Mikael Dia, the CEO of Funnelytics has some pretty thought-provoking ideas in my interview with him in this episode.
For instance, he believes that there is ONE thing all business owners struggle with…
It’s called “chasing the thrill”, or “shiny object syndrome”.
You probably faced this yourself, especially if you’ve ever started a business with the dream of becoming a millionaire in your 20s.
Let’s face it, the shiny object syndrome is one of the reasons why most entrepreneurs take so long to get rich and successful.
This episode will help you overcome it and finally crack the code for building a successful business!
You’ll also learn about:
- How to differentiate Shiny Object Syndrome with a real opportunity
- How Mikeal views business and what really matters in life
- How he balances fulfilling both personal and business goals in a meaningful way
- A revolutionary perspective for making your webinars irresistible to customers
Transcript:
Meet Mikael Dia: Founder of Funnelytics
[00:00:00] Terence: Alright guys, we have a very special treat for you today. We have Mikael Dia from Funnelytics
Mikael Dia: What’s up? How’s it?
Terence: Hey. So Mikael has not only set up Funnelytics, but he has also a vast, business experience in setting up agencies and also doing webinars. So we can’t wait to hear your words of wisdom today.
Mikael Dia: It is, uh, it’s gonna be a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to the conversation and, and sharing whatever value I can share.
Terence: All right. So Mikael, let’s start off with your business journey. Tell us the highlights of your business journey.
Mikael Dia: Okay. Highlights. So I’ve built two seven figure businesses, and one eight figure business at this stage. I’ve been able to kind of do it across multiple, different industries, which has been really fun. So an agency, a software company, a coaching, and kind of info based business were kind of the three core that I was able to scale. And I’ve grown teams to just shy of 30 people and, have looked at a whole lot of different marketing strategies, especially with, with Funnelytics and seeing, you know, the data and seeing what our, our clients have done. So, so those are some of the highlights and some of the, the fun parts. And I’m sure we’ll dive into the lowlights as well throughout the conversation. But yeah, some of the highlights there.
Mikael's Entrepreneurial Journey: From T-Shirt to Tech
Terence: Sure. So, so did you start off with your coaching business first before moving into your agency business? And then finally Funnelytics.
Mikael Dia: No, I actually started off… so the journey is a lot longer than that. I started off in kind of selling T-shirts and then I went into affiliate websites and I started learning about pay-per-click advertising.
And, [00:02:00] I experimented a whole lot my first real kind of business was a Mandarin language school. Actually, I don’t know if you knew that. Yep.
No. I don’t, I don’t speak Mandarin. I’ve never been to China. But, I started a Mandarin language school. This was in 2000 and, 2012 is when I built that with a friend of mine. And we exited that business and I really used a lot of my kind of knowledge of funnels and basically just marketing in general to, ramp that up. When we exited, I actually went into, I started another language business, a tech business and, an app actually, that didn’t actually work out. We went bust. It didn’t pan out. But then afterwards, that’s when I started my agency. So I took a lot of the knowledge that I knew about.
Funnels and about [00:03:00] how do you convert strangers into customers. And started helping businesses, started building funnels for them. And actually one of the clients that I brought on very early days in the agency was a coaching business in the nutrition space. It was called IIF ym com and I ended up becoming a partner in that business, becoming the CMO and, and really kind of helping that business ramp up, and, and grow to kind of new heights. So, yeah, it kind of happened simultaneously, but technically it was a client of my agency first, and then I became a partner and a co-owner in that business.
Opportunity VS Shiny Object Syndrome
Terence: I get it. Okay. So it seems like you have dipped your thickness into many different
Mikael Dia: Yeah.
Terence: and yeah. So. Obviously you can see opportunity like many entrepreneurs [00:04:00] do. So you know, there’s always the shiny object syndrome that keeps entrepreneurs in one place, right? And not really moving and getting stuck. How do you see opportunity versus, okay, this is just a shiny object syndrome. How do you differentiate between that?
Mikael Dia: I think the biggest thing is, a lot of times we don’t take the time to see something through. As entrepreneurs, we’re quite impatient. We have kind of, especially if you’re a vision based entrepreneur as opposed to let’s say an operations or integrator based, entrepreneur, what we find is our vision tends to be clearer than the time it takes to actually achieve that vision.
So, I’ll give you a perfect example you know, in, in the software world. You think that, you know, let’s go and build this thing. Like I can see it, [00:05:00] I know what it looks like, I know what I can do with it. But of course, in order to actually build it, it takes years, right? It takes several months to get a prototype and then get the feedback and then test it and this and that.
And, and I think what happens is as we’re working towards that vision, opportunities arise. And when those opportunities arise, we start to assume that those opportunities can come quicker by chasing that opportunity than if we were to just stick on path and and whatnot. And what it does is it creates this spiral for us because we just end up going down this path of, okay, well man, I’ll give you a perfect example.
