707 Tai Goodwin:

What’s your number? What do you want your business to earn every month? How much of that do you want to earn personally? The numbers always tell the story, yet so many entrepreneurs are afraid to even look at their numbers, let alone set precise money goals and measure their progress them. Just like the body always goes where the eyes are looking, my guest today – Tai Goodwin – shares how to work towards – and work your – numbers.

MELINDA

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m a 5-time serial entrepreneur who has lived and breathed the ups and downs of starting and growing businesses, currently the game changing social podcast app Podopolo. Wherever you are listening to this, take a moment and join the Wings community over on Podopolo, where we can take the conversation further with your questions, perspectives, experiences, and advice for other female founders at whatever stage of the journey you’re at! Because together we’re stronger, and we soar higher when we fly together.

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who became known as The Quiz Funnel Queen because she figured out early on that quizzes – if done right – put a multiplier on conversions in your marketing.

Tai Goodwin is the CEO of That Marketing Team and the creator of the Liberated CEO Accelerator. She’s an award-winning instructional designer with 20+ years of experience creating learning experiences and content for Fortune500 companies like Barnes & Noble and tech start-ups like Leadpages.

Tai will be here in a moment to share practical marketing tips and much more you won’t want to miss, and first,

And by the way, starting this Memorial Day weekend, you’ll see in real time what you can win – because Podopolo is partnering with Feast It Forward in Napa during BottleRock to put top podcasters on stage live – and for Interactive video livestreaming on Podopolo. They’ll be talking to some of the biggest artists playing at BottleRock, where Podopolo is also the title sponsor of BottleRock AfterDark, featuring Chvrches, Silversun Pickups, Iration and the Wedding Band. Make sure you download the app so you don’t miss the exclusive livestreams!

Ok so let’s get to the marketing and money practical advice you can’t afford to miss.

Tai Goodwin (aka The Quiz Funnel Queen) is CEO of The Momentum Agency, creator of Quiz & Grow Rich and cocreator of The Funnels Done Right System. She’s an award-winning instructional designer with 20+ years of experience creating learning experiences and content for Fortune 500 companies like Barnes & Noble and tech start-ups like Leadpages.

A former teacher, turned corporate trainer, turned entrepreneur and author, Tai is passionate about marketing and marketing technology. After coaching and teaching hundreds of entrepreneurs on social media, marketing, and business strategy – it became clear to her that the biggest gap was in implementation.

The author of Girlfriend its your time, how to choose the right consultant  and co-author of The Profitable Woman’s Playbook, Tai’s articles have been featured on The Huffington Post, Forbes.com, Careerealism.com, and CAREER Magazine. She’s also been highlighted by Money Magazine, Black Enterprise, and The BOSS Network.

So let’s dig deep into funnels, conversions, and how to know your numbers so your bank account shows you in hard cash what you actually want.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Tai Goodwin , and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

Melinda Wittstock:

Tai, welcome to Wings.

Tai Goodwin:

Melinda, I am so excited to be here.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes, me too. I’m speaking to the Quiz Funnel Queen. Tell me about quizzes and why they work so well in a marketing context.

Tai Goodwin:

Well, quizzes work because they convert twice as well as any other kind of lead magnet, like your PDFs or your checklist and downloads and this and that. I love a good checklist, because I love Canva and those kind of tools, but we’ve seen much higher conversions with a quiz. I’ll tell you the funny story about how I started with quizzes. When I left my last day job, I did not have an email list. I needed people to actually sell my coaching services to, and so I used a quiz to add 500 people to my email list in about two weeks.

Melinda Wittstock:

Wow.

Tai Goodwin:

Yeah. Then one, a few months, [inaudible 00:01:00] on those off of those 500 people, I’m like, “Okay, I’m doing my sales calls, I’m building my business,” and it was another, maybe four or five months out, I said, “Well, let’s try this again,” and this time we will put the power of a Facebook ad behind it. So, I used one Facebook ad and one quiz, and in four months, Melinda, I took my email list from 1700 subscribers to over 12,000 subscribers, and I knew I was on to something

Melinda Wittstock:

That is amazing. So, Tai, what was it about that quiz? What were you asking people?

