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Thanks to the Rona and the “new normal, businesses and teams are going virtual quicker than you can say “I work from home.” Work will never be the same again, and this new normal has opened the eyes of everyone from across the globe to the possibilities of remote work, remote workforce and the importance of managing a virtual team.

Businesses that used to be in a traditional office setting are now finding ways to adapt and make the virtual space work for them, their teams and their organization. Thankfully, tools like Slack and Teamwork are making the virtual working space much more manageable.

Even after this pandemic is over and the much-awaited vaccine saves the world, it won’t be a surprise if many businesses choose to stick to this remote work arrangement. In my opinion, because this type of arrangement has been working for me, I’m sure other businesses have experienced positive outcomes from this set up as well and will choose to continue it.

Some people are still learning the ropes in this “new normal” working situation, while others like me, have been virtual for a little now. Matter of fact, we are so virtual, that some of us have built virtual businesses and we have been working this way for several years now.

What started out for me as an experiment (more on that later), soon became my “saving grace” ever since the pandemic shook the entire world. Looking back, starting a virtual team was one of the best decisions I have ever made because of how quickly I was able to adapt to this global phenomenon (together with my team as well).

And because managing my own virtual team was a puzzle that I wanted to solve, I had no idea that what I have achieved now was even possible through the people that I have hired. It’s amazing how I have grown my businesses into what they are today all by working with my virtual team members… no, you can’t have them, they are mine (however you can start building your team by following THIS). 

It’s no surprise that managing a virtual team is different from a physical one, but the core principles of leadership and management still stand. And I admit, I am no expert in this field as well, but I am lucky to be with team members who were willing to experiment with me along the way and learn what is the right way to manage the business with members from all around the globe. 

I have been working with my virtual team for about 6 years now, and learning how to manage everyone (including myself) is a never-ending process. One that I am going to share here in the hopes that you gain some nuggets of wisdom from my personal experiences and apply them to building and growing your own virtual team. 

In this blog post, I am going to talk about this experiment that ended up being something that’s changed my business forever. I will be sharing with you everything that I have encountered while growing and managing my own virtual team including the following:

• The Idea That Started It All
• My First Attempt at Outsourcing
• Focusing on the Bigger Picture
• The Challenges I/we have faced and how we overcame them
• Lessons Learned Managing a Virtual Team
• The Rise of the Tide

THE IDEA THAT STARTED IT ALL

I have always wanted to own a business. 

Back when I was a teenager, I remember coming across the Cashflow Quadrant in Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad, and I promised myself that when I “made it”, I would make it as a “Business Owner”.

I want to have leverage and I want to earn money without having to worry about taking a 2-week holiday not earning because I was on a holiday.

But it’s interesting how my main reason for starting a business has changed as I grew older (maturity, perhaps?). Initially, I just wanted to earn more money so I could live a good life. But eventually, I realised that owning a business and earning money can mean so much more. It can mean making an impact as well and amplifying that impact through the business and the money it has made. 

So now with my business, along with the team, I am mostly driven by the fact that I want to make an impact on other people’s lives, mine, my team and our clients’.

Anyway, back to pre-Tega before all the making an impact mind shift happened.

Because I was fixated on becoming a business owner, I took it upon myself to learn how to start. I needed to figure out a way to create leverage so I could be an actual business owner.

And that is when I came across the idea of outsourcing. Whilst scrolling through Facebook and hearing about so many people’s experience with it and how it has helped them grow and scale their business, is what spoke to my curiosity and led me to actively seek out material that spoke about outsourcing and scaling, and read a few life-changing books like Tim Ferriss’ 4-Hour Work Week and Mike Michalowicz’ Clockwork.

I was curious to know what this outsourcing thing and what it could do for me. 

And thus began the experimentation.

MY FIRST ATTEMPTS AT OUTSOURCING

Before I was able to successfully hire my first virtual team member, Mark, I experienced a number of stumbles with less than stellar results.

My very first attempt at hiring a remote worker was for my friend. Let’s call him James (not his real name).

James was a web developer and needed an extra hand to help him with his work so he could add more clients to his business. Naturally, James needed another web developer to do this. And me, being the curious and helpful person that I am, thought that this would be a great way to see how this whole outsourcing thing works.

So, I made a job post on Upwork (formerly Elance-oDesk), received 3 candidates, chose the guy who responded first and immediately hired him. That’s all I did. And yes, if you read my other blog post on how to hire virtual assistants, you will KNOW that “process” sounds rather unlike the more experienced Tega now. 

What happened was because I never actually interviewed this person, I never got to assess whether he would be a good fit for James. And lo and behold, the two indeed weren’t a good fit and the partnership did not last very long. 

To make things worse, I had to refund James AND pay the web developer since James didn’t pay him. Bummer.

As unfortunate as it sounds, it was a reality check for me and had me think long and hard about what went wrong. 

A few months after that attempt, I decided to get back to my laboratory and find out what went wrong and how exactly to make things right. This is when I did even more research on outsourcing which included reading John Jonas’ blog.

I realised that I needed to have a proper system in place when hiring. This involved actually interviewing the candidates and finding out WHO they were to avoid any personality clashes just like with the whole James shenanigan.

Luckily enough, my friend Adil who owns a podcast also needed some help and I brought up the idea of bringing a virtual team member on board. Adil gladly agreed and offered to split the fee of the remote worker with me. 

And because this was such an enticing offer, I took it as a sign to start my outsourcing journey again equipped with all the new things I have learned and the processes I have put in place.

This was when I found Mark. 

I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly he was picking up the tasks I asked him to do (most of which he didn’t have experience with before), tasks included Digital Marketing, working with ClickFunnels, setting up Facebook Ads, and doing some video editing. Mark proved his competency and opened my eyes to how good outsourcing actually is when you get it right.

Here was a guy (living halfway around the world) who didn’t know tons of the things I asked him to do, but learned those things in a relatively short period of time.

He was my first successful hire and this is when the gears in my head started turning.

But it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows after my first hire. I still had a lot to learn.

Unfortunately, the gears in my head turned so fast that I got overly excited and immediately sought my 2nd virtual team member a week after I hired Mark…without following the systems I used to hire Mark.

I got too confident in hiring an additional virtual team member that I never even considered if this person would even have enough work, to begin with! To top it all off, I didn’t even provide any training and I wasn’t in a place that I could actually afford to add another team member (I was still operating in the self-employed box during this time). This person didn’t stay very long, and this gave me another reality check that I still wasn’t as competent as I thought I was.

So, going back to the drawing board, I needed to fine-tune my systems, processes, SOPs, training modules and everything else even more before I swam deeper into the ocean of outsourcing and grow my team. 

It took several months and a few failed attempts (or learnings as I’d like to call them), before I was able to have the systems and processes in place I am using now to hire virtual team members for myself and my clients. 

Now that I have built up my experience, I realised that every virtual team member I wasn’t able to keep was just a guide that led me in the right direction to build the awesome team that I have today. And with my current team, I am able to focus on other aspects of the business that will help us scale, grow, and eventually make an impact on the people around me. 

FOCUSING ON THE BIGGER PICTURE

With all these testimonials online of entrepreneurs obtaining more freedom through outsourcing, it’s amusing how I never focused on this benefit when I started my own virtual team. 

I was never really set on experiencing the benefits of this outsourcing “hype” simply because people say they can work 4 hours a week and travel the world while other people did the work for them (though I was initially attracted to starting a business because of these same benefits). Living a life of freedom (the typical “entrepreneur” variety) wasn’t my main mission of starting a virtual team and growing a business. 

In fact, that barely crossed my mind because I was driven more by curiosity about the outsourcing practice than anything else.

Because I stepped up to the plate with the mindset of just “experimenting and seeing where it goes,” I never fully let go of the business so I could have more “me” time (in fact, I am still fully involved in the business and am rather busy myself). 

But this doesn’t mean that managing a virtual team hasn’t helped me significantly. In fact, I am now able to personally focus on bigger leverage tasks in the business such as looking for clients, creating a direction for the team and helping the team grow and change their perspectives. 

I now have more freedom mentally because I have team members that I can rely on to take care of all the nitty-gritty details. My virtual team has helped me get out of situations that would have required me to keep a close eye on because I have learned how to properly delegate everything. 

The systems and processes that I have established have allowed me to arrive at a place where I can trust my team members to do the work without me having to be a taskmaster. This has given me peace of mind and alleviated my “perfectionist disease” to some degree.

Although I have no doubt that my competent virtual team members would be able to do their job, I doubt everything would go as smoothly as it does, if it wasn’t for the systems and processes in place. I realised how important it is to set up the playground before you can let your virtual team members freely do the things you need them to do and expect the results that you desire.

But even after everything is in place, managing a virtual team isn’t always a bed of roses…

CHALLENGES IN MANAGING A VIRTUAL TEAM

Each and every entrepreneur who is managing a virtual team has their own challenges for sure. 

Definitely one of my challenges during the early stages of this “experiment” was making sure that the person I hired has enough work to do. Not only that, you need to make sure that with the amount of work you are giving, you need to be able to afford the compensation.

I admit that I lost a virtual team member because I wasn’t able to pay her fairly since I couldn’t really afford it yet. Plus, she never communicated this to me so I assumed everything was fine until I realised that she was finding more clients behind my back…

So before you decide to hire someone, you need to be in a place where you can actually afford it and that the tasks you delegate justify the compensation you are giving.