One of the first businesses that I attempted, or first kind of projects that I attempted when I first learned this whole digital marketing game was a [00:06:00] Survival Knife website. And basically what I did was I built a website that had all of these review articles all designed for SEO purposes. And my buddy at the time had all these survival knives, and this was back in 2010 ish. And I don’t know if you remember, in 2012 the Mayan calendar was supposed to end and it was supposed to be the end of the world. You, do you remember? You remember that back then?
The end of the world was supposed to happen in 2012 because of the Mayan calendar or whatever. They even made a movie about it, 2012 or whatever.
So at the time, I got all these knives that my, my friend had these kind of, you know, he’s an outdoorsy kind of guy, so I took pictures of them. I wrote these articles, SEO driven, you know, Google at the time was much different than it is today.
The idea was I would rank these articles and I, in my mind, I’d be like, okay, well 2012 is gonna happen in a couple [00:07:00] years. People are gonna search for survival knives and survival gear and all that stuff. So I’m primed for this, right? And after about three months of basically building the website, getting everything up, all that stuff. I kind of sat back and I was like, okay, now what? Now?
Now I kind of have to wait in a sense, like maybe do some link building and all that, but ultimately my sight’s up. How am I gonna start making money? Because my vision of what this thing should be was felt far away, I jumped onto the next shiny object, which is, okay, well let’s go and learn Pay-per-click.
You know, let’s accelerate this. Let’s find another way, another tactic, another strategy. To make this work. So I learned pay-per-click advertising. And I threw, I threw a hundred dollars at, at pay-per-click ads for some of the, the landing pages or the articles.
I actually got my very first online dollar, doing that. [00:08:00] Uh, it was a $5 and 23 cents commission, and I spent $99 and like 90 something cents to make that $5 and 23 cents. So, you know, it, it’s this idea that ultimately we’re always chasing that vision and find, trying to think of ways to make it happen sooner. What I’ve learned over the years is that’s not how it works.
The more you chase different shiny objects, the more you chase new tactics as opposed to honing in that one tactic, refining it, optimizing it. Just continuously doubling down on that. That is what creates that compounding effect over time. And it just takes time. But most people wanna skip the time they wanna be millionaires by the time they turn 21.
So they’re trying to figure out how do I do that, right? So,
Terence: Yeah…
Mikael Dia: It’s, it [00:09:00] that’s really kind of the, the challenge that we face.
Terence: Yeah. I think sadly, that’s probably one of the things that keep entrepreneurs where they are, like not breaking true, right? Because they’re kind of like jumping from one opportunity to another and not really, really optimizing the opportunity they already have. Like what you…
Mikael Dia: Yeah, I think the, the biggest challenge with entrepreneurship is we chase the thrill. So part what I mean by that is of being an entrepreneur is. You get motivated by your thoughts and you get motivated by the opportunity and the thrill of will this work. So you put in a whole bunch of effort trying to make this thing work.
You, you learn this new tactic or you learn this new software, or you learn this new thing and you’re like, this is exciting. Yeah, this is gonna change my life. And you get excited and motivated by that.
So that’s what ultimately drives you to [00:10:00] kind of make this. Thing happen or, or double down on this thing. And then once you reach a certain point of like, oh, okay, it, it, it wasn’t as good as the copywriter said it was, it wasn’t as fast as the person kind of sold it to me, then you kind of jump on the next one because you lose that motivation, that excitement of, of this. What I’ve come to realize is that you, you really have to love the journey.
You really have to get excited by the milestones and not focus on the gap, but focus on the game. What I mean by that is I read the, I have this book that I’m reading right now called The Gap in The Gain, or something along those lines by Dan Sullivan. And if you think about…
Terence: Great!
Mikael Dia: You’ve read the book? It’s a great book. Yeah.
It’s a great book because it really makes you start to realize the difference [00:11:00] between how we’re perceiving the world and, and how just the. Two sides of the same coin can actually change your entire mindset. So for, for those listening, who don’t know the premise, basically it’s very simple. You start somewhere, you have a vision at the very top, and then somewhere in between is what you’ve achieved.
Right now, most people focus on the difference between their vision and what they’ve achieved. In other words, the gap between. What they’ve achieved and the vision and the problem is every time you achieve something new, you’re always constantly evolving.
Your vision, your vision’s always moving forward. So therefore, you’re always chasing that vision and focusing on that gap between what you’ve achieved versus you know, what the vision is.
The people who are the happiest focus on the gain, which is where did I start and what have I achieved and what is the [00:12:00] gain between those two things and if you stay focused on that while still understanding that I have a vision at the end of the day, there’s something I want to achieve, but by focusing on the gain.
Then all of a sudden you’re, you’re not chasing shiny objects. You’re not trying to find new tactics or new ways to try to get to my vision faster or, or simpler.
It’s, man, look at what we’re consist consistently achieving all this time. So I think that makes a big, big difference.
The Transition from Agency to Software: Building Funnelytic
Terence: Yeah, I agree. ’cause like I, I think if you are in the gap, you’re kind of like in the mindset of desperation, saying, okay, I need to do this other thing and seize this other opportunity, and we then lose the vision. Good example was recently I looked at my last year’s
Mikael Dia: Yep.
