Episode #59: Funnels, Facebook Ads, and Freedom with Rita Barry

Intro (00:00:01): When you give smart women a five-year plan, simple business strategies and a positive mindset. It's amazing how fast your business can grow. Welcome to the fast track woman podcast with your host and business strategist, Terra Bohlmann. She helps women business owners stop winging it and board the fast track to success. When she's not making high flying dreams, the reality you can find her traveling to random destinations, desperately tracking down Chanel, broaches, or sipping overpriced coffee drinks. Her purpose in life is to help you build a profitable first-class business, smooth out the bumpy ride, and finally have more time, energy and freedom. So buckle your seatbelt because this episode of the fast track woman takes off right now. Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the fast

Terra Bohlmann (00:01:00): Track woman podcast. I'm your host, Terra and I am super excited to talk to you today about Facebook ads with my special guest Rita Barry. So let me give you her formal bio because she's such a rock star and I want to give her all the respect she deserves. So Rita Barry is a measurement marketing expert and the founder of Rita Barry and company. It's a digital marketing optimization consultancy for the past 10 years. She and her team have been helping women led online businesses, get clarity about every aspect of their marketing funnel and paid traffic campaigns. Her website is Rita Barry, R I T a B B a R R y.co. And she is from Canada. And we've been chit chatting a little bit here before we officially started recording the podcast and I have a feeling we're going to become fast friends. So she's a total rock star.

Terra Bohlmann (00:01:57): So welcome to the podcast, Rita, how are you today? What an amazing thank you for having me that, that makes me sound super fancy. You are fancy, you are fancy. And it's kind of like, I make it, I don't know, like a thing to just, I want to read people's formal bio because we put energy in that sometimes it's cool just to sit back and be like, is that me like, totally, totally. So I appreciate you being on today and you know, we're going to just kind of dig in to things around funnels and Facebook and all that kind of stuff so that other women business owners can get some financial freedom and honestly this scale and leverage their business without having to always be trading time for money. Right. So I love that. So tell us a little bit, like how did you even get into this space? Like, what's your background? Oh, well I went to school for calculus and microbiology, so

Rita Barry (00:03:00): Like super sexy stuff

Terra Bohlmann (00:03:03): On my computer

Terra Bohlmann (00:03:05): Programmer. Like we all go to school and then we find this industry.

Terra Bohlmann (00:03:09): It was originally though.

Rita Barry (00:03:10): And then I like made my family super proud and I went into social work for like eight years and it was kind of a left turn that now I think like in my online business, owning my own company now for 11 years, that it was a beautiful marriage now of like the relationship side of me that loved social work that I really missed when I was doing science and math stuff. Cause that's all very like in your head and like very analytical obviously. And that was the piece when I, I felt was missing from that specific career. For me, that social work really provided and then like lo and behold completely accidentally, it was like not a grand plan to this. I can just see it now in retrospect, that it was those two pieces of me together that loves a deep, like intimate relationships. Long-Term really getting to know people and the analytical logical side that really loves numbers and data and things together. Kind of the perfect marriage in measuring people's marketing and paid traffic. So, yeah, I've been online since 2009 and originally was in web design and development and did that stuff for a really long time. That was my, that was my training business. As we called it, we were talking about it

Terra Bohlmann (00:04:22): Before we start recording and I called it, I think my practice business, my practice business was a website company too. And then I had a team of like 11 in the Philippines and I'm like, Oh, wait a minute. I just literally switched from like doing consulting and implementing these big like tech systems to now doing websites. And no matter what I did, I couldn't scale it. And I could charge like three grand a website, but it would just be like, the profit just was the same. So it was just kind of like, I don't know,

Terra Bohlmann (00:04:51): I stuck to,

Rita Barry (00:04:54): I didn't want to charge, cause I know people charge huge amounts of money for websites. Like I get it and yeah, I could see it. I always had a big imposter complex around that. And I was like, I knew I had friends in the space who had gone to like the Toronto school of fine arts and like, they were like artists to me. Right. They would make the beautiful sites. Right. And I like, and I didn't want to do that. Like I'm like, I don't school's happened for me, like the formal school, like honestly, I mean, I think I learn more now than I ever did before, but that time for me, felt like it was over. So I was like, I have no interest in doing that again. And I just didn't see any place that I could scale that particular thing and the profit merchants. Weren't great. Right. And the thing about web design and any web does, or even just service providers know like the scope creep, I'm like when design is done. Right. Never, literally last week, last week I got an email from somebody who was like,

Terra Bohlmann (00:05:48): I remember me from back in like 11 years ago and like

Rita Barry (00:05:53): Not designed a website in like, I think six years, I think it was like the last that that we did. And I was like, I didn't even remember the name initially. Like it took me a minute and like, cause that's how it's never done. Like it literally doesn't, it doesn't end. And I was like this, I don't want to be tied to. And it's always an emergency. Like if a website is down, it's absolutely an emergency. And I just wanted something that wasn't putting out fires like that all the time. And it naturally led to the analytics because that was since I couldn't do or didn't want to, or whatever, the really fancy, like super involved art project type websites, my strength was in the statistics and the analysis of the effectiveness of the website.

Terra Bohlmann (00:06:34): That's right. And that's what so many people don't understand. And this was, I, this was like a perfect tee up into what we're going to talk about, but it's like, you can have the most beautiful website and 3000 is almost on the low end of websites design anymore. So you find people either become a DIY wire and they want to learn WordPress. They do it themselves. That's kind of what I did. And that's how I got into website design is you know, I was like, someone's like need a website. I'm like, okay. So I've taught myself WordPress and I'm like, who did your website? I'm like me. And they're like, will you do mine? Sure. How much? I don't know, a thousand bucks. Then I got really like bougie and like raised it to three or whatever, but no matter what, it's a hard business. So shout out to anyone running a website business because it is not easy and just keep doing it and figuring out how to refine it and make it cost-effective we needed. And we need them. I refer them all the time. This I'm like, Ooh, I don't know. But like once you find someone good, you know, it's like, you know, grab a hold of them and just, you know, follow that project plan and, you know, scope anyway, like

Rita Barry (00:07:42): Good, be a good customer. Right. Totally.

Terra Bohlmann (00:07:45): And you could have the most beautiful website in the world. And I had like eight of them, one of my live events. I was like showing people like when you can't decide on your brand and I was doing a talk on branding and it was like, I just kept bouncing around because I was using, I need to rebrand. Oh, that didn't feel right. Oop, new colors as a distraction from doing the work that needed to be done, that made me uncomfortable, like selling and putting myself out there, you know? So it was like, I was showing all the iterations. I was like, this was the blush days. And then we went to the, and I'd hired, you know, so-and-so who I liked her style, but it wasn't really me, you know? So it was just like how much money and time I've spent on this branding process. But, you know, so I had a series of beautiful, amazing websites, but it doesn't mean they're working for you. And I would imagine you're like me where your website should be your number one sales person. Right. And so can we talk a little bit about that? Like, you know, when I first started working with women and I don't tend to work with a lot of startups, I work with women who probably have a website, but it's not doing much for them as far as conversions, stuff like that.

Terra Bohlmann (00:08:56): Or they're really smart women who are leaving the corporate world to do their own thing, like start their own consulting company, whatever. And so anyway, so it's like if they need a new site, right. It's like, it's not just the glamour and the glitz of having something new it's this thing needs to work for you. Like what can we talk in terms of, when you talk about fine tuning your clients funnels, can we talk about just funnels? One-On-One I mean, not from like, what is that when they talk about these funnel things and what does that mean for what's on your website?

Rita Barry (00:09:32): So I'd say there's like really two kinds of funnels, right? Cause there's like the discreet kind of direct response funnels that often are what people think of when they think of a funnel, they think of, you know, the ClickFunnels sort of things. You go into the landing page, you get all those upsells, that kind of thing. So there's those sorts of funnels that are very valid and people use them in their business in different ways. But then there's also the marketing funnel. Like that overall thing that we're kind of like basically your marketing plan, your customer journey, all of those things are fairly interchangeable as far as what kind of, what you're creating for your customers to help them make a buying decision and your website fits and kind of the second category, right. It can lead to some of those discreet funnels for sure.

