PODCAST
Today we have Amanda Dake from Funnel Kitchen on the show and she’s going to talk to us about a lot of different areas which comes into funnels. The first question I ask her is what is a funnel? I think a lot of people have been using this term and selling this term, but it’s really hard to kind of pin down an exact definition of it and I think she does a great job. We’ll also hear a lot about communities online and offline and a better picture for how to educate people through your business and through your products and services.
Key Takeaways
[5:35] The true definition of a funnel
[8:18] How to find your purpose and how to translate that into your website
[9:30] One of the hardest questions for people to answer
[10:38] How to map out your digital infrastructure
[16:44] Using digital tracking effectively
[20:52] How to avoid visitors decision fatigue
[22:14] When to make a face-to-face connection
[25:59] How Amanda built the Funnel Kitchen community
[30:13] The three-prong business model
Amanda Dake Information
Amanda’s Funnel Kitchen Consultation
Transcript of Podcast
Kyle:
Hello everyone and welcome again to another episode of the Story Engine Podcast. So without further ado, here’s Amanda.
Amanda:
Thanks for having me, Kyle.
Kyle:
So let’s dive in by just … Tell us a little bit about yourself and I would love to know how you came to building Funnel Kitchen and even after that, tell us what is a funnel because I think a lot of people … There’s a lot of different definitions going around and it’s kind of a buzzy markety term right now that I feel like most people don’t fully understand.
Amanda:
Yeah. So I’m Amanda. I am a former high school science teacher turned online marketer. That’s like, “What?”
Kyle:
Yeah.
Amanda:
Yeah, so back in the day, I lived a very linear life. I went to high school, then I went to college, then I got the job, and then I got the house, I got married, I got the masters degree, I got the kids. Everything happened like what we thought it was supposed to happen like, right?
Kyle:
And the white picket fence, right?
Amanda:
Yeah, I’m from Oklahoma. I still live here in Oklahoma. It’s just kind of what my mom was taught, her mom was taught, it’s just how we’ve been taught to live this linear life, right? And something happened back in 2011 and I was … I guess I could say I woke up, so to speak. And I was like, “There has to be more than this.” My kids were already both in school, I have two boys. I mean, I have a successful career. It wasn’t just a job. I had a career for 13 years teaching school. I was coaching tennis. I was contributing to humanity. Doing my part. But it felt just like, “Oh, this is it?” I did all the things I thought I was supposed to do and I was good at them all and then I’m now left waiting for my kids to get out of school to have grandchildren. That was the next milestone I could see. I was like, “This isn’t gonna cut it anymore.” Plus, teaching school, I was really working with other people’s kids. I was spending so much time with them, more than my kids.
I was … I really wanted some more balance. So in about February of 2011, I put in my notice that I wasn’t coming back to education. And by doing that, it allowed some doors to open for me that just really took me on this path to get to where I’m at right now. And I didn’t know what to expect, I didn’t know what was gonna happen. I just knew that all I needed to replace was 400 dollars a week because that’s what I was making as a teacher. And I just jumped and made it happen.
So from there, I mean, there’s all kinds of cool little side stories that come in to get me to where I’m at today, which I don’t really want to go into right now. It’d just take forever because every year it seemed … Or every time I said yes to something, it opened up another possibility. And so I knew that I wanted to replace my income. I knew that I wanted some more spare time for my kids. I knew that I wanted to contribute more to humanity than I already was. Yeah, I was helping kids in schools, but if you think about it, I was helping max 150 kids a year. Doing what I do now, I can reach millions of people with my message, or with my methods, or helping them get their mission out and voice heard, or whatever it is that I can do. So it just .. It makes sense now looking back, leaving that education thing because I thought, well, that was my purpose of teaching, and helping, and whatever. But I’m still doing that now, it’s just to a larger scale.
And some of that is through funnels. And funnels are really just … It’s just really a different buzzword for website, if you want to say it. A term that everybody understands is what a website is. Well, in the old days, a few years ago before Russell Brunson and all this cool Click Funnel stuff and Leadpages. He’s not the only one, but he’s the one I use. A website was more just like an online brochure of your services and your prices. But now, we’ve taken that and we’ve altered it to be more targeted. So now a funnel is a website with a purpose. So if somebody comes to your funnel, there’s really only one thing for them to do. Whether it’s to buy your product, to sign up for your email list, to join your messenger bot, to join your membership area, join your Facebook group, whatever it is, it’s one thing for them to do and then you lead them down a path of where you want them to go next.