And speaking of tasks, it took me a while to delegate these as well.

Earlier in this blog post, I mentioned that I am a bit of a control freak and have something I call the perfectionist disease. For someone who wants to make sure everything is under control, learning how to let go and delegate tasks to someone else can be quite difficult. 

I have this tendency of taking on most of the tasks instead of passing them on to the team, which kind of defeats the purpose of why I have a team in the first place, right? 

This continues to be a learning process for me and I am slowly fixing this by putting systems and processes in place to help open the lines of communication and automate and standardize the workflow. That way, things are done the way I want them to be done and we all know what comes after each step.

Using automation, I can streamline some processes in the business. For example, getting and onboarding a new client becomes much easier to manage because I can pass the baton to the next member of the team, without having to do it physically. The person responsible for a task is automatically made aware of what they have to do it and when they have to have it done. 

Another challenge for me was learning how to manage people and myself better. Having people work for you and knowing how to manage them can get quite challenging, especially if you don’t have the confidence.

One thing I found difficult was making sure that my team members were not taking on too much or too little work, and also communicating which tasks should be prioritized and accomplished first. It becomes especially challenging as the team grows and you start to manage more people.

Eventually, I learned that communication is key and constantly checking in on your team members ensures that everyone is managing the work well.

LESSONS I HAVE LEARNED MANAGING A VIRTUAL TEAM

Delegate, Don’t Abdicate 

I talked about this in my other blog post on How to Find Great Virtual Team Members. When people hire a virtual team member, they think that this person is going to be a mind-reader and know exactly what to do and will just get it done. 

From my experience, this is far from the truth. I used to get frustrated when someone new on the team wouldn’t get a task right after I had explained it the third time. I’d automatically default to thinking “that things would be much quicker if I did everything myself instead”. 

Eventually, I realised that what I was abdicating responsibility instead of delegating. With the former, you’re simply passing responsibility to someone else and expecting that they can instantly submit work that matches your standards.

That is something that you should not expect ESPECIALLY not at the start. Team members have to work to a point where there is enough trust for you to hand over responsibility.

Rather than abdicate, delegate instead. This means that you take the time and effort to manage and train this person so that eventually, he or she will get things done according to how you like them to be done. And yes, it does take time and effort, but in the long run, this will result in quality work and team members who choose to stay and buy in more to the business. 

And because you need to train them properly, you also need to be open to the idea that they will make mistakes along the way until they become proficient. 

Systemize, Systemize, Systemize

I am a firm believer in systems and processes, given the story of Rich Dad Poor Dad and my belief that to “Make it” I  gotta make it as a Business Owner.

When you bring someone else into the business, it’s very tempting to say,“Bob can you please do X?” and then expect Bob to know everything and remember the things he did. 

If you don’t have systems in place and then give them the same task a few weeks later, you can’t expect them to remember every single thing he did the first time. If you don’t document your processes, doing repetitive tasks becomes a headache in itself because you won’t have a standardized workflow and you will have team members constantly asking you how to complete their tasks. 

Learn to Trust Your Team

If you hire someone virtually, there is a very small chance that that person will be able to scam and take advantage of you. But what I find is that a majority of them won’t because they need a job and you have jobs that need to be done.

For those who are new to outsourcing, it can be difficult to pass on your tasks to someone you haven’t met and worked with personally. But you need to start the relationship off on the right foot by learning to trust your team.

And if your virtual team members forget something or makes a mistake, trust as well that there is no malicious intent on their end and it could be a result of the lack of experience or, in some rare cases, them not knowing how to communicate their problems with you.

For control freaks like me, you need to get comfortable with letting go and trusting that someone else will do the tasks for you.

THE RISING TIDE…

All around me, I see my entrepreneurial friends make the decision to start a virtual team when they realise they can’t run their businesses on their own anymore. And this isn’t just with my friends. In fact, according to ScienceDirect, “The emergence of COVID-19 has presented employees and employers new challenges as many employees and managers were forced to work in a remote environment for the first time.”

So it’s no surprise that we have witnessed a growth in the virtual workplace and people hiring virtual team members, and employees looking for online jobs.

But with the rise in popularity of remote teams also comes its challenges. Things like figuring out the process when hiring someone and knowing whether that someone fits the WHO you are looking for can be a challenge especially when you can’t meet that person physically.

Other challenges involve knowing what tools to use to track productivity, output, projects and other things that need to be tracked in order to know whether a team member is doing the work well.

You also have problems with time zone differences since outsourcing mostly involves hiring people from countries in Asia such as China, India or the Philippines. Having team members from all around the world pose a challenge when you need to set up team calls.

I am no exception from encountering these types of problems, but as I mentioned, I have learned a lot in these 6 years and am continuing to learn. 

I’ve had friends ask me how to find, train, and manage the right people for their business because I’ve been doing this for several years already. This was what made me decide to write a complete guide on How to Find Great Virtual Team Members, and this process has helped me, and other entrepreneurs successfully grow their virtual team.

Because at the end of the day, when you hire someone, you don’t hire for skill. Rather, you hire someone for their values because I found that 8 out of 10 times, if you don’t hire someone with the right personality, that person won’t stay long in the business and you’ll end up right back where you started.

As a small business owner, I feel that my focus should be on creating assets, and having the ability to leverage those assets at a later date. More specifically, you should be building and controlling how you distribute the info/content you create. Learning how to build your email list helps you do just that.

I know people who built their businesses on Facebook when things were easy and all you needed was a Facebook page, only to wake up one day, and have Facebook say “You now have to pay to reach the audience you have built on your Facebook Page.”

I know people who set up affiliate businesses using Google Adwords (back in the day) making an excess of $5,000-7,000 per month, only to wake up one day to find their Google Adwords account shut down, because Google did not want to work with those businesses anymore.

The above events are cyclical, and business owners have been talking about it for as long as I can remember. The thing is though, we get sucked into this new “Platform” or method and at the start, things are ALWAYS easy because the platforms/methods are new and they need to attract as many people as possible to use it. The easiest way for them to do that is to make it SUPER EASY for you to get results using the platform or method.

Then because things are easy, people get sucked in and don’t think about some of the fundamental things they should be thinking about to secure their business or income for the long term.

If you want to truly grow your business and make the most out of your content, you need to find the best solution that allows you to have full control of your relationship with your audience. This is where we talk about why it is important to build your email list, because not only will you own the racetrack (more on that later), but you will also be able to build a strong foundation of know, like and trust. 

Recently, I held an email list accountability program for a small group of business owners on Facebook to help people grow and start their email lists. The goal was for the participants to get their first 100 subscribers if they didn’t have an email list yet. And for those who already have a list, to get additional 100 subscribers. 

I also wanted them to start building the habit of consistently emailing their list. Being consistent doesn’t necessarily mean 20 times a week or 5 times a week. What I mean by consistently is that there has to be a set schedule and you stick to that so that you stay consistent. 

Another point I covered was tips on how to easily come up with ideas for your emails so you don’t stare at the “black screen of death” because you didn’t know what to write about.

43 people took part in this accountability challenge, and 25 successfully started their email lists. Currently, someone was able to build a list of 2,000 people at an open rate of 20% and CTR of 1%. 

And because these people started an email list, they were able to own the racetrack and grow their following.

Unfortunately, I don’t plan on hosting this challenge again anytime soon, but the good news is that you can find all the juicy bits in this blog post to help you start your own email list.

But before that, let’s talk about how important an email list is and what do I mean exactly by owning the racetrack?

WHY DO YOU NEED TO BUILD YOUR EMAIL LIST?

Building your email list will definitely take some effort on your end, but the benefits to your business make your efforts all worthwhile. Here are the top 3 reasons why you should focus on building your email list:

1. You Own the Racetrack. Personally, the biggest benefit of building a list is that you get to own the race track. This concept is something I got from James Schramko. If you like horse racing or if you are into horse racing, you can be the person who pays money to bet on horses. If you want to make money from horse racing, you can either own a horse or own a jockey. But if you want to be paid by everyone I just mentioned, you can own the race track. And because you own the race track (or your audience in this matter), no one can take that away from you. 
2. It’s Easier to Build Relationships. Everyone is talking about the importance of Social Media, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But what I want you to realise is that you are beholden to whatever platform you are posting on. So that means that your account and all your information is never really secure. Through your list, you are able to build better relationships with your subscribers through more personalised emails depending on their journey. 
3. Ultimately Make the Cheddar. The thing with email lists is that whenever you build your list, you build your audience. And when you build your audience and strengthen your relationships with them, you are ultimately going to make money whenever you make an offer because of their trust in you. 

SOME THINGS WE WILL BE COVERING…

In this blog post, we will be covering the following:

1. The tools that you need 
2. How to build your email list
   1. Free Methods
   2. Paid Methods
3. How to start emailing 
   1. What are you going to be emailing about? 
   2. Who are you going to email?
4. How to manage your email list

Let’s get down to business…

THE TOOLS THAT YOU NEED

The tools and the features of these tools are important if you want to effectively grow and manage your email list. But if finance is a limitation, you can always resort to free tools at the start and McGyver stuff together so that everything works. 