Rita Barry (00:10:12): But when we're designing websites, when we're looking at the kind of the customer journey, the marketing for a client that's potentially coming on board, we're evaluating like, do they have all the different sections of marketing in place that we would look for as a successful client? Like someone who would be a successful client, do they have marketing and places working on awareness? That's talking about problem identification. It's meeting people at that place because if you're not talking about the problems and the pain that you solve, when people are in that problem, aware stage, they're not going to self identify. Right? So a lot of clients that we see are often really good at problem identification. Cause they're usually well-established companies. They realize they need to be talking about problems and pain points. They're usually missing like the middle category, which is the solution awareness. If anyone's kind of aware of kind of familiar with the marketing spectrum and from Eugene Schwartz about talking about solutions, like how do you evaluate whether your solution or someone else's solution to your problem is the right one.

Rita Barry (00:11:09): That's often where we see kind of a big gap, right? Like how do you help people be, I guess the easiest way to describe it as how do you help people decide if someone was picking a vacuum right. Solutions to the problem, because the problem they would have the dirty floor, the solution for a dirty floor can be everything from a robot vacuum to a fancy Dyson, to Hoover, you get at Walmart to a maid, right? Those are all solutions to that problem. And the solution awareness section, we're helping people evaluate which of those solution types are best for them. Right. And really matching up your product with the problem they have, but helping them make an informed decision, like which of these categories is best for you. It's always like nine times out of 10, that's missing where people are just not talking about it. And they talk about their product really well, because that's usually like something we all, we were like, I can talk about this. I know what this does. The benefits features, et cetera. Yeah. And it's really important to have all three of those marketing pieces. Sometimes it's referred to, you know, as awareness, engagement, lead gen and sales, it's all the same stuff, which also makes it incredibly confusing.

Terra Bohlmann (00:12:14): I you're the first person I've, I believe I've interviewed that has really made that differentiation. So it's like a lot of people like, Oh, I'm going to tell you how to build the most amazing sales page and copy and that kind of stuff, which that's one, that's like a step three, but that awareness side, and this is what was a big game changer for my own business was when this light bulb came on, because I had worked with someone who was like awareness, engagement, sales. Right. And I was like, Oh. And so, you know, most of the people who work with you are like, they've been watching you for a while. Right. But if you don't have that, I love how you teed that up. And it was like, you know, understanding the problem. So why do you think women, because we both work with women, why do you think women struggle to talk about the problems and all that kind of stuff? And they just want to talk about like the benefits and how great the, like, you know, it's important to understand the problems, but like why do you think they don't want to go there?

Rita Barry (00:13:17): Well, I think the good part about can I think the benefit that, and speaking in complete gender generalizations, that women are really good at identifying or empathy or good with the relationships in the feelings. So you feel like it's something that people just don't know to do because usually when we introduce that to a client, they're like, Oh, that totally makes sense. If that was something that was missing. So they usually get the concept right away. But it's just that, there's just a lack of understanding that when you're really designing a overall marketing funnel, which is really what Facebook, what we do on Facebook, like it's not rocket science. It's just usually that people don't know that all those pieces have to be there, especially when you're dealing with social advertising, because people aren't necessarily Googling. Right? Like when you're dealing with Google ads, you're dealing with people that are actually already problem aware, sometimes solution and product aware.

Rita Barry (00:14:02): So you're talking to them differently, but on social platforms, they're not necessarily looking for your product. Right. So that's often why we start with problem awareness and pain identification in social advertising. But that's the biggest conversation is when we go in and say like, I guess they've already built their product. And that's why they're so grounded in it because we're usually so close to it. I'm like, yeah, every feature I know every product, I know all the bells and whistles, it's amazing. But when we kind of pull back to those other stages, it's usually they usually contact us when they realize that it's not just selling. They're like, you know, or it's selling to people that know them really well. Like you mentioned, who are already in their world who have naturally gone through those awareness and engagement stages because they were having conversations or they've been in their sphere for a really long time. But when we're looking at kind of that scale and growth that they come to us for, with the ads and with the metrics, that's not going to cut it anymore. Right. So we have to make sure that they have that full breadth of the marketing in place or else none of it's going to land.

Terra Bohlmann (00:15:03): Yeah. This was such gold. That raid is talking about. So it's like, you want to have a movement, right? If you are so passionate about what you do and how you serve your audience and you need a bigger audience, then what she's saying now is like, you gotta make sure people know that you understand their problem and you have that give them that awareness that you engage them and then you can sell to them. So it's like, versus even, you know, I was telling her before we started recording, I would say this, like, I always bring up this and everyone's like, Oh, that's nice that you had a side conversation. I should probably re record those at some point. But it's like, I was telling Rita. I was like, I have always, as part of my funnel is I did two live events every year and then COVID hits.

Terra Bohlmann (00:15:47): And now like I'm doing my first real online launch. Right. And it's like, once I do this, I don't know. Maybe I'll go back to a one event live event a year. Maybe not. I don't know. But like you have to adjust accordingly and I'm getting excited because I understand that, you know, I have goals for the launch, but at the end of the day, you know, what I'm most excited about is like growing my list of people that I can nurture over the next, even if it's the next year to make sure that we're a fit to work together. And if I would've done this 10 years ago, that would have been smart, but that's okay. It's not what it wasn't my journey, but now it is. So it's like really cool to be able to ask you these types of questions for the audience, because it's the stuff that I'd love to know too.

Terra Bohlmann (00:16:33): And you've been doing this a while. So, you know, I know you work with a lot of elite coaches and to help them fill their programs and stuff like that. And so I would imagine you go in and do some sort of assessment, like you were saying to see maybe what they're missing a gap analysis and in our nerdy terms, things right. Do a gap analysis to figure out, you know, what's missing and how you can help them. And if you can help them. Right. So, and then of course, look at the data. So when you are doing that assessment, like what are the things that you're like, yes, I know like if we just tweak this, she's going to be like blown away by us. Like, what are those in that assessment? What do you really look at?

Rita Barry (00:17:16): Well, we have, we look at four specific things when we're doing before it's actually, before we even take on the client, we do it more in depth when we take it on and I'll give you one of the secrets to running a successful ad agency is you hire and you take on clients that are going to work total spoiler alert there. So when you see people that are like, Oh my gosh, we got a bazillion ROAS on this account that person's business already worked. Facebook ads do not resurrect a business that does not work. And we are very careful who we bring on because if a business is, and which I will define in a minute, what that looks like for us, it makes Facebook ads amplify it exponentially. But if something is broken inside of the business, we can't fix it with ads. So we won't take that person on. We'll get like, they'll have, like, this is what's broken. You know, you can go fix it, come back to see if it works kind of thing. Or sometimes they just, you know, go on and fix it and don't need us. That's cool. It's just that all the pieces have to be in place or else scaling, especially scaling with any level of stability and predictability, which are two, usually the two big things. Those are my client's favorite words. That's what they want. And it's not going to work otherwise.

Terra Bohlmann (00:18:25): Well, before you go into that second part, I just have to commend you and like, make sure everyone understands that what Rita just said there, that is such a high integrity statement because a lot of ad agencies will take people on knowing they're the half the gaps, but then what happens is they don't get the result. The client's mad, they've wasted money and time. And they're disappointed. Rita. What she said is like, we look at this and it's either a yes or no, and you're not doing it to be like, you know, whatever, it's more like you want, you know, you have the data and what it's going to take to be successful. And if they don't have that in place, it's a no, not right now. Like, and because your reputation is depends on it, right? It's like that. So kudos to you for actually putting that stake in the ground because a lot of people just come from that place of scarcity, where they take on the client and then it's later on that they realize, Oh, what she has is name a scalable anyway.

Rita Barry (00:19:22): Right. And that's, that's why we try to avoid that because we don't want to take that person's money. If we don't think that we can do a good job with it. And every person that we bring on, like the kind of, one of the filter questions that my ops manager has when a new lead comes in is always like, is this person like a case study in the making? And that's always how she looks at it. And you know, and we're honestly, I mean, we're at a place where we're full and we're waitlisted. So it's obviously like, it's a nice place to be. And we have a lot of luxury around that. But the reason we got to that place is because we were so picky, even when I totally could have used the money, we totally could have used a new client, but it's like, this is going to end up with an unhappy client and not unhappy me. And it's going to be super stressful. And that's something that web design taught me.

Terra Bohlmann (00:20:07): I was going to say that now I instantly started having those feelings that come up with the web, like this is going to be a web design client that never goes away.

