JLD: Who’s ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here and I am fired up because we have an Audio Masterclass that’s going to help so many people. It is the Flawless Facebook Ads Formula. Let me tell you, Fire Nation, you used to be able to be not flawless back in the day and still get good results, but in today’s world, you need to be flawless with your ads formula and I have brought Ethan Sigmon to share that. And he is the man. He’s running my Facebook ads for years now.

Ethan’s the founder of Opesta which is a Facebook messenger automation software. And prior to Opesta, he built a seven-figure Face with ads agency when he has generated tens of millions in sales through Facebook ads and a lot of that has been through my Facebook ads that I’ve been running through Ethan for a very long time. So, Fire Nation, stick around. You’re going to learn this Flawless Facebook Ads Formula step by step after we thank our sponsor.

Ethan, say what’s up to Fire Nation and share something interesting about yourself that most people don’t know.

Ethan: What’s going on, Fire Nation? I’m so excited to be here. JLD, thanks for having me, man. Something interesting about myself that most people don’t know? All right, so, this is something that people that are very close to me know – my wife, my good friends, things like that – but typically not something I share a ton, but I am super, super left-brained – like 97 percent left-brained. And because of that, I think at least, I really, really enjoy strategy games. So, if I ever have spare time, which is very rarely, I love playing some strategy games and some nerdy games like that – but one of my guilty pleasures.

JLD: I’ve always loved the game Risk which I know has some strategy to it, but what’s like one of your favorite strategy games right now?

Ethan: Yeah, so, right now, it’s strange. I really had never gotten into it, but (A) I love risk, but another one that I have just recently gotten into is Magic the Gathering.

JLD: Ooh.

Ethan: So, it’s one of those really nerdy card games, but there’s a lot of strategy involved in it and I just got hooked in the last six months or so.

JLD: Well, I did not know that about you. And, Fire Nation, as I mentioned in the intro, I’ve known Ethan for a long time. He has been running my Facebook ads for a very long time – ever since we met in person at a Click Funnels event years and years ago. So, it has really been cool to see how he has evolved his business – how he recently launched Opesta which is a Facebook messenger automation software that I’m a user of and big supporter of because it’s just great and there are a lot of reasons why.

So, if you’ve ever thought, Fire Nation, that a Facebook messenger automation needs to be part of your game plan – and by the way, it should be – check out Opesta – O-P-E-S-T-A – because it’s a baller. So, Ethan, we’ve been friends for a long time. We’ve been working together for a long time. You’ve been running my Facebook ads for a long time. When and why did you start that Facebook ads agency?

Ethan: Yeah, and I think it’s awesome that I’m here talking to you about this because you’ve literally been there from the beginning.

JLD: Yeah.

Ethan: So, it was never really my intention to start a Facebook ads agency. We had kind of started running ads ourselves because we had the same problem that I think most business owners had. We created something amazing – put it out there – and we just couldn’t get as many customers as we wanted. And so, we heard about ads and Facebook ads, and so, we started running them – started seeing some good results – and we started kind of just documenting our journey.

And we weren’t doing anything special by any means, but we were doing some things that other people weren’t just because we wanted to test the newest things. And from that, we got a lot of people inquiring and reaching out and saying, hey, like could you do this for us? And so, we started doing it for some other people and ended up turning it into another business kind of by mistake because, like I said, I’m super left-brained and I discovered that I actually really loved looking at these stats inside of Facebook and seeing what things I could change and what difference they made and things like that.

And so, it kind of turned into this game almost for me. And that’s kind of where it all began.

JLD: Well, I do love gamifying things. I think it’s so important, Fire Nation, that for our self, for our customers, clients, fans – whatever there might be – when you can gamify things, you just make it so much more fun and more interesting and curiosity comes out and all of these things. But with everybody that starts something new, Ethan, there are problems. And the biggest problem for most people is getting clients. So, when you first got going back in the day, like how did you get those clients and who specifically were those clients you got?