Whereas an old-time website … Which there’s still a purpose for that sometimes, but more of a brochure website, people get on there and there’s so many things to look at and so many things to do. And people have attention spans of ants. And so we get distracted and we just give up and we leave. So basically a funnel takes us through a journey that the business owner wants us to go on. And I help people do that for their own businesses. I either map them out for people or I will even build them.
[bctt tweet=”A funnel is a website with a purpose in which you lead your potential customers down a path of where you want them to go next. -Amanda Dake ” username=”kylethegray”]
Kyle:
I think that’s powerful.
Amanda:
That was a long-
Kyle:
No, no, that was perfect. And I loved that. And just kind of leading into this, there’s a lot … There’s a big theme in your own life about purpose and kind of finding your purpose and making a bigger impact. Transitioning through that and then to the point where your funnels are just a single purpose website. And I agree with you on the fact are … What you were saying where it’s a website with a purpose. And I think some people might think right away, “Well, my website has a purpose. It does this and that and this.” And I think a problem with a lot of people’s sites is not that they don’t have any purpose, but they have so many purposes. They try to do so many things at once that the real purpose or the real thing gets lost in the mix. And so I’d love to know, first, how you work with people to help them find this purpose. And how does that translate into what their website looks like or how somebody would experience their website.
Amanda:
So really what I do first and foremost is … When I work with a client is I’ll have a strategy day where basically I come in … When I do it in person, there’s something about the energy of meeting people in person that you cannot replicate online. I love technology like Zoom and GoToWebinar, whatever, where you can meet face to face. Believe me, I use it daily and I talk to people from all over the world face to face and it’s fantastic. You and I are face to face right now and we are thousands of miles apart. I think it’s so cool. But when we’re talking about your business, and your life goals, and your purpose, and what success looks like for you, to me that is so much more important and it needs to be done in person.
So we do big whiteboard sessions in person. I have a lot of strategic questions that I go through with people. You might think that they’re just basic questions, but they’re questions that people don’t answer. They know they need to but they don’t. And they’re questions that I even put off answering for many years. And I’ll tell you what one of them is and it sounds so silly when I say it, but it’s one of the hardest questions for people to answer and it’s what do you want? And when I ask that question, even to myself, I was like, “Oh, god. I don’t even know.” Well, if you don’t know what you want, we can’t get there, right? And so that’s … We dig in. It’s not just business talk, it’s personal talk, it’s what do you want for your life? What do you want your life to look like? What do you want your day to look like? How much time do you want to spend?
A really great friend of mine and an amazing strategist, Kelly O’Neil. She basically says, “Okay, what kind of business do you want? Do you want to make six figures a year? That’s great, here’s what it takes to do that. Are you willing to put in that work? Oh, you want to make seven, eight figures a year? No problem. That is completely possible, but this is what it looks like to have a seven figure business. This is how much work you have to put in, this is how much dedication you have to have, whatever, are you ready to do that?” Right? Because we hear so many people say, “Oh, I want to make this much money and I want to do this.” That’s great if you want to do that but do you have something to back that up? Do you really … Do your life goals really match what you think your financial goals are for your business.
And so I help people do that also and then once we figure out what that is, we look at what their product offerings are, we look at what kind of path clients need to go through to buy, or subscribe, or whatever it is with the business owner and go from there. Map out really a blueprint of what this digital infrastructure is gonna look like. So basically a bunch of different funnels stacked together to get clients or prospects to the end result that we want them to have.
Kyle:
Could you describe like a before and after? Maybe there’s a specific example you can give to us or maybe there’s a hypothetical. But I’m thinking like, so we start and they’ve got a homepage, and they’ve got this quiz that asks you this, and they’ve got a bunch of blog content that’s all kind of related but doesn’t really push you anywhere, and then it goes to this website that looks very, very different. Can you explain to me some of the befores and afters so somebody can get a good idea?