Rita Barry (00:20:15): This pastor, and you haven't even started. Right. My husband laughed at me all the time where like, I would sign it. I'm like, this is going to be terrible, honey, can you talk me out of this next time that I say this is going to be terrible? And then I do it anyway. Totally. And we learn, we learn. And it taught me for Facebook ads. And so we've been very, very careful who we bring on. And because honestly I have to love my client's business. And most of the time them as well, like we get we're super friends, all of us, like not like friendly, friendly, always like sometime depending on the personality. But like, I care so much about their business. Like it's not even just like to pretend and sound good. Like sometimes it keeps me up at night trying to figure out how to make their business work. And you can't expend that level of energy, right. To infinite amount of people. That's great. Just need to kind of be careful. And it's not just kind of figuring out how I work best and it's small groups long-term and that just means you just have to charge more to make it all work. But exactly.

Terra Bohlmann (00:21:12): But that's a whole other podcast,

Rita Barry (00:21:15): The four things, the four things we look at kind of when we're assessing a business and you can use it as a self-assessment in your own business. If you're like, am I ready to run Facebook ads yet? Because not every business is not every business should be running Facebook ads, you know, outside of, you know, maybe some testing or something like that. Unless these things are in place. The first one's a product sounds really crazy.

Terra Bohlmann (00:21:35): You would like in a, in a product that could be sold and somewhat automated or have some systems around, it

Rita Barry (00:21:42): Has to have some systems like it needs the, it needs to be a good product. It's solid. That is grounded. That people have bought it before. Ideally. Or you have a previous track record, like say you have an established business and this is a new product. That's fine. Right. Cause you'll have some grounding in your other products, in a previous audience, things like that. So we're always looking at like, is the product on a strong foundation? We usually grade these four things out of one to five and then see how big the score is kind of thing. So, I mean, you can just basically look like, is this product solid? Have I sold it before? Do we have good client feedback, good customer reviews? Like, is this something we're proud to sell? Right. I always love to hear clients talking about their product. It's one of the biggest indicators I use on discovery calls about how passionate they are, about what they sell and who they serve. It tells me a lot that I need to know about that particular part of business, because we want to work with, you know, the skeezy people.

Terra Bohlmann (00:22:36): No, the people who are like, well, I know what's really hot right now, the economy. So I'm just trying to, you know, yeah, I'm going to make a million and then

Rita Barry (00:22:45): Right, that like, I love my people. I want to help them so bad and this is what we offer them. And so the second piece is the offer. And so oftentimes people get the product and the offer mixed up the offers. How you talk about the product, it's the hooks, the angles, the unique selling props that go with that particular product, right? Because a product is a vacuum cleaner, right? But the offer is when Dyson talks about like the filter list stuff and all of that, those are the unique selling propositions and never losing it section that's the offer. Okay. And those are very important. Sometimes we help the clients with refining that. And a lot of the time we help the clients with refining that because it's really hard to find those pieces. If you don't have like a background in marketing copyrighting, things like that offers can be a bit tricky, but it's making it seem new, different and interesting.

Rita Barry (00:23:34): It's the, why does someone pick my thing, my product over the competitor's product. And when we get so close to our products, as we talked about some lots of times people get lost in the weeds with the offer because the offer is what jumps out on Facebook. Right. You know, there's like a bazillion things that you're scrolling there. If you don't have the hook, nobody cares. And so that's a big, a big piece that we analyze. Fortunately, if they have a solid product, your offer can be nuanced, right? You just, you can work with that. Or the third piece is an audience. The, this is specific for Facebook ads when we're kind of assessing that. It's what kind of audiences do we have available? Because they can be either email lists. Right. But there's also all of those like pixeled audiences that would be engagement type audiences on the platform, whether they have video view audiences for basically looking at like, who do you have access to in your world?

Rita Barry (00:24:23): Like who are your warm groups more as a kind of a function of, what do we need to do when we start advertising on Facebook? Because we have some really successful clients who have very successful businesses that have never advertised on Facebook. And they're more of high touch service providers. You know, that they're making multiple seven figures, but they've never, they don't need an email list, right? Like it's just the nature of their business. So in those sorts of businesses, then it's like, how do we create those audiences on Facebook to start advertising to that's a strategy piece, but it can help for new businesses when there's or businesses that are new to the platform thinking who do I have available in my warm sphere? Because that's always where we start advertising and new people should too, just heads up, always start with your warm people, if you got them.

Rita Barry (00:25:07): And then the last piece is the marketing funnel that we just talked about. We really do a full assessment around how is the organic marketing, or if they are doing any kind of paid acquisition, how are those things doing at bringing people into their company and making sales right now? So we look at what those big conversion rates are like, is this product selling at the, at benchmark? Like, are we seeing the conversion rates we would expect to see on landing pages onto their email list and into their sales funnel and actually onto the product. So we look at the health of that whole system, and that's often where we see, Oh, there's like a no solution awareness discussion happening, or you don't have any testimonials or case studies, you know, like you're really missing social proof and authority and stuff lower in the funnel. So those are the four pieces we look at and we always try to get to them into that kind of, if we're looking at like a one to five into that four or five range before we take them on, or if we are taking them on, what do we need to focus on first before the ads get rolling? Right. Yeah. Making sure we get that up as high as we can.

Terra Bohlmann (00:26:07): I love that. I love it. I mean, it's like, so from a price point perspective, it's like when you take on a client, it's like, you know, do the funnel and the Facebook ads and you know, the funnel and this assessment, would that work for a nine 95 product any easier than it would work for a $9,000 a year product?

Rita Barry (00:26:27): No, like, it really is like, I would say like universally true across the board, like, cause we have some people and you may have seen, this is like all the rage now with the $27.

Terra Bohlmann (00:26:38): I know I bought a few of them and I don't even log into them afterwards. Yes they're so you must be running those.

Rita Barry (00:26:45): I do have a couple of people that have 27. That's how they build their lists. Actually they build their lists through low cost sales that are like, self-liquidating basically pay for themselves. And then, then they have a whole backend, right. That they're using. But it's creates a really robust, engaged email list, as you can imagine, because it's not just filled with freebie seekers. So we do those. So like all the way from we put the same amount of, kind of I'd say effort, like the same amount of, of kind of analysis and work. Because honestly those ones, the margins are so tight. Those are actually harder to run and make work. Then all the way up to programs that were selling like 18, $20,000 programs and everything in between, they all kind of go through that same gap test. I guess they always get the same analysis of what's working.

Rita Barry (00:27:27): And what's not because ultimately, no matter what the price of your product is, it still has to have all the same components. It's just that they're wildly different, right? Like the way you talk about a $20,000 program is different than a $27 course. That's like a snackable, little impulse buy, but it all still fits kind of in those categories, which is wild. And that's why when, you know, everyone's like, Oh my gosh, Facebook ads are like kind of mystifying to me. I'm like, it's marketing. It's just like forcing the funnel. And there were people that are on the Facebook ads platform that, you know, colleagues of mine who are so good at like the tweaking and the automated rules and like the tech, like they can hack that platform for days. And they would put me to shame doing that because that is not where my skillset lives.

Rita Barry (00:28:12): We've been so successful because we understand marketing so much better. Right. And we understand the human experience and do so much research around voice of customer and all of this unsexy stuff. No one wants to do. And I found that far more foundational cause the hacking the platform, they change it like every day. So it's just, you can't, you can't even win that battle. Like you're always racing to keep up with it. So it is like if people understand marketing foundations, then they just kind of have to understand some of the tech of how to make that happen on the platform. But it really has to be grounded in solid marketing theory and background and an understanding of their customer. Then they're going to be wildly successful compared to the people that are just trying to hack it for the day with that blog post they read or that Facebook group that they heard, this thing works. Right. Like that's not the way to do it. Right.

Terra Bohlmann (00:28:56): Right. Exactly. No, that's cool. So, you know what Rita saying is like, you know, they're in it to build a relationship for the long-term like, it's not about, you know, this quick, you know, thing trinket, because then you have a list of people who want this, you know, I'm looking at chopsticks on my desk, right? So it's like, you know, this magical chapstick that changes colors. And then you have a list of people who are interested in that. And then the next week you want to go sell, you know, salt lamps or something, which is also on my desk. You know, it's like, we want to be really clear with who you want to work with and what problems you solve and keep that consistent. So when it's time to switch out and say, okay, well, you know what, I'm going to try a $27 product and do whole thing.