But if you truly want to grow an email list that is going to support your business, you will really need to invest in the right tools eventually. It doesn’t mean that you have to start with paid tools, but in the long run, you have to invest so that you won’t have any headaches from maintaining your list from all the “McGvyver-ing.”

Here are the following tools you will need:

• Email Service Provider – there are plenty of options in the marketplace. The one that you will choose will depend on where you are at the minute in your journey and to how complicated what you are doing is. Here are some of the options that you can choose from:
  1. If you are just starting out:
     • Mailchimp
     • Aweber
     • Getresponse
  2. If you want more advanced options:
     • ActiveCampaign
     • Drip
     • ConvertKit
     • Clickfunnels
     • Infusionsoft
• Landing Page Builder – choosing this will depend on where you are and what your technical skills are. For my business, I use ClickFunnels, which can be a bit pricey, but it is what I found fits with my business needs. I’ve used ClickFunnels on several occasions, especially when I ran a 5-Day Ads to Leads Challenge for my audience. Here is how part of my landing page looked for the challenge:

• Website/Web Host – this is one of the things that people are debating about. Whether you actually need one or not, because most landing page builders negate the need for you to have one. But my point of view is, if you truly want to own the racetrack, why should you beholden yourself to a landing page service or builder? Let’s take ClickFunnels for example, which is the page builder I use. In 2019, it went down 5 times so people could not send traffic to those pages. So can you imagine people who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on paid traffic and if they don’t have a backup page if ClickFunnels goes down, that’s money down the drain. Owning your own website gives you full control and security. 
• File Storage – depending on what you’re doing and how big you are, you can use services like DropBox and Google Drive without needing the paid plan. It all comes down to personal preference. 
• Lead Magnet – most people think of lead magnets as a PDF, free email course or anything that you give away in exchange for someone’s email address. Although this is true, something most people don’t talk about is that you can be your own lead magnet. This means that you can share your own personal experiences with other people. and those who are interested to know about it can sign up to your email list. Don’t constrain yourself to thinking of it as a deliverable and think of it a bit more creatively. Here is a sample of one of my Lead Magnets:

Although I did mention some of the tools that I personally use, I highly discourage you to use these if ever your reason is just because I use them. Remember that we all have different needs and so the tools relevant for your business will be different from mine.

And once you’ve decided on your tools, know that you can always decide to switch if you find that the ones you’ve chosen don’t seem to fit. It’s all about trial, error, and experimentation.

HOW TO BUILD YOUR EMAIL LIST

There are primarily 2 ways by which you can build your email list. It’s either through paid or free ways. In an ideal world, you should use a mix of both because each option, to some degree, helps you leverage for list growth. 

For both methods, I just want to point out that I haven’t used ALL of these options, so this will all just be a brief overview of everything.

FREE METHODS

Here are some of the free methods you can use to build your email list:

• Content. This is something that I believe everyone should do. This can include written, audio, video, and content upgrades (aka bonus material to amplify or enhance the experience of the reader/viewer after going through your content). So whenever you create content, you always have to focus on the objective of growing your email list. 
• The 3F Formula. The 3 F’s consist of your friends, fans, and followers. The idea is to make a list of each of these people, roll up your sleeves, and make the time to get these people into your email list. What I did is that I sent a personalized email to the people in my 3F’s and asked them if they are interested in XYZ with the goal of receiving XYZ benefit. If yes, they sign up for my email list. And the worst thing that can happen is that they say no. And if no, simply say thank you and move on. You really have nothing to lose! 

These two organic methods are all about leveraging on what you have, especially if you have a following on any of the social media platforms. Work on creating great content, add a few content upgrades, and encourage people from your 3F’s to sign up for your email list. 

USING PAID TRAFFIC

Let’s cover the super basics of using paid traffic to start building your email list (since I don’t consider myself an expert on the subject).

The beauty of using paid traffic is that when you see that you have good conversion rates for any of the organic content you put out there, you can use paid traffic to promote your content and get more exposure and subscribers from there. 

To get started, there are a couple of things you need to have in place:

• Basic funnel. The goal here is to keep this as simple as possible. There’s no point in making it complicated because based on my personal experience, this leads to procrastination. You need to have your opt-in page, thank you page, and download page for a start. Here is a sample of a thank you page I created:

• Your indoctrination emails. When people opt-in to your list, the first email you should send is an indoctrination email. This should be prepared beforehand so that when people signup, you know what email they are going to get. The main goal here is to build KLT (know, like and trust) and further encourage them to use the thing that you’ve given them. 
• Your platform of choice. You need to choose your platform such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. to manage and promote your content. This will depend on what you’re comfortable with and whether you already have a following in any of these platforms.

The key thing to note is that whenever you use paid traffic, you need to have your pixel, whether it’s a Google remarketing pixel or Facebook pixel, installed funnel-wide. This means that it should be installed in every page that people are going to visit. 

The reason for this is that when you run cold traffic, a number of people won’t opt-in on the first go, so you need to go back to them with ads called retargeting ads, which reminds people about the ads that they didn’t click on the last time. 

Utilizing pixels answers your question on knowing whether someone has opted in or not. To go even more granular, if you want to separate those who have opted in and downloaded, and those who have opted in but not downloaded, you can set up something called Conversion Events which can be setup via Facebook or Google.

So when you are doing retargeting, someone who opts in and downloads is more likely to become a customer as opposed to someone who opts in and doesn’t download. 

It’s all about knowing how to read your data and doing all the necessary adjustments to make the most out of the funds you spent on these paid methods.

Another great practice when you have access to paid tools is that you can segment your audience, so that you can send the right email to the right person at the right time. 

TYPES OF SEGMENTATION

What is segmentation? Basically the idea of segmentation is dividing up people on your list or creating a way to identify the people on your list so that you know where they are on their journey. 

Segmentation is something that you can implement for paid email service providers such as ActiveCampaign so it is a little bit more advanced, but I wanted to give you a quick overview on this topic. 

To give you some context, let’s talk about segmentation for a fitness coach who specializes in weight loss for women. 

So possible segments for this coach’s list can be professional women, stay-at-home moms, and brand new moms. These three belong to different segments because they are from different stages of their weight-loss journey. 

The brand new mom for example will be trying to shed some baby weight, the professional woman is not going to have enough time to dedicate to working out, and the stay-at-home mom may only be able to work out at home. So the message to each of these women should be different, right? 

That is how segmentation goes. Knowing where your customers are allows you to send them the right messages that are relevant to their needs.

When it comes to how you decide to segment, there are three types that you can do:

• Pre segmentation – this is when you identify people before they get on your list. This means that the messages you put out should ideally pre-segment your audience. So if a certain call-to-action or content upgrade is relevant to them, they decide to sign up for your email list and receive KLT messages related to what it is they are looking for. 
• Post segmentation – this happens when you segment them AFTER they are already on your list. I’ve done this with ActiveCampaign through the tagging function and asking people some questions to help them identify which bracket they fall under through letting them click on specific links. In other words, for every email you are sending out, there is an automation working in the background to segment people based on the types of emails or messages they are interacting with. You can do this with simpler email service providers but it’s a bit more finicky. 
• Campaign-based segmentation – this type of segmentation is relevant if you plan on launching a campaign and you can ask your audience if they are interested in it or not. If they indicate that they are interested, they will be getting all the emails for that campaign and all the promotions. On the other hand, for those who aren’t interested don’t get anything related to the campaign but will still be on your email list. Campaign-based segmentation allows you to get to know where people are on their journey.

HOW TO START EMAILING

When it comes to starting your email list, there are a number of things I believe that you need to ask yourselves and know the answers to:

1. What are you going to be emailing about? 
2. Who are you going to email?

Let’s cover each of the points.

WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO BE EMAILING ABOUT?

When it comes to the content of your emails, here are a few things you can write about to help you get started:

1. Results – this is all about sharing your results or achievements and talking about what action plans you took to achieve them.
2. Day in the life – you can talk about the stuff that you’ve learned from your own personal experiences or even any books, movies, or insights you’ve recently encountered.
3. Challenges, “failures” & triumphs – my friend Dan Meredith has a knack of sharing these types of experiences on Social Media and his email lists wherein he takes a “failure” and turns it into something funny and memorable. You can then talk about how you overcame these challenges and turned it into triumphs.

When sharing to your email list subscribers, the key thing is really to just live your life and from the mere act of living, “failing” and trying things, you are going to have an endless amount of content you can revert back to. Being natural also means that you don’t sound too pushy or sales-y when it’s the time to make an offer. 

WHO ARE YOU GOING TO EMAIL? 

As we covered a while ago, knowing who to email to is important because you need to tailor your messages for each of your readers/groups. I segmented the readers three different groups:

1. Leads
2. Buyers
3. Repeat Buyers

Everyone who is one of these groups will respond differently to the different kinds of emails that you send. So going back to the previous example, theoretically, leads would be more interested in you sharing a story about your results rather than a day in the life email. 

Buyers would be more interested in you sharing the challenges and trials you’ve experienced in your weight loss journey (as with the example of the weight-loss coach) and would far more likely convert them into repeat buyers. 

This is where segmentation comes in. To help you identify who to send what specific email to. You need to also know where you will be starting and who you will be targeting from the three groups above. That way, it’ll be easier for you to craft your emails.

HOW TO MANAGE YOUR EMAIL LIST

Gaining an audience is only the start of the journey, and the work doesn’t end there. 

