Transcription
We have been tweaking and like poking at this funnel to increase conversions for four years now, since November 2020. We're picking up an award for having our first $10 million funnel. The funnel he's talking about here is an extremely simple but genius four-step funnel that prints his company upwards of $700,000 a month.
And while many online consulting companies are struggling with rising ad costs, lack of profitability, and skeptical prospects, AGN Smart seems to be doing better than ever, with really solid return on ad sped. So, what can we learn about creating and optimizing successful funnels from their 4-year funnel optimization journey? Let's dive into it and find out.
So, if we head over to their funnel and get a 30,000 ft overview, it looks a little bit complex at first. You know, it's more than four steps, but they all lead back to the key four steps that we're going to get into in this video. I do want to start though with an interesting thing here. So, I actually saw Jonathan post inside the school community about their free to paid community and how it generates them $250,000 a month. And we'll get into how that actually works in a second. But I do think one of the main ways it does it is leading back to this key four-step funnel, which is the free training funnel. They're running a little bit of YouTube ads. Uh, they have a YouTube organic platform that's around 300ish thousand subscribers. That's obviously bringing in a lot of free traffic, but the main way, at least paid, that they get customers is through Facebook ads.
So, if we go over to their Facebook ad library, we'll start to see the strategy that they're using. Now, one thing that's really interesting to me here is how direct they are with the vehicle. Okay? So most people in the market of selling an opportunity to people, right? A business opportunity like this to become a facilitator, that's the offer would be leading more indirect, right? Like you could say they're they're leading with like, you know, most people don't know this, but there's this hidden opportunity, right? That can take an average person and turn them into a business owner. Like that's the kind of the angle most are leading with. Whereas AJN smart is leading with like you can see the copy here. Is there a proven method to help workshop facilitator? So, if you're not a workshop facilitator or don't want to be one, you're probably not going to respond to this, right? At their scale, this honestly is quite surprising to me because the idea of workshop facilitation, I don't I think they kind of created that idea, right? But maybe they've gotten to a large enough point where they can lead with that now because people just know what it is. Um, typically I I just would expect them to lead with again more of there's this opportunity maybe for people who are, you know, consultants or, you know, um, you know, marketing agency owners, right? That you can lean into this new opportunity and get more of what you want with less of what you don't want, right? But that's not the angle they're going for. So let's see why, uh, in this ad copy and in the next pages.
So, it says, "In this training, Jonathan Courtney, who was in that video, will teach you exactly what you need to do to become a high-paid top 1% facilitator in 90 days or less by using his popular 516 method." So, a lot going on there, right? One is social proof, right? Workshop facilitator and CEO of Agent Smart. A little bit of credibility. Not really social proof, I guess, a little bit of credibility. Next, he goes into some social proof. How he landed facilitation gigs with the world's best companies, Google, Twitter, Lego, and more. Right? So, adding in some credibility there. But the second thing is they're selling the benefit, right? High-paid top 1% facilitator in 90 days or less, right? Dream outcome, reducing the time delay hero's value equation, right? 90 days or less by using his popular 516 method, unique mechanism, right? They're creating some curiosity around, wait, what what is this 516 method? Right? Again, social proof here, then a little bit of reducing some of the pain points: how you can end workplace collaboration nightmares forever, how you can facilitate like a master even when you're not a subject matter expert, expert, kind of removing some of these limiting beliefs around if you're not a subject matter expert, you can do this too. And how to build an amazing career as a workshop facilitator that is more of again that that leading with maybe someone who's not a facilitator currently. Um, or maybe they are and they just don't think they can really advance. Interested. This training is available for a limited time only. Urgency and scarcity. I think it's been available for like 3 years now. I was actually in Sim Oven's quantum mastermind, uh, back in when did he make this? I want to say it was like 2021. um, and he was making this training and I remember it going pretty well. So, it's available for a limited time. So, unlock it now and start watching.
