Facebook Advertising, Entrepreneurialism & Managing Stress with Rick Mulready

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• Becoming an entrepreneur often takes work. If you’ve fallen into your own business and need help owning your new entrepreneurial endeavor, that’s totally ok.
• A coach is a brilliant investment to help you work on you as an entrepreneur.
• The imposter syndrome is real for all entrepreneurs. “Who the heck am I to do this?” is a common question and a barrier to break through. Flip the script on this and ask, “Who am I not to do this?”
• Facebook Ads are still the most cost effective and efficient social media advertising platform available today.
• A successful Facebook Ad requires you to know your audience, to understand your offer, to create the right copy, to choose the right image, and more. You need to know the fundamentals of marketing!
• If you’re just starting out in Facebook Advertising, start with just $10 a day for 7 days. Test it, see how it works. Then run another one for $10 a day for 7 days. Compare those results. Keep testing until you find something that connects, then put money into it.
• You need to remember the full funnel tied to your ad. Remember to think all the way through your funnel to ensure the messaging remains consistent throughout. This consistency is what is necessary if you want higher conversion rates.
• When you’re going for a conversion-based campaign, the algorithm wants you to go after a larger reach.
• You need to allow your ads to run for at least 3 days for the algorithm to figure out your ad. This is part of the “learning phase.”
• To be in this space, showing up on camera is important. And being consistent is important.
• Anxiety is a real thing when showing up on camera, and even when running your own business. It takes a lot of work to keep it under control!
• Remember that what you’re doing is offer help to those who need it. Use that focus to put your ego in check and keep perfectionism at bay.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

Paid advertising is an art. You don’t need to start out with a lot of money, but you do need to test it and commit to it. Those who commit are the ones who succeed. And remember that commitment doesn’t require perfection. All you need to do is commit and follow through on a consistent basis. Get your stuff out there!

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• A bit about Rick’s path to online advertising – 06:40
• The accidental entrepreneur – 14:23
• Why Facebook Ads is the right thing right now for Rick – 18:37
• What most people get wrong in Facebook Ads – 21:16
• You can advertise on Facebook for very little money up front – 25:37
• The best part of Facebook Ads – 30:00
• Facebook Ads are part of a larger process – 35:13
• Facebook’s AI: “The Learning Phase” – 41:32
• Perfectionism, life on camera, and more – 45:15
• Getting personal is hard, but worthwhile – 55:16

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODE

• RickMulready.com
• The Art of Paid Traffic podcast
• Rick’s Facebook page
• Rick’s Instagram page

Transcript below

Hello, and a super-warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. I hope wherever you are in the world, you are having a great week. Actually, saying that has reminded me ... Because, this week, I was talking to one of my listeners on Facebook Messenger, and she was asking me whether I knew what kind of split I had between the UK and America.

And I wasn't sure, because actually I wasn't sure where I could find that kind of information. And she really kindly put me in touch with a friend of hers that knows a bit about podcasts, and also was able to give me a link to somewhere where I could see the kind of breakdown I had. It was so cool, I have to say, to look at it and see that I'd got people listening in America, Australia, obviously here in the UK. It's just so nice to think that you put some content together, you work really hard on it, and you want people to hopefully take in that content, appreciate that content, and that it benefits them in some way, that they would listen.

So, I am so very grateful that you have decided to pick up this podcast and listen to it. I really do appreciate you being here, and I really hope that you have been enjoying the interviews that we've been doing so far. So far this month, we have had Pat Flynn and Amy Porterfield, which, as I said last week, are like kind of dreams come true for me. And it's funny, I did an Instagram post in the week, where I said that success was like buses, that you get nothing for ages, and then everything comes along at once. I am not complaining, I am just blown away recently about some of the amazing things that have happened.

One of those things is that I've been invited to do a TEDx talk, which is amazing, because this has been on my vision board since I had a vision board, actually, along with lots of other places that I want to speak at. But a TEDx talk was always near the top of the list, because for me it has real experts. I find TED talks fascinating, I find the people that do them really polished, and the fact that I've been allowed to do one is crazy.

Now, I am terrified, by the way, and I'm trying to put together the presentation for it. I am panicking and having self-doubt, and impostor syndrome at every single slide that I am doing, because it's something huge, and I want to make it really good, and I want people to love it. Also, I know that doing a TEDx talk is an amazing opportunity, but I look at that for every opportunity I get. I think to myself that I want to be the best I can possibly be, or do the best I can possibly do at every single thing that I'm asked to do or invited to do. So, even though TEDx is really high on my list, I think I would care just as much about the smaller things as well. But I do really want this one to be really good.

Anyway, on with today's show. So, it's still September, which means I still have another interview for you, and this one is a really cool one. They're all cool. I wouldn't bring you anybody that wasn't cool, obviously. But I loved doing this one, and in fact the interview itself was done really late at night, because again, I think I mentioned before, lots of people I'm interviewing are in the States. So, it was about 10 o'clock at night by the time I started the interview, and I got off, and I was buzzing, because, you know when you do something, you think, "I loved that. Every single minute of it, I thought was brilliant." And I'm really hoping that you're going to think the same.