The main goal of list management is to maintain the quality of the people on your list. So this includes people who open your emails, engage, click through your emails, and those who are buying.

Here are some of the things you can do to maintain a quality email list:

1. Remove the deadwood. Some examples of deadwood are people who simply subscribe to your email list just to get their hands on the lead magnet. Some people even go to the extremes of creating fake email addresses so you don’t have access to their real ones. Other examples are emails that bounce back, people who don’t open your emails, and people who unsubscribe. For a service where you are paying per contact on your email list, you want to pay particular attention to deadwood to save on costs. Personally, I remove deadwood every 6 months. 
2. Create segments of active readers and clickers. If you’re using simpler autoresponders, this is something you might have to put more steps into. But for tools like ActiveCampaign, Infusionsoft, Drip, and ConvertKit, you can actually mark the people who are most engaged and what you can do is that when you send out your emails and you want to boost deliverability, you can choose to send to them first. 
3. The Tags vs List Debate. (This step is a little bit more advanced) So in this debate, it’s all about setting up your email marketing system so that you’re sending the right message to the right person at the right time, rather than sending a general blanket message. You could argue that it is a matter of preference because some people still do it the old way, but what you tend to find is that whenever you have your list and the contacts on your list are tagged properly, you are better able to send relevant messages to the different segments (tags) because you know what they are interested in as they are tagged whenever they engage in emails. In my opinion, the perfect scenario would be for you to have between 3-5 lists and in those lists, you’re tagging people so that you know what they’re interested in and you can tailor your emails properly.
4. Using automation where it makes sense. Automation is only available in the more advanced email service providers. Automation saves you from having to create the same emails over and over again. This is something that you set up only once and everytime that automation is triggered, a particular set of conditions or workflow happens. You can also do something called lead scoring, which means that when someone opens up an email, they are given points and for example, if they have three points, you can tag them as an active reader (tying back to the second point).
5. Integrate with your website where it makes sense. How this works is that you can place a pixel on your website so that when someone from your email list goes to your website, you can segment this person further to refine the message.

IT’S TIME TO OWN THE RACETRACK

Although my goal for the original accountability challenge was to grow your email list to 100 subscribers, I hope that this article helps you grow your list twofold. 

Email lists tend to be overlooked at this day and age, especially with the rise of Social Media Marketing and an increase in the number of platforms available. And although these avenues are GREAT ways to create a connection with your audience, ultimately you still want to own the racetrack and have full control of your audience.

I hope that this quick guide gives you a good idea on how to start and manage your email list so that you can create better relations with your audience and grow your business to its full potential. 

Good luck!

When we talk about Being Your Own Client, the thought seems counterintuitive because when we think of clients, we always think of someone other than ourselves, right? 

As a result, most of us have never really entertained the thought of becoming our own clients. More often than not, our main focus is on getting more and more clients to increase our profits that we end up forgetting about creating systems for our own business (Tega loves his systems).

Just like you, I also had the same mindset back then. I too felt stuck. 

We all start out as beginners, and being a new freelancer or entrepreneur in the industry is a tough place to start. But this is why I wanted to write this blog post. I want to demonstrate to you that you don’t need to feel stuck. All you need to do is switch your brains and know where to start. 

And where is the best place to start? You.

This blog post as a whole is actually more about self-confidence and awareness of where you stand in your business more than anything else. And in relation to this, I can speak from experience that as an introverted entrepreneur, I’m slowly learning about self-confidence myself. 

In another blog post on my website, I share about how I overcome introversion when it comes to promoting myself and my business, and I cover a bit more about this experience here.

So how does being your own client relate to becoming a better entrepreneur and individual in general?

Well, because when you value your own business and skills, it shows how confident you are as a person. If you don’t value these, who else will? You need to believe in yourself first if you want your clients to believe in you as well.

When I realised this, I was able to get clients for my Facebook Ads Agency and Podcast Management Agency.

WHY DO YOU NEED TO BE YOUR OWN CLIENT?

Being your own client means that the things you do for your client — all the systems and processes — should be done for yourself. The drive you have to generate results for your clients should be the same drive you have to generate results for your business.

A few years ago, when I just started out, my main focus was on getting clients to avail of my video editing services. I’ve experienced the frustrations of not being able to convince anyone because I didn’t have a portfolio to show. And because no one wanted to get me, I couldn’t build my portfolio. 

It was a vicious cycle and it needed to stop. 

Then the idea of being my own client came to me. I thought, “heck, why not make videos for myself first?” And once I started making videos for my own personal projects, I would post these on different groups and people started to notice. 

I made people aware that this is what I do. But more importantly, I proved to them that I know how to do it. People started referring me to their friends and I eventually found my first few clients there. 

And this all started from making videos for myself and being my own client. 

The main point here is that when you do things for yourself, and put in the same effort as if you were an actual client of the business, you generate results. And when you generate results, you have actual proof that you are capable and skilled. 

Even the fact that you are generating results for your business is a success in itself already. Your results will attract the right clients to you, when you put in the work. 

When you do the work, you let the work become a testimonial of the fact that you can do the job. 

Even if you technically don’t have anyone else to impress other than yourself, the long-term benefits are profound. Here are a few other reasons why being your own client should be of utmost priority:

1. You can serve your clients better. Treating yourself like a client means you’ll know how your clients think. This means you’ll be able to resonate with them more. Getting into the minds of your clients can make you one step ahead of them. 
2. You become more organized. When you are able to break down your own deliverables into small steps, it becomes easier for you to come up with systems and processes to make your processes more efficient and organized. You find ways to “serve” your business better through best practices, which will be carried on to when you serve your clients. 
3. You become more accountable. Because you treat yourself like a client, you have a stronger sense of responsibility to get the job done. This can also mean that you set deadlines for yourself and create a detailed timeline so that you are able to complete your tasks on time. 
4. You market yourself better. When you start to speak from personal experience after becoming your own client, it becomes easier for you to convince your audience that you are competent in what you do. You are your own testimonial and this allows you to know exactly what to say to your clients if they have any questions or reservations about your product or service.

Now that we’ve covered the reasons why you should be your own client, let me share how I became my own client and how this has benefited my business.

HOW TO BE YOUR OWN CLIENT

From my own experience, when I start planning the tasks for myself and the business, I take note of the same details as if I were asking a client. I ask myself the same questions and structure everything the same way. As a result, I can come up with a detailed task list of everything that has to happen.

For example, when I start planning a new episode for the Intent Podcast, I think about all the elements such as the editing, shownotes, artwork, uploading, and marketing of the podcast. This is the exact same thing I do for my podcast management agency clients as well. 

When I get a new client for the agency, I need to know what assets they have first and how I can package my services in a way that is valuable to them. 

I also make sure to cover all the itty bitty details like how many episodes they plan to release weekly, if they already have a podcast host, if they need a website, and if they already have marketing assets to begin with.

These questions are all important in making sure we provide invaluable services to our clients.

And because I have my own podcast and know what a typical podcaster needs to make his/her podcast happen, I know exactly what my clients need and I can fill in the blanks in all the right places. 

Learning from your own experience means that you know what questions to ask.

One thing that I am slowly working on is setting deadlines for myself. But because I have the right systems and processes in place, once I have the assets I need, my team and I can work immediately without having to worry about any deadlines. 

Also, this may sound pretty obvious already, but when you are your own client, really treat yourself like a client. This means that you have to separate yourself emotionally from the thing that you are doing and think more logically. 

That way, you have a full grasp of why you are doing the things that you do, and when the time comes that you need to explain all the details to your client, you know what to say.

Becoming your own client also means that you need to know how to package yourself and your services in such a manner that it truly shows that you know what you are doing and that you speak from experience. 

Because that’s the entire point of being your own client, right?

HOW TO MARKET YOURSELF EFFECTIVELY

If you’re like me and don’t like talking about yourself, what I do is I talk about what I DO instead. 

I speak about personal experiences from my own businesses (aka “experiments”) and I share how I was able to help my clients with the services I provide. Speaking from experience is one of the best ways to demonstrate competency and credibility without actually talking about myself per se.

It’s really all about telling stories and talking about what you do.

Another thing to remember is that everything is content. That means that everything you do, everything you experiment on, IS content. No matter how much you think your experiences aren’t worth sharing, they are. 

Share your mistakes, share your challenges, share all your obstacles. Embrace the suck. The goal is to make sure that people see that you are actually doing something and they know what you do. 

Another thing that is big in the industry right now is content repurposing, which allows you to create “micro-content” from your main content and post it on different platforms. And content repurposing will definitely need you to be innovative sometimes. 

Entrepreneurs don’t think outside the box. There is no box. 

Now that I am slowly getting out of my comfort zone and putting more content out there, it dawned on me that I’m slowly getting better as an introvert and learning how to relay my ideas more clearly.

BE PROUD OF WHAT YOU DO

As you slowly learn to market yourself, you begin to create your own personal brand. And because you speak from actual experience, it speaks about who you are as a professional and how much you value your business.

You need to start treating your business like an actual business owner rather than just someone who is self-employed. 

And what is the difference, you may ask? 

Well, for the former, you basically still work a job. Working a job means that if you don’t work, you don’t get paid. Your income is purely active and solely relies on you showing up. 