This takes you to this landing page, which I think they've freshened up a little bit. Uh, they obviously have a new logo and I think they've added some new colors, but this is an interesting landing page and I really really like it from a design perspective. When I land here, the colors look super good. It's very clean. The spacing between every element is like kind of perfect. And that makes sense. Agent Smart, I believe before they were facilitators, they were actually UX designers, so they have a lot of experience in UX. But I just love like it's pretty colorful, but the colors all go together, right? That green and the blue and the yellow. They all go together. And there, you know, rather than just having some text that says free training, they have this little, you know, image up here, the ripped little paper, and then same thing down here. Um, just it looks pretty cool. And I believe this is built on ClickFunnels. I'm not entirely sure. Yeah, looks like it's built on ClickFunnels. That's weird. The headline disappeared when I went back to it. Okay, there we go. Um, so yeah, it looks like it's built on ClickFunnels. Let's look at the copy here. So, up on the top it says, "Unlock the training to get a free step-by-step guide to my favorite workshop." And you open this up. Unlock your free training. Includes a free bonus. Enter your information to get your free copy of a 47-page step-by-step guide to my favorite workshop, Lightning Decision Jam, straight to your inbox. No idea what Lightning Decision Jam is. I think that's kind of the point. There's a lot of curiosity there. This free bonus is just another incentive, right? To add in your phone number, your email, right, and unlock your free training. The CTA, right, isn't just like sign up now, right? No, it's unlock the free training. So interesting that they added that bonus there. I'm sure that helped optin rates. That's pretty cool. But it says become a high-paid facilitator in 90 days or less. Again, very congruent messaging from ad to landing page. And it's selling the big benefit. High-paid facilitator in 90 days or less. And from a compliance perspective on Facebook, this is much better. And they do something else on this page that's interesting from saying, you know, earn $100,000 a year, right? Cuz that's just going to get them flagged on Facebook, but high-paid. There's enough kind of ambiguity there that it's probably not going to, at least as frequently, get flagged by Facebook um as like a get-rich-quick scheme.
Then it says, "Learn the five things you can do to become a top 1% facilitator and earn six figures while doing it, aka the 516 method." Okay, so they're again very congruent on the five things to become a top 1% facilitator and earn six figures. The 516 method. They talked about in the ad copy. They talked about on the landing page. If you're not congruent between either your organic content and your landing page, there's going to be a drop off, right? A bigger drop off than there should be, I should say. So very congruent. And then again, they're they're saying six figures rather than $100,000, right? Because again, I think that's primarily for compliance reasons. Free bonus. Unlock the training and get a 47-page step-by-step guide on running my favorite workshop. Again, exact same thing. This opens the pop-up. So, what's interesting here is the CTA, right? The button is technically not above the fold, but at the same time, this is above the fold, right? So, that opens it and this is above the fold, right? So, they're they're passing that test. Then, they have this copy right here.
Um, well, another really interesting thing that I want to mention here is I've said in the past that typically if you just want the highest opt-in rate, I would strip everything off this page besides basically this and just put a form right beneath it, right? Form on page typically works better for B2C. Form on the pop-up typically works better for B2B, typically. However, we ran an interesting test that's still running, so it's inconclusive, uh, for a client that might change my mind on this. And here's what happened. Well, we tested a new landing page kind of similar to this, right? Where rather than just having information above the fold, there's like a few sections beneath it. Typically, I'd always remove that stuff. However, we wanted to test it. And what we saw was like I I always say, optin rate decreased. However, the strategy session booking rate 4xed. Okay, it went from like 5% to 20%. Again, it's inconclusive. We'll see where it actually ends up being. But the early data is suggesting that yes, less people are opting in because there's more friction, there's more stuff to read is turning some people away. However, the people that opt in are so much more likely to become calls. So, I'll I'll keep you posted on what we end up seeing there. But, it is just an interesting thing and it it is another good reminder that you can't just look at one metric in isolation. Something might increase your optin rate, but that doesn't mean it necessarily results in more money in your pocket at the end of the month, which this one will if it results in four times more strategy sessions. So, it it literally just absolutely demolished their cost per call from like getting close to $1,000 down to like $250 by changing nothing but the landing page. So, we'll see again if that sticks.
So same uh copy here from the ad, again congruence, button opens up the popup, more social proof, right? About the best companies in the world, that's super cool, you like only he can say that, so again very good credibility, another piece here about the free bonus and if we open this again, unlock your free training, again form on page might work better for them, typically it would but we're talking probably about a 10% improvement potentially on page which at their scale would be a lot of extra leads, okay? Then this takes you to a very simple video page that says, "Watch the full video below to learn how to become a top 1% high-paid facilitator." Just reminding you one more time that you're in the right place.