Tai Goodwin:

Well, the quiz was just what type of entrepreneur are you, and I had broken it down into four different types. Are you are a trailblazer, a guide, are you the hands on person? So, it was very, let me get all these women in business who were trying to figure out what they were doing, and help them because that’s what I did as a coach. So, people resonated with it. We had about 1,600 responses to it. You know how, when you do it on Facebook, it tells you who liked it, or who commented. We actually had about 400 comments on that one ad. Then we also ended up having about 340 people that shared it, because it was fun, and that’s one of the reasons people like quizzes. One of the first quizzes that I took way, way back in the day, was about Harry Potter.

To be quite honest, I didn’t even know who Harry Potter like really was. I just knew everybody was taking a quiz, and so I took one too. Right? But people like getting information about themselves. We’re a little bit narcissistic, right? We want to know about ourselves, and so we’ll take a quiz and it’s interactive. For any users or for your audience, your clients, your prospects, the fact that it’s interactive is one of the things that changes the game, because it’s not this one-way download, where they’re going to get something and have to read a PDF. It really is an interactive experience, and that’s what people are looking for.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, depending on what the people chose, did they, they got an instant kind of response or something about themselves?

Tai Goodwin:

Absolutely. So, the great things about quizzes, and I will need to clarify this. So, a quiz is not a survey. See, surveys will tell me, I’ll be telling you information that I already know about myself. Right? I know how many kids I’ve got. I know what my income is. Right? That’s what a survey is. When people take a quiz, they’re usually getting information that gives them insight they didn’t have before. So, for example, with that quiz, what type of entrepreneur are you, let’s say the way you answered the questions, it turns out you’re a trailblazer. Trailblazers, they need to build big audiences, because they’ve got a message.

They’ve got a book that they want to get out into the universe. They want to be on stages, which is very different from the person who’s like, I’m want to be behind the scenes. I don’t really want to talk to a lot of people. I just want to do the work. Right? So, based on how you answer the questions, you get that feedback. In that particular quiz case, we were telling you, if this is the kind of entrepreneur you are, here’s what you need to focus on in your business. So, it becomes prescriptive and personalized, which is very different than somebody downloading a generic cheat sheet or checklist that could be for anybody. Does that make sense?

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. It totally does. So, you’re giving them value, and then at the same time, as you’re building your list, you’re actually able to segment your list, so you know how to remarket to everybody.

Tai Goodwin:

Absolutely. We call it a trifecta, right? Because your audience was, because they’re getting value, just like you mentioned. You, as the entrepreneur win, because you’re getting more than an email address. It’s really hard to market to people when all you know is their name and email address. But what if you actually had other questions and answers that allows you to get the right content, the right offer in front of the right people, at the right time? That’s the beauty of segmenting your list with something like a quiz. Then of course, your bank account wins because now you’re going to see more conversions on the back end.

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. So, you’ve turned cold leads into warm leads. You know a lot about them. They feel like they’ve been given value, so it seems like a no-brainer. So, what did it take to build, because people get all hung up on the funnel mechanics, the tech around it, all the things you have to do. So, take me through your early experience, and kind of where you are now and how you do it now.

Tai Goodwin:

Well, I’m very, very techy. I’ve always been one of those gadget folks, especially when it comes to marketing. So, the first quiz I built though, was a paper-based quiz. It was, and, or also known as kind of a checklist where people got to score themselves, and I would give it to my clients. They would go through and they would score themselves, and then we would give them a call, and we would go through their score. So, when I started finding quiz platforms that would do the scoring for me and for them, it was a game-changer. So, we always, and we keep that same kind of format now. We always separate the content from the platform. So, now we do all the work in the beginning. We’re going to find out like, what is it that you want to sell? What is your, who is your audience for this particular quiz?