Terence: It didn’t hit where I wanted it to hit. So I was feeling, I was in in the
Mikael Dia: Yep,
Terence: gap, right? And I was kind of feeling a bit depressed, but then I look back [00:13:00] at my figures five years ago compared to today, I’ve increased my business by
Mikael Dia: Yeah.
Terence: compared to like five years ago. And then like, okay, I’m back in the game and I’m like, okay, let’s focus and continue to grow this instead of trying to do something new and stupid that, you know, may keep me in a bad…
Mikael Dia: A hundred percent. And I actually think that, I actually think that goals, or at least targets are very bad. Like I see targets, you know, I understand that we have to have to some degree, something to achieve towards, and we want to hit targets and, and, and align people based on you know, set up plans based on, okay, well if I want to hit X amount of revenue, which means I need to have X amount of new customers, which means I need to have X amount of salespeople and all of that stuff.
These things are, are important to kind of [00:14:00] formulate a plan. The issue with targets is rarely do you ever hit a forecast. Rarely, right? Rarely do we ever hit the targets that we want to hit, and when we do, yay, great. We hit it. And you sit there and you’re like, okay, but now what? You know, like, who, it, it really doesn’t change anything other than cool. Let me pat myself on the back and say, good job. I hit my target. But it doesn’t mean anything, right? As long as you are enjoying that journey as opposed to focusing on the destination or focusing on that target it, it makes the world of a difference.
And, and trust me, I’ve been, I’ve been on the other side as well, where you sit there and you’re like, man, I didn’t hit my target. I raised money. I didn’t do this or that. And, and it just puts you in a bad state of mind, and it’s not, it’s not why we go into business in the first place.
Terence: That’s right. So, so Mikael talking about that, right? [00:15:00] talking about shiny object syndrome, you transition from being a marketing agency to be becoming a, essentially a software company, helping that actually monitors traffic and helps people to track the, the marketing. So how did you know that wasn’t a shiny object syndrome? So I’m just wanting to know what your thought process was and why you decided to transition.
Mikael Dia: I knew it wasn’t a shiny object syndrome because I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I couldn’t stop thinking about I. This thing. I truly,
Terence: Hmm.
Mikael Dia: I truly felt that like, I want this, I want this. Even at the very beginning, that investment and that kind of spend that I took to kind of build that first prototype, it was, it was like I was still running my agency.
[00:16:00] It was money that I used from my agency to build that first prototype. It was a tool for me. It wasn’t a tool for other people. It was a tool that I wanted internally because of how I was operating my agency and the, the processes that I had. And it was really there to simplify my life as an agency owner. At some stage when Funnelytics started to grow. I had to make a decision. Do I keep going with my agency and do I split my focus or do I double down on on one or the other? And of course, you know, as you know, I went with Funnelytics and, continued to grow that because of course there’s, you know, there, there’s obviously higher upside.
But it also fueled me a lot more like I, I was getting up in the mornings and I was I, this is all I wanted to work on. It’s like, how can I, you know, what, what should this product do and this and that?
And, you know, late at night, like, [00:17:00] instead of thinking about how do I get another client from my agency, my thoughts were, man, how do I get more users?
How do I get this? How do I, what, what is the next feature that I build? Et cetera. So I think we, you have to kind of, it’s almost like, you know, the saying like. If you’re about to spend some money on something and you’re about to buy something, and like it’s an impulse buy, just sleep on it for a night and, and see if you still want it the next day, right? Sleep on it for a week and see if you still want it.
Well, in this case, it’s not a shiny object if you’re constantly thinking about it, if it’s, if it’s motivating you, right? There’s no… If you’re sitting there and saying, man, I really, really want to keep doing this, or I really can’t stop thinking about trying this thing. If that lasts more than a week, then you’re probably in a stage where it’s like, yeah, you should probably at least pursue it.[00:18:00]
Challenges of Shifting to a Software Business Model
Terence: Cool. Cool. So was it, what were the challenges like to transition from an agency to a software company and ? You know, what kind of challenges came up? ’cause as you mentioned, I’m sure it wasn’t as smooth as you thought it was gonna be, where you kind of have the software company and everybody wants to sign up and Yeah. So just wondering, what were some of the challenges you faced, um, in this journey of building this Funnelytics software?
Mikael Dia: Man. More than I can even count or, or mention. I could probably go year by year and, and talk about challenges that we faced. but, you know, some of the main ones in the software game is the, the biggest one.
The, by far, the hardest thing that I’ve ever had to solve that I never had to It, it wasn’t [00:19:00] the same challenge in the agency world or even in kind of the, info space coaching space is Churn trying to get somebody to adopt a piece of software and use it and not churn by basically understanding well, who is the real user? And with Funnelytics, we still do, we, we all sorts of users because we had this free mapping tool. That’s how I started kind of promoting it, is through this free mapping tool, which we no longer.
Terence: Hey, I signed…
Mikael Dia: Yeah, there you go. Right? You signed up for the free mapping tool. We no longer offer the free mapping tool. We’ve actually closed it off and, and the main reason we closed it off is because, even though it brought incredible clients overall, it also brought all sorts of noise and it, it made it very, very hard for us to understand, well, what exactly are we building?