Ethan: Yeah, absolutely. So, kind of like what I mentioned before – we started documenting what we were doing and we had a couple people reach out and we had never done this for anybody before, and for a long time, I told most of those people like, no, we don’t run ads for other people because, like I said, we had our own other business that we had been running the ads for and seeing good success with and it was growing. And so, it wasn’t really my intention to run ads for clients.

And then, something kind of happened in my other business where I had to end up buying out my partner. And so, I spent all this money to buy out my partner and then was really cash-drained. And so, I thought, all right, well, maybe I’ll run ads for one of these people that inquired. And so, we kind of ran ads for this one person here and we got that just by documenting what we had been doing. And they saw it and were interested, and then, after we ran ads for them, we got amazing results and I realized like, oh, man, maybe I can run ads effectively for other companies in other niches selling other products – things that – those are all fears that I had – like can I even get people results?

And so, we started to just reach out to people and I think you were one of the kind of original people that I reached out to. And what I did is essentially emailed some people that I thought would be awesome to work with and said, hey, you know, we’ve been seeing awesome success with ads – Instagram ads, Facebook ads, whatever they might be – we’d love to see if we could get results for you – no strings attached. We just want to kind of try and run something for you here for two weeks and see if it produces.

And some people said no and other people said yes. I think you emailed back and said, yeah, I’ll give it a shot. I’ll see what you can do. And we were able to produce some good results and then the rest is history.

JLD: So, Fire Nation, one of the biggest take-aways from what Ethan has done over his journey – what I would definitely suggest for you – is when you’re good at something, find people that you would love to work for and love to work with and like your dream clients – your dream partners – and reach out to them and say, listen, you shouldn’t trust me right now because I’ve given you no reason to trust me. I haven’t done anything for you yet. So, I want to develop that trust. I want to develop that knowing, that liking, that trusting. Give me the opportunity to do that. Let me do what my area of genius is. Let me just go forth with my zonifier for you for free and let me produce.

And if I do, then we can talk down the road what it would like for us to partner up on a more consistent basis – X, Y, Z. And then go out and just over-deliver for these people. And then guess what? You’re over-delivering for people who you want to work with – that you want to work for – and guess what? Those people have friends and peers and acquaintances that are just like them. And now, wow, John, like your most recent Facebook ads were great! How are you doing that? Well, it’s not me. It’s Ethan. And whatever it is that you’re doing – that’s how the process grows and spreads.

But the reality is, Ethan, it’s not just super simple. It’s not like snap your fingers, do a couple things for free, and then, all of sudden, you have a thriving business. I mean that is definitely the process to start the ball moving, but you’ve got problems as well. We all have problems growing our own businesses. So, what problems specifically did you face when you were growing your agency early on?

Ethan: If you don’t have problems, I don’t think you’re an entrepreneur, right? Like I said, this was kind of something that was accidental and not really my full intention to create, and because of that, I think I didn’t set up systems and processes the way that I really should have from the beginning.

And so, what started to happen is we started to produce results for these people that we were reaching out to like you and Andrew Moore, Yanik Silver – some bigger people – like my dream clients. And I didn’t even reach out to those people with the expectation of, okay, we’re going to run ads for them and produce results and then we’re going to try to get them to become a client. It was just like, hey, I want to do something for these guys because I admire them and I want to add value to them so that I can have a relationship with them.

And then, naturally, once a business owner sees results, their natural response is that they want to get more results. And so, it kind of just evolved naturally into that. And what happened was we started to get more clients than I could handle and we didn’t want to say no, but at the same time, I was at this point where it’s like, okay, we have to scale the agency. So, I need to hire another ads manager. I need somebody in here that’s also at the same knowledge and level and skill as me and can produce results because my reputation is on the line when we’re working with these clients.

And the big thing that I ran into there is if you want to hire somebody who is really, really good at ads, it’s typically very, very expensive. It’s like a couple hundred thousand dollars a year because they know that they could go out and do this on their own as a freelancer and make that if not more. And we just couldn’t afford that at the time. I was on a bootstrapped budget and we didn’t have clients paying us the amounts that we do now. And so, I had to figure out a way to hire somebody who had never really known much about Facebook ads and really teach them everything that they needed to know to be successful. And figuring out how to do that was one of the biggest problems I faced in my business.