Terra Bohlmann (00:29:41): It needs to tee up what your big thing is. Right. Instead of trying to constantly like shift everything, which is what I see happening all the time with women business owners is like, you know, the shiny object syndrome. It's like, Oh, I want to be a life coach. You know what? Nope, I'm going to be a career coach. No, you know what? I'm going to be a business coach, you know? And it's like, okay, well, wait a minute. Like all this work you've done and time and money investment, you know, we want to build an engaged list.

Rita Barry (00:30:09): It's boring. The consistency is so boring.

Terra Bohlmann (00:30:12): And that's the real magic bullet in all of this is like, you will be a seven figure plus woman business owner, when you can sit with the boring and like, and just rinse and repeat.

Rita Barry (00:30:25): I heard someone in a mastermind once said to me, cause it never, like, I always felt like had to come up with something interesting. And this was right in my transitional between web design and like letting go of it because we already had the other services, but I just wouldn't let go. It was like a blanket. I just would not throw in the garbage. And she was like, you know what? She's like if Bernie and Brown got on a podcast and started talking about bicycle repair, it'd be super weird. Right. It would be like, what is going on? I want to listen to the 27th podcasts I've listened to is Bernay Brown talking about shame and vulnerability. And when she said I went, Oh my gosh, that is like, I'm sure Bernay there were days where she's like enough. I know. Right. It's her thing.

Rita Barry (00:31:08): And we don't get sick at like the people who are like fans or like even like many fans or just enjoy her work. They expect to hear the same thing. And like that, just that exp explanation landed with me. So severely, like it's just sat in my soul for years. I'm like, Oh, this is, I can talk about the same thing over and over again. I can say, and this is why, because people hear it at different places in their life. Maybe, you know, something was said a different way and you get so much better at explaining it. Yeah. You know that if you listen to someone, explain their concepts, you know, your one versus your five it's magic, what they have been able to refine into their message. And that was always the part that I was missing because of the changing all the time. You don't get to sit in your expertise and find ways to explain it that resonates with your audience until you've been in it, the boring and the nonsense for a really long time.

Terra Bohlmann (00:32:00): And that's the gold from the entire podcast. AB absolutely. It's like, Oh my gosh. And yeah. So thank you for that because, and I get there's like, and I was that person too, as I'm sure you were, when you're first starting out, you're like, this is what I'm good at. And like, I don't know how this fits in or how can I, you know, like for me, cause I'm a systems person as well. And you know, I'm probably 30% creative, 70% logical. And it was like, I was like a unicorn in this space. I was like I like business to me is very simplistic. Like we over-complicate strategy, right. Everything I do is a foundational. Let's get really clear on who you are and what you do, what you sell, how much you sell it for, you know, how do you deliver that to your customer?

Terra Bohlmann (00:32:46): Like that's a business map. It's just very, I see it as it's simple, but like for everyone else, it's like, you know, they have all this stuff in their head and it doesn't, they can't make logic out of it, you know? So you just kind of get stuck in this overwhelm and this like confusion and like, I'm smart, but what am I doing wrong? Or how is this, how is this woman who like, or we get in the comparison game, I try not to do it anymore, but when you're first starting out, like all this stuff's happening. And so, you know, there is some grace and like, okay, you can figure it out. You heard Rita. And I say, we have practice businesses, you learn from it. And then you get that clarity and you just double down on like what works. And I think at one time I've had like 27 products that I sold in my company, which will my word insane, which means you need 27 funnels.

Terra Bohlmann (00:33:38): Which means like it wasn't doing well. Right. And then I just went to one-on-one coaching one-on-one coaching. And I did that until I burnt myself so hard out of it because I couldn't do another sales call. Like it was just then I went to group, right. And then I just said, you know what, I'm going to do this, my mastermind. That's all I did for like two, three years was just the mastermind. And then it was like, Oh, when you simplify and get rid of all the things that you want to sell and come up with the signature thing and then build out and do what Ray is saying, the funnels and stuff, reverse engineer, that one signature product. Oh my gosh. Like it'll literally feel like you can have like three extra days off in your week.

Rita Barry (00:34:26): Well, and that's the neat thing I found about like the clients that I work with majority are seven and eight figure coaches and digital course creators, things like that. And what's so cool about being behind the scenes of that business of all those businesses. Like you learn so much about, first of all, they're all like the rest of us. They might, some of them might fly in private jets, but they're literally like the rest of us. So it's like, there's that grounding of like, okay, we're all on the same playing field here. We all have a brain. We can all do things. But what was so illuminating for me when I started seeing intimately, because I see everything from like sales to profit loss statements to everything like I'm like in it with them, is that the simpler, the business, the easier it is and the more profitable it is. And they are all fighting to keep it simple, just like the rest of us, except they know how important that is. Like the amount of times I'm sitting in on a marketing meeting or a quarterly meeting with a client and all of these ideas are fine because everyone has just, and they have teams, right? So like we have 20 people,

Terra Bohlmann (00:35:25): It's creatives, lots of creative.

Rita Barry (00:35:29): And like everybody has opinions. Your customers all have opinions about what you should be offering. And it's like, there's so many inputs. And like, literally like the amount of times are very good. Like this is what we sell. We sell two things. This is why we sell two things because like they appreciate the infrastructure that is around the delivery of those simple products. And they do not want to, you know, it's usually when they pair down from the 27 funnels to the two products, all of a sudden they're making $20 million. Right. It's because they get really good at selling those two things. And like I talked about with all that awareness, you know, engagement, you can then focus on what do the people for these two products need to hear in all of these different, because it takes so much listening and research and refinement, no human has enough time to figure it out for a billion products.

Rita Barry (00:36:18): Like if you just start with wanting to get so good at talking about it, it becomes so easy to sell. You know, like it's just, it's, it's so easy. And that has been one of the greatest gifts my clients have given me like, Oh, like, this is how this is done. Right. We can, none of them have service businesses like I do, but there's so many takeaways from that. And that's all I've been done, been doing the last six years is like, no, we don't do that anymore. And we don't do that. And you're like, how can we simplify this? And we just,

Terra Bohlmann (00:36:46): I find that like my favorites, like, Oh, we tried that four years ago. That was a no.

Rita Barry (00:36:51): And it really just becomes like, it was exactly what you're talking about. It's like pattern recognition that when you're in, you're just doing a mastermind or you're just doing one-on-one service. And all of a sudden, like the map that you think is really simple is really just like your 10,000 million hours seeing this pattern again and again and again, and simplifying it down to its essence. And I think that's the beautiful thing that I didn't appreciate until much later in my business is that when I get into an ad account or we're creating these things, we have structures and plans in place. Not because it makes it easy and it's a shortcut it's because we've spent so many hours, we're finding these plans and noticing what those trends and patterns are for our clients in all these different spaces and taking the best of the best and kind of,

Terra Bohlmann (00:37:34): I love it. Like, don't you just feel, I just feel more relaxed just listening to this right now. It's just like, yes, all the things. And it's simple. It's the anti hustle mentality of just like you have permission to run a simple business. And even for me, like as much clarity as I've, you know, I always say that. So it's like, I've been in business a decade and I felt like year two, I had more clarity. And I was like, Oh, look at me. I was so cute with my little website business. And then it's like, Oh, now I have more clarity, more clarity. And now you're 10. I'm like, Holy cow, like, can I get more clear than that?

Rita Barry (00:38:07): I know I wanted to send a postcard to my new business, self it's. Okay. This is going to be messy, but prefer perspective. Like it took me longer to get from zero to 100,000 than it did from a hundred thousand to a million. Interesting.

Terra Bohlmann (00:38:23): Okay. I was the opposite, like, but I'm not at the million. So like I got to the six figures really quickly, but even at a hundred thousand plus, you know, whatever it was my first year, it was like, I made plenty of way more than that in the corporate world. And so it was like, that wasn't even, it was a goal. Like everyone wants to be a six-figure business owner, but yet it's like, well, that's still like, I still need to triple that in order to get back to wherever it was, because I got a thing called a salary. And now I have these things called expenses, you know? And it's like, you know, I had to, what a lot of people don't talk about is profit versus where we see, Oh, I just had a $3 million launch. Awesome. How much profit did you make on it? Awesome.