Amanda:
Yeah, I have a client right now, we’re working together. She has a great … her website looked great. I’m not … Websites look cool, right? But there’s a lot going on there. Now, her website’s still alive. We’re not taking … we did not take it down. She put a lot of money and time into that and people … she gets traffic there because she does have a blog on her website and she gets a lot of organic visitors from that. But it’s busy. And whenever … she’s created an online program, online course for people, and that’s our goal to get people into that course. Well, if you just go to her website, there’s a lot going on. You can get a book, you can get some downloads, you can get blog posts, you can join a challenge, you can do all these different things. It’s really difficult and confusing
[bctt tweet=”Create the path you want your visitors to follow, to get them to the next step in your funnel. -Amanda Dake ” username=”kylethegray”]
There’s no confusion about, “What PDF should I download and read or what book should I buy or what program should I join or whatever?” No, take the quiz. Then we’re going to go meet here. Then we’ll go to the next step. Right? Once they’re at the next step, if they don’t go past that next step, they’re added to what I call buckets. They’re added to a specific email list where we then continue to get them to do the thing that we want them to do.
We like them to go in sequential order. If they don’t do that, then they go to a different bucket and we try to get them to do different things obviously, but for simplicity we take them from a quiz to another offer, very low end, just getting them in to get to know us, trust us, and get committed to whatever it is that we’re doing. Then, we take them on to the next step. So, basically, that’s all that we do. We build this out together.
I build out the infrastructure, but we map out all this together that makes sense for her client, her ideal client to go through this specific path. You can’t do that with a website. You can’t say, “Okay, once they land on the homepage, I want the person to click only on this button, although there are 5,000 other buttons they can click on.” No. They come to our landing page, or they come to our quiz page, or they come to our whatever funnel, and the only thing they can do is the thing that we want them to do.
Kyle:
So, what’s powerful about this? And the clarity you kind of give them? Is there’s at a normal website, and you mentioned this earlier, but there are so many things that could go wrong. For example with somebody, if maybe you’re a coach selling a high-end product and you’ve got an expensive coaching service, but maybe you’ve got a course and a book and a couple of other smaller things, and somebody arrives on your site, and maybe it’s their first time on your site.
They don’t really know you. They don’t really see why you’re valuable, and maybe they just browse to your services and all of a sudden see a $5,000-10,000 coaching package.
Amanda:
Yeah, like, “What?”
Kyle:
And they’re like, “Okay. I’m out. I’m never coming back.” Even if it was the right thing for them, and maybe you also had a free training that could have given them the results that would have created that $10,000 for them, and so you’ve lost it, and so by giving them this controlled experience, you anticipate their mindset and where they are and create a curated experience for them instead of having them try and navigate this almost grocery store like environment of information where you have to choose things.
It’s like expecting somebody to be on your website without a funnel is like sending somebody to a grocery store and hoping that they-
Amanda:
Or a Cheesecake Factory menu.
Kyle:
Oh, Gosh.
Amanda:
They’ve never been there. I don’t even have the energy to read through the thing. I can’t. I don’t go there. I can’t do it.
Kyle:
Yeah. It would be interesting to imagine what a funnel for Cheesecake Factory would look like as people entered. “Do you want Asian food or do you want pancakes today?”
Amanda:
I know, it’s crazy, but it’s the same thing. I get, I personally get decision fatigue, and I do the same thing on websites. I’m just like, “Oh, man. I can’t even do it,” but yeah, people come in and they’ll see your $5,000-10,000 offering and then they write you off, but guess what? I have a free group that you can join with all kinds of free things, or I have all kinds of stuff to get you up to that point. So, yeah that was a great example. It’s just too … the first impression isn’t what you think.
So, I also wanted to add, tracking is so sophisticated now, we can target people that have visited certain steps of our process to only offer them certain offers. So, if somebody is brand new, called cold, right? Cold market, cold emails, cold visitors, we’re not going to throw them into a $10,000 offer right off the bat. They need to figure out who we are. We need to know a little bit more about them, too, but we can track these people based on what they’ve done in our funnels, and then only offer them things that are relevant to them, and I think that’s pretty powerful.
