TCC Podcast #88: What you need to know to use Facebook effectively with Rick Mulready

Our guest for the 88th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Facebook Ads Expert Rick Mulready. Kira and Rob sat down with Rick to ask him about his story and how he became the go-to-guy for everything related to Facebook marketing. Here are a few of the things they talked about: •  the mistake he made when he started his business that held him back •  how he structures his days to get more done •  how he’s grown his team to handle the parts of the business he can’t handle •  the programs and products he’s built to sustain his business •  the Insta-story opportunity that’s open for the taking •  how to get started with Facebook (the first step will sound familiar) •  the kinds of ads that are working today •  what you can do with FB ads to increase engagement and make connections •  the images you should be using in your Facebook ads •  how we can use FB ads to market our own (copywriting) businesses and stand out •  what has changed with launches and how Rick is thinking differently about them •  how you can get started with FB ads even if you have no experience •  where you should do Facebook Lives (on the page or in a group) •  how Rick connects with authority figures (and how we can do the same thing) There’s a ton of great information here for anyone who wants to start advertising on Facebook as well as for any copywriter who works with clients who use Facebook to promote their products and services. You won’t want to miss it. To hear the entire interview, click the play button below, or for a full transcript, scroll down. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: RickMulready.com The Art of Paid Traffic The FB Ads Diagnosis Check List (mention troubleshoot) Ashlyn Carter Amy Porterfield Chanti Zak Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Kira:What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob:You’re invited to join the club for episode 88, as we chat with paid traffic expert Rick Mulready, about Facebook advertising and what copywriters need to learn about making it work; how he’s built his own business empire; what’s working and what’s not working in launches today; and the importance of teaming up with the right people to move your business forward. Kira:Welcome, Rick. Rob: Hey, Rick! Rick:I am so honored to be here; thanks for having me on! Rob:We’re excited. Kira:Yeah! Rick:You guys just said ‘episode number 88’; is that what you guys said? Rob:Yeah. Kira: Yeah!Laughs. Rob:88. Can you believe it? Rick: Laughs. No! I was like, I feel like you guys just started this, like it’s...I mean, I know it’s been going amazingly well, but are you doing like four a day or something like that? Rob:Laughs. Kira:Laughs. We’re pulling one everyday; yeah... Rick:Laughs. Congratulations! Amazing. Kira: Yeah! Thank you! And I know, Rick, we’ve worked together in the past, and we’ve talking about bringing you on the show for a while, so now it’s finally happening, and a good place to start is with your story, especially for people who aren’t familiar with you yet. How did you end up running your empire? Rick:Laughs. You use that word; I just laugh at that word. Kira:It’s an awful word! Laughs. Rick:And just for everybody listening, before we got going here, Kira said, ‘Is there anything that you don’t want to talk about,’ and I said, ‘Nah, I’m an open book,’ and the thing of it is, is Kira knows a lotabout me, because we’ve worked together with writing copy. And so I said that, and I’m like, ‘Ooh, wait; Kira knows a lotabout me’, and I’m saying nothing’s off the table here. So yeah. It’s been a very cool journey. I mean, when I think about it, it’s only been really not only four and a half years. It was January of 2015 when the business truly got started. I say ‘truly’ because I left the corporate world in the fall of 2012, and I fumbled around for fifteen months. I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m going to be an online entrepreneur,’ and I had no idea really, truly, what that meant. And, so, I left the corporate world, and I had money saved, and thought I was going to, you know, create this amazing business doing Facebook ads, and by the end of 2013, I was quickly running out of money because I really didn’t know how to create my own business, and then, hired a coach, got support, got community, in January of 2014, and that’s when things really started to take off for me and get some structure in the business, really. And, for the past four years, a little over four years now, I’m super, super grateful. I’ve seen hockey-stick growth; we’ve been growing really quickly over the past years, and this year’s looking no different. And, I’m really excited about it. I think the lack of clarity of what I truly wanted to focus on in that first year where, after I left the corporate world, really hurt me. And it was that January of 2014 when I said, in working with a coach at that time, it was, “What am I truly going to—what am I going to sellhere? What am I going to be known for,” if you will. And I had that sort of imposter syndrome at that time. I was like, “Who am I to be teaching Facebook ads? I mean, at the time, I had spent twelve, almost thirteen years in the corporate world of online advertising, but, I was like, “Yeah. Who am I to be teaching Facebook ads, there’s all the other amazing people out there.” And when I kind of got over all and just embraced it, and went for it at that point, that’s when things, you know, really started to get some momentum at that time. Rob:So Rick, you mentioned that when you started your business, you sort of new what you wanted to do but you had no idea about runninga business. Rick:Yeah. Rob:Like, will you talk a little bit about that, because I think that’s something that a lot of copywriters run into in their businesses. Like, we’ve got this technical skill that we have, and we’re pretty good at it, or we think we’re good at it, so, why not do that for a living? But, there’s all this other stuff that we don’t know in order to be successful. Rick:Yeah, exactly. So I had decided about two and a half years before I had actually left the corporate world what I was going to do, and I just said you know what? I wasn’t doing Facebook ads in the corporate world, but I was working with some of the biggest brands in the world on their campaigns, but also I was working with AOL, working for Yahoo, working for Funny or Die. So I was working forsome of the big brands in the world, while I was there working with other huge brands. So obviously, I understood the world of online business, but I wasn’t doing Facebook ads at that point. So, when I was like, “You know what? I want to do something different. I want to create my own schedule,” you know the whole cliché, like: “I want to do my own thing, I want to create my own schedule, I want to serve the people that I want to serve...” I decided, okay, you know at that point, I saw what was going on with Facebook, and because I have that online marketing background, I naturally gravitated towards the advertising side of Facebook, so that’s when I dove in and everything and I started teaching myself and started running Facebook ads, and everything like that. And I was like, “Yeah, I can do this,” but then, when I left the corporate world, it was like, “Holy cow.” You lose the structure; you lose the “security”, which is a falsehood; like, okay. I know I can do this. I know howto do this, meaning Facebook ads; I know the skill, but then, it’s like, how do I get clients? I do I create offers that they want to purchase? All that type of stuff. That’s the stuff that i didn’t have a grasp on. And I’d only known it from the corporate side, and with these big brands and with what they were doing, but then, you know, breaking it down to what I could be doing to create my own business, I was like very lost. And for it was that fifteen months or so, after I’d left where I—like I said, I fumbled around and just really tried to find my way. And I started out with Facebook outs during those fifteen months; then I kind of stepped back, and was like, “Well, maybe I’ll do allof social media; and teach allof social media.” And then, it wasn’t like I mentioned before, until I went sort of back in and focused on Facebook ads, and started to say, “Okay, you know what? This is how I’m going to leverage Facebook ads in order to build my business, and get really focused on what I can offer people and how I can help them. Kira:You mentioned “structure” a couple of times, that you know, the change in January 2014, the coaching and the structure and maybe a couple other ingredients. What did that structure look like early on, and why was that so helpful for you? Rick: First of all, I remember I left the corporate world on a Friday, and I remember getting up on that Monday morning, not knowing what to do with myself! I was like, wait a minute: “I normally go into an office right now, and I don’t have to do that right now!” So I was lost. And, it was the Fall, so we’re getting into the Holiday time at that. So, it didn’t really hit me honestly until January. So it took me a few months honestly for things, because the holidays had died down at that point, and I was kind of getting into the reality of like, “Okay, I need to create structure for myself, in order to build this business,” but again, because I didn’t know what I was doing with building this business, the structure was all over the place. And, I mean, I just sort of dove in, and I started to, you know...when I was working, I would try to structure my day when I’m most fresh.