As a business owner, you develop systems that are working whether you’re there or not so that your income is not tied to you alone. 

This has greatly helped me during the pandemic because I am able to set myself apart from everyone else because I offer valuable services in a systemised way. 

These systems have allowed me to scale my business and hire people from abroad, the Philippines in particular , to help me work on multiple projects and clients at the same time. 

In a nutshell, being your own client allows you to market yourself more authentically and shows people what you do. As entrepreneurs, we need to stand up, plant our flag, and say “this is what I do.” 

As a person who’s been managing several businesses for a few years now, I’ve had my fair share of challenging clients and even losing some along the way. So I thought I should write this blog post about the lessons I’ve learned from losing clients…

In fact, 5 months ago when I was on the search for more clients who could use my Facebook Ads services, I put out a message, got a client AND then proceeded to lose the client. That experience made me sit back and think about WHY I lost the client, but not just that client, I tried to think back to all the clients I have lost and why I lost them, and think of the lessons I got from that/those experiences. 

When this client and I started working together, things were okay at the initial stages when we both stuck to the original work agreement. As we continued, I kept getting more and more requests from this client, and the helper and experimenter in me wanted to fulfill these requests. These requests soon ventured out of the original scope of our work agreement, and I ended up spreading myself too thin…

The result? That process of doing things out of the initial agreement led me to losing this client because we both ended up making mistakes as the scope of work kept changing and getting bigger. 

Although it was a sad experience, this motivated me to write this blog post for myself and for any one else who struggles with retaining clients because of scope creep or poorly set limits and expectations.

THE LESSONS I’VE LEARNED

Lesson 1: Don’t chase the money

Every business owner wants and needs money, right? You need money to run your business, support your personal goals, and grow the company. This is why finding clients for us is so important, especially during the early stages.

But the caveat to this is that if you pressure yourself too much to make money, you end up making hasty decisions. I’ve learned to stop accepting any ad hoc tasks just for the sake of charging more for the client because I don’t want to end up having too much on my plate.  

Now I only accept tasks that I know I have a documented workflow for. That way, if I can’t do it myself (because I tend to procrastinate), I can pass it on to my team and make sure that everything gets done on time and to a high standard by someone other than me. 

Lesson 2: Be aware of red flags

I believe that people that go far in life are those that learn from the mistakes of other people. 

If you are in the business space, there are a whole bunch of resources out there where you read and learn about the mistakes of other entrepreneurs. It is important to learn from the mistakes of others so that you don’t experience the same challenges.

Naturally, we are all bound to commit our own mistakes and as we move forward. You need to take note of all the red flags you’ve seen to help you identify which clients wouldn’t be good for you to work with.

One red flag I’ve learned is that if a client is very demanding before they have even paid you, chances are once they pay, they will become even more demanding. 

Here are some other things you should be aware of when looking for potential clients:

• How do they communicate with you? 
• Do they respect you and your skills?
• Do they know their boundaries? 
• Can they meet the expectations you set for the project? 

As you get more clients, you will become more skilled in spotting these red flags. These will become indicators of whether you should move forward with a certain client or not. 

Lesson 3: You Are The Expert, Be The Expert

You have been hired by your clients for a reason, and it is because you are more experienced in what you do than them. You are seen as the expert and the solution to their business problems. 

So if your clients do something that will end up costing you more time, do not hesitate to make suggestions and set your boundaries. Remember that you can always earn wasted money back but you can’t take wasted time back. 

Going back to the client I spoke about at the start of this blog post, even if I didn’t break the first two lessons, I experienced several hurdles because I wasn’t able to set boundaries.

Because this client didn’t know what they wanted and didn’t have a clear structure in place, we ended up having to face several hurdles that resulted in problems that needed to be addressed. I had the need to fulfill all their ad hoc requests which resulted in a lot of issues. 

I learned to be the expert and set boundaries so that I can prevent these types of issues with my future clients. This meant that I let my clients know how I work and how I don’t work which demonstrated my expertise and set my foot down.  

Prevention is always better than cure. 

Lesson 4:  Stay in your zone of genius

I know how tempting it can be to do more for your clients, especially because you want to make sure the client has a good experience with you, but 9 out of 10 times, you end up in a place where you’re going to do more than you’re being paid for. As a result, you might start to feel like you are being taken advantage of. 

In my case, I ended up wandering away from my original service of Facebook ads and added a whole bunch of other things that I had no business adding to. If i had just been firm and stated what I can and can’t do, I would have been able to meet the needs of my clients properly. 

You want to make sure that you and your client stick to the agreed contract, and if there are any additional tasks, only accept them if they are within your zone of genius and not something entirely different. 

Lesson 5: Learn From Your Experiences

As I stated a while ago, it is important to learn from the mistakes of others. But what’s more valuable is when you learn from your own mistakes. And as you learn from these mistakes, you begin to improve your processes, put filters in place and setup identifiers to know when you’re about to make another mistake (for example, avoiding red flags). 

When it comes to my own experiences, I now know that I should not deal with clients who need to make money yesterday with Facebook Ads. Why? Because in a way, they are chasing money (lesson #1) resulting in them not being in the right place mentally and not having the patience to properly set up the campaign and ads in the right manner.

In terms of learning from my mistakes, this ties back to lesson #2. It’s all about being aware of the red flags. 

These red flags resulted in me creating a client expectation letter to set boundaries. The letter aided in ensuring better communication, being explicit about what I can and can’t do, and setting the expectations for the project. 

One example of boundaries is establishing Slack as our means of communication and setting office hours. 

Don’t hesitate to be firm about this agreement because it encourages respect in the relationship. 

Another thing relating to identifying your red flags is to remember these negative attributes because they aid in separating the good clients from the “bad” ones. In my case, I’ve learned that if a client is not willing to listen to you, you know that things may not work out.

VALUE YOURSELF!

The bottomline of this entire article, and the main lesson I want to impart to you is that you need to become self-aware and learn when to say no. Because I have this constant urge to help people, I admit that saying no can be difficult at times. 

But I’ve learned that saying “no” and establishing certain boundaries is an act of valuing yourself and establishing your worth.

Remember that you and your business come before your clients and I hope the lessons I’ve learned from my own personal experiences can help you find better clients to scale and grow your business.

In an earlier blog post, I wrote about running multiple businesses, one of the businesses from the previous blog post, I mentioned that I run an ads agency. It is through this agency that I have been able to help my clients generate leads for their businesses using Facebook Lead ads and other types of campaigns.

If you’re new here, I wrote an article as well about running a 5-day challenge. And the reason why these 2 articles are interconnected is because through that challenge, I taught absolute beginners how to use Facebook Lead Ads to grow their business, and it has helped them immensely. Everything I taught in that challenge will be explained in detail here. 

My experience of using Facebook Lead Ads for the past 3-4 years is proof enough that I know how effective and beneficial it can be to both big and small businesses alike. And because I have been receiving a lot of good feedback about my previous how to articles (particularly the one on How to Start a Podcast), I figured I’d write even informative articles. 

The goal here is to give people (you, in particular) useful information on growing your business without having a paywall in the way! I want to show you that the world of Facebook Ads though it can get complicated doesn’t have to be so scary as long as you understand the fundamentals and have a sherpa(me) to guide you along the way.

This article is loosely structured around the 5-day Ads to Leads challenge I ran earlier in the year, The feedback I got from the people that took part in the challenge was that it was so helpful, I wanted to create this so that for the willing they could take what is here and use it to bring in leads and customers to their business.

And yes, before the naysayers say it, there are a bunch of marketing tools that you can use and choose from to bring leads and customers in, with a myriad of options both digitally and traditionally, there is just something about Facebook Ads and the accessibility it gives you that makes sense for all types of businesses.

WHY SHOULD YOU ADVERTISE ON FACEBOOK?

The million-dollar/pound/yen/sheckles question: Why advertise on Facebook? 

Due to the length of time I have been using FB to advertise for my clients, I have seen first hand the power it has to change the fortunes of different businesses, however I don’t expect you to take my word as gospel, so I have put together a list of reasons why you should advertise on Facebook from other experts and authorities.

Here are a few reasons why you should advertise on Facebook:

You can reach your ideal audience

Facebook is currently at 2.7 billion monthly users according to Statista.com . This data alone shows that your audience IS on Facebook, you just need to know how to find them (which is why you are reading this article right now).

It’s no surprise that most businesses are flocking to Facebook to market their products and services. With Facebook’s enormous number of users, it’s all about finding your audience, putting your message in front of them and standing out from the other advertisers.

Campaigns Are Highly Customizable

Because Facebook has so many users, you can attract the right audience to you if you know who you want to target. The platform can help you design your ads to attract the right leads to your business, whether it be based on demographics, interests, language, location, or a whole bunch of other targeting capabilities. 

With Facebook’s features to make your campaigns highly customizable, you are able to create the perfect ad experience for your target audience. This is especially true with all the data Facebook has of its users.

Facebook Ads are easy to set up

Virtually everyone has Facebook. So it’s not difficult to set up an ad account. And not only that, creating the ads are super easy to make (as I will show you later). Everything is pretty straightforward so you won’t feel so overwhelmed at the start. 

It’s also inexpensive to advertise on Facebook, making accessible to both small, local businesses to huge corporations.

One of the best ways to get leads through Facebook ads is through something called Facebook Lead Ads, which will be the main focus of this article.