Rita Barry (00:39:05): So I can tell you that firsthand, like we, we run some serious Facebook ads for some serious monster launches and yeah. And it's, it's a lot, like, people are usually shocked at what goes out in the ads and things like that. So it is, it's very eye-opening to see what those kind of create. But I mean, I came from social work at a very low bar. I just wanted to, like, I remember thinking I was like, I just want to pay the car payment. Right. That was my goal. As a business owner, it was just see I had a three-year-old at home and my husband was working full time and I was just wanting to kind of fill in the cracks because I was bored really. Like, that's kinda what happened. And, and it was the doing that, having that social work salary in my hat, I was like, okay, I can do this.

Rita Barry (00:39:48): And it never occurred to me that at a certain point in my life, I'd never have a car payment again, like, cause that's not what the world is supposed to be like. Right. And it was coming from not much to be very nice about what the situation I grew up in. I didn't have thoughts that could like dream big enough. Right. I just didn't have any context for that, about what life could look like, but it was a hustle and a slog for me, those first hundred thousand, it was like finding the thing, finding the thing, you found the thing. And it seems like how super niche does this, right? Like Facebook ads for coaches, consultants, digital course creators, just the ladies, because I think we all women need more money in the world

Terra Bohlmann (00:40:27): And we understand each other, like, there's just a difference when a woman like will come to me and I'm like, you know, I always ask like, how'd you find out about me? And you know, it's like, well, I was searching for a female business coach, you know? And, and it's not to say like, I am not a man hater. I'm not, I don't even consider myself you know, major feminist. Like I love men. I've, I'm raising three boys. I love my husband, but we are wired differently. And I think we understand each other because it comes for us. And I think we were also, this is like the pre-conversation, you know, that I know everyone's like really. Okay, thanks. But you know, in talking about women, we're drawn about feelings more so than the data, the results, the, this, the, that it's like, we're going to make our judgment based on how we feel. And as soon as I switched that out, because I can be, I can come with a very masculine energy. I know that it's just, I worked in tech for many years and it's just how I am. Yeah. And so, as soon as I started reframing some things around, how does this make you feel and how does this make me feel? Like, I didn't even know. I tap into feelings about business. Like I was, the girl was like, why are you crying? Like, this is embarrassing. Like you don't cry in business, you know?

Rita Barry (00:41:42): No, it's okay. Totally.

Terra Bohlmann (00:41:45): And I'd have live events. And I had a designated person that was the crier handler. So someone would be crying about something cause something would come up at a live event as it always does, you know, tap into and someone start crying and I would just be like on the mic, I need therapist in the back, please, you know? And it's like, go and then handle it. Right. So, and then I was like, you know what, I'm going to lean into this a little bit more and, and understand. And myself also not just make decisions with my head, just super easy for me, but like also tap into how, how do I feel about it? How's it feel in my heart? You know? And that was probably my biggest aha. And the last 10 years is like, we can do what we love. We can choose clients, we can hire clients, we can fire them if they're not in alignment with our heart. And that was just a game changer. And I don't know. So I love that. You also just put the stake in the ground saying I work with women. I know part of my purpose. I want to hear your purpose too. But I know like my purpose is to help elevate how the world views women, business owners, period. Right? Like we need to be taken just as seriously. Why women? And like, what's, what's your purpose?

Rita Barry (00:42:55): I was, I was raised by a single mom before. I would say my mom got divorced before it was cool. Because she, like, my dad left when I was seven. So I was seven months old. My brother was three. He just was gone. And the, to be raised in like this really small town mom was on welfare. And I was in one of like a weird town that was like a bedroom community for a big city. So it was all the kids I went to school with. Their dads were like the head of the hydro company. Like, cause they didn't want them to put their kids in, in the city. So they all lived in this little town and I just, by happenstance, that's where we lived. So I was like the embarrassing house that was falling apart. That was later demolished. Right. So like came from like there was black mold in my bedroom.

Rita Barry (00:43:34): Like it was bad stuff. And, but my mom loved us, raised us. Amazing. We never went without like the basics. We always had clothes, food, shelter, everything. And she worked really, really hard, but she was so entrepreneurial. But the only thing available, right, like in the eighties was like Avon or you know, all of those kind of like MLM type things. And it was still so limited. Like I remember she did Amway. She, there was all these like things that she tried and she never got really good traction with anything. Granted, she was very much like, like looking at Maslow's hierarchy of needs. We were very much of the bottom anyways. So she didn't have a ton of time to devote to any of that stuff. But the opportunities we have now, we're in no way available to her. And it blows her mind still to this day, what we have built. Right. And she just like, she's like, this is incredible. Like she's like, and I was so disappointed. You weren't going to be a doctor. Right. My mom,

Terra Bohlmann (00:44:28): My mom's big, my goal. And she usually, she doesn't to the podcast, but I mean, I've shared this on stage too, but it was just, you go become a secretary at the tractor company in town. You have really good benefits because my mom was self-employed she's owned and operated a barber shop most of my life. And then my dad was a lead singer of a rock band, which of course means no benefits. You better be dead before, are you dying? If I take you to the hospital? Like what? No. Like we don't even go to the doc like a physical, like legally you have to have one to get us to play sports. Okay, we'll go do that. But like, it was, you had to be definitely ill to even consider going to the doctor. So it was very important that for her benefits and marrying somebody stable.

Terra Bohlmann (00:45:11): So it was like, okay, take care of you, take care of me. So if I could get and become just like a secretary and have, you know, a salary with good benefits and w you know, long-term employment, it wasn't like Terra, I want you to be the CEO someday. It was like, be the secretary. So that's how I started. I wasn't ever going to go to college. I went to a secretarial program and same type of thing. And it was like, then if you marry someone, I mean, lo and behold, you can marry a factory worker that has a really good job with a pension or a construction worker that's in the union, you know? So like, that was a golden dog. And so then I was like, okay. And, you know, ironically, I ended up marrying somebody from the same tractor company that I worked at as a secretary. But like, it was one of those things that they only knew what they knew. And they, you always want better for your kids, but like, you know, it's just, they didn't know what they knew and what opportunities we have now.

Rita Barry (00:46:10): Yes. They had no way of like, none of us did, like, if I even think, cause I'm of that generation where I had an analog childhood and a completely digital

Terra Bohlmann (00:46:18): Yes. I'm like the one that you two were the gen X-ers like there's a four year gap. The Y2K people.

Rita Barry (00:46:27): It was funny because like my daughter, like when she's talking about all of the, because she's 14. So like all of the digital apps and I'm like, I'm right there with ya. I know the tech talk. I can Snapchat. I can do all the things, but I can also appreciate that. Like I grew up knowing what it was like to be bored. Yeah, totally. It's really interesting. It's kind of like a unique spot to be in. And like, even to talk to my mom now where she's just like, what do you even mean? Right? Like, what do you mean this zoom thing? And like all of these things that we do when we take kind of for granted now, but it was seeing her. And I was, I was just, I was an old soul as a kid, which is kind of like what they've always said from like, the moment I was born, it was like, read is just quiet and thoughtful and then speaks a lot. But it's still thoughtful. And I looked at what she was going through and I saw us and what our house looked like. And I mean, all of my friends were obviously very affluent. They all got my cards on their 16th birthday and all that kind of stuff. And

Terra Bohlmann (00:47:22): You get a car on your side. I got a, no, I got a Barbie Jeep. Like it was so, but it was so mean what I got cause little sister came in

Terra Bohlmann (00:47:30): And woke me up on my 16th birthday, Terra, Terra, come in the driveway, you got something on the driver, happy birthday, mom got you something. And I ran. So mine was like, they were mean about it. And I ran out and that in the driveway was a Barbie Jeep. That was probably like a $15 RBG. And they thought it was hilarious. I was like, maybe this is it. I'm going to get a car. Just like my friends know I had a barbecue.

Rita Barry (00:47:52): Oh, that is true. That's a lot more cruel than, I don't know. Really don't remember. Yeah, it was, I got my license. Like I remember, but that wasn't my car that I got to take that in, like in looking at that piece. Right. And like looking at life and, and even to this ad, we had talked about this, actually, not that many months ago with my mom. And she was like, well, like what, why have you been? I said, there was a big portion of my life. I was running away from being poor. And then like, I've settled more into now that like, just, we're not running from that. Right. Like, we're really just about creating abundance and all these other things that we do with the money that we have. So, but the running in the beginning came from, like I knew education was my way out.