And for who, because it [00:20:00] It very quickly became not about me, but about you guys, about the customers and, and every customer coming into this mapping tool had slightly different wants and needs and, and, you know, reasons they were using the tool and, and what their next step was, et cetera. S. Churn is a massive challenge. It’s a challenge for any business, but in the software game, it is your business, right? If you can’t get somebody to stick around, it’s, it’s really, really tough. ’cause you’re charging a hundred bucks, 200 bucks a month, you know, maybe on the high end you’re charging 500 or a thousand, whatever. But in general, you’re not charging a lot of money in a, in the software game. So that was really, really challenging. And I never had, um, I’ve never had experience building products, right? I’m not an engineer.
I’m technically an [00:21:00] engineer by education, civil engineer, though, not software engineer, and
Terence: Mm-Hmm.
Mikael Dia: I’ve never had experience building products, so understanding what that looks like. I didn’t have a co-founder, uh, with Funnelytics, so it was just me. I hired a developer. So understanding like what is, what is building a product really look like, you know, what exactly does it mean? I had no idea. No idea that. I would have to pay exorbitant amounts of money to AWS for like tracking all of this data that we track for all of our clients. I had no idea, right? In my mind it was just like, I want this tool to do this, so I want it to click here and do this and show me this. So, you know, that learning cycle is also very, was very, very challenging for sure.
Terence: So, so the development costs [00:22:00] basically went through the roof from what you…
Mikael Dia: Development costs, server costs, basically just costs of, of taking this product to another level, right?The problem with development and software is that you can’t iterate ahead of time. What I mean by that is, Let’s say, people want a Facebook integration and they want to see Facebook data in Funnelytics. Okay, well, it’s not like I can whip up a new service and and tweak it with my next conversation or, or a coaching program, like tweak it and, and record it live after, you know, after I’ve sold it, like. I’ve gotta build it first, right? And, and you go and spend the next three months to six months building a prototype or building version one, then you get feedback.
Then you realize people didn’t want it exactly this way and, and you gotta create this loop. So there’s a ton of [00:23:00] upfront costs in the software space that I didn’t think about. I didn’t really know, like I knew theoretically but when it’s actually hitting your bank account, that’s when it hurts, a little bit more. You actually truly feel it. I also raised money with Funnelytics, so we went down the VC route and, and raised money and trying to hit milestones and, and playing the VC game as a very different game.
Terence: That can…
Mikael Dia: Yeah, it’s a very different mindset than when you’re bootstrapping for sure. It’s…
Terence: mm-Hmm?
Mikael Dia: at least… It causes you to it, it definitely causes you, or at least it caused me to live in the gap much more than in the gain having VC money because you know, you wake up one day, literally, this is what happened with us. It was in kind of two chunks, but basically you wake up one day and you have $3 million in a bank account.
[00:24:00] Like you go from, okay, we’re struggling, like profiting, making, you know, margins every month is on the verge of potentially working or not working, and, and you’re stressed. And then boom, $3 million in the bank account, except that $3 million comes with stipulation. Spend it and grow, right? So now you’re, you’re…
Terence: Wow. So you’re forced
Mikael Dia: Of course. Why, why else are they giving you money? Right? They’re, they’re giving you money to grow the company to increase the value. So go spend that money, grow the company, focus on the targets. What are the targets that you’re gonna hit? Now you’re sitting here and you’re saying, okay, well I’ve got this money.
In order for me to get to the next milestone, I’ve gotta focus on, not my achievements, but on my targets, which is again, focusing on the gap because in the VC world. [00:25:00] You’re only as good as your next raise, right? So you raise a seed round, you do a few things, you hit some milestones. You go and raise a series a round, you do some stuff, you grow, you hit milestones.
You go, you raise the next round. And if you’re not able to hit those milestones, if you’re not able to hit those targets, you’re not raising the next round, right? But what you’ve done is you’ve actually sat there and said, okay, well I’ve gotta use this money to try to hit those milestones.
So, that’s when you start going and saying, okay, well, shiny objects, or maybe we should hire this person, or We should do this, or we should do that because you’re trying to solve for achieving that target and it can be very, stressful and also very challenging, right? Because if it doesn’t go according to plan, well guess what? All those people have to go, you’ve gotta cut back.
You’ve gotta basically scrap [00:26:00] your plan and say, okay, we’ve gotta pivot, we’ve gotta try something different. And yeah, it, it’s, it’s a different game for sure.
Personal Sacrifices and Balancing Business with Family Life
Terence: Yeah. So Mikhail, I’m just wondering like in terms of how business has affected your personal life, did you have to sacrifice, you know, through the years of being in business, did you have to… Has any aspect of your life had had to take a backseat, like your relationships, your health, or anything like that? And how did you deal
Mikael Dia: Yeah, I would say, not so much my relationships. I have, two, two kids. I have a, a seven-year-old and a three-year-old, you know, my daughter was born two years before I started Funnelytics, and my son was born right in Covid 2020.