WHAT IS FACEBOOK LEAD ADS?

One of the easiest ways to get the right kind of information from your audience is through forms, specifically Facebook Lead Ads. These are promoted forms that are integrated into the ad so that when people click on the ad, they are asked to fill the form out. 

What’s great about Lead Ads is that they are also optimized for mobile, making it much more convenient. This is especially relevant because according to Statista.com, 98% of active Facebook users access their accounts via mobile.

This is a great way to know your audience better while providing value for them. Let’s cover more advantages of using Facebook Lead Ads…

WHY USE FACEBOOK LEAD ADS?

Because Facebook Lead Ads is already integrated into Facebook, users don’t need to go to another site to fill in all the information. This makes things easier and quicker for your potential leads. 

Apart from Facebook Lead Ads being mobile-friendly, here are a few other reasons why you should consider using this for your business:

• The forms are fully customizable, so you can tailor the questions based on the needs of your business
• You collect valuable information which you can integrate to your CRM. I currently use Zapier to integrate Facebook Ads to Google Sheets (Spoiler alert… I will show you how later)
• Those who fill out these forms are considered warm leads because the effort alone in submitting these forms shows their interest

It’s no wonder why Facebook Lead Ads is the go-to if you want to grow your business and generate leads. Let’s get down to the specifics.

HOW TO USE FACEBOOK LEAD ADS TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS

The steps outlined below will get you from knowing absolutely nothing, to knowing enough to be dangerous but not an expert (because that’s going to take longer than just one article). The goal here is to get you started and to know what needs to be done. 

Let’s keep things as simple as possible (the last thing I want to do is to scare you off!).

STEP 1: Getting Setup

The best part about setting up Facebook Ads is that it’s so simple and straightforward. In the Facebook advertising ecosystem, you will need the following:

• Personal profile (good news is that you have this already)
• A Facebook page that relates to your business entity
• An ad account to advertise your business
• Business Manager which acts as a container that holds the advertising side of FB all together and keeps it separate from the personal side of FB

So here is how to set it all up…

• Go to business.facebook.com
• Click “Go to Business Settings”

• On the left side, click on PAGES where you can see all your pages and who are assigned to them

• In the USERS section, this is where you can add people or partners to your business manager (this helps if you hire an agency to run the ads for you)

• Under USERS, you will see PEOPLE (you can add people and assign them “assets”)

• Going back to ADD ACCOUNTS, you will see 3 options under ADD (assuming you haven’t run any ads yet):

1. 1. Add an ad account
   2. Request access to an ad account
   3. Create a new ad account

• If you do not have any ad accounts, select the 3rd option (Create a new ad account)
• Fill in all the necessary details

• If you are running ads for yourself or your own business, give yourself Admin Access

• And there you have it. Simple as that! Now we’re good to go and ready to make our audience want to click on our ads.

STEP 2: Create an Offer

Although creating ads on Facebook can be as simple as ABC, it is important to know how to package your offer in a way that piques the interest of your audience. In this section, we are going to cover the following:

• What is an offer?
• Why do I need an offer?
• Do I really need an offer?

What is an offer?

Simply put, imagine that an offer is a nice fancy dress that you put over your product to make it attractive to your ideal customer. Now remember that It is NOT your product or your service, but rather it is how you present your product or service. (example: discounts, BOGO, VIP experience, promos)

Why use offers?

You will see offers everywhere you go. Every business is trying to make you say YES to their offer, and you are no different. Here, we are trying to replicate an offer in the digital world through Facebook Ads. You need something that makes people stop scrolling, and that is through creating an enticing offer.

Where can you find offers that convert? 

Rather than going through the entire trial-and-error phase of finding an offer that works, it’s best to look out for current offers that have already been tried and tested. You just need to know where to find them. 

I personally recommend websites like Groupon.com where there are TONS of offers you can browse. 

And guess what? Finding offers that work is pretty straightforward. Just look at which products are trending and whether the ratings are good or not. That would be an excellent gauge for you to see whether this is something that you can apply to your ads. 

Also take note that offers that work greatly on Facebook are ones that you can deliver quickly, at scale, and something that leads people to buy more. 

Once you’ve picked an offer that you think would be most relevant for your business, it’s time to get creative and work on the elements of your ad.

STEP 3: Write Words, Get Paid

Alright, this is where you get your creative hat on and find the right words to get results. 

So…writing words to get paid…sounds too good to be true? Well, once you know how the creative elements to an ad works to get results, you won’t feel so clueless. We will not go into too much detail here because this topic deserves an entire article rather than just a small section, but I will be sharing with you some quick tips and resources that you can utilize to guide you further. 

There are two things that you should work on:

Images / Creative

Personally, I am not a graphic designer and designing images really isn’t my specialty. But I do have friends who are good at this and have given me lots of useful tips that I will be sharing in this article.

When it comes to social media graphics, you need to know how your audience uses social media. You want to create attractive visual/audio visual assets to get people’s attention and click your ads.

Your images need to be eye-catching to get people to stop scrolling and be intrigued by what you have to say. When it comes to inserting copy into your graphics, keep it to a bare minimum. Less is always more. Make sure that the fonts that you use are also readable and that they don’t dominate the graphics (minimalist fonts that aren’t too bold or cartoon-y work best).

Another great tip is to also use templates so that people know that the ads are coming from you, and this also keeps your branding consistent (plus it makes creating images much easier for you!). 

Some websites that provide great and free stock images are Pixabay, Pexels and Unsplash. Though I personally recommend that you avoid images that look too much like stock images. This is why I hired someone to make cartoon versions of me so that all my social media images look more personal and unique.

Regarding creating the actual images, I’ve found Canva to be very useful and versatile.

Words / Copy 

Once you’ve grabbed someone’s attention with a striking image, you need to sustain that through writing enticing words that make them want to continue reading your ad. 

I highly suggest that you read through Copyhackers’ Copywriting Formula and Copywriting Worksheets to help you get started. The articles are pretty lengthy, so if you want to do a quick skim, I suggest you start with AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action) and PAS (problem, agitation, solution).

And once these elements of your ads are good to go, it’s time to show them to the world!

STEP 4: Let’s get your ads turned on

Before we tackle how to activate your campaigns, let’s cover the 3 levels of a campaign:

• Campaign – where you tell FB what you want to optimize your ad for

• Ad Set – where you do your targeting, select your audience, set your budget, and determine where your ads go

• Ad – where you put in the images and the copy and basically design what your ad looks like on the news feed

1. • Start by Creating an ad

• Choose your objective – we will use Lead Generation because this allows us to put our offer out to the world really cheaply. The way it works is that you set up your ad, copy and image, and invite people to take you up on your offer. This is where Lead Ads come in.

• Give the campaign a name that you would recognize
• For small advertisers like us, we don’t do A/B testing nor Campaign Budget Optimization

• On the next page, name your ad set
• I usually disregard Dynamic Creative

• In the Audience section this is where things get serious. Disregard Custom Audience for now since that is more advanced.

• You first need to create an audience based on their demographics. For the radius in Location, I tend to find that 5 miles around the location is best for local businesses. The more specific, the better.
• My agency goes with the age 25-55 because anyone below 25 may not be able to afford the product you are offering (this will depend on your business however)
• Keep detailed targeting off, unless your audience is pretty big (which won’t be the case for most local businesses)

• Placements – Automatic Placements means that your ads will show up everywhere (including Instagram stories, newsfeed, Facebook stories, newsfeed, right hand side, and other sites tied to the Facebook Ad Network) which is too much for you to control and your campaign will burn through your cash before you get any valuable results. That is why I recommend Manual Placements more. Make sure you are not showing up in the wrong place. I avoid Facebook Marketplace, Stories, In-Stream, and In-article.

• Budget & Schedule – for Cost Control, this is a bit advanced because you need to know your average cost per lead. What we need to set is the Daily Budget, and I suggest around 5-10 USD for a start.
• If you get the warning of “Ad Set May Get Zero leads”, you can just ignore this if you want to avoid spending more to get results
• In the next page, at the Ad level, name your Ad.
• You can choose between Carousel (maximum of 10 images) or Single Image or Video

• In Media, this is where you add the image/s for your ad

• In Text & Links, this is where you enter your copy. The Headline is your hook. 
• Display Link is where you enter your website address and then you choose your Call to Action (I’d either go for Get Offer or Learn More)

• In Question Format, because we selected a Lead Ad, you will be able to see an Instant Form. This is what we call a Native Ad, meaning the audience doesn’t need to leave Facebook for you to get their information.

• If you choose to add a form, select Higher Intent as the form type because you don’t want a bunch of unqualified leads with the More volume option. More Volume means that most of the other information is pre-filled out, which may not be accurate information (especially because most Facebook users have a different email address for their Facebook accounts)

• I tend to keep the headline and image the same as with the ad for familiarity
• Edit the form with the information that you need. Here is the information that I asked for, which align with the Higher Intent option

• You can also choose to add a custom disclaimer if you have one on your website or if it is necessary for your business

• Once you have all the information, click confirm and your ad gets submitted for review

And once your ad has been approved, congratulations! Your ad is now available for everyone to see…

STEP 5: Ads are Running, Now What?

The journey doesn’t end once your ad gets published. In fact, this is only the beginning to unravelling the beauty of Facebook Ads and how it can make a significant impact to your business.