Amanda:
It’s really difficult and confusing for a visitor to figure out where should they start, so what we’ve done is we’ve created the path for the person. We said, “We want you to join our community,” we’ll call it, “And we want you to start here. All you got to do is take our quiz.” Basically, we built a quiz, we run traffic on Facebook right now and through email to this quiz. Once they take the quiz, then we get them to go to the next step. The only thing they can do is take the quiz.
It’s very difficult to do with a website, and especially when it comes to advertising and tracking people and retargeting things, and things like that, of course, you can re-target people that have visited regular websites. I get re-targets from visiting regular websites all the time, but just when you have such directed funnels, it makes it so much more powerful.
Kyle:
One of the things I loved about what you just said is decision fatigue. You have decision fatigue because you know you’re working with a lot of different clients. You got to create a lot of different strategies, and I think that, that’s one of the things that a lot of people when building a website, when considering how they’re going to market and their business, and offer their products, very few people really consider decision fatigue in their design, or in what they create, and I think it’s very important for everyone out there to realize that you only can make so many good decisions in a day.
Every time you choose the red shirt or the blue shirt today, that takes a little bit of resource that only gets replenished with a good night sleep. So, it’s a limited resource, and by creating a path that people can follow, it’s not being manipulative, but it’s creating something, it’s curating the experience for them, because all of us are confronted with so many decisions every day that it actually, it shows respect for a person to give them a path to follow, and it respects their time, and their energy, and their efforts, and the better that you can align your message with the path that they need to hear, the message that they really want, if you can get clarity on that, then the happier and easier it will be for them.
Amanda:
Totally agree. I’ve seen this several times. A person that I follow, Alex Sharpton, he is a coach for high-level business owners. He wears the same outfit every day. Not the same one, but he has the same T-shirts and the same pants, and the same shoes. He doesn’t have to choose what he wears in the morning, and I know other really high-level thinkers like, Steve Jobs, I think did that too, where it was just like a black T-shirt and jeans every day.
That’s a decision that I don’t have to make anymore, right? What I’m going to wear. If you think about now, especially as a woman, you might go and stand in your closet and just stare, and pull things out, and try them on, or look at them together and then figure out the weather. It’s a lot of energy and effort just to decide what shirt to put on, and so that just contributes to those decisions that you have to make, and if you’re a business owner and a family person, right, children. I’ve got to run a business. I’ve got to run a household. I’ve got to manage all kinds of different things.
By the end of the day, sometimes I just can’t do anything. I cannot make any choices whatsoever, like sparkling water or flat water? I can’t tell you like I really can’t. Sometimes, when my people, if I hang out with people that aren’t entrepreneurs or business owners and I’m at a restaurant and I can’t make that choice, they’ve learned now when I say I can’t choose, they’ll just do it for me, but it’s a true story.
Sometimes, I cannot. I can’t. I just can’t. So, why would you want somebody that has much, they’re in that decision-making process all the time, why would you not want to make that decision easy for them? So, that’s kind of what I help business owners do for their infrastructure. For their digital online presence. Let’s make it easy for the people visiting you, and prospects and future clients to work with you, and that’s really what it funnels do.
Kyle:
Another thing that you said that was really interesting to me, I think in a world, in this kind of world, where there is a lot of new technology and digital marketing, and Click Funnels happening, that everybody really wants the fully online business, and it’s interesting that you invite people to come out in person to work with you, and also you were mentioning before the call, you do a lot of speaking in different places, and you’re interacting with people face to face, and I’d love to hear, not only just kind of as you work with your client, but where are some places that people still need to be in person these days, and what are some situations that any business owner should be in interacting with people, engaging with people face to face, and avoiding the temptation to just build things online?
I’m sure it’s definitely possible to do it all online. There’s plenty of case studies of people doing that, but why do we still need to make these face to face connections?
Amanda:
I think it really depends on what kind of business you have. So, if you have this e-commerce business and you’re selling products like I have an e-commerce store, and it’s T-shirts and sweatshirts, and things like that. I don’t need to see a person to make that transaction. They either like it or they don’t, and they move on. It’s online shopping. It’s different, but if I’m in a business where I’m going to be working for a long period of time, whether it’s 90 days or longer with someone, that’s, to me, it’s more relational, and you got to really make sure that your energies align.