Now, this video here is quite long. It's an hour and 6 minutes. Normally, this would be about 20 to 30 minutes. And there's also this beginning part. We won't watch this. I watched it before. That is him currently. And it's about 3 minutes. And he says, "Hey, you're going to see me with different hair." He's kind of just explaining some of the changes, right? Um, and he he is talking about a little bit of, you know, hey, you're going to get this workshop or playbook and um, all of these things, right? But what's interesting here is he is breaking some of the rules of VSSL. He's not getting into the content super fast, you know, he's not like hooking them in super hard, right? We can listen to this hook. Hey, I'm Jonathan, CEO of AJSmart and Facilitator.com and welcome. Okay, so first five seconds he just introduces himself, right? Normally it's like you're leading with the promise, if you're diving into it. But this thing is working, right? I think last I heard they're at 2 and a half 3x return on ad spend. So it's working, right? Don't change it. Again, the VSSL goes through basically I think pretty similar to like a Russell Brunson webinar. Obviously, they changed it for themselves. They're leaning into the this unique mechanism, right? They talk about how to do this. They show a ton and ton of results, right? um, of different people who have gone through this. Um, they talk about the principles of running workshops and then all the way at the end they go over a call to action to book a call which is this button right below. Let's chat. Right? Very simple page. Very very very simple page.
This then takes you to a survey where you'll get qualified for the call. Right? We can see what they're doing here. Surveys, by the way, are one of the most interesting pieces of a funnel because often there, you know, we just type questions out, we put them on there, and that's it. There are often so many optimizations like they're they're typically just a conversion killer instead of funnels because of questions. I mean one look at this. Look how long this is taking to load. That was about 30 seconds, uh, while I was on a monologue there. And you know the workshop or master logo isn't showing. I mean all of this is pretty bad. Um, what they might do and what what might help is just putting the application below the video. It would decrease load time. Um, and you know that might help. It would be something I would test. Um, please complete this form to schedule your discovery call. Okay. What's your name? That looks good. They have the tight form branding. I'm that honestly is pretty surprising. I would remove that just because again it's a small percentage, but if if I click that now I'm off of their funnel. Not a huge thing, but it's something that doesn't serve a purpose. So, we'd want to remove it. Okay. So, it's asking for my for my email. They have this line. We require this to schedule your call. One thing you can do here is if you have a bonus you're sending them, you can add incentive, right? Because this is often a question people are worried about. They don't want to give their email. One thing I do in my funnel is underneath where I ask for their email, I say, "Don't worry, we don't go crazy with marketing emails," and I put like a little face pal emoji, right? Just to reduce that fear that they're just going to get spammed every day if they put in their email. Where am I based? That's an interesting question. I don't know why they need to know that. And that's that's one thing on forms that we typically like to look at is if there's no reason for the question, which maybe they have a reason for it, but if there's nothing like if I don't need it to get on the call, I'm not going to put it on the form because it's extra friction that is just going to decrease the volume of the calls. What do you currently do for work? This is probably a qualifying question. What would you like our help with? It's a decent question. If our workshop or master program proves to be the best next step for your career business, how much do you think is appropriate to invest in yourself right now? And they have three options: more than €5,000, 1 to 5,000, less than €1,000. I would probably create a US-based version of this and maybe based on the location you could, you know, pull in a different code. Maybe based on where the ads are served, they just go to a different landing page. But this is going to be a friction point because if I'm in the US, which I I do think they target the US. I could be wrong. I think these ads actually um yeah, these ads are in the United States, so they definitely do. Um, so if I'm here, I'm like, "Okay, you know, $5,000, I think that's like what, $6,000, right?" But I don't know. But this is definitely a qualifying question. These are interesting. Um, if your bottleneck is is quantity of leads, I would not put that in your application. If you're accepted in the workshop or master, how soon are you looking to get started? Another qualifying question. And it looks like that's it. And then that takes you to schedule your call. Great, Ryan. Let's schedule a call. Click to see our calendar. Okay, that's friction, right? When you submit it, it should just redirect you. Or this is on Typeform. One thing you can do on Typeform that we have seen actually uh increase conversions is adding the Calendly at the end of the Typeform. So if they're approved, it shows them Calendly on the Typeform. I forget the exact metrics. We tested it recently and it was above a 20% improvement. I want to say it was like 32% or something like that improvement in calls booked from just adding it to the end of the Typeform. So I'd probably do that for them. Got to give a shout out to Jeremy Haynes cuz I learned that one from him. Uh, but schedule your call. Again, friction point. They're it's it's a conversion killer, right? They're losing leads. Then you have Calendly. Nothing else on the page. That's probably fine. Um, but here they're booking 4 days out. That's guaranteed hurting their show rate. We've seen like we've seen show rate be at 50%. And you change nothing else by not letting people book no more than 3 days out, even more, ideally 2 days out, and show rate like immediately jumps up 25%. It's just once you book out farther, it's just it really hurts show rate.