So, this week, I have the pleasure of introducing the amazing Rick Mulready. Now, I found Rick through Amy Porterfield some years ago, as he is Amy's go-to Facebook ad person. Now, Rick has been in the online marketing space for 18 years, and is an industry-leading authority on how to simplify Facebook ads, and that's one of the things I love about Rick. He has this amazing ability to take something that could be quite technical and complicated, and make it so simple and straightforward, and give you the ability to walk through it, step by step. He also is the host of a popular podcast called The Art of Paid Traffic, and they've just gone past their 200th episode.

So, Rick really is an amazing font of knowledge about Facebook ads. In this podcast, we talk about how Rick got to do what he does. We had a chat about what he loves about Facebook ads, and quite frankly him and I were really geeking out about numbers, and how cool Facebook ads are, and what they can do for your business. And then we had a really interesting chat about him and how he deals with not only anxiety, but perfectionism, when we're in a business where you put yourself on camera, and effectively leave yourself open to be criticised and judged. I really hope you enjoy this episode. I thought it was a great one.

I won't wait any further, and I will introduce the awesome Rick Mulready. Rick, I am so happy to welcome you here on this episode of the podcast. I am so excited to have you with me. Welcome.

I'm honoured to be here, thanks so much for having me, Teresa.

I have been really lucky that I've seen Rick talk. I've followed him for quite some time, and I remember seeing you, or hearing you, more likely, on Amy's podcast, and thinking to myself, and I was driving ... It was one of those moments when you're like, "I haven't got a pen, I need to remember this guy's name." Because you were just talking so much sense, on a subject that, A. I haven't really found anybody who was really good at it, or said it in a way that we could understand. So, yeah, I found you really quickly, and I followed you, and I've loved your stuff ever since.

Thank you. I really appreciate that.

No worries, but, for my audience, if they haven't come across you before, and I have mentioned you ... In fact, really quickly, I did a talk at Converted in Minneapolis last year for lead pages, and you were in my presentation. Because-

That's right too, you mentioned that to me. Thank you- [crosstalk 00:06:36]

Yeah, remember that. Yeah, I name-dropped you there, and I know I've name-dropped you before, but if my audience haven't heard of you, Rick, tell me a bit about how you got into doing what you're doing, and how you got here today.

A bit about Rick’s path to online advertising

Yeah, so, I come from a corporate background. I was in online advertising for ... How long was I doing that? For 12-and-a-half years, before I left the corporate world. So, I started back in, I like to call them the Wild West days of the Internet, where ... I started back at AOL, on the East Coast of the States here, and I was in the online ... the advertising [inaudible 00:07:12] operations team. So I started out as somebody who implemented all the ad deals that the sales team were selling, and then, pretty quickly, I was managing the team. So, I was one of the managers for a couple of people, and then it progressed from there, and then before I knew it, it was me and one other guy who were managing about 40 people, total.

And so that was my first sort of introduction, if you will, to online advertising. And this is still back in the days where, when I first started, I remember, they were still sending out those discs, the AOL discs, with the annoying connection sound and everything like that.

And so, this was a lot, too, before there was any kind of regulation or standardisation of advertising, so I just got to see things really early on. Also, way back when things were just measured by click-through rate. That was it. It was just like, that was the measure of success. Like, "How was the click-through rate?" I was at AOL for five years, then I moved out here to the West Coast, I worked for Yahoo for a couple of years, worked for Funny or Die for about a year. And so, a lot of different companies in the online advertising space, over about a 12-and-a-half-year period. And so, starting in 2000, and here we are in almost the fall of 2018, I've been doing this now for almost 19 years-

Wow.

... in the online advertising space. And, obviously, I love this space, the whole world of online advertising and marketing is just ... I love it, and I can talk about it for days. I've just seen so many different iterations of it, and also worked in so many different parts of it, from back in AOL, which was just like standard banner ads, and things got a little bit crazy when we were doing animated gifs, back then.

You're like, "I'm changing the world here."

Exactly, and then when I was at Yahoo years later, then it was more like, we called it rich media, where there were interstitials, or things moving around the screen, and all that type of stuff, and search. Then, when I was at Funny or Die, this was a branded entertainment. So, these are big production videos that we partner with brands on, and stuff like that. And I did contextual advertising, another company.

So I've just kind of seen the whole gamut of online advertising and online marketing, and what works for big brands and what the accessibility, I guess you'd call it, for small businesses. And that was really the reason, or that was a reason why I got into Facebook ads, was because I was at these big corporate jobs and companies, working with and for some of the biggest brands in the world, but I was also, number one, I was starting to get an itch of, "I want to do something else. I want to do my own thing, I want to get out of corporate."

I didn't really know what that was, but, this was around 2010 or so, I was seeing what was happening on Facebook, and I was seeing the ability for small businesses to market themselves, on a platform that wasn't costing them a lot of money. And so, because of my advertising background, I gravitated towards the advertising side of Facebook, and I dove in. In 2010, I said, "You know what? I need to figure out something. I want to leave the corporate world. I don't know what that looks like, I don't even know what ... I've never been an entrepreneur, I've never ... running my own business or anything like that."