Rita Barry (00:48:32): I knew I always identified as very, like self-identified as very intelligent. And even from that young age, I saw how hard that was. I saw my mom cry. I saw her not eat dinner because there wasn't enough food for all of us. And she gave it to us and she would wash dishes and just say like, Oh no, that's fine. It's, you know, I'll just do the dishes I'll eat later. Right. But years later we realized it's because there wasn't enough for everybody and all these things that she did. And I, but even though I didn't see kind of those little pieces, I knew how hard it was. Right. Because you do, you feel hope. And she said, it's like, there's literally no money. Don't wreck your pants. Right. Like these are your only shoes that don't be growing. Like those are the things that kind of gets stuck in your head.

Rita Barry (00:49:14): And so I said, mom, like, I knew that like that hardness was not what I wanted for my life. Right. And I didn't know how I was going to figure it out. Initially it was like schooling and being a doctor and all that kind of stuff. It later turned into this, which I'm infinitely grateful for. But like, and that's why, like, that's kind of the long story around where the lifting women up came. And I also have friends who probably won't listen to this podcast because they'll totally know who they are, but people like friends who are in relationships that they would not be in if money wasn't a thing.

Terra Bohlmann (00:49:46): So the freedom. And when we say freedom, it's like freedom of choice. And it's some people think like, Oh, well I want to make a lot of money because you know, then I can buy things. Right. And it's like, you know, you gotta really, we do this in my mastermind. You, you get down to the seven whys of why you want what you want. And then it's, when you get down to that six and seventh time, you asked yourself why that's the real root. And we all have a Rita story of like growing up and maybe in some cases, money wasn't ever an issue. You got everything you wanted, but you didn't get your parents' attention. Right. Cause they're too busy working. Or in my case, I don't ever remember not going without, but we had, I had

Terra Bohlmann (00:50:28): A grandma and grandpa that he was retired from the same tractor company that would never let us go without. So it was like, he was always are, you know, like saving grace and everything. If you know, my parents going to make the mortgage payment or whatever. So it was like, you know it, and then back then was when credit just came out. So we had this magazine, this catalog called Fingerhut. I don't know if they had it in Canada. And it was, it was like this where you could buy a toaster and it would be $3 a week, you know? So it was all the like payment plan and the introduction of credit, you know? So it was like, yeah, that was a whole thing. But at the end of the day, we all have our stories, but you need to get really clear of what that is and know that that was our, what we're going to enter the mindset stuff now. But like that was our six year old self that was feeling like unstable because whatever reason, and now we're in our forties and thirties or whatever. And you're like applying that to life and that's, you have to do that work. And if you can't do that work, it's really hard to accept the money that you're going to make

Rita Barry (00:51:37): That you're actually going to make. And it's like, I know like another spoiler alert that the, the thing that I, that landed so much in the last two years for me was that the person that I am now is exactly the person I was before the money. And that's really disappointing to a lot. Cause it's like the losing the weight, the getting the, you know, you get the million, you get the whatever. Yeah. Like you're literally the same person. And it's something that I hear my clients say all the time. They're like, I wish I could have told myself that, like I had to be the person I wanted to be to start with before that wouldn't even create itself. But I'm still me. I'm still have the same thoughts about not being good enough and having to work on all that mindset stuff at this place, in my business and in my life that I was a decade ago.

Rita Barry (00:52:22): Right. It's the exact same human. I brought her with me. She comes and it doesn't fix anything. Right. And I've seen clients blow up their own businesses unintentionally because they didn't do the mindset work to be comfortable with where they work. Cause all the problems they brought them all with them. And then they just had those problems with extra zeros. And then all of a sudden they don't have a business anymore. So it seems super woo. And I'm so stinking logical, if it didn't actually prove itself to be worthwhile, I would never do the mindset work. Right. But I would have probably blown up my business.

Terra Bohlmann (00:52:55): Oh, if I did it in complete reverse order. So it was like, you know, I did the come at it, very logically business, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then once I started layering in the mindset stuff, cause I was like, that's I called myself, Whoa, not, I don't think it could work, but I'm not woo woo or whatever. And I mean, who's to say like, now that I feel I'm being judgy to woo. It's just, we mindset is the number one thing that is going to make or break your business. Right. It's it's our brains. And you know, so if you want to scale like what we're talking about and create the funnels and do all the things and run the ads and be able to take that capacity on and fill not even worthy of that money,

Rita Barry (00:53:35): Some people don't feel worthy of it. Yeah. Right. Exactly.

Terra Bohlmann (00:53:38): Because if you don't, you'll end up just blowing it on, you know, $250,000

Rita Barry (00:53:45): Gets crappy, like sorts of things. Right. Like people and it's weird because it's every, it's, it's a really hard conversation to have to, depending who's in your social circle because nothing sounds as obnoxious as I'm making like $15,000 a day with my digital course. And I'm like having a, I'm really uncomfortable with the amount of income I'm making. Like there's certain group of people that are probably in your sphere and there might not be anyone who is safe to have that conversation with that will actually help you as opposed to just like yeah. Like whatever. Wow. Rich people problems. No. And it's different conversation. And that's part something I didn't appreciate either is that I just started noticing that like stuff went to come out of my mouth and depending on who I was talking to, it created a giant chasm between us and that was never the intention.

Rita Barry (00:54:30): Right. So it's kind of like finding people you get, sometimes it's getting a coach, like those safe places to actually have those conversations. And we have clients all the time, which is why I'm also another reason I love working with women because it's not all like, let's just go and run through the to-do list. It's like, how are you feeling about all of this? Like, what's your brain doing? Are you comfortable with this? Like some clients cry, some clients don't right. Like some people are more emotional than others, but like we talk about all that stuff or spouses and partners that are like either super supportive or super not, you know, and all of these layered nuances that are in all of our businesses, because I dunno just the clients that I work with special and just all the women that I know in the world where there's, we don't really separate the same way that my husband, like he goes to work and he does work. And then he comes home and the business owners we work with are not like that. Like they've thought, you know, the kids, the families, the relationships, their parents, you know, their mom's opinion about them having a business, all of this stuff together. And then we're sitting here trying to run Facebook ads and it's not that simple. Right. So much more to it. And, and that's one of the most beautiful things I think about really focusing on women led businesses. It's just super fun and it's a different flavor and we get to pick, okay.

Terra Bohlmann (00:55:40): I totally agree. And the whole thing about being in a mastermind is like in being in the right mastermind, because we were talking about that on the pre show,

Rita Barry (00:55:49): You know, it was like, if you're in the right

Terra Bohlmann (00:55:51): Mastermind, it's like, Oh my gosh, like it's no big deal for the mastermind. I'm in. It's like, Oh yeah, I made $25,000 this week. And we're all like, Oh, yay for you. You know, like that's whatever. But if you were in one that would, you know, be full of people starting up or what's an email list or what's, you know, I don't know what, how much to charge. Like there's a place for that, but surround yourself with people who are just one step ahead of that. Not people who are like, you know, so out of reach, right? So like, you know, that's again, you know what you're talking about earlier, come back to the problem awareness and what's the problem like, Oh, sometimes I, big problem is I'm uncomfortable making the amount of money I'm making and I need to push through that and feel worthy

Rita Barry (00:56:38): And nice to picking your mastermind. It's true. It's cute. It's so much more involved than people think because of that, because it needs to be that safe place. It needs to be like, I love it when I can have a problem like that. And then other people are those few steps ahead, right. Where they have had that girl I've been there too. Here's what I, I here's my coach. Right. To be able to have that group of people around you is amazing. And especially because we all come from these different beginnings, but when you get to a certain place in your business, everyone kind of is confronted with a lot of these same problems. And yeah. And if it's a mismatch, then it just ends up that you other coaching people in the night,

Terra Bohlmann (00:57:13): You're paying 25 grand to coach people,

Rita Barry (00:57:18): Or you're not getting your needs met and being there. Right. Because everybody really needs to, it just needs to be that equal share or equitable, I guess not always equal, but it's just, it's so important

Terra Bohlmann (00:57:28): Because you're also in a mastermind. I'm in one, I run one like, you know, where we talked about this on the thing. And it's like, what is super interesting is like, when you're going to go step into be one, you gotta be ready to be open and vulnerable and real hard. It's so hard. So that is like what I found out because I've been in masterminds and I run one is a secret sauce that I have, like we were talking about, what did we say earlier? Like, I'm pretty good. Like you have this aha like, Oh, I do this really well. And one of my secret sauces is to be able to make everyone in the room. And I work with high achieving women who look like they have their crap together all day long. Right. That's who I have to not break them. But like, I have to make sure that my goal is I want them to all be best friends by the time our weekend is over.

