Carson (02:28):

So the special

Dylan (02:29):

Guests in question is of course, Sabah Ali. And she is the founder of brands that sell. She's a coach, a two times TEDx speaker, a best-selling author and on a mission to help coaches scale their business. Past six figures she's known for her branding work. She's helped a passionate business owners clarify their message and story to attract more clients and gain authority by organic marketing strategies and personal branding. And did I mentioned she's been featured on publications like NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox news. The hype is really all so Sabba, how's it going?

Sabah (02:59):

I am good. I love that intro, Dylan. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here, especially since this podcast show focuses on ads. I'm like the organic queen over here, so I'm sure it'll be a fun episode.

Dylan (03:13):

And just cause you mentioned that it's probably going to be titled the organic queen. So shout out to that too. Yeah. You made it easy for me with that little bio. So I was like, heck yeah, I can just read this. It's going to be a little intro. So, but yeah. Give everybody some context of who you are, kind of, you know what you're getting into these days. Just so everybody has an idea.

Sabah (03:31):

Yeah, for sure. So yeah, similar to, to what you just said, Dylan. So I'm a, I'm a business and I'm a brand coach, right? So primarily what I do is I work with other coaches, consultants, service providers, helping them clarify their brand message. So they stand out amongst everyone else. That's primarily doing the same thing as they are. Right. Especially nowadays like the, the barrier to entry in the online space is so, so low meaning there's so many people doing organic marketing and branding ads, right? So the only way you can really differentiate yourself is you right? So like my expertise is helping people identify what their unique selling factors, but I call your unforgettable factor to channel that through your marketing, to scale your business. So, um, for me, I've been doing this for give or take like three ish years. I've been in the online space for five years. I started when I was in college. So I've been building and running my business and to graduation, which is about like three years ago now where'd you graduate from? Yeah. So I graduated from Iowa state I'm from the Midwest, but I just moved to south Florida, but a year ago now actually. Yeah, yeah,

Dylan (04:41):

Yeah. And I mean speak on the organic side. I mean, with me being a paid ad guy before I even started working with, you know, newer brands am like, how many sales are you getting organically? Cause I mean, if you're not selling organically, I bet you the pay the ads aren't going to work. You know, it's not going to be some magical button we flip on, you got to have a proof of concept. So that's why I was like, this is going to be a juicy one for sure. So let's go to the nitty-gritty. So of course we're going to dive into the rich ad segment, which is basically what's working good for you right now in the organic world.

Sabah (05:10):

Yeah, for sure. So I'd love this question. My entire business it's built around content marketing, right? So producing a piece of content, having a specific call to action for my ideal clients, for my followers, literally just having a conversation with them and then booking a call with me and landing them as a client. Now a lot of people over-complicate organic cause they feel like they need like funnels and fancy landing pages and all of these different like webinars and like sequences and email follow-up sequences. You really don't like the simplest strategy is literally create a piece of content, start a conversation, book, a call, pitch your offer, and then close the close that person as a client. Um, for me now, since I've been in the organic space for a while, of course, when you're producing content every single day, it can get very repetitive for your audience.

Sabah (06:05):

So one simple strategy that's been working for me really well. It is running challenges by so you've probably heard of them like three-day challenges five day challenges when you're providing so much value on the front end, right. Spending a few hours or a few days with your audience, what happens is you build that know like and trust factor. So if you're even built, if you're bringing in cold audiences to that challenge, they don't know you at all whatsoever, they spend three or five days with you at the end, they're going to want to buy from you because it feels like they've known you forever. Right? So over time, what I do, and this is kind of going into like more deep dive strategy is running like organic promotion cycles. So every four to six weeks within my business, I'm doing some sort of like challenge or workshop or masterclass.

Sabah (06:54):

And over time I have these trainings it's pre-recorded so I can run them as like evergreen trainings, every four to six weeks to promote. Um, so for me I find that so, so controllable in my business, right? Cause when it comes to like the strategies and the tactics of like having conversations with those leads book and calls, even after the event, if they don't book, you can hire like a team member of VA to do that for you. Right. So this is where I've kind of gonna throw a fire at ads. It's like, I see people as spending so much money on ads, right off the bat, thousands of dollars. They don't have a validated offer it. They don't have a brand foundation built. They don't know who their ideal client is. So if you're going to bring in cold leads who don't know you, who don't like you, who don't trust you, it's so, so hard for you to convert them on like a sales call. Um, so I know I kind of went into detail, but like doing those organic promotion cycles have been working. So, so well for me, for me and my business.