We’re going to do all the work to build the content, the outcomes, the questions, the results for your quiz first. Then we go into the tech, and when you separate things out like that, and that’s for anything, whether you’re writing emails, doing landing page copy, when you start separating the copy and the content out from the tech, it makes it a whole lot easier. So, that’s how our process is. We get all the content stuff done first. Then once we have it, we go into the builder for your quiz. We go into the builder for your emails, because that’s the other thing, Melinda. Just like with any good lead magnet, you can’t just have a download or a quiz or a cheat sheet. The other part of that is that email conversation, and it happens as part of your follow up. So, you’ve got to have the complete system or the complete funnel by having the quiz and the emails to follow up with your audience.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. 100%. So, one of the things that I’ve noticed with entrepreneurs, particularly women, can get really stuck in the planning and the perfectionism of the plan without taking action. So, what aspect of what you were doing was build the plane as you were flying it? Did you wait to have everything all lined up before you launched, or do you just kind of go and learn along the way?

Tai Goodwin:

I kind of went and learned along the way and that’s, I was willing to invest, especially when it came to like the Facebook. Right? Using Facebook ads, I had no idea what I was doing. In fact, it’s funny, Melinda, the very first time I got that little notification from Facebook that said we took $500 out of your account. Now of course it didn’t say that. Right? It was just like, your payment has been processed. But to me it was like, oh my gosh, Facebook took $500 out of my account. Let me shut all this down. I did. I literally shut down my Facebook ads. When I talked to my coach, he said, “Well, why’d you do it?” I said, well, they took $500 out of my account. He said, ‘But how much money did you make?’ I said, “Oh,” so I learned to go back and start looking at my data.

I could see that at $500 over about a two week period of time, I had booked 10 sales calls from people that took the quiz, and I ended up signing two clients. I was still figuring stuff out. But even while I was figuring all that out, I made $500 turn into $8,500, and I started to see the power. I said, “Now I get why people use Facebook ads.” Right? I would trade $500 for $8,500 all day long. But I was learning as I went along, and now we’re in this place where we’ve kind of perfected our process.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. Well, I love that you were willing to build a plane as you fly it. Everyone needs a coach and everyone needs a mentor. Yet, I know in my entrepreneurial journey, building five businesses now ,my biggest learnings have come from my own failures.

Melinda Wittstock:

Have you learned more from your failures or your successes?

Tai Goodwin:

Oh, that’s a great question. I would say I’ve learned more from my failures, because when your failures, it kind of shows you a couple of thing. Right? It shows you, okay. I need to go back and optimize this, but it also shows you who you are. Are you willing to give up? Are you willing to learn how to ask for help? Are you willing to put your ego aside, and say what you don’t know, so that you get the right kind of support? There’s all those little pieces that build up your character, when you experience failure. I wrote a book called, Girlfriend, It’s Your Time, and one of the things I talk about in that book is the difference between bright women and brilliant women.

Bright women, they see failure or they fail and they think it’s a prescription or a description of who they are. Right? I failed, so I must be X, Y, and Z. Brilliant women know that failure is a stepping stone to what’s next. So, when you begin to see failure as that way, it’s not that you necessarily look forward to it, but it becomes, okay, I missed the boat. I dropped the ball. Right? There’s something that I can learn from this, so that I can get to what’s next in my path, and that’s how I see it.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes. That’s so important what you just said, Tai. I think, on this podcast, we give that message over and over again. It’s kind of one of those things that you don’t know until you know, but I love that you mentioned getting out of the way of your ego. I remember one of my coaches said, “Actually, you don’t really want to be the smartest person in the room. You kind of want to be the dumbest person in the room, as long as you’re listening, and you’re learning.” Other little bits of wisdom is find someone who’s already done what you are doing, and has done it before and ask for their advice.