So, when you actually schedule, it says, "Thank you. You're booked in." You receive an email from us shortly with important information about your call. Make sure to check it. Congrats on taking the first step of becoming a top 1% facilitator. And there's an image. There's a lot they could do on this thank you page. I don't know what their show rate is. I have no idea. Um, actually, I do know because they mentioned it in a video. Let me pull it up. Okay, so their show rate is about 80%. Which is decent, right? They probably could squeeze out a few more % of that if they changed some things around on this page. But that actually is pretty decent for today's day and age. But typically, if you have a video here that just gives them a few pieces of information, it's very short, 60 seconds to 2 minutes that says, "Hey, Google Calendar made an update recently where events like this don't automatically get entered into your calendar." So, make sure you go now and just just click I know the sender and add it to your email so that there's no confusion when the time of the event comes around. Other than that, just make sure you show up on your computer, you know, free from distractions. Just tell them how to show up. I mean, they do say you'll receive an email, right? But, um, if you had a video walking them through that, that could be helpful. Another thing I've seen people do on this page that can be good is you add another video below it that just sells even more, right? That just kind of warms people up on the vehicle. If they just watched an hour-long video, they probably don't need that. So, in this case, I'd probably just have that one video up at the top.
So, that's the basic funnel that's printing them, you know, kind of in total upwards of half a million a month. And he said on a good month about $700,000 a month. They do have a few other ways to get there. I think the newsletter obviously pushes there. Um, not much to say there. Uh, obviously YouTube is pushing there and a few other places. They I don't think they're running this anymore, but I did hear them say in the past that this was one of the best funnels that they've ever made. I think it was one of the most profitable, and it leads back to the same place, right? So, the whole angle here is to get a free book where you can learn how to run and design your own workshops. There's a video here. And he said he thinks the reason why this funnel works so well is because on Facebook ad guys, you're holding something physical, right? You're like, you know, get this book. He said that tends to work better. And it's either free or it's like 9.95 or maybe 20 bucks if you want the physical copy. But he said they lose money on this, right? Yeah. It's 20 if you want the physical copy or you can get the digital copy for free. Uh, there's some social proof on this page. There's a little bit of what's inside of it. Very very simple funnel. I'm sure there's tons of optimizations here, but it I think it was working. It looks like they stopped running it. It's at least not on their US Facebook ads. When you order the free digital book, it says your order is complete. And then it says, "Before you uh close this page, we'd like to invite you to a free training." And I think that takes you right back to the same free training, right? But it is hosted on EverWebinar. So, it's hosted in like a a live room, which is interesting. I again, I think it's the same one. I'm not entirely sure. If it's not, it's probably pretty similar, right? So, that's interesting. If you go for the paid one, I am curious to see where that takes you. Okay, pretty simple order form here. Two-step order form. Honestly, not much to it. And maybe there's an upsell, but it probably just takes you back to the free training.
So, that's the the book funnel. Again, thank you page sends you some emails. That was one thing actually that I didn't notice is when you go to that thank you page. Let's pull that back up. It says get started now. You check availability, right? For the, you know, the live room. You pick a time. You then register for it. But this step is awful. Okay, so it says, "Woohoo, you're all signed up. Details to join your free training will be in your inbox soon. What to do now?" And like it gives you a few things, right? But what it doesn't do is allow you to join the join the waiting room, right? So for the time I just signed up for it starts in 4 minutes. Right now I have to go check my email, which is a huge friction point. So the best way to do this is to just add a button on this page that says join waiting room now. Like if your event's coming up soon and then people can go and and join the waiting room, right? You don't want to add that friction where they have to go check their email in order to to get on, right? Because your attendance rate is going to plummet. So that was something really really big that I noticed when I was going through that, right? Just to get to that webinar live room was a little bit harder.