Dylan (07:54):

Yeah. So on the challenge question, I mean, yeah. The challenges work. I fall into that trap all the time sometimes just to see if I can beat a challenge, but you mentioned the evergreen cycle side of things. So how long are you able to kind of keep a challenge kind of renewed? Is it something that maybe lasts half a year, every four to six weeks or do you kind of keep it going year round or you kind of change it up a little bit each time?

Sabah (08:15):

That's a great question. It really depends on the topic of the challenge. Sometimes I'll make challenges in workshops that are more like relevant to like this situation or this season. Right. So for an example, back when like COVID happened, I think I did like a three-day training based on like how to market your, your services during a pandemic. I could still use that as like evergreen content, but it's not as relevant nowadays. Right. I have a specific workshop. That's basically like my organic marketing framework that I can use. Like I've been using an app for, I want to say about a year. Right. Still really relevant. The foundations are the same. Um, but if I were to say like a rule of thumb of probably like six months to a year on the top, like the context of the workshop or the training. Um, but like over time, like when I work with my clients, they find their own type of like challenge or workshop they really like to do sometimes like three-day workshops work a lot better than like five day workshops for people. So of course when you're putting an event together, it takes like time and effort and energy. Right. So over time, like let's say in like a quarter you want to run like two workshops. Maybe you want to just prep and do like one big one and then use one of your old ones as like an evergreen repeatable cycle. Um, so that's like a different way you can use it to if it's, if like not every four to six week weeks, you want to create a new one.

Dylan (09:39):

And that makes sense. And I mean, speaking of the pandemic, have you noticed has changed a lot when it comes to like webinars or did you used to do more stuff in person, but now it's more virtual. Have you seen the impact of your clients' businesses? I'm kind of curious on how you've been able to adapt on, you know, the evergreen funnels that worked last year, maybe this time versus what's going on right now.

Sabah (09:57):

Yeah. Great question. So for me, honestly, for me and my clients, our businesses have been thriving through the pandemic and it's primarily because like everyone's online. Like you don't really have a choice, but to be online and to grow your business online. So of course the different strategies I teach my clients, like they're implementing it and it's working, right? Like my show up rate for challenges and workshops. It's been a lot more than like before the pandemic. Um, for me, I, I do speaking, I would speak at events, talk about like my programs and my workshops. But for me personally, like I know everyone has a different strategy when it comes to even like throwing events and selling out like your programs and your, your tickets for me personally, I find when you have a system that works online, you can just double down in this strategy to continue growing up, to continue growing it and then use like events and like speaking to more.

Sabah (10:50):

So grow your brand, which will bring you more clients through like your online funnel, quote unquote. Um, because for example, if you're speaking at an event and you just like drop your Instagram or like your website, of course, where people are going to start to follow you, they're most likely going to opt into something free that you have, if you don't have anything set in, in place. Right. And then it's hard for them to like, build that know like trust factor, because typically when you are giving a presentation, it's only like the generic like, oh, this is who I am. This is what I've done, but it's no like real, real strategy. If that makes sense though.

Dylan (11:27):

Oh yeah. And you have to lead magnet at the very end. I fall for those, every conference I go to, I feel I click it. I get texts for like three years still hitting me up. Like, that's funny. Okay. Now with, I see your posts on Facebook, you obviously kill it on the organic side, but with the traction you're getting, have you ever tested ads to see if that would kind of ramp it up or you just want to keep it straight, organic and with, within your scenario?

Sabah (11:51):

Yeah. So I'm not, I'm not like against or against ads. Um, I feel like ads is like an amplifier for a strategy or a system that already works. Um, so for me, I've, I've like tested apps before I tested ads running to like a workshop and a challenge. Um, for me, I just have never like focused on it that much. So I probably just didn't spend like the time and energy figuring it out. Um, for me and my business, I do see using ads to more so like grow my like organic community, like on Facebook. Like I have a Facebook group, I get tons of leads, tens of clients from there. So like instead of running ads, like a book, a call with me or like a VSL or webinar, having them go through, like my Facebook group organically will be for me, I think just based on my experience, a higher conversion rate in them actually booking a call with me.