Tai Goodwin:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Don’t be afraid to do that, but I think this is what I, this is what I think so many women struggle with is perfectionism, doing the equivalent of cleaning the house before the housekeeper comes, thinking that we have to prove that we know what we’re doing, and it holds us back in business. It, certainly, even with a successful business, it holds us back from scale. How, did you ever have any kind of perfectionism thing going on in your life that you had to overcome?

Tai Goodwin:

Oh, absolutely. For me, I think it was a remnant of corporate. I worked in large corporate Fortune 500 companies and all that before I eventually made the leap. Even now, with clients that come into work with us, when we’ve come from that corporate background, we’re expected to have to be perfect. Right? Because we’re not going to get up and present an idea, right, without it being perfect or we don’t want it to be judged or we expect it to be judged. So, in corporate environments you’re expected to present and it has to be flawless. Right? I think we bring some of that over into our business, and I can’t, I can’t put this out there until it’s absolutely right, and I’ve got to check it 10 times.

By the time you’ve checked it 10 times, somebody else has already made money from it. Business moves fast, money moves at the pace of, it requires speed, in order for you to get to market faster, in order for you to beat the competition, in order for you to stand out from all the noise that’s out there. So, definitely felt like for me, it was a carryover from what I experienced in corporate, and I had to learn to let that go.

Melinda Wittstock:

I think there should be an AA for perfectionists. Right? I wonder whether it’s the root of the perfectionism is just fear. Right? Or, just as a mindset thing, kind of like the imposter syndrome or lacking of really understanding our own value or appreciating our own value, that makes us want to over-deliver into this perfectionism.

Tai Goodwin:

Yeah. I think it’s that pain of being judged too. A lot of us, especially as women, we carry that stigma, whether it was from, high school bullies or girlfriends. Right? Because sometimes people think, well, it was the bullies. No, you could have been around a clique of girls who are just as judgey.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh my God. Yes.

Tai Goodwin:

We carry that voice of judgment in our head. I know for a long time, one of the things I grew up hearing all the time when we saw somebody do something real, who does she think she is? Or she thinks she’s cute. Right? We internalize that same judgment. Right? Oh, they’re going to say, who do I think I am, if I do X, Y, and Z. If I show up and do this, who do I think I am? That judgment makes us want to be perfect, so we can avoid what that feels like. And so-

Melinda Wittstock:

But also, it can make people afraid of success because the, what’s it called? The tall poppy syndrome. Right.? So, a woman just dares to shine in her true bright light, go for it, create a seven-figure, eight-figure, nine- figure business, like go big, there’s a fear that, oh gosh, who does she think she is?

Tai Goodwin:

Yeah. Yeah. I experienced that too. I had to really deal with that when I was in fifth grade, no, fourth grade even, it goes back a little bit further. Right? I was threatened by two girls in my school, because I raised my hand and answered questions. I was a total nerd. Right? But I loved it. I love school. I love learning. They threatened to beat me up-

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, my gosh.

Tai Goodwin:

… for answering questions in class. So, yeah. So, that’s something that has plagued me over and over, and things that I’ve really had to work through that fear of raising my hand, and wanting to be called out. I’ll tell you, I really worked on that within the last two years. I was part of Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business Program. I made it a point that every single class, it’s like, it’s a cohort of entrepreneurs. You go through it for like 14 weeks. It’s grueling. You meet four or five times a week. I made sure every single class, I raised my hand and asked a question or answered something. It was painful, Melinda, because all that fear would come up.

All that, they’re going to think of this. I did it every single time. Here was the payoff though. By the end of it, your peers get to nominate who they want to be like the valedictorian. I was nominated hands-down, and I got to speak at the closing event. So, that was a time where I learned from my success. But it ties into this whole story that we’re talking about, being afraid of success and being a tall poppy. Sometimes we have to work through those things.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. It’s so, so true what you say, but how heartbreaking is that? Because I think if you get kind of cut down a size as a girl for showing how smart you are, or just being who you are, then as you grow into an adult this kind of fear of just truly stepping into the light and showing our smarts, it’s gosh, you wonder how many people, I imagine most women carry some sort of version of that with them. I know I used to get bullied as a girl around that same age range, because I was kind of quite similar to you. I didn’t see why anything should kind of hold me back, but oh my gosh, other people tried to, for sure.