But, I knew I had this itch to do something like that, and so I said, "You know what? This is what is right in front of me right now, from a Facebook ads perspective. Let's try it out." And so I dove in, started teaching myself, started running some campaigns. I ran some campaigns for friends. And so, long story short is, I left the corporate world in 2012, in the fall of 2012, fumbled around for 15 months, had no idea what I was doing, and then finally got some coaching, got some direction, in January 2014, and started the business that I have now. We've been growing over the past ... almost five years now, because we're at the end of August here, so a little over four-and-a-half years, and things have been awesome. It's been an amazing ride.

That's so cool, and actually one thing that I find really interesting, because your story is fairly similar, in a sense, that I came from corporate as well. And in fact I was listening this morning to ... I don't know whether you know Carrie Green, she's Female Entrepreneur Association.

Yeah.

I was just listening to her audiobook, and she was saying, "From a really young age, I'd started my own business." And then I was listening to something from James Wedmore the other week as well, and he was saying the same, and I was thinking, "Do you know what, I never did." I don't know about you, but I never had the inclination at all for a long time.

Yeah, I was just talking about this this morning with somebody else. Like, I don't come from an entrepreneurial family.

No.

My dad was an auto mechanic, my mom, when I was growing up, was a paediatric nurse, and then later a children's librarian, so I don't come from that entrepreneurial background. However, when I was a young kid, I was best friends with a kid in my neighbourhood who did have that entrepreneurial kind of ... He wanted to do his own thing, and so we used to do ... I recently told my wife this, she was like, "That's the weirdest thing ever." We used to dig up dirt, and sift it, in like wire mesh.

Okay.

And we used to put in little Ziploc bags, and take it around to homes in the neighbourhood, and sell what we called "sifted sand". And we would position it like, this was great to grow plants in, you know?

Brilliant.

We always got the pity dime from people, but they were just throwing it in the trash right after that.

And it didn't take off, Rick? I don't understand.

It did not take off. No, we did not end up selling that business or anything like that.

It's really weird.

We would hold magic shows at his house, and we would invite neighbourhood kids. They would have to pay to come, or I remember we would do Halloween haunted houses in his basement, invite neighbourhood kids. But, even though I was part of these little entrepreneurial ventures that we were doing, it wasn't driven from me. These were driven from him. You know, as I think back on it now, it's like, yeah, that could play a little bit, like, that's what it's like to do our own thing. But these were definitely coming from him, and he's since gone on to ... He's started his own business and done really, really well for himself. But, for the most part, the entrepreneurial stuff, I don't come from that type of ... My family was not that, from the entrepreneurial side.

So, I don't know, I think it's just more of, I've always been one to want to do my own thing. I grew up in New Hampshire, went away to school in Virginia, so I went away 500 miles from home-

Oh my goodness.

And then, lived in Virginia for 15 years, then moved out to the West Coast and all my family is in New Hampshire. And so, I've always been that adventurous, want to do my own thing, but, at the same time, I just don't really know where it came from. I just want to do my own thing, want to create and work on things that I want to work on, and serve people in a greater way.

The accidental entrepreneur

Yeah, that's awesome. I was thinking about calling myself like, "The Accidental Entrepreneur" or something, because, and I don't know about you, for a long time I couldn't even call it myself. To see myself as an entrepreneur, it wasn't even a word that entered my head, because I was just doing what I guess I'd always done, but doing it for myself, rather than doing it for a business. So, I think it's really interesting, and actually you and I had a conversation when we did meet in San Diego, about coaching. So, it's interesting that you said you got your coach, because I actually asked you a question about, "Would you pay for a coach? Do you think you should have a coach?" and you said to me, "Everyone should have a coach."

100%, yeah.

And actually, I'm not blaming you for this, Rick, but I'm just saying that I now have a coach, who I love, and is amazing, and yeah, and she's awesome, and I get it, and I see it. But, actually, one thing that I think I love having about a coach, and maybe this has helped you as well, is that I needed the help on me and working on me as an entrepreneur, rather than ... I didn't need the help doing marketing or social media, because that's what I knew how to do. You know, I was the technician in the business, whereas I needed the help stepping out into being that entrepreneur person.

Totally, and one of the first few things I'll never forget. So, my first coach was James Wedmore, and I'll never forget-

That's not bad for a first coach, is it?

Yeah, he's pretty good. I shouldn't say that, he's the second coach. He was the one, though, that really helped me take things off, or helped me to get things off and running quickly, in January 2014. But I remember sitting down with him the first time, and he said, "Well, why do you think you've not made any money since you left the corporate world?" That was 15 months, you know. In almost a year and a half, I really hadn't made hardly any money, and I said, "I don't know."

Like, I'm just sitting here, and I'm just trying to think about this, and James is very good at not telling you the answer, but leading you to the answer, and you figure it out yourself. And like, "Why haven't I made any money? I don't know. Oh,...