Sabah (12:44):

For me personally, I just can not sit there and watch a VSL or a webinar. I just know it's like, it's there because they're going to try and pitch me something. Right. So it's like, even if people need help, right. They would much rather go through something that's like, feels more safe. And I think like a Facebook group and like going through a community, it kind of having conversation with some people, um, having them see me live on live video really builds that connection a lot faster. So they are able to like a book, a call with me that way. Um, so yeah, in short, I do see myself using ads in the feature. Um, just for now I think it just organic, it's much more controllable and I know ads, you have to learn the strategy behind it in order to make it work correctly. Yeah.

Dylan (13:29):

Oh. And it changes every month. It seems like. So I'm in, yeah. It's working for you right now. No reason to throw a wrench in the wheel. Well, I love hearing about good strategies, so let's get to the not so great strategies. So of course we'd love to dive into the not-so-great side of things and of course, poor ads are a big way to do it. So what's something you thought would maybe absolutely kill it. That ended up backfiring. Hey, this is not working at all, you know, what's that in your world? [inaudible]

Speaker 4 (13:59):

Yeah,

Sabah (13:59):

For sure. Great question. Um, so I mean, since we're talking about organic, I'll kind of touch on like the organic part of it. Um, but for me, when I first got started in my coaching business, there's kind of like two models of organic. There's like the inbound approach. And then there's the outbound approach. Um, for me when I was just learning how to start and grow and scale my business, of course, I went through like coaches and courses and programs, a lot of that outbound approach or like the organic marketing approach that they would teach was outbound. So like send 50 conversations, send 50 messages a day to like your audience and you're bound to land clients and book because for me, I just like absolutely hated doing that. So I remember there was so my business, yeah, there was a phase in my business.

Sabah (14:44):

Um, it was actually right after graduation. I would sit there for like hours sending cold messages to people on Facebook. Um, and I remember I even had an Excel sheet of like hundreds of people I would send messages to. Cause they would tell me like keep track to see like who would open it and who you need to follow up. So I just like sat there sending cold messages. I probably landed like one client within like three months. Um, so yeah, it was, it was bad. Um, so what I realized is from one, I hate that strategy. Um, number two, you, you really don't need to do that. Right. Because what I realized is if people need your help, it's your job to ATrack them through like the brand that you're creating. Right. Because for me, all I do is I teach people how to create a brand.

Sabah (15:36):

And back then when I didn't know what I was doing in my business, I was teaching something, but I wasn't doing it like essentially for myself. Right. So for me now I want to say like 85% of my business is like inbound. Like I get inbound leads through like the challenges that I do through the workshops that I do through the content I create. Um, but yeah, like outbound cold messages. I know some people like use that as their only way to get clients and sometimes it works right. But for me, it just wasn't aligned with my energy because I just am not that type of person. I'm a creative type of person. So I just wish I could get those like three months back where I was sending out Cole messages literally took me nowhere. So that's a part of organic, like they focus on like at all.

Dylan (16:28):

And how many do you think you sent out out of curiosity, emails and messages to land that individual client. Oh, aye. Aye. Aye.

Sabah (16:37):

What's that over 5,000? You think? I don't I'm maybe like over a thousand. Um, it might've been a little bit more. Yeah. Like it just wasn't great. Cause also like, I didn't, like, I didn't know what I was doing back then. Right. So I would get on calls with people, but I also didn't know how to like pitch properly. Right. So for me, when I would get on a call with someone, they're like, oh yeah, I want to do it, send me over information. I thought they would be a client, but of course they would go see me. And I wouldn't hear back from them ever, because back then I would just focus on making the sale instead of actually like providing them with value, having them fall in love with me as a person, as a personality. Right. Because what I've realized over time is like, people aren't necessarily buying into your product or service they're buying into you as a person, especially if you're in like the coaching consulting world. Right. So that's where the shift really happened for me when I realized that

Dylan (17:32):

That makes sense. And I think the key thing you kind of pointed out is the coaching consulting world and it's all about authority trusts. Do you like this person? You know, do they provide value? So I mean, all these points you're touched that really kind of feed from those specific, you know, individuals there. So I think it's killer when it comes to your specific audience and niche,

Sabah (17:49):

You're doing

Dylan (17:50):

An e-com brands too, or is it pretty, you know, business, coach oriented,

Sabah (17:54):

Primarily business coach, like coaches, consultants, not just in the business field, I've worked with like mindset coaches and his coaches, holistic coaches, um, also worked with like agency owners. There was like a phase where I wanted to work with like products and like e-commerce brands. Um, but it just, it's kind of like a different ball game when it comes to marketing. Right. Because if you're selling a product, like there's not really a reason why someone would sit there through like a five day challenge, unless it's like that very high ticket product, you know? Um, so no, not necessarily it mainly coaches, consultants, service providers. That

Dylan (18:30):

Makes sense. Heck yeah. So with you kind of helping fine tune and offer, how, how, how many times do you kind of hit that offer, you know, a home run out of the gate and how many times are you having to critique it to kind of, you know, hit that home run, essentially. I'm curious on the success rate for that first one and done offer.