Tai Goodwin:

Yeah. I think it’s something that a lot of us have experienced and we’ve internalized it.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah.

Tai Goodwin:

It does. I talk sometimes about how trauma holds our business hostage, because we’ve learned not to speak up, we’ve learned not to ask. We’ve learned, I should be able to figure this out on my own or do it myself. We’ve learned that. In some cases, it’s come from a traumatizing experience, some more traumatizing than others, but we’ve learned those behaviors and they show up in our business all the time.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh gosh. 100%. So, you coach a lot of people now. You’ve transitioned. Not only are you the Quiz Funnel Queen, with your own businesses, but you help a lot of other women as well. How much of it is a mindset issue or recovering from these things, and how much is it a business learning issue? I imagine it’s a little bit of both, but in your experience as a coach, what’s your process in terms of how you get women through all of this trauma, I guess, really?

Tai Goodwin:

Well, you know what? When I first started coaching, it was a lot of mindset. I was working with a lot of newer folks who were just coming into the space, and they were super passionate about what they wanted to do, but they had that fear of, well, can I charge this much? Nobody’s going to listen to me. I’m bugging people, or they had all of those kind of thoughts. So, in that case, if people are at that space where they don’t understand the difference between marketing and bugging people, right, that it is some mindset stuff that has to be done.

The kind of clients that I work with now, they’re over the mindset piece. Right? Like they realize that, if I’ve got a solution, I’m not bugging people when I do my marketing. Right? I’m actually helping them solve their problem. What they’re missing though, is the strategy. Right? So they’re really good at what they do. They’re able to help a whole lot of people. They just don’t know how to get in front of more of the right people, because nobody’s ever taught them how to do marketing.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. Yeah, exactly. Then the marketing side can be tricky too, if you’re of, if deep down subconsciously, which is basically 80% of our actions are driven by our subconscious. So, if deep down you think about yourself that you don’t trust in your own value, then it becomes really hard to go market any product or service that you have created. So, what holds people back from stepping into the marketing and sales? Is it just that? What are some of the things they have to do, just to get going, and get that kind of marketing sales muscle happening for themselves?

Tai Goodwin:

Well, the first thing is that they … I think people need to really understand that marketing is something that you can learn. I think a lot of folks come into this thinking that I have to be a born salesperson. I have to be a born marketer in order to make this work. Because I’m not a natural marketer or a salesperson, that I’m just not going to be very good at it. That’s not true. Most of the people that you see that are doing amazing jobs at marketing and sales, they’ve learned how to do it. They’ve worked with somebody who’s helped them with strategy. They’ve learned the terms. They understand the psychology of it. They’ve learned how it works. So, it’s a skill that you can learn, and if you approach it from that, and say, listen, marketing is the lifeblood of a business, right, because without an audience or what we call a community of buyers, without that community to sell to, you really don’t have a sustainable business.

Tai Goodwin:

If you can embrace that, then you say, “Okay, well, I need to learn how to build that community of buyers,” and if you are okay with learning, which is what I tell my clients, you don’t have to be okay with like becoming a salesperson. Are you okay with learning how to have a conversation? Are you okay with learning how marketing psychology works? Because if you’re okay with learning and you’ve learned something before, so you can learn something new, if you’re okay with that, we can get through all of the other stuff. So, that’s the first decision, is be willing to learn. Then the next thing is that you got to be willing to be decisive, and this is something I see us as women do all the time. We are very indecisive when it comes to business and marketing. I want to work with everybody, right? Melinda, you’ve been around. You’ve heard people say that I can serve everybody. Right? Everybody-

Melinda Wittstock:

No. No. It’s the exact opposite.