Terra Bohlmann (00:58:17): Right. And they're coming in with their all, you know, everything because I was that person too. And so I have to do things in order to get them to feel comfortable being real and where it comes. Cause they all get love seats. Right. So what is the thing you want to bring that everyone's going to help you with? And it's like, I want your there's a trick to it. And the main trick is find someone who's going to be really vulnerable on loveseat. One. This is the one that gives you the permission to be like, Oh, okay, she's going to be willing to open up about, you know, how her husband doesn't support her business and this and this and that, or he's really insecure that she makes more money than him now. And that's the thing, keeping her up at night. The next one's going to be comfortable ago. I don't know. Like, I feel like I've made bad hires on my team would have, how do I fix so embarrassing. So

Rita Barry (00:59:06): Things that were like, Oh my gosh, I must be the only one

Terra Bohlmann (00:59:11): People knew the truth that I would be a fraud network

Rita Barry (00:59:15): And nobody cares. Nobody cares. Yeah.

Terra Bohlmann (00:59:17): Just have, just do a really good job of building. Like you said, your three steps,

Terra Bohlmann (00:59:22): Which I think is so key. It's like understanding the problems that your customers or future customers are dealing with and then give them some sort of engagement or way to whatever. And then like they'll buy from you and they'll not just buy from you, but they will be loyal to you. Love you forever. Love you forever. And I always say that to people. I'm like, I don't want anyone talking smack about me. Like, that's not why I'm here. So like, if we're not a fit, we're not a fit. And that's totally cool. Like, I'll refer three people that you can like interview and stuff like that. But like at the end of the day, you know, we all want to like love our customers and we want them to have 10 times the value that they're paying us. So anyway, so couple of things we'll wrap up and this has been amazing.

Terra Bohlmann (01:00:09): We've touched on so much stuff from like what funnel is and the website side of things and, and whatnot. And then like the Facebook ads and scaling and, Oh my gosh, mindset. I mean, I don't things we can talk for like hours, but what would, so if somebody were, let's just use me as an example, I've told you on the pre show, I'm like doing my first real, real online launch, a decent list size. But like, you know, I'm doing my first online side because I've always done in person. It's like, what do you say to somebody who comes in and through your assessment process? Like, you know, maybe like I'm really clear on what I sell and I've got the social proof and whatever, but maybe I'm like a three and like a four or a three and a two. And you're like, Terra, you're doing a good job, but you need to do this work. Right. And my goal being, I want to scale using Facebook, what do you tell the person who's like, not really played around with it and kind of scared of it.

Rita Barry (01:01:07): Right. And the Facebook ad part, well, once, like once we do the assessment, if we like, we obviously identify this stuff, that's kind of like broken or could use improvement. Cause sometimes it's just some small tweaks that make a big difference. But the biggest thing like with Facebook is it, once you have like that stuff that works and taking it onto the platform is really not that challenging. You just have to kind of know your numbers. So it's going to come down to like some really unsexy stuff around data, not crushing amounts of data, because this is always the piece that's missing. That is why measurement marketing is so much a part of what we do with Facebook ads, kind of some of our secret sauce and our unique selling proposition for our business. Because when you go onto the ads, right? And you think of all those questions that people ask all the time around, well, what's my good cost per lead.

Rita Barry (01:01:52): What should I be looking for for like what click through rate should I have or what cost per sale, all of those questions. Like we have benchmarks for sure. There are like ranges that are like inbound sort of thing, but those are not applicable if your business works differently. And so when you understand what conversion rate you have on landing pages, or you understand what percentage of your list buy products, like when you do it organically, then can start to understand when we apply that to the Facebook platform or any kind of paid traffic, you know what your inbounds is like, say you convert 20% of the landing page, you convert 3% to sales with all of those, just real big picture numbers. Like we're not even talking about like scroll depth and all that kind of stuff. Right. That's really super Ninja. Just your basics, conversion rates, email list, all that kind of stuff.

Rita Barry (01:02:42): You can take those numbers and reverse engineer what your costs should be on the platform. Because when everyone's like, well, what's a good cost per lead. I'm like, it depends. Yeah. I have clients who have a $50 cost per lead on a $20,000 program. That's amazing. Right. You know, but a $50 lead for a $20 service, not amazing. Right. So it's so relative. And that's why like when, you know your numbers, like to me, when I look at business the same way, like you're like, it's simple. I see every business has math right there. And it's the marketing math that I'm usually focused on. But I mean, there's obviously the financial math too, but the business math with the marketing is like, how many people do we need? And what conversion rate do they have? You know, what are they doing in the middle? And what's the conversion rate to sales.

Rita Barry (01:03:29): It's like, and the frightening thing after years and years of doing this and like hundreds of thousands of like so many impressions, like great. I think we're, I don't even know how much we've run through the platform now. Like multiple millions of dollars we've run through the Facebook platform. And it's just, people's conversion rate usually stays relatively the same. And people always think it's like, it's just weird. Like each client kind of has their own flavor. And once you know your numbers, you can just ignore like, Oh, so-and-so's blog posts as I should have a dollar relayed. Well, it should, you know, you have to find out what yours is, right? Because you might have an expensive audience. You might, there's all of these variables that none of those blog posts can help you with. So just getting a rudimentary idea of just tracking month over month, just some super basic numbers around how many people come to your website, your email list growth.

Rita Barry (01:04:15): If that's the type of business you have, and then the sales in there, you will get so much clarity around how much you can pay because you'll understand your average order value their lifetime value of a customer, all of those things, which is the, we don't even like put a pixel on a site until we know all those numbers for a client, because that's how we measure success, right? Like that's how you set goals. That's how you know, is this profitable. Cause I'm not going to run a $50 lead for somebody and be super excited about it. If that's not profitable, we might have to optimize that back to a buck. Right. Or we could be jumping up and down because it used to be $200 and now it's 50. So it's also relative. And that's also what makes the platform a little bit tricky. But if you just understand some of those basic numbers that are really matched up to that marketing funnel, we talked about there's kind of base metrics for each stage. Then you will be infinitely farther along than like the vast majority of businesses. And like other spoiler alert. I have clients that are seven and eight figures who don't know those numbers super well. Right. And it's okay to have to be like, you know, go back and figure them out later. Right. Totally cool. You'll just be further ahead if you do it sooner.

Terra Bohlmann (01:05:23): Absolutely. And that goes back to, you know, quote unquote, the high achievers, the whatever it's like, Oh, I got this, I got this. It's like, no, let's look at this. Like I'm a complete newbie. Right. And there's some, you know, joy of like, and I say this all the time because I create business models for a living. Right. And what my team and do. And it's like sometimes, you know, everything for me is a travel analogy. Sometimes we have to land your airplane, which is your business for maintenance for just a little bit so that you can go further and faster later, like, and we have to land it for maybe a week. Right. And just do the things that we need to do so that you have that clarity and that you have the benchmarks or the whatever so that you can go and, and there's no, we should all be doing that. Like

Rita Barry (01:06:07): Transformational. It really is. And yeah. You know, it seems like such a bother and nobody likes to do it because trust me, that's why often people hire us because they're like, we hate this. Yeah. Take care of it. And, but the clarity that people get, and it also helps with a lot of that mindset stuff because people often think certain funnels are doing terribly and they're actually not because they don't know what their metrics are. Or we get super emotionally attached to a piece of marketing. That's a garbage we were like, but I love it. It just wants to make it video. And we get super sentimental about it. And then the math is just, it's just numbers. There's no drama to it. Right. Well, that's converting at nothing. So like let's figure out why. And then we can move from, move on from that.

Rita Barry (01:06:49): Instead of trying to like, just keep going and keep going. And when you get the clarity around, this is what's working, this is what's not, and that's where the Facebook ads become gas on the fire because you find the best of the best, the messaging that's working, the imagery that's working, the funnels, that's, they're all going to funnels that are working. And then you can have stability and predictability with your spend. You start getting all of that, you know, all the things you hear, people like it was working in that it wasn't that's because there's something wrong with one of those four areas. Right? And when you have, when you go at it from that really systematic approach of getting your foundations in place first, then doing the ads, you can be one of those advertisers that all of a sudden has like this exponential growth, because it's all very stable and stability doesn't come unless your marketing is in place

Terra Bohlmann (01:07:32): A hundred percent. Remind the audience of the four of the four levels again, before

Rita Barry (01:07:38): Product X and place offer audience and marketing funnel. And so funnel being entire marketing journey, customer journey, whatever that is.