So 2020 was a very interesting year for most of us, and, [00:27:00] all of us really. But, but for me, because I had my son, because I also, that was the year I raised my round of funding. That was also the year we went from, in office to fully remote. A lot of things happened that year that kind of changed the course, over the last few years. But I’ve always… For me, family. And, you know, my life in that way is, has always been number one. At the end of the day, business is fun. Building businesses is fun, but you are, you’re not gonna sit back. And first of all, you know, Funnelytics is not a company that is going to necessarily be around in a hundred years from now, right?
Who? It’s, it’s a company that we are building that, I truly believe in the product and, and we’re gonna create a ton of value for our customers. But at some stage, [00:28:00] technology’s gonna evolve. People are gonna think of customer journeys differently, et cetera, et cetera. My family though, is not going anywhere, right? And, and if you aren’t nurturing and really honing those relationships, you know, that’s when I don’t wanna look back at 60 and, and sit back and say, man, I built this incredible business, but I don’t have the family that I really, truly want.
I’d rather say I have the family that I’ve wanted and I wasn’t able to achieve. You know, I, I had to sacrifice my business aspirations. But I am finding, you know, for me, I’m finding that balance. The one thing that has suffered for me is definitely, just health, but just focusing on… not focusing enough on my own. My own, like health, especially physical, just working out and it becomes a back burner, right?
It becomes a [00:29:00] okay, well, number one, make sure, you know, I can see my kids and tuck ’em into bed and all that stuff. Number two, I gotta make sure I can pay the bills and, and build the business and, grow the team and pay and, you know, serve our customers and all that stuff. If I have time, I’ll do some pushups. You know, , the pushups can wait…
Terence: Yeah.
Mikael Dia: but it is bad. It is bad ’cause you get older and you start to realize, man, like actually your health your own, taking care of yourself should actually be number one because it fuels everything else if you’re able to take care of yourself. You have more energy, you, are in better mood. You’re overall just have more stamina and you’re just, you’re, you’re just a better person. You operate better, your business does better, your relationships are better.
So even though you know the pushups have taken a backseat, I’m well aware and conscious that [00:30:00] they need to take a front seat. Because otherwise, other things do end up suffering, right? If you pull out your back because you’re not strong enough, that’s not fun for anybody.
Terence: Yeah. Yeah, and, and it’s one of those things with health, if you don’t take care of it, it might not happen to you immediately, but it could happen to you two, three a hundred percent where something happens and you’re like, oh shit, I should have done…
Mikael Dia: Exactly. I should have done those pushups. I should have gotten, should have gotten stronger. But it’s true but yeah, no, that, that’s probably in general, like, you know, building a business requires a lot of time. For sure.
Balancing Business Success with Personal Well-being
Terence: I like your, I like your philosophy and the way you see family and business because, you know, let’s face it, even Apple, Microsoft, they probably won’t be around in a…
Mikael Dia: Totally. And it, and, and you know, it’s funny, I listened to a somebody sent me a video. It was my wife actually.
She sent me a video of, [00:31:00] um, this lady that basically was just sitting there and it’s a short video and in the video she’s like, I want you to think about something. Fast forward 100 years from now, let’s go to the year 2124. The reality is this, nobody knows who you are. Not your grandkids. Your great-grandkids have never met you. You are ultimately completely forgotten. Even if you’ve made an impact in the world to some degree, maybe you’re in a book, if you’re, you know, you’ve made that big of an impact. But overall, nothing has really changed.
The world has moved on and maybe for the first year or two, people mourn you, you become a picture on their wall. But once your grandkids, now are at that stage where they’re now at 80, they’re now in their sixties or whatever, and you’re passed away.
[00:32:00] What did it all mean? What did you spend the last 100 years focused on? So if it’s basically going to not matter in five years from now, you shouldn’t spend more than five minutes really dwelling on it or being stressed about it. And, and I believe that that’s really true. Like you need to live a life where at the end of the day, it’s fun to build a business. It’s fun to try to make money. It’s fun to try to hit these goals and, and impact as many people as we can. And, and yeah, we should live our lives to the fullest while we’re here, but we shouldn’t sacrifice, what really fulfills us on a day-to-day basis because
Terence: Mm.
Mikael Dia: In 80 years from now, buddy, you and I aren’t alive. We’re gone. It doesn’t exist anymore. It’s, it’s over, so who cares, right? And, and it is what it is. Some people would argue, Hey man, you can have an impact on humanity.
[00:33:00] I would argue that. Yeah, I mean, let let Elon Musk be the one who figures out how to get to Mars. I’ll figure out how to track customer journeys, make sure I can make some money along the way and have fun and, and spend time with my family.
Terence: Yeah especially when your kids are so…
Mikael Dia: Exactly.
Terence: mean, you know, it, it is just once in a lifetime chance. Once you…
Mikael Dia: It’s done.
Terence: they…
Mikael Dia: they grow up and, and it’s over, and…
Terence: Yeah.
Mikael Dia: and if you are driven by an ultimate mission that that drives you, you know, again, like Elon, like Jeff Bezos, like, like the people who, you know, are trying to move humanity forward in that sense,
Terence: Mm-Hmm.