The next thing that you have to do is to DIAGNOSE then take ACTION so you will know what to adjust to make the ad work better. Sometimes it means adjusting the budget, or changing the copy or creative, or simply leaving your ad to run and promote the business (this is the best-case scenario).

Here are the big 3 metrics that you need to observe:

• CTR (click through rate) – indication of how many people are seeing your ad and clicking through
• CPR (cost per result) – how much it’s costing you to get a lead, quick way for you to judge if your ad is costing too much
• CPM (cost per mille) – price it costs to show your add to a thousand people. This isn’t really something that you can control but there are times when it goes crazy (an example is at the end of Q4 when people have extra left for advertising by the end of the year). When CPM is high, you might want to change the type of campaign you run to change the cost.

Let’s do a quick crash course on how to understand your ads more and make necessary adjustments from there:

• When you first open business manager, this is what you are going to see

• You can also set the duration of the ads

• You will see an option Columns:Performance and what you want to do there is select Performance and Clicks.

• Here is a quick run through of what each column is:
  1. Results – pretty self explanatory. It’s the results you get from each ad you run. You need to know where you are in the hierarchy. I suggest you look at the Ad Set Campaign tab because we are doing something called ad set-based optimization.
  2. Reach – number of people the ad has gone out to
  3. Frequency – on average, roughly how many times someone sees your ad on their newsfeed
  4. Cost per result – one of the “big boys”, simply put, your cost per lead 
  5. Budget – budget you set for that campaign
  6. Amount spent – how much you’ve spent for that campaign
  7. Ends – when the campaign ends
  8. Schedule –  this is important if you’re running a date-specific campaign (for example a Halloween campaign)
  9. Impressions – how many times the ad has come up
  10. CPM – second big boy 
  11. Link clicks – the number of times the link for your ad was clicked
  12. CPC (cost per link click) – basically cost per click
  13. CTR (link click-through) – click through rate for the links in your ad
  14. Clicks All – the difference between this and CTR is that the latter is the number of people clicking on the actual link whereas the clicks all is the people that click on your ad. It doesn’t matter where they click (for example see more, opens image, shares ad, etc.)
  15. CTR (all) – all interactions with the ad
  16. CPC (all) – the price it costs for people to click your link
  17. Website Purchases & On-Facebook Purchases – you will see that these are blank because these stats are primarily for e-commerce.
• Now we need to look at the CTR, CPM and CPR
• If you’re running a lead ad (which is what we are doing in this case), then CTR would be a good place to start. For CTR, generally I try to aim for a 1% on the link click through and for all, twice of that. This is because CTR counts all the clicks and CTR link click through is just for those who click the links.
• If CTR is low, you may need to change the ad copy or the image because people are not clicking through. This is because people see your ad but choose not to click it. The goal is to grab their attention through great copy/creative to increase your CTR.
• Also check if your CPM is too high and you’re not getting any results. That means you’re allocating your funds to the wrong ad, especially if CTR is low. 

And that is a very quick, beginner-friendly overview on how you can diagnose your ads. There are lots of other factors that come into play when it comes to diagnosing your ads, but what I have taught you above is the perfect place to start.

BONUS: HOW TO SETUP AUTOMATIC NOTIFICATIONS FOR THE LEADS YOU GET FROM YOUR AD

Earlier in the article, I mentioned that I use Zapier to manage all the information taken from the Lead Ads. Zapier allows the responses to automatically appear on Google Sheets. I also make sure to include the timestamps because the tendency is that most people forget that they actually submitted a form and showing them the timestamps is pretty good proof of their submissions. 

Another great thing about Zapier is that I can set up another trigger for Gmail so that whenever a lead comes in, we receive a notification about it. 

Here’s a quick run through of how I set this up in my business:

• Go to Zapier.com (https://www.teglikes.com/zapier) and create an account if you don’t have one yet
• Start by choosing a trigger. In this case, it’s Facebook Lead Ads.

• Select New Lead for the Trigger Event

• Connect your Lead Ads account

• In Customize Lead, choose the respective Ad Account and Form

• Test Trigger to have Zapier provide the most recent submission on your Lead Ads

• Select Google Sheets as the Action

• Choose Create Spreadsheet Row as your Action Event

• Connect your Google Sheets account

• In Customize Spreadsheet Row, make sure that you have your Google Sheets file (and worksheets) created beforehand because you can’t create it in Zapier. Assign the respective files in this section.
• You can then customize the sheet more through choosing the respective information that you need to appear on the Google Sheets file

• On the next section, select Test & Continue

• You will be notified if the test was successful and you can double check in Google Sheets if the information appears there

• Once that’s ready, go ahead and Turn On Zap.
• To add an email notification, scroll below and select Email by Zapier as an additional action
• Select Send Outbound Email as the Action Event

• Fill in all the necessary details for the Outbound Email. You can also choose to insert data from the main source (Facebook or Google Sheets)

• Select Test & Continue to see if the Zap works

• Once you successfully receive a test email, go ahead and Turn On Zap (sometimes the email takes a while to appear on your inbox)

And that is how you manage all the information of your leads without having to invest in an expensive CRM system! Zapier is a very useful tool and I use it in multiple other aspects of my business. It has been a very effective tool for me and I hope you found this section useful

IT’S YOUR TURN!

You’ve made it to the end of the article! We have covered a lot of basic points here to get you started and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Getting started is usually the most intimidating part of the process, but once you have your ad setup and learn how to tweak and diagnose along the way, everything will soon become second nature to you. 

Facebook Ads is really one of the best marketing tools out there and I hope that this blog post has encouraged you to start advertising on this platform to grow your business

This post is about How I have ended up in a situation where I am running a couple of businesses. It is not a step-by-step guide; it is more a post about how I ended up here and how I manage everything. And it is based on my personal experiences. And after going through much trial-and-error, I believe I can share a few bits of knowledge on how to run multiple businesses.

The reason for the above preface, or pre clarification if you will, is because personally, I don’t feel like I run multiple businesses. It was never in my intention to run all these businesses for profit. Rather, my approach was more of looking to solve a problem and selling my ability to solve that.  

So, if you think about it, my businesses are “productized” solutions to a problem or group of problems that I had at one point. Eventually, it kind of became a business because people saw me solve the problem and wanted me to solve it for them. I talk about this in the “How I accidentally started a Podcast Management Agency” article.  

WHY NOT JUST ONE BUSINESS TO RULE THEM ALL?  

If you know me, you know I LOVE learning and experimenting. And it just so happened that because of all these skills that I’ve required through the years that I couldn’t keep them all in one business entity. I wanted to do so many things that it became difficult to sell these things under one package. 

Technically I run 4 small businesses:  

• FB ads agency 
• Podcast management agency 
• Virtual Talent Recruitment agency 
• My personal consultation business 

 The first 3 individual businesses above all came about from me wanting to solve a problem: 

• Ads agency – because I struggle to talk about myself and what I do, I have an aversion to doing anything organically (which is slowly changing as you’re reading a blog post about this right now). I needed to find a way to get my name out there and this was done through paid traffic which I had to learn on my own. I then helped other friends who needed help in this aspect as well. 
• Podcast management agency – if you haven’t read my other blog post on this, I was trying to solve the problem of doing all the work by myself through outsourcing. After what felt like years of trial and error, I happened upon a system and for me to move forward with that, I made an offer to a friend to split the person’s pay and that person (who had his own podcast) said yes. The person we outsourced then helped in starting the business. 
• Recruitment agency – I got tagged on a couple of posts on Social Media from people who needed help with their business. This is how I slowly grew my agency and one thing led to another. The agency currently helps freelancers or solopreneurs who want to scale what they’re doing. 

Because I eventually wanted my businesses to run without me, I decided to keep them all independent from myself. This is when I learned the beauty of outsourcing.

SYSTEMS AND PROCESSES TO RUN THE BUSINESSES 

Now that you know what I do, let’s talk about the systems and processes on how to run multiple businesses. 

Since I was managing more than one brand, I realized the importance of having systems and processes in place to keep me sane. Systematizing and process docs allows the team to produce output at a level I would do myself and sometimes what they create is better because it is their focus. 

You need to create systems for every part of managing the business. This includes payments, notifications, updates for the clients, and workflow management. Next step is to establish processes so that everything that needs to be done for all the parts of your business is broken down in such a way that it’s easy to read and implement. 

The easiest service for me to systematize was the podcast management agency. When it comes to producing a podcast, it is easy to break everything down and know EXACTLY what to do in each step of the process.  

We also wanted to identify how we can make this agency so that our clients are as hands off from the podcast as possible. Which is where we came up with the idea of uploading the podcast to the podcast host, uploading on the website, embedding the podcast player on the website, and so on. 

Doing it this way, means that the whole process is output driven and distractions are removed, because team members or you will be guided through the entire process and know what to do moving forward. It will also make it easier identify what tools you need for you and assign responsibility to the right member(s) of the team.  

THE TOOLS WE USE 

To create systems and processes and make sure everything is followed through, you need to use the right tools. 

These are all the core tools I’ve been using to manage the businesses: 

• Google Docs – to house the documentation of the processes 
• Teamwork – project management for task checklists (for example we use task templates for everything that needs to be done for every podcast management client) 
• Slack – for communication with the team 
• Zapier – to send notifications in Slack whenever something is added to Teamwork  

There is a wide array of tools you can choose from out there, but so far these are the ones that have worked for me and my team. 