Tai Goodwin:

You want to be decisive. The people who do well, they make a decision. This is who I’m going to start with now. These are the people that I’m going to market to and speak to now. May I expand that later? Absolutely. Right? This is what I’m going to offer now. I’m not going to offer 25 products, when I don’t know how to sell one. Right? So, it’s learning how to market, being willing to do that, and then learning or being willing to make a decision. Because those decisions that you make will allow you to fly farther, faster than if you’re, “Oh, I don’t know, and I’m not sure.” No. Make a decision and keep it moving.

Melinda Wittstock:

This is such good advice. So, Tai, at this stage, like you’ve, you became the Quiz Funnel Queen. How have the quizzes evolved over time? Have they gotten more sophisticated? Has it been more difficult to stand out in all the noise, especially as there’s so many quizzes out there. So, I imagine you have a lot more competition.

Tai Goodwin:

Not, not really. We’ve got people that say they’re going to build their own quiz, and then they come to me, because they’re like, I can’t build it or I don’t know what I’m doing with it. That’s fine. I think quizzes are kind of in that space of being the new webinar. I, my background is in corporate training, and instructional design is what I did for some of the larger companies I worked for. I taught my first webinar, Melinda, in 1999. So, I’m dating myself here with that. Right? But we, I was working for a national sales company and we could not pull people off the floor. So, I was teaching online with Citrix GoToWebinar or GoToLearning, right, back in 1999. I remember that, because we were all worried about Y2K, right? Oh my gosh, Y2K is going to crash the computers.

We can’t do our jobs. Right? Look at it now. We still have people, how many years later, it’s 22 years later, still trying to figure out how to do webinars. Right? I think quizzes are the same way. There’s some people that, they build quizzes, or actually a lot of them are building surveys and calling it a quiz, and it’s not, because it doesn’t really calculate anything. The technology on platforms are, people are building more and more of those. Every year there’s new platform that’s being released. What’s going to start happening is, because of the data that a quiz allows you to gather, that’s what’s going to become more sophisticated.

Tai Goodwin:

The sophisticated people are using the data from quizzes to segment their audience and increase conversions. On the front end, you’ve got those people who are just coming into this space, and they like the idea of a quiz. Oh, a quiz is cool. Then they’re creating quizzes like what color is your aura? Right? Colors. Things that don’t really help you segment your audience, and then they’re wondering why they can’t convert, but you’ve got those savvy folks who’ve been doing this now. We built their first quiz actually back in 2013. Right? We started doing it for our clients after we had that success with Facebook ads. But the sophisticated and savvy folks are using that data to actually do a better job with their marketing and segmenting their audience.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, you have done so many things in your lifetime. I mean, you’re a former teacher. You’re a corporate trainer. You’re an entrepreneur. You’re an author. You’ve got a whole bunch of books out there, and you teach all these entrepreneurs on social marketing, business strategy, and along the way, what has been the biggest challenge for you personally? We were talking about failure earlier, but what was your big cross to bear on a business side of things, apart from overcoming what girls did to you in the fourth grade or whatever. What was the biggest challenge for you? The biggest failure and the biggest epiphany, biggest challenge that you had to overcome to get where you are now?

Tai Goodwin:

The biggest challenge was thinking bigger about my earning potential. It’s interesting, because I had the same challenge when I was in corporate. When I was in corporate, I was the lowest-paid person on my team. What sparked my love of coaching in the first place, was I went to my, I went to my go-to resource to find a solution, which was a book. I read Barbara Stanny’s Secrets of Successful Women. Secrets of Successful Women or Secrets of Six-Figure Women. I think it might have been Six-Figure Women. One of the things she said in that book was, the only reason women don’t make six figures is because they don’t think about it.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right.