Mikael Dia: then hey, go by all means. Like, you are that person.
Terence: mm
Mikael Dia: I’m not gonna stop you, you know and I’ll look up to you in that sense, but…
Terence: Yeah. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Mikael Dia: [00:34:00] Absolutely not. Of course, like we, without Amazon, I wouldn’t have, cloud services and you know, there’s all sorts of things that, that have, evolved from that. But ultimately, we are still just on this little planet that is in the middle of this universe. That means fundamentally not much.
How to Make a Successful Webinar
Terence: You’re right. So Mikael, let’s pivot a little bit. I know you’ve done a lot of webinars. You’ve promoted a lot of webinars in your agency, and you currently still do webinars for funnel analytics. Could you share one or two tips to make webinars more successful to our audience?
Mikael Dia: Yeah. So a lot of things that I’ve learned over the years with webinars the biggest thing that it comes down to is always, always your offer. And understanding [00:35:00] how to how create the belief pattern that will, that will stop people or how to, how to break the belief pattern that would potentially stop people from buying your offer. That’s really what your webinar is designed to do. So one of the things that I always start off when I’m creating a webinar is I look at my offer and I wanna make sure that my offer solves a very specific goal, right? So if I’m going to help you generate leads, my offer, you know, if you’ve ever read the a hundred million dollar offers by, Alex Zi, or if you’ve read any of Russell Brunson’s books, you want to stack as much value into that offer where it’s almost a no-brainer to. For somebody to basically say, well, yeah, like if my goal is to generate more leads, this offer was designed to generate more leads and encompasses everything.
So one of the things that you’re gonna sit down [00:36:00] is you’re gonna ask yourself, okay, well what are all of the possible objections that somebody would have when it comes to, when it comes to generating leads for this particular thing? And then what are all the possible objections of everything that I have in this offer? So every, every part of the offer, you’re gonna kind of scrutinize and say, well, they might say this, or they might say that. And typically the false beliefs will, will come around three core things. This is, you know, iterating from Russell Brunson. It’ll be either the, solution itself, the vehicle, it’ll be an internal false belief, or it’ll be some sort of external false belief.
So the first thing I do is I sit down and say, okay, this is the offer. This is what I want people to buy in order to achieve this thing. Then what I’m sitting down and saying, okay, if that’s the offer, and that’s what I want people to do, I need to reverse engineer what belief, [00:37:00] what does the viewer or listener need to believe? In order for them to say it’s, it’s a no brainer for that offer, right? So for example, I’m, I’m currently crafting a new little mini webinar, um, for kind of one of my front end products with Funnelytics which will include access to our, our mapping tool, access to our template library, access to some training around how to use templates to close clients using Funnelytics, et cetera. And the, that offer is a hundred percent designed to help people close high value clients, not to retain, not to present, um, you know, reports or look at numbers, just. Everything I’m doing is designed to help you close high value clients.
Everything I’m stacking in the offer is there to support that thing. Then what I’m thinking about is what are all the key [00:38:00] beliefs that people need to have in order for them to then say, yes, this offer makes sense. So the first thing I’m gonna say is, okay, well, they need to believe that they can close. Premium clients or they can position package their services for premium fees, and they also need to believe that this part of my offer is kind of the only way that they can do that. Then they need to believe that. Um, in order to actually make a sale, they need to show something that is visual and show a client something that is visual and they need to believe that Funnelytics mapping tool is the best way to show something that’s visual.
Then they need to believe something else, right? So I’m gonna keep listing all of that. And I’m just going to start crafting my webinar in this structure where I’m gonna come in, I’m gonna introduce who I am. I’m gonna talk to you about the first thing that you need to believe. My first secret, my first hack, my first point, my first phase, whatever [00:39:00] you need to believe this. And then I’m gonna actually start sprinkling in how part of my offer. Is designed specifically for that.
Then I’m gonna go to the next thing that you need to believe. I’m gonna make sure you believe it and show you that part of my offer is designed for that third thing, and then I’m gonna go and transition into, here’s the offer. Now that you understand that if you do this, this, and this, you can achieve this thing. Here’s the offer that I’ve designed to make this easier for you. Right. So that’s ultimately the structure that I’ve refined over the years from testing webinars, learning from the Russell Brunsons of the world and, and the Jason Flatleys and, and basically just trying all of these, these things. So hopefully I didn’t ramble on too much and that was useful, but um, yeah, just something to think about, just false beliefs and eliminating those beliefs.
Terence: That makes sense. I mean, the way you structure your webinars, you are very much, you very much have [00:40:00] your end user, your prospect in mind, and you are helping them to overcome the, you are entering the conversation in the mind about the belief systems, about whether I can do this and all that stuff, which I think is so important because many people just look at a webinar structure and they think, oh, I’ll just fill in the blanks. They kind of like miss out the most important piece, which is…
Mikael Dia: the person, yeah…
Terence: the, the person and what they’re
Mikael Dia: a hundred percent.