Sabah (18:46):

Yeah. So geez. I need to kind of think back and look at it now. Um, like one of my first offers that I did was a lower ticket offer. Um, and it was primarily just like a masterclass that I was doing, but it was ascending into like my higher ticket program. So, uh, I I'll give you guys this story of like my first ever client that I got and it was, it was actually really funny. So for me, like I probably tweaked my offer. Like I want to say more than like 20 times, um, getting him to like messaging the ideal client and like, this is this actually let me get into it now. Uh, for me, for me, when I first got started, right. I was helping people build their brand. Right. And of course, when I was pitching my offer, I was like, oh, I'm going to help you build your brand.

Sabah (19:34):

Right. You're going to gain like an audience. You're gonna get better at like content creation. You're going to get better at just like being a person of influence. Right. And I see a lot of people make this mistake now. It's like, they're focusing on the process that they're teaching someone versus like the end result. Right. So for me, I never had a clear end result. Like, what's do what, like what's building a brand new do for someone. So like, I don't know why that just took so long for me to like actually understand. I see a lot of people making that as a mistake. So that's why it took me so many different tries to get my offer. Right, right. So it went from, oh, I'm going to help you build your brand to grow your audience, to like a thousand followers from there as like, I'm going to help you grow your brand to land your first client.

Sabah (20:15):

I'm going to help you grow your brand to get to 10 K a month. Right. I'm gonna help you grow your brand to get to multiple six figures. Right. So like over time I started to tweak that right. When I really start to understood, understand like the process, the promise, and then like the problem that you're helping someone solve. Um, but for me a believer in, uh, one of my first high ticket clients, I got, it actually just came from like someone who had been following me for awhile. Um, like I also went through a phase in my business where I was creating a lot of great content, which I also see a lot of the coaches to do, but I never really like offered my services to anyone which seems really surprising. Right. Because most of the time people are like selling right. By went through a phase where I would just like, talk about my story, my journey.

Sabah (21:03):

I would have referenced what I was doing, but I never actually took the initiative to like sell my offer. So my first like high ticket client I got was a 4k client. And he had been following me all throughout my college, like days. Right. So like he saw the entire shebang, I got on a sales call with him and he was like, geez, I've been waiting for you to come out with something that I can buy and learn all this stuff that you're doing it. Right. So like over time it was just getting more clear in my messaging and my content. And from there, it just, it just really started to take off. And

Dylan (21:38):

That's a cool story there, man. Hey, you never know that that person you talked to two years ago could be a client next week.

Speaker 5 (21:49):

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Dylan (22:52):

Course, you know what the name of the podcast is very similar to a book name. So we'd love to kind of find the financials and kind of, you know, crossroads of marketing as well there. So, I mean, what kind of financial tip or principle could you share with the audience based off your expertise?

Sabah (23:05):

Yeah. So I would love to talk about when you get to a point in your business where you're scaling and you're building out a team, right? So also for me, like one thing that I've learned over time as I'm building and scaling my business is like, obviously you can't do every single thing on your own, right? So what I learned is when you get to a point in your business where you're generated cashflow and you want to start to hire out team members, when it comes to either like an executive assistant, a virtual assistant, um, a sales person, maybe another coach that's helping you with delivery. You want to have at least like six months cash in your bank before you start to hire, um, in terms of like your expenses when it comes to your personal and your business expenses. Right? Because for me, probably for like the first few years in my business, all I would focus on was marketing and sales and not necessarily like the backend.

Sabah (23:57):

Right? So when I realized that every single month I was doing marketing and sales, so I was generating cashflow. Right. But when you hire someone on, you have to train them, right. You have to teach them your business, your mission, your vision, right? So your focus, isn't just marketing and sales anymore. So some of those ones when you're hiring and when you're scaling your cash may dip a little bit. So you want to make sure you have cash in the bank. Right? So what I learned is like, if you have at least like give or take like six months, at least cash in the bank for your like personal and your business expenses, then you should be good to go when it comes to scaling and hiring out your team members.