Tai Goodwin:

Right. They say they want to make more money, but if you make a dollar more than you made last year, you’ve made more money. But women don’t think about, I want to make six figures. This was like, 15, 18, almost 20 years ago, when I read that book and that changed things for me in the corporate setting. I got a coach after reading that book, and I went from a $40,000 job to a $63,000 job in one job move. Right? When I came into my business, I was having the same issue, and here’s what happened. This was within the last four years, actually. I was talking on the phone to these guys about enrolling in their program. They said, “Well, how much did you do last year, and what do you want to do now?” I said, “Well, I want to double what I was doing before. So, I want to double it. I want to do 200,000.” He said, “Okay, so you want to do $200,000 a month?”

Melinda Wittstock:

I love that.

Tai Goodwin:

Yeah. Right. I was like, “Oh, that’s an option?” Right?

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. We don’t even, we create our own earning’s glass ceilings. Right?

Tai Goodwin:

Exactly. Exactly. I’m thinking, he meant for the whole year. The thing is, their business was doing like $400,000 a month, so that was like nothing to them. But I hadn’t had that shift in my thinking. After that, now, we’re still a work in progress, but man, that was the last time, we hit, that was the last time that $10,000 was our high thing for the month. Right? That’s our lowest month right now. Right? But we, but there was that mindset shift and it was a simple conversation. It wasn’t a big coaching call. It was just the fact that I heard someone else say it that way, as if it was easy as breathing air. Oh. So, you just want to do $200,000 a month?

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. Men are more likely to be that way. They don’t have any kind of weird issues about money.

Tai Goodwin:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

I mean, they just ask for what they want, right, or whatever. Right? So, when you’re helping your clients to kind of know their number. Right?

Tai Goodwin:

Un-huh.

Melinda Wittstock:

Which is critical in business, then the next step is to figure out, okay, so what’s the funnel. How many people do you have to talk to? How many do you have to reach at the top of the funnel?

Tai Goodwin:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

… to get that. How does that apply to your pricing? I find there’s a lot of resistance generally, to knowing your numbers. Like not just your own personal number, but the numbers at the business and being on that. So, talk to me about that. Because if you start with the end in mind, then you can kind of backward plan in terms of what it is you specifically have to do. Then you have your roadmap. You know what you need to go do. It seems so obvious, but-

Tai Goodwin:

Absolutely. It’s, you’re so absolutely right. We say that our job in marketing, is to help our clients create repeatable systems, so they can have predictable income. Right? The way you get to that is, like you said, by knowing what your numbers are. But so many folks don’t want to think about that, because it’s uncomfortable. But, one of the reasons I think it’s uncomfortable is, because now what happens if I don’t hit that number?

Melinda Wittstock:

Right.

Tai Goodwin:

Right. Then I feel like a failure. What I’m helping my clients do is, no, you’re going to work towards that number. It may take you three months, four months to get there. But that doesn’t mean you stop. You know what I mean? Somebody who’s training for the Olympics, they don’t like say, “Okay, well I didn’t get to the Olympics in a month, so I guess I’m not going to do it.” No. They trained for years. Right?

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly.

Tai Goodwin:

Now we’re not talking about doing for years in your business, but it’s the principle of what is your goal? Have a goal and work towards it. But, you’re right. You’ve got to understand what those numbers are. I think it’s one of the reasons why people get so frustrated with marketing, because they don’t understand a 3% conversion rate, which is typically what you’re going to have. Right? They don’t understand that. So, they think, if 100 people see my thing on Facebook, I should have 100 sales. That’s not how that works.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. You might get two.

Tai Goodwin:

That’s not that’s how any of that works. Or, if I’ve got 100 people on my email list, everybody should buy from me. 3%. Right? The open rate is 22%. The click-through rate almost emails is about 3%, on average. Right? But if you don’t understand the numbers, you’re going to get really disappointed really, really fast, because your expectations are going to be unrealistic. So, you’ve got to know your numbers. It does not have to be scary. To me, numbers make me feel calm, because if I can take a look at my calendar and see that I needed 10 sales calls and I’ve only got two, I know I need to hustle. Right? So it really calms us, and it really gives us a really great place to work towards, and not run, from because we know that if we hit our numbers, we can create that predictable income every single month and not be on that rollercoaster that most people are on, where one month we’re up. The next month we’re down. The next month we’re not even on the mat. Right?