Terence: and that’s why their webinars, you know, don’t
Mikael Dia: Yeah. And, and I also think that, the, the process of building a webinar, people, people tend to conflate training versus a webinar. In a webinar, you cannot be afraid to sell. Your goal is not to [00:41:00] teach. Your goal is to sell. Your goal is to get somebody to buy. The only way that you’re gonna get them to buy is not by teaching them something new. It’s by making them realize that the way they’re thinking. It’s not the way they should be thinking. If they wanna achieve this thing that they want to achieve, they need to be thinking this way. And your offer,is there to make that easier. To simplify that, to create a shortcut to that. But fundamentally, you need to approach your webinar in a way that I’m not here to try to teach you something new. I don’t want you to go out after this webinar and, and like. Take this, you know, workbook and start filling it in and all that stuff. That’s just gonna give them homework, right? And it’s not gonna convert.
What you want to do is just basically sit down and say, my only goal on this webinar is to understand, to put myself in your [00:42:00] shoes as a customer to understand what beliefs do you have about this outcome that I’m trying to get you to list those and then break those, right? If I can make that happen, my webinar will convert now. There is a big difference between live versus re uh, evergreen webinars. We can get into that as well. But yeah, that is how I start thinking about webinars.
Terence: So that’s so good because you’re actually shifting beliefs rather than teaching, which is what many people do at webinars, and they, they wonder, Hey, I gave all this value, how come no one signed up for my offer?
Mikael Dia: yeah. because you didn’t, you didn’t, uh, sell them the offer. You gave them the value, Right. You sold them the value as opposed to selling them the offer. A webinar is designed to sell an offer. It is not designed to sell value. Right. So, and I think that that’s the, the key there. It doesn’t mean it can’t be valuable.
The webinar [00:43:00] is still valuable as a whole because If they didn’t watch that webinar, they wouldn’t have changed their belief patterns. So it’s still valuable, but it’s not about selling them value, it’s about selling them an offer. It’s about making sure that they understand that offer, if that makes sense.
Evergreen Webinar VS Live Webinars
Terence: Yeah. Such a good distinction. Uh, since you’ve opened the loop on recorded versus live webinars. So tell us the difference. Miguel
Mikael Dia: Yeah. So, um, live is Significantly easier, significantly easier. Um, and the reason it’s easier is because you have feedback, right? You’re, you’re going to go through a loop over time and, that feedback is live, tangible feedback. It’s qualitative feedback, not just quantitative feedback. The problem with, recorded webinars is your. You’re hoping to make it work based on quantitative feedback.
IE [00:44:00] how long did people stay, how many people looked at the offer, et cetera. Right? You have very little kind of qualitative feedback to get from, like, there’s tools like webinar fuel and, and you know, other, other tools out there that kind of collect the chat and, and all of that, that process. But it’s not the same because what I’ve noticed is with at least me, when I record a webinar, I’m lazy. I don’t want to do it again. I don’t wanna start chopping it up. I don’t want to start tweaking it. And it’s like, okay, it’s done. Let’s put it live, right? And let’s put it as a recording.
But the reality is you’re going to have to tweak your recorded webinar just as much as you’re gonna have to tweak your live webinar. You’re gonna have to iterate on it. You’re gonna have to cut it up, you’re gonna have to shorten it. You’re gonna have to test this. You’re gonna have to move the offer here. You’re gonna have to tweak how you pitch it, et cetera, et cetera.
When you’re doing it live every [00:45:00] week or every two weeks or whatever the cadence is, you kind of don’t have a choice but to tweak it because you’re, you’re about to present live to a group of people. So I’m about to go live, so I’m gonna, I saw that this last one bombed, so I’m gonna have to tweak something right when it’s recorded. Well, I just see that I spent a thousand dollars and I made none back, or I spent 10 grand and, and I made one sale.
I’m gonna just say, well, it didn’t work because I don’t have that feedback. I don’t know what didn’t work or didn’t, you know? So I always, prefer to go live, do it, live a bunch of times, get it to a stage where, I know that it can convert. Ideally, do it live to a cold audience as well because doing it live to a warm audience is not the same as doing it live to a cold audience.
Terence: True.
Mikael Dia: But at some stage, if you want to evergreen the webinar and you do want to kind [00:46:00] of not have to do it live, you just need to realize, okay, I’m gonna take my best live version. It’s a net new experiment, so I have to come with it in the mindset that this isn’t going to convert and it’s not going to work, and I’m just gonna have to look at the data and figure out how can I actually tweak this a little bit more, chop it up, shorten it, you know, tweak where the call to action is, whatever it may be as I’m experimenting cold, so…
Terence: Mm-Hmm.
Mikael Dia: it’s a process to get a webinar to convert on cold, and it’s not easy. You‘re better at this than I am. So you have way more experience about webinars than I do when it comes to testing, and so I’m sure you could probably give some, some better tips around evergreen versus live.
Terence: I mean, I think you just have it spot on. I think [00:47:00] most people we work with, one of the key mistakes they want to make is that, I want to put this on Evergreen as soon as possible. So they might just do one or two webinars and they think, yeah, let’s go Evergreen and it for short because like you haven’t done enough testing to live
Mikael Dia: Yeah, and, and I think the one thing I will say is, if you are willing to spend money to basically use the money to experiment because converting cold, or sorry, converting an evergreen webinar versus converting a live webinar is fundamentally different. There will be differences in, attendance rates. There will be a differences in, in how people, you know, perceive it.