HOW WE SELL AND GET CLIENTS?  

In terms of how the services are sold, I’m still working on this as I’m writing this article. The reason for this is because I have an aversion to talking about myself (I know I’ve said this twice now, in case it didn’t sink in for you the first time). I also did write an article about “How to market as an Introvert. 

Yes, these businesses can stand on their own, but there are certain elements of each business that can feed into each other.  

For example, when it comes to the recruitment and podcast management agency, something I’ve done before is help my clients setup their podcast, put my system in place, and train their team (who I helped recruit). This isn’t something that I’m doing currently but I’ve done it before. 

So, on the surface, it looks like I can only sell one thing, however because of the level of systemizing we have done, it creates an opportunity to cross sell the different services. There is the example of the podcast scenario above. 

Another example could be Selling advertising services of the ads agency, but as we work together, the client could conclude that they want to start a podcast but not manage it themselves…and create the opportunity for me to provide the podcast creation/management services of my podcast management agency 

This goes to show that it is possible to cross-sell and is something I will definitely do in the long run. 

WHAT SKILLS DO YOU NEED TO POSSESS? 

In my opinion, the skills you need to manage multiple businesses are the following: 

• The skill for the service that you’re selling – You don’t have to be an expert, but at least intermediate level so that you can communicate to properly delegate tasks to the person who will do the work for you. On the flip side, you also need to know how to communicate what needs to be done to your clients as well so that it is easily understandable.  

• You need to be a people manager – Because I have a team backing me up for everything, I had to learn how to manage them. This means that you need to learn how to properly work with and communicate to other people. If you don’t do this, you will be stuck having to do all the work yourself.

It takes patience and effort to be able to handle the balancing act of running multiple businesses. One doesn’t become a master overnight and it certainly took me YEARS to come up with all these systems and processes.  

And that’s how I am currently managing all my businesses. Again, I never really thought about these entities as businesses but more of a way for me to help more people. If you focus on that, everything becomes easier to manage. 

I am an introvert. Not only that, I’m introvert in the balancing act of managing a couple of businesses, running a podcast, and slowly growing my personal brand. You can say that through the years, I’ve learned how to market as an introvert.

If you’re not new to business, you’re aware of the fact that businesses don’t promote themselves. And for me, that means that promoting myself and my brand is up to ME…an introvert (along with my amazing team, of course, but you get the gist). 

I’ve had my fair share of hosting livestreams, managing Facebook groups, and interacting one-on-one with potential clients for all my businesses. I especially had to let myself out there when I ran a 5-day Ads to Leads Challenge.

It may seem that I have it all together and that learning how to market as an introvert all came naturally to me.  

But as an introvert, sometimes my introversion gets in the way and more often than not, I get uncomfortable when the time comes that I have to talk about myself and what I do.  

Slowly, I am getting out of that shell and becoming friends with the inner gremlin in my head reminding me every now and then that I am an introvert. Yes, I am an introvert, but that isn’t a bad thing at all… 

BATTLING MY INNER GREMLIN 

As introverts, most of us have learned to adapt and appear to be extroverts. Most people believe that introverts are always shy, but that isn’t the case. I can easily strike up a conversation with a stranger and make it seem like I am the most talkative person in the world.  

I can act like an extrovert, but sometimes, my inner gremlin gets the best of me in certain situations. 

Situations like when I just started playing American Football and people thought I was a pushover. Or when I get a new client and I feel the pressure of making sure I don’t mess up because I get paid for my services. 

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate myself or regret being an introvert. The gremlin in my head isn’t always the bad guy and I have slowly learned to channel my introversion to become the best version of myself when it comes to self-promotion. 

CAN INTROVERTS PROMOTE THEMSELVES EFFECTIVELY? 

So, why don’t I like talking about myself?  

Well…I just DON’T. There’s no grand design or grand why behind why.  

As an introvert, I am uncomfortable with being in the limelight and would rather listen than talk about myself. However, that doesn’t mean that I/we can’t promote ourselves or our businesses. 

In a world full of extroverted marketers, we feel like we need to live up to their standards and appear to be flashy and flamboyant. We’ve been taught that in order to promote ourselves, we need to be extroverted and talkative.  

But remember that both introverts and extroverts have their own strengths and weaknesses.  

As an introvert, I have learned to harness my natural curiosity in order to have interesting conversations with other people. Because of this, I can carry great conversations while seeming like an extrovert (when in fact, most of the time, I’m just nodding my head).  

To answer your question whether introverts can promote themselves, the answer to that is 100% YES. 

It may take a few step backs and a bit of learning from our end, but ANYONE can be a marketer. Anyone can market his/her brand and be authentic about themselves without having the need to appear extroverted. 

So how as an introvert, do you promote yourself? 

Here are some of the lessons I have learned as an introvert marketing himself in a world full of extroverts. 

USE YOUR INTROVERSION TO YOUR ADVANTAGE 

Think Like a Scientist 

You may have noticed cartoon Tega appear every now and then in my articles or my social media posts. Most of the time, cartoon Tega dresses up as a scientist, because I like to consider myself a scientist conducting experiments in business.  

This mindset means that every business, every piece of content, and every endeavor I get myself into I look at as an experiment.  

Rather than focusing on success and getting results, treating things like a scientist means that I’m more inclined to satisfying my curiosity rather than achieving XYZ. I get so focused on the actual “experiment” that I tend to forget about what people are thinking about it.  

In experiments, whether you win or lose, it’s all still a win at the end. Losing means that you’ve learned valuable lessons and winning means that you know what to continue doing moving forward.  

As introverts, we like to live inside our head. So, let’s make the most out of this and think like a scientist rather than a marketer that’s so focused on impressing our audience.  

Act More, Talk Less 

I find it much easier to talk about my experiences (aka experiments) rather than about myself. And because I feel like talking about myself isn’t really something, I’m keen on, I’d rather spend my time being productive and doing the thing. This thing can vary from my experiments or spending time with myself learning something new.  

Once I’ve done something related to the thing, it becomes much easier for me to start talking about it. If you think about it, it doesn’t seem so difficult to be talking about my experiments because it isn’t necessarily about MYSELF per se. 

That way, what I share is useful to other people because I get to talk about my learnings and takeaways. This makes things far more interesting than having small talk (which most of us introverts avoid as well).  

Going back to the earlier point, channel your inner scientist, and talk about that and because you are so focused on the actual doing of the thing, you disregard what everyone else thinks(At least, that works for me).  

Don’t Focus on Making an Impression 

This tip applies for both introverts and extroverts alike. And this goes not just for self-promotion but life in general. If you are constantly worried about what other people think, you will be in this endless cycle of always trying to please everyone.  

I realize that not everybody thinks the way I think about things. We all have our own unique likes and dislikes. This is especially reflected on Social Media. The ads I am attracted to can be something utterly useless for someone else.  

So, when I reflected on this, I concluded that I cannot please everyone with my content. Some people will enjoy it, and others will not. For those that don’t care about your content?  

Don’t care that they don’t care!  

Everyone is so busy worrying about their own issues, challenges, triumphs & perceived failures rather than your stuff and when you promote yourself, you do not have to be self-conscious at all. Simply focus on your ideas and being the curious introvert that you are.  

Utilize the Power of Words 

Promoting yourself does not always have to be about creating entertaining videos or hosting impromptu livestreams to get attention.  

There are so many ways to promote ourselves and as introverts, we need time to think about what we put out there. We know there is power in choosing the right words to say, and it’s not something that we can come up with on the spot. 

This means that we are more inclined to content that allows us to sit down and reflect before saying what we want to say. 

Written content is much more attractive for most introverts because what we say is carefully curated. Thankfully, because of the internet, we introverts have a myriad of avenues to choose from in order to put our words out there. 

Personally, being “talkative” on Social Media, this website, and to my email lists is something that I have grown accustomed to. I have nurtured most of my business relationships and built my brand through these platforms because I found that I am most comfortable with them.  

Choosing which platforms work best for you will need you think like a scientist again. Each person is comfortable and uncomfortable with different things so if something doesn’t feel right to you, you can always experiment with something else.  

Focus on Helping Over Promoting 

The final tip that I want to share is that whenever I create new content or start a new business, the number one goal for me is to help other people. That’s the main reason why I started all my agencies and created a personal podcast.  

Promoting myself and garnering fame was the LAST thing on my mind.  

Even this article was written with the sole purposes of helping fellow introverts out there get over their shyness or hesitations so that they too can grow their businesses and in return, help more people.  

So, if the inner gremlin in your head stops you in your tracks while composing that next social media post, tell yourself “If I’m not going to help other people, who else will?” 

INTROVERTS UNITE! 

Just because I’ve shared these tips with you doesn’t mean that I’ve mastered them all myself. As I’m slowly growing my brand and getting more clients, I still struggle at times with my introversion.  

Sometimes, my inner gremlin can be my best friend or my worst enemy. But hey, that’s life and we must accept all its ups and downs. I am slowly learning to become a better marketer (or should I say, scientist), and I know that getting out of my shell will take time and experience.  

I hope that all these tips made you realize that you as an introvert also have the potential to create wonderful things and be proud to share it with the world.