I know that sounds a little lulu, but if you’re going to be spending nine months, building, helping somebody build their business, you got to make sure you like each other, right? Why would you want to? You have your own business, so you can make choices to do what you want to do and what you don’t want to do. To me, doing my strategy sessions in person are vital, because that allows us to have this connection, and of course, normally whenever I do that, I come in, and we’ll have dinner the night before, and that’s of course, we’re going to talk some business, but it’s more of just getting to know one another or a team of people.
Sometimes it’s not just me and one other person. It could be me and their team. It’s a personal thing, right? It’s relationships, and they need to like me, too, and if they don’t like whatever thing about me, then I don’t want to work with if they don’t want to. It’s got to be mutual. So, I think these strategy sessions that I do are vital for people, and I’m not the only one who does these, but to me, if you’re mapping out your business and making plans to move forward, you should do that in person. I do workshops in person.
I love going to events, and conferences, and things like that. You get all these ideas and you have all these notes to kind of implement when you get home, and then you get back to regular lie, and you don’t implement anything. So, and I’m guilty of it. I’m really guilty of it. So, what I started doing is a two-day implementation workshop. So, basically people come in, in person, and we get it done in two days, and there’s nothing that beats that. You can’t do that online. I’ve coached people. I’ve done group coaching. I’ve done one on one coaching via Zoom, or GoToWebinar or whatever for the last two years, and nothing beats in person, focused work. Period. Conferences, to me, in person, my good friend, Cody, we do a lot of work together. He calls a lot of the stuff that we do at conferences, lobbycon. We end up just hanging in the lobbies and networking and building relationships with people. Of course, there’s valuable information being presented on stage and we don’t knock that whatsoever.
We get the most out of the relationships that we build just by connecting with people one-on-one or in person. Do you see a pattern here? I have mentioned three times in a row now, it’s all about relationships. That’s something that really I just feel that I build best in person.
Kyle:
Yeah. That’s not to say that you haven’t built a good brand online. You’ve created a Funnel Kitchen Facebook page, which is up to about 5,000 likes and followers right now. I’d love to know what you’re doing, what you’re creating on there to build that following and to build this community online as well.
Amanda:
When I started the Funnel Kitchen page, groups were not really a big popular thing yet. Basically, it was the place where I shared training, live videos, downloads, things like that. I was just doing that all through the Facebook page. Then, as groups became more popular, I created the Facebook group. Originally, my Facebook group was meant to be support. You pay $97 a month and you just get me and a couple of other people to help you with your funnels or with whatever you needed help with online marketing-wise.
It was taking a lot of effort and energy. People were not using it as much as we had hoped. Even though people were joining, I can’t just take your money if you’re not going to be doing the thing that I need you to do. It wasn’t about … You do the math. Like, “Oh it’s only 100 people at $97 a month. That’s great. It’s a great income,” or whatever.
Kyle:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Amanda:
We were up to 50 people at $97 a month, which doesn’t sound like much, but it was pretty decent. I mean because it wasn’t our only source of income. It was just on the side. There were three people using it. Basically, I just made the decision to cancel all of it. I kept the group, but I canceled all the payment. Then, I opened it up to the public. Now, it’s grown, I think I’m almost up to 600 members which is great. I don’t do any advertising for it, it’s just word of mouth.
I’ll post some help when people have questions in other groups, and they’ll find me and they’ll come and join. Now, that’s the place where I do training or live videos or I will help somebody that needs … They can’t get a button to work on their page or whatever it is. I don’t do strategy help in there, because that’s just too much. All the technical help you need, but because it’s a smaller group, I like it a lot. You don’t have to sift through a bunch of people that might not know what they’re talking about.
It’s also really a pitch-free zone other than what I might want to offer since it’s my group. In other groups, if you post a question, then it seems like your inbox just floods with people wanting to do stuff for you, which is good and bad. You wonder like, “Do they really know what they’re talking about or they just want my money?” Funnel Kitchen, there’s an online membership area with lots of free training that you get access to once you join the Facebook group.