Most people nowadays know that this isn’t Live so they [00:48:00] won’t stick around the same way, show up rates. So the sooner you can start experimenting with the, the Evergreen webinar, knowing that you will spend a lot of money upfront, what most people fail with when it comes to webinars, or funnels in general.
I would say, but specifically webinars. They sit there and say, okay, my offer on my webinar is $997. I’m willing to spend $2,000 to test this, and if it doesn’t convert, I’m gonna throw it out the window. Okay. Well, what you’re actually going to experience is you’re gonna spend $10,000 gathering a whole bunch of data and tweaking, and then you’re gonna spend another $5,000 and, and that first $10,000 will get you no sales.
Then that next $5,000 or that next $10,000 will get you one sale, and then [00:49:00] the next $10,000 will get you three or four or five sales, and then the next one, now you’re at that break even because you’ve iterated and iterated. So you’ve spent that 30 grand in order for you to get that first couple of sales. But it’s not this. It’s not this linear process. It’s no sales. No sales, no sales, no sales. Tweak, tweak, tweak, tweak, tweak, No sales. No sales. No sales, no sales. Tweak, tweak, tweak, sale, sale. Right? And, and most people sit there and like, I’m gonna spend two grand. It didn’t work. Ah, let me stop this. I tried funnels. It didn’t work. I was speaking to somebody who told me, I spent $700 and it didn’t work. I was like, what? What do you mean? How, how much was your cost per lead? And he was like, oh. It was like, you know, $30 cost per lead. Okay. So you generated a total of 10 leads.
Is [00:50:00] what you’re saying you, you did. So, yeah, it didn’t work. I was like, Hmm. Yeah. If that’s your mindset, of course it’s not gonna work. So, you know that, you know, you, those are the challenges that you face when optimizing funnels and, and, and webinars in general.
Terence: Yeah. But it’s worth it because once you have a working webinar, once you have a
Mikael Dia: You can scale.
Terence: Then it’s like
Mikael Dia: The sky’s the limit. And that’s, that’s the thing. Right? And most people have a scarcity mindset when it comes to money, especially when it comes to money spent on advertising, because it’s this weird feeling of like, I’m literally just giving money to Facebook, right? I’m, I’m literally just doing this. I only got 10 leads. Okay, well, it was $30 for you to get those 10 leads when you spent that six, $700.
I look at your landing page, and I see that the conversion [00:51:00] on your landing page is 15%, but the, you know, your ads are actually not too bad. You know, 2% click rate, your cost per click is maybe a little bit high, but that’s just the nature of your audience. So it’s not that it didn’t work, it’s that there is a bottleneck right there. You could probably split test a new opt-in page, and now all of a sudden you just dropped your cost per lead to $10 or $15 or whatever it is, right? And then people move on to the next step. But in order for you to do that, you’re gonna have to spend another 700 bucks. You don’t have a choice, right? So people see it as a, as an expense as opposed to as an investment in terms of building that webinar.
If I were to say to you, you know what, you’re gonna get an Evergreen webinar, however, that evergreen webinar, you’re gonna have to invest. $50,000 [00:52:00] first, and then that webinar will work, right? Well, now my, my, what do you call it? My state of mind or, or kind of my expectations are set that, okay, that 50 grand, it’s gone. It doesn’t exist anymore. I’m spending it, it doesn’t, it is not gonna come back to me. But after that 50 grand, I’m gonna start to see. The money come in and, and I start to see that break even, et cetera. People think, well, I’m gonna spend, shouldn’t, this thing should be two times ROAS, right? Or three x ROAS.
That’s, that’s what it should be. So let me go and spend the $300. I should have made a thousand. Didn’t work. Yeah. Well that’s not how it works.
Where to find you
Terence: Yeah. Well, Mika, it’s been fantastic. I mean, you know, you shared so much knowledge in there and experience in terms of like your entrepreneurship journey and also on webinars. So I think .
If, I hope everybody got tremendous [00:53:00] value from this as I have. Before we end Mikael, if people are interested to find out more about Funnelytics and what it does, and to follow you to, you know, learn more from, from your words of wisdom, how can they…
Mikael Dia: Yeah, if you wanna learn more about Funnelytics, and you’re ultimately kind of an agency, then go to funnelytics.io. If you’re a coach or, a kind of a consultant and you have a webinar, then go to Terence ’cause he’s a certified funnelly partner and he’ll help you optimize your webinars. And when it comes to following me, if you wanna, you know, follow along, the journey of building funnelly and customer journeys, I post a lot on LinkedIn mostly. So go to my LinkedIn and connect with me there.
Terence: Okay. Fantastic. Well, thank you Mikael. It’s been a pleasure. I wish we could talk longer, but maybe we can do another session
Mikael Dia: Sounds good, man. [00:54:00] Appreciate it.
Terence: All right,