Dylan (24:40):

That makes sense. And I would imagine it's pretty common across the boards where once you start adding more on, Hey, if you're having a positive trend, you may see a little dip, but that's probably completely normal because it's going to go back up because there's always a learning curve. You gotta do training, take your time out of somewhere else. So, but ultimately that person should be able to add on, you know, X percent in a positive manner, essentially, I would imagine.

Sabah (25:01):

And

Dylan (25:01):

How important is it, how important is it to find the right hire? I would say like, I'm kinda curious in the qualification process, cause I've heard, you know, it's, it's, it's more costly, you know, finding a bad, you know, employee versus a good one more or less. So I'm kind of curious on your thought process for

Sabah (25:16):

That. Yeah, for sure. So like it's, it's kind of the phrase, if I can think of it correctly, hire slow, um, and then like fire fast. Right. So I will take my time to find someone that aligns with my company's vision, our mission and my brand. Right. Because for me, like, and probably every other entrepreneur out there, like you've built your business, like from the ground up, like, it's your baby. Right. So the last thing that you want to do is bring in someone who's not aligned with what you're creating. Um, if you're new and you're just hiring like your first like team member, like take care of time. Um, for me, when I first had my first hire, it was my executive assistant. I probably took a month to find that person. Um, I probably went through like 10 to 15 applications to find that specific person like, oh, I'm never going to find this person.

Sabah (26:13):

Right. Because for me also, like, I'm, I'm that like perfectionist, I want to make sure that they check off like all the lists, um, as a business owner, you want to make sure they check off that list. Right. If there is something missing and if you feel in your gut, like, oh, I'm like, not sure they're like there. All right. Don't hire them. If they're all right, just don't do it. Um, it's, it's just not going to work out at the end. You want to really be like, oh my gosh, like there's no one better than them. And then that's you really want to do, do hire and bring them on it. But, um, yeah. Like if you do make a bad hire, just fire them, like, I'd say it don't take much longer than that. Right. Otherwise you're going to probably break your business a little bit more in different areas and regret it in the long run. So yeah, that's, that's kinda my tips when it comes to hiring a yeah.

Dylan (27:05):

And that's perfect. I mean, I think that's a huge aspect because executive assistants are one thing, but man finding someone who actually is, you know, thrilled to learn about your business and, you know, give above and beyond they're out there, but take your time, you know, don't push back. Cause that could be expensive. Now this has been, this has been fricking awesome. I love this super different. So how can we support you? What's the best way to get people to kind of get in contact with you?

Sabah (27:28):

Yeah, for sure. So I am probably the most active on my Instagram. So if you guys would go to Instagram and type in at the Saba Ali, so it's basically T H E S a B a H a L I, you guys can follow me there. Connect with me. If you click on my bio right there, there's a free training that you can go through that says how to make 50 K in 20 days organically. Right. So if you're like, Ooh, organic seems fun. And it seems interesting. Maybe I'm doing it a little bit. Right. And you guys want to check out how my business did 50 K in 20 days. So you guys can go check out that training a hundred percent completely free, and I'll give you a four week roadmap of how to do one of those organic promotion cycles that I, that I talked about. Oh yeah. Well,

Dylan (28:15):

I absolutely loved today. You're breaking records now the first organic on the podcast. Huge deal.

Sabah (28:24):

Thank you so much for having me. This is so fun. Like what I said right before you jumped on, I love doing interviews. Uh, and I'm so thankful that I got the opportunity to speak on one. That's just focuses on ads. And so thank you again, Dylan.

Dylan (28:38):

We'll have you back on and then maybe a couple months to kind of hear how it's been. Cause we love those followup episodes

Sabah (28:44):

For sure. Let's do it. Awesome. Well, thanks for jumping on.

Speaker 5 (28:54):

Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich add more ed podcast. If you're like me and listen to podcasts on the go, go ahead and subscribe on apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and rich dad, poor dad.com/podcast. And if you absolutely love the show, go ahead and leave a review and a comment share with a friend. If you do take a copy screenshot of it, email me zach@funneldash.com. Show me you left a review. I'll give you a free copy of the rich add or add book to learn more about the book. Go to rich ed, pour a.com to leave a review that a rich and poor at.com/review. Thanks again.

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