligned with the values. So they didn’t have to do all these things like direct messaging or charging high ticket. They could just buy their way into it, just like I did. So after that I had a phase of that was working really well. And my first thought was, I want to turn this into a group coaching program. Once I have refined it, then I started to have a self-liquidating offer, getting paid to grow my audience. So that that’s another strategy. If you can’t get down your acquisition costs, you want to have something that contributes to the ad spend. So this is also what’s working now in your business really well or that you really optimized. So I think that was great work.

Evelyn:

And then I kind of lost the track a little bit because I couldn’t, I wanted too much. So I wanted to give them everything. And I started to, you know, when I was growing and looking to become a better coach, I also, I think it’s easy when things don’t work immediately or when you were doubtful about yourself to look into what other stool, and then it’s very easy to lose your way. So like after this works well for me and before relaunching it, I wanted to make it so much better. And then it got out of hand, it got, so the whole idea, it got so big that I wanted to solve everything. Like I wanted to start solving everything for them and, you know, making them breakfast and bringing their kids to school so they can sit down and relax for coaching almost like that.

Evelyn:

And yeah, I was doing myself with this service and also people. So then it was kind of falling off a little bit and I decided that the setting that would, and also the father of my child had to leave the country for six months. So I was alone with the baby and I felt okay, I don’t have the resources to create a full-on coaching program yet, but I still love to work with people. And I know people, they want to stick in my world and be connected with me and they want to pay me something, but I don’t have an offer for them. So I started a membership and it was basically just creating a room where people feel entitled to approach me with the problems, if that makes sense. So it was doing a founding member launch and just helping people with the things that I solve and it with adds more people streamed in what I love about it is the culture is amazing, but I got to broaden my in my content. So again, I was extending Menish and doing everyone, a this service kind of with that.

Zivi:

And what made you realize that? Because, uh, it’s very hard to say no to yourself when you want to help people.

Evelyn:

Yeah. So the term, every time someone makes sure I’m, it is relatively no. So it’s overall, it’s below 10%, which in my sphere, the benchmark industry benchmarks are 20%. So I’m cutting that in half. Although I consider my bottom, my membership still at beta, it’s still a product in development. And, but everyone that can, so either they went for the funnel and didn’t fully realize that this is a membership and what they were buying into. This was a very small amount, like handful of people, or they said, I love the group. I love the content, but I’m just overwhelmed. And that was because it wasn’t focused around you here today. Let me grab your hand. We do justice and justice and justice. So when someone would ask me, you know, I’m thinking about this, what should I do? I will be like, here are your options. And instead of saying, you do this, okay. So just, of course there’s so many things you can do, but I should just take, or it helps people more. You could just give them one option. And that’s probably the one that worked best for you as well. So

Ziv:

You transitioned from teaching them everything that you were able to do to teaching the people a more limited set of things, or maybe even like one at a time that if they do it, they will get the best results and they will not be overwhelmed, kinda.

Evelyn:

So I think it was a problem of standing my ground as an expert. So for example, when someone says would come in new and they would say, then I want to do a webinar. How should I do this? I wouldn’t dare to say to them, you shouldn’t start with a webinar. Don’t do this. You’re not ready. So I didn’t want to be harsh. I didn’t want to overwhelm people. So I would give them the best way to tweak their way into it, which is not the best guidance sometimes. And that’s something I realized you have to be the, the guidance for them. And also sometimes tell them you’re running in a wrong way. You can’t skip the step. I know you want to be faster, but you’re going to make a mistake here. So I think that that was something that just grew as my confidence grow. And now I’m a little bit more blunt with that, but it’s just to protect people from themselves.

Ziv:

Yeah. I love it. I call it the, like the pointy end of the boots. I put my, my coaching boots on and then it’s time to kick some assets and to tell people to do things the hard way, not the shortest way, usually to the shortest way.

Evelyn:

The highway is the short way, you know, it’s not even hard. It’s and I think also some things I realized is sending people back, demanding people to do their part in coaching. So, you know, coming from service provider backend, almost like an employee, I want to say. So when now, when I started to work with coaching plans and even with my members, sometimes the relationship was just, I still felt like a service provider. I didn’t play my role as the coach and say, look, I’m doing my part of coaching you, but you also do your part of putting in the work, showing up prepared, going through the things in the portal. So I would have people sending me direct messages in the night. I want to do this and I want to do that. And can you help me log into my website? And in the beginning, I will do all of that just to realize, because I can look that up in the portal is this person locked in what half of the five introduction, video, and never went for the content.

Evelyn:

And now just me to go in and fix things that she doesn’t understand, even why we’re doing them. So my role also needs to be, to set expectations better and tell people, look, this is our way here. This is the problem solution. This is how we do things. You do your part. I don’t mind that way. We go there faster. And every time I’m doing this with people, they either live fast, which is good because I’m not answering messages in the night or they get results fast, which is also good because they’re happy. Like it’s existed.