Another really interesting thing that they do is when you go to their website on facilitator.com, which is an awesome domain, they have Workshop Masterclass, and they actually show the price on here, which is not common in this industry to show, you know, the price of your program on your website, but they do it, but they do it in an interesting way. So it's $9,000, maybe $9,500. Where is the price? Okay, I think they removed it. Never mind. So, one of the things I was going to say is is it's interesting, right? Because they could get people not to book a call if like, "Oh, I can't afford, you know, a $9,500 or whatever dollar course it was." But what they did on the sales call is on the sales call, they offered it to you for like 7,500. So, they lower the price, right, to give you incentive to buy on the call. Um, and you're expecting to be a lot more. But, I wonder if the extra friction because I think it was right here. I wonder if that extra friction um was just not worth it for them, right? Yeah, it it was right there because if you look at like this, this is for one of their uh in-person 5-day training boot camps and this is, you know, it says here 14,300 on the page. Again, design here is really really good. I I love this. Um, these workshops are really interesting. It's very similar to what Hermosi is doing, just in sense of like these like 15k uh in-person workshops. I think Hermosi might be I want to say it's like 5k for the day and then he has an upsell that's like 4 or $50,000 to come for a couple more days and then come 6 months later, but it's more it's a smaller group of people. Um, that in-person uh experience is something that seems to be working quite well, uh, for them.
So they have, they have that which is an upsell opportunity for everyone in Workshop Master, and then they have, uh, an entry-level training which is Facilitation Fundamentals. This is currently closed, but you can join the waitlist for it. I don't know how much this one is. This is probably just serves as a downsell. They have such a massive audience that by having more offers, they're probably going to make quite a bit more money. I think they probably just started with just the Workshop Master, and then they've, they've gone into more, and actually they also have a Design Sprint Master Class, but they're not really pushing it, and it's also joined the way of this. So they're not pushing this currently. So most of their revenue, I think, is coming from Workshop Master.
But it is also really interesting and very cool how Jonathan has escaped the typical, like he's the face of the company, and no one else is, right? Because if you go to his YouTube, and this is true in, you know, I mean, he is in the VSSL, he is in, you know, the majority of the ads, but if you go to their YouTube, uh, it kind of reminds me of Daily Wire, where like Ben Shapiro started it, and then he brought on Jordan Peterson, and then he brought on Matt Walsh. I don't know if it was actually in that order, but he brought on these different personalities, which is interesting in kind of this online consulting world to bring in these different people, right, that can make content and kind of make the brand more than just yourself, right? And even the name of, of the YouTube channel, it's AJ and Smart. It's not Jonathan Courtney, which is pretty cool. So, I think he's done a good job at that.
If we go back to this community, there are a few interesting things he's using. It goes back to, you know, the facilitator.com, which obviously they can purchase things from there, and I'm sure there's posts in here on things like Black Friday, and again there's a whole email strategy there. Um, they're using these different platforms to communicate more with their audience, get people into the door through different promotions throughout the year, but there's, it's not like a hard-sale community, and they don't have like a traditional paid community that they send people to after this, but they, they're building a community. They're providing value, and some of those people are going to ascend.
Another really interesting thing though that they did do that does move people up the ladder is when you join, you automatically get this message. It's automated from Rebecca Courtney. She says, "Hey Ryan, as a new member, you get one free facilitation assessment call to find out exactly what to do next to grow your facilitation career. You can book in here, right?" And that then takes you to Calendly, which I'm assuming there's some value on this, and then they probably try to ascend you into Workshop Master or maybe one of the other programs. So there is that natural ascension there, um, but not a super hard sale, and you know, they have 70, 800 people in here, so I'm sure that's bringing in quite a bit of revenue. Um, but it's it doesn't seem like it's any longer their main funnel. Um, it seems like they're, they're predominantly focused on this one currently. But YouTube still does push to that free community. So it takes them off of a platform they don't really control to a platform they still don't control, but they control, you know, more than YouTube because people are in there. They're engaging. It's not as reliant on the algorithm.
That's the funnel that he said on the Good Month gets him to about $700,000 a month in cash collected. Uh, and that again is producing over a 2 and 1/2x return on ad spend on Facebook ads, when many people are struggling with rising ad costs and skeptical prospects. They seem to be doing really, really well, and they've also had a pretty long career. I mean, I think they've been 5 years now, AJ Smart, which in the grand scheme of things isn't very long, but in this space of online consulting, it seems like a lot of people are, you know, they have a good couple years and then they die off, and they've just been consistent year after year. And I was able to see him in Quantum Mastermind and see the growth that he's had since then, which is super cool. So, I hope you enjoyed this video and learn a few things from their 8-figure funnel. If you did enjoy this video, YouTube thinks you'll enjoy this one as well. And I'll see you there.