It’s also a place for me to kind of test out ideas that I have for my own business that would help people much like that are in my Funnel Kitchen, right? They’re usually business owners that are new to this funnel world. I’ll be able to … I use that group to curate my own ideas on how I can serve the masses outside of my group.
[bctt tweet=”Use your social groups to curate your own ideas on how you can serve the masses outside of that group. -Amanda Dake ” username=”kylethegray”]
Kyle:
I think that’s powerful. I think a lot of people when imagining creating a Facebook page or a Facebook group, they just think it’s this raving fans who just want to buy, are ready to buy your product. Really, as far as I’ve seen in my experience, that’s rarely the case. Being able to create a community where you can test and share ideas and sharpen what you’re offering can be really powerful. One of the things that you mentioned you’re helping people with, before the call, was courses.
Amanda:
Yeah.
Kyle:
I think that these are really essential as part of a funnel for a lot of different reasons. I would love to know where does a course fit in if we are an entrepreneur? Whether we’re selling e-commerce products, I’m sure there are courses that are a fit for that kind of store, or if you’re a high-end coach or consultant. How does a course fit inside of your business, more than just, “I’m going to sell this course and make money off of it?”
Amanda:
Something I teach to all of my clients and I teach at all my workshops is a three-pronged business model. Now, I do not make this up. I learned it from someone else, but it transformed the way that I approach my business. Now, I’m able to teach other people how to do that. Basically, it’s your business can be set up to be successful in three different prongs. Those prongs are you work with people one-to-one, you work with people in a one-to-many, like a group setting, and then you have a leverage leg of your business.
A lot of business owners will fit into one or two of those bubbles, but they don’t have all three going for them. That’s really what I like to help people uncover is how can they diversify their offerings to fill all of those bubbles? The leverage leg is probably one of the most powerful because it’s leverage. You create it once and you sell it over and over again. You can reach so many more people with so much less effort on your part, so then you can focus on your higher ticket items or other things that you want to do.
Courses are a really fantastic way to build leverage for your business and reach so many more people than you would be able to reach in a group setting or one-to-one. A lot of people don’t know where to start at all. Almost every business could have a course with it of some kind. My friend, Tyler, just really helped me lightbulb moment this, but I was a teacher for all those years. I have a Master’s degree in education. I worked in curriculum. I’ve written curriculum for online schools and offline schools.
[bctt tweet=”Courses are a fantastic way to build leverage for your business and reach many more people. -Amanda Dake ” username=”kylethegray”]
It just didn’t click, like, “Oh well. I should help people create courses. I’ve built my own courses.” I don’t know why. It’s like you can’t see, you’re too close to everything. It took somebody just like, “Hello,” shaking you, like, “This is what you’re supposed to be doing.” Yeah. That’s now helping people identify those legs of their business and what that course piece should be for their leverage piece. I help people map that out and, ultimately, build it if they need help building it.
Kyle:
I think that’s incredible. Though it’s easy to connect the dots looking backward, I think your background in education and how people learn probably has contributed in many, many ways to your success. I think that a big takeaway of mine on this conversation has been that it’s about education really, rather than sales or marketing. If you can teach people and if you can walk people through, because we don’t go, like, grade one and then grade eight and then we’re a senior in college. We got to go through all of the steps. It’s the same way that we progress people who are becoming aware of us and who need their problems solved with us.
Amanda:
Yeah.
Kyle:
I think that’s great. Amanda, where can we go to learn a little bit more about you? Tell us about where we can find your Facebook group and be a part of Funnel Kitchen and anything else, any other ways we can connect with you.
Amanda:
Yeah. You can find me at funnelkitchen.com. There’s a video there that just tells a little snippet of my business story. Then, my Facebook group, everything is Funnel Kitchen. It’s really easy, yeah. Then, I speak at different events. They’re not huge events. Then, I host my own small events as well, workshops, things like that. Funnelkitchen.com is a great place to start.
Kyle:
Awesome. Amanda, thanks so much for joining us today. It’s been a lot of fun having you, and we’ll talk to you again soon.
Amanda:
Thanks, Kyle.