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. Going back to what you said a moment ago, you really have to know who your target market is. Right? Because if you’re just not pre-qualifying people or not knowing who you’re speaking to in a marketing sense, then you’re kind of wasting dollars, right?

Tai Goodwin:

Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, like the beauty of Facebook and all these other sorts of platforms that allow that kind of targeting, if you know who you’re going for, and you can really focus a message and you use your quizzes by all means. I think that’s such a great marketing strategy and tactic, conceivably, your conversion rates can start to climb. At least you’re talking to the right people.

Tai Goodwin:

Yeah. You’re talking to the right people. You’re not wasting your time. The other thing that you’re doing is you’re disqualifying people who are not a good fit. Right? That’s the other thing I think, as women, we need to understand, we don’t just accept anybody. I see this all the time. Well, I say, “Well, who’s your ideal client?” They say, “Well, the people that have come to me.” No, that’s not what I asked you. I didn’t ask, who’s coming to you? I asked, who’s your ideal client. We liken it to dating Melinda. If you’re a single woman, and you’re dating, you don’t just accept anybody who comes up to you. Right? If the people that keep, guys or people that keep coming up to you don’t have jobs and they can’t really afford anything, and they’re about nonsense, you don’t just say, “Okay, I guess this is who I’m going to date.”

Tai Goodwin:

You don’t do that. Right? You’re going to go somewhere, and you’re going to find the people that you really want to connect with. Guess what? It’s the same thing in marketing. You don’t just accept who’s coming up to you, because it’s convenient. You get to decide who you date. You get to decide who you market to. You get to decide who your client is. That’s one of the things I loved about being an entrepreneur, because when I was working, I didn’t get to choose who my boss was. Somebody would move into a position. I didn’t get to choose all the stuff that … I’m an entrepreneur. I get to make that decision. Who do I work with? Who do I want to spend my time with? Who do I want to serve? Who do I want to make an impact for? That’s, to me, one of the blessings about being able to be in business for yourself.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, gosh. 100%. So, who are your ideal clients? Who do you work with, Tai?

Tai Goodwin:

Yeah. I love, love, love working with women entrepreneurs who are right at that six-figure mark, and they’re trying to get to multiple six figures in their business. A lot of our clients, they have been really great at getting word of mouth and referrals, and that’s been fueling their business. And they’ve reached this place where the referrals are drying up, or they can’t scale the referrals on word of mouth. So, now they realize that they need a tight marketing system in place. That’s what we do. We’re going to help them put a repeatable system in, so they can create predictable income and not have to worry about the ups and downs of referrals or somebody didn’t give me an affiliate this month.

Tai Goodwin:

We don’t want to worry about that. We want to be able to create that predictable income and they’re coaches, they’re consultants, they’re CEOs of service-based operations. They also really have a heart to make a big impact on the lives of the people and the communities that they’re working with. So, those are, that’s the big picture of who we work with.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, that’s wonderful. So, what’s the best way for people to find you and work with you?

Tai Goodwin:

Well, all on social media, if you’re looking at like Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook, you could always find me at Ty Goodwin. It’s T-A-I, Goodwin G-O-O-D-W-I-N. You’ll find me there. Our website is thatmarketingteam.com, but I’ve got a special offer I can share with your audience if they-

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, wonderful.

Tai Goodwin:

Yeah. If they go to 101quizideas.com, they’ll be able to get a list of quiz ideas. If they’re interested in that, they can absolutely do that. We got 101 quiz ideas. They can start thinking about how they can use a quiz for their business.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, that’s fantastic. Well, I think I’ll check that out too for Podopolo, because we’re always talking to podcasters. What kind of podcaster are you? I might just borrow that. That’s awesome. Well, Tai, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Tai Goodwin:

It’s been my absolute pleasure.