Terra Bohlmann (01:07:46): And just her talking about the customer journey is not something I hear a lot of people talking about. It's one of those strategy things it's like, Google it, like do the research, like figure out your customer. I call it customer experience. But like customer journey or the customer experience you want to do from when they don't even know who you are. And they're having those problems all the way to, Oh my gosh, I'm a raving fan of Rita's or Terra's. And like, I'm going to tell everybody, map that out for them and just like, just do it and then go solve the problems at each point in there.

Rita Barry (01:08:21): Exactly. And then you, your content calendar is also there, right? Like total to, to lunch calendars actually come from that. That's how we build a lunch, right. It go through problem solution, product awareness. And it's just it's and it's the way humans make decisions. So it's super, untrendy it's been around since the sixties. If you Google stages of awareness, do not read Eugene Schwartz book. It's super dry. But if you just, if you Google stages of awareness marketing, I think actually stages of awareness will probably get it. You'll see a lot of different resources, but it's true. It's like foundational strategy. So it's not sexy. It's not the thing of the moment. But it's something that when I understood it personally, when my clients understood it, like it just, it grounds your business. It gives your marketing boundaries. It helps you see compartments. Whereas before it felt like a big blob, like what do I do? And now you're like, well, which part of my marketing three chunks of my marketing, aren't working, what's falling down. Where do I need attention to it? And then, yeah. And then the Facebook ads is just gravy on top.

Terra Bohlmann (01:09:17): And when you're doing that, exactly what she said, and this honestly, I'm always a hundred percent transparent with anyone. I work with an audience. And just any woman who would ever care to know is that was something that was such an aha for me, even in the last year. And that's being in business nine years, the clarity around not being the person, that's buy my stuff, buy my stuff, buy my stuff, buy my stuff. Like we hate that person, right? Yes. Kate's probably like we unsubscribe, we roll our eyes. We're like, I don't want to buy your thing. It's like, when you do it in a very strategic way, that is what makes it seem like, Oh, Rita so nice. Like she's doing this extra long podcast and she's just given us everything she has and being dah, dah, dah. And then it's like, Oh, I like her. Like that is okay. Now I'm going to engage with her at some level. Like I'll download something from her site or whatever, and then maybe I'll be her customer. So it's like, that's the journey that we want to take people on. Not just, Oh, buy me, buy my stuff.

Rita Barry (01:10:13): I didn't even know they need to buy your thing. Cause they don't actually know what problem it solves. And I think this is work that you get better and better at with time. Cause I mean, I do this with clients. I still had to do messaging work for my own business last year to really dial it in more because when we're talking about things like Facebook ads and marketing metrics, that's the product, right? That is not the problem itself. And since, depending on your niche too, with those different products, you're going to talk about like the way I use Facebook ads to solve a problem is a different thing. Right? Because that scalability and predictability isn't for everybody. Some people just want to get started, but they're not my client. So it's like, how do I talk about that? So people know, and when you get the right people, it's exactly what you said that people hear it in. They're like she is the person because not everybody deals with like some of my clients spend a million dollars a month on Facebook ads for their singular business. Not everybody's used to running that kind of ad spend, right? Like that's a very specific lane. And I had to learn how to talk about that in a way that helps people understand who I was and how I could help them. And that's, that's always a journey and I think we get better and better at it, the longer we're in business.

Terra Bohlmann (01:11:21): And when you understand the journey, you're going to also attract the like-minded people and you're going to love your clients more too. So

Rita Barry (01:11:28): Like so like when I think about your web design clients that were not the right people versus the roster of clients now, like, like we're like Barry, Abadi friends. Some of us like, seriously,

Terra Bohlmann (01:11:39): I love that. I, I call them my ride or die friends, but like I now, and it's funny cause I've been having, I had ride or die friend. And now whenever anyone says that, like they're more, they want to ride, but they're not really, really willing to die. So, and that's what I was attracting. So I had to like it. So now whenever I hear that, I'm like, no, you're going to ride, but you don't want to die. Like I'm willing to die. Like let's do it. I know

Rita Barry (01:12:03): Come to work. And like helping them make wild amounts of money is so stink and fun. Like the whole team gets behind it. That's the vision of the company is to help these women make ridiculous amounts of revenue and that's super fun. And so like it just congealed everybody together. And honestly like working with them is all so much fun. And that's usually the same thing that they echo back to us. It's like, it's not an ad agency that we're used to working with. Like, you can tell that you love us and want us to succeed more than sometimes we do. Right. I love it. And it's important. It's important to know your people, but once you come to work and this is the business, right. Like I don't feel like I'm working anymore now. It's so fun.

Terra Bohlmann (01:12:46): It's so fun and so true. Like I get out of bed everyday. Like, Oh my gosh, I get to do this. People pay me to do this fun stuff. Oh, that's awesome. So in wrapping up, thank you so much for all your time. All your transparency, vulnerability and tips and everything. I always like to ask everyone I interview, since it is the fast track woman, the podcast is the fast track woman. What will you share? The one thing that you wish you would have known that would have helped you go faster in your own business?

Rita Barry (01:13:16): Oh, mine. Honestly, it was like, I'd have to say niching and like yeah. Like finding my thing. Cause it was the business and I wish like that I needed to fail faster. I guess that's kind of what ultimately it was is that I got so stuck in, I have to make this work versus being okay. Cause I was always, you know, always the person that was picked for like, I was just smarty pants. This is my thing. Right. But it had a hard time failing at things and I like hung on to stuff and products and services far longer than I should have. And I, if I would've just been able to rapidly cycle through like, Oh, that didn't work. Let's let it go. Yeah. I would have gotten to this place a lot faster because the growth in the like the latter half, as I mentioned was so much more than, and it's so much more fun and it's easier.

Rita Barry (01:14:04): Like all the things like it's not a harder business because it's bigger. It's easier. I have a team there's a whole bunch of people like there, seven people doing work right now while I'm talking to you and that is infinitely easier than it used to be. And if I would have just decided that I was not going to give up until I figured it out. And that was the guiding thought versus being sentimental and attached to a specific thing, I would have been far better off and probably got here a lot sooner. But ultimately we got here anyway. So I'm just going to be super grateful that this is where we ended up.

Terra Bohlmann (01:14:35): Thank you. And I'm sure that's going to serve and resonate with, with so many women. And yeah, I felt the same way. It was like, why did I, I was like fighting upstream with my business. Like it had to be hard and these are the stories I told myself, like I have to work hard. It has to be hard or I don't deserve money. You know, all the things. And when I finally just let go and kind of went with the flow and it felt easy and I didn't feel guilty about it was like, Oh, I had to go through that fight so I could understand and be in those trenches and be muddy so I can understand how my clients feel when they come to me. Right. So I'm grateful for that the same way you are. But I love that tip because

Rita Barry (01:15:15): So to be in it, I think the mindset would have been so helpful to just, Oh my gosh. Just through the empathy that comes from going through that messy part is so invaluable.

Terra Bohlmann (01:15:25): Amen. Amen. So thank you. This has been so fantastic. How can people learn more about you?

Rita Barry (01:15:31): Well, the one and only place really it's so funny. The person who measures marketing doesn't do a ton of it herself, but always that way. It's always lots of word of mouth. So we don't worry about it so much. But the best place to find me is@ritabarry.co and Dutch mutton. It's B a R R Y. Not like the fruit, it's the other one. And yeah, and that Rita Barry.com will also take you there. So we got both of those and we have stuff about all the different things that we do and, and lots of different podcasts that I've been on, different things that people want to learn more about. Measurement, marketing, Facebook ads, all that fun stuff. You can find it all there.

Terra Bohlmann (01:16:03): Fantastic. Thank you. It's been such a joy and I want to definitely have you back on the podcast. So thank you. Take care.

Outro (01:16:11): And there you have it. Another jam packed episode of the fast-track woman podcast, don't forget to visit Terra Bohlmann.com where you can get more business tips and strategies learn how we can work together to accelerate your business success or access this podcast. Episode show notes with a full transcript and links to resources mentioned today. And if you enjoyed this podcast, I invite you to leave a review so that we can help serve more women business owners like you until next time here's to owning your time and valuing your word.