Ziv:

Love it. So what is your goal now with this? Like how are you going to continue the flow of narrowing down what you do or what you,

Evelyn:
So I just set up the whole membership growth path as project plan. I really want people to dial in the tasks, into their calendar and have a daily checklist on what they need to do. So I want to make it much more streamlined in that sense that there are no, I think every time the content allows you, this room for creativity, it’s when people are kind of in the air and they look for shiny objects, a quick fix, and this is when they drop out of the way and they tell it, go down a distraction. And so I’m refining the program to be really step by step by step. And I also realized I have a light version of my membership, which is just $49. And people always say, the amount of value is unbelievable, but it doesn’t help. If there’s so much value, if people don’t implement it, doesn’t, it’s only valuable if it, if you really implement.

Evelyn:

So the issue I found with the light version is that a lot of people take it to light. Cause it’s just $49 a month. And it’s a nice to have at this point, but you know, I can have it running the whole year. It doesn’t harm me. And then I have a premium version, which is 197 and there, I see the people turning up every week to the coaching calls, also requesting my feedback and doing their work and requesting me to do my part. And that’s just such a beautiful journey. It’s such a beautiful community. It’s inspiring for everyone. It’s motivating and it’s really helping the right type of people. So going back to what I said, when, you know, figuring out the niche, I managed a few times and I think now I’m more conscious about it and it wouldn’t happen to me again, that I’m going out of my micro-niche. So it’s more the opposite. I want to niche further down, but I also think I understood now the importance of the second part, which is the people need to be a good fit. They need to understand your vision and you want to be in there with them for the long run, getting them the best results and really changing their lives.

Ziv:

Love it. Uh, we’re, we’re kind of running out of time, but I have to ask her there’s so much, I have to ask you have this approach to help people figure out the first lead magnet. Can you talk about that?

Evelyn:

So basically I want people to brainstorm 10, to 20 problems, and this could be very, very tiny problems that people have in the beginning of their journey. So the problem could be as easy as, I don’t know how to write a specific email. So it could be just one. So, or, you know, what is a good thing? I don’t know how, I don’t know how to set up my first funnel, my opt-in funnel. I don’t know how to be very small things that just annoy people and they keep procrastinating with it because they had don’t have a template. So my idea is that people brainstorm 20 ideas and then sort them by how much pain does this cost. So how much do people procrastinate with it? And then top down, think about easy solutions that you can provide that will just save people from this creative burden that they have.

Evelyn:

And it’s just one tiny problem that you can communicate fast and it is kind of self-explanatory so you don’t need a long ad copy ideal. You just need the visual and nothing else. And those are the lead magnets that get you need for around 50 cents. Because of course the costs have risen a little bit on Facebook ads, but those are the winning lead magnets. And they go such a long way. If you can, people are happy. You know, everything that stays below $5, if you can acquire a lead for a 10th of that sum, your business can go.

Ziv:

And we’re talking about a resource that you’re creating that will be basically delivered through an email after they opt-in through, the lead through a campaign that is like a lead gen campaign in for on Facebook. Right. Nice. And it’s quite interesting how people from so many different micro niches added in your pro account or your pro membership for 1 97, we’re able to use this process and launch the first lead magnet and not a long time after that launch either a beta or a tripwire and people show up and show the results. It’s just very, very yummy. Any a word of advice that you want to share from your experience to people that are listening to this and trying to find their own micro niche like you, it seems like when you went into the micro-niche of helping people with what you do best at the beginning, it was going to a Facebook group. And then nowadays it’s about doing the things in the right order to leverage a Facebook group and A lead gen campaigns into a business that actually make money and this profitable. What is your word of advice to an entrepreneur that starts their journey?

Evelyn:

I think focusing on two types of things, the first thing is showing up authentically and sharing what you thinking about and what you’re working on. As often as you can, ideally every day on your, or on your Instagram, just you can talk for half a minute into the camera, just being when you’re sick and when you’re not feeling it, just show up anyway, just share it anyways. So just be there and document your journey, be the living case study. And it’s also okay. If it’s not always shiny and plumber and glitter and success stories that will often connect you much more with your audience and with people and, and clients. And the second thing is giving others, which you’ve created for yourself. So now we just talked about the lead magnet and the tripwire products or self-liquidating offers. You probably have already a gold mine laying on your desktop because it’s things that you’ve created for yourself in the past review, the things you’ve put time in to make things easier for yourself, processes, you create a checklist, you created emails you’ve written in the past. That worked really well. So there is a goldmine of your creativeness that lays around there and that it would be very, very valuable to others because it just saves them time.

Ziv:

Love it. Evelyn Weiss, where can people go to learn more about what you do? Ideally

Evelyn:

They go to successfulcoachads.com or they find me on Facebook and send me a friend request. So I love to connect with people in, in that sense, don’t send me a DM pitching your group program after you might expose them Instagram.

Ziv:

Uh, well, people can also find a YouTube channel and learn a lot from that. So we’ll put a link to your YouTube channel on the show notes, a daily cookie.co Evelyn Weiss. Thank you so much for taking the time and sharing your story with us. It’s very inspiring and it’s amazing to be around you and, and get the opportunity to ask you questions about like you just show Evelyn a funnel and she knows exactly how to optimize it. So thank you so much for being here and see you guys next week on the micro-niche mastery.

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