JLD: So, Fire Nation, there’s a lot of problems that we’re going to face growing any business. Just look at them as learning blocks. Look at them as areas of improvement that we can just continue to up-level our game every single step of the way. And there’s a lot of different things that we could talk about now and really kind of lengthen this out, but the problem is that’s not really where I want to spend our time today because Ethan has done some incredible things over his career.

I mean his Facebook ads agency, Opesta – amazing things – the reason why I really wanted to bring him on to chat today with us was because of his Flawless Facebook Ads Formula. It was something that I’ve seen him do time and time again and get massive results and something that he now is ready and willing to share with the world. So, Fire Nation, we’re going to spend the rest of this master class talking about the Flawless Facebook Ads Formula. Ethan, first and foremost, what is it?

Ethan: Yeah, so, like I said, our biggest problem was figuring out how we could take somebody who had never really run Facebook ads before and hire them since that’s what we could afford but make it so that they’re producing solid, consistent results. And so, to do that, I had to come up with a formula and I had to really systematize everything that I was doing when we ran in and we were going into these accounts and producing these results.

And the hardest part about that is we needed to make it so that it would work in any niche for any product, for any service – whatever it might be – and that took tons and tons of hours. And the result of that was what I call the Flawless Facebook Ads Formula. And essentially what it is is it’s a formula but also a process and a method to apply that formula.

So, this formula is the exact formula that we use and have used to generate over $50 million dollars in revenue for ourselves and our clients over the course of the last four years from the ads that we’ve run. And it’s what has allowed me to hire these people, teach them this formula over a course of a couple hours, and then let them shadow somebody for a week, and then be able to give them $100,000.00 a month in ad spend to manage and they’re able to do that profitably by just simply applying this formula in every ad campaign that they set up.

JLD: Okay. So, Fire Nation, when we get back from the break, we’re going to be talking about what type of businesses this formula actually works with. We’re going to be talking about why Ethan thinks this formula is so gosh darn effective. What you need to do is stick around for that. But Ethan, give us a little bit of a teaser before we dive into the break about this ads formula. What is something that’s really going to wet Fire Nation’s appetite for this?

Ethan: What I’ll tell you is the difference between this and maybe a lot of other stuff that you’ve heard about Facebook ads is that this can be executed no matter what type of business you’re in and you’re always going to know what is working and what isn’t working. There’s going to be no guessing involved in setting up your ads and running those ads.

JLD: So, Fire Nation, you heard it from Ethan. We’re going to be right back when we thank our sponsor.

Ethan, we’re back, and I want to dive even more deeply into this Flawless Facebook Ads Formula. What types of businesses specifically will this formula work with?

Ethan: Absolutely. So, one of the things that I love about this formula is that it can be applied no matter what industry you’re in, no matter what type of business you have, no matter what you’re selling. Now, the one caveat that I will give is, if you’re looking to buy Facebook ads simply to maybe build brand awareness or things like that, this formula is probably a little bit more than you need. If you’re just trying to build brand awareness, this isn’t really what you’re looking for, but if you’re looking to try and generate leads, sales – actually do some direct marketing with your ads – this is the exact formula to apply to get results for those styles of campaigns.

JLD: So, my first question goes to why. Like why is this formula so effective? I mean you’ve been doing Facebook ads for years now. You’ve seen what works. You’ve seen what doesn’t work. You’ve seen things change over the years as Facebook has updated algorithms and emphasized different things and taken away other opportunities and added more X, Y, Z. Why does this formula specifically work so well and is so effective?

Ethan: The biggest reason that this formula is so effective and why I can so confidently say that it works no matter what your business is – what you’re selling – is (A) because we’ve applied it in almost single niche for every single type of business – every single type of product – so, I have that confidence, but (B) the way it’s structured is much different from the way that a lot of other gurus or people online that teaching about ads tell you to run and test and things.

The formula is literally structured in a way that you’re going to be testing specific things and we prioritize what has the largest impact and test those things first. And then you’re able to take those results and repeat that until you are fully optimized on your campaign. Now, the positive of this kind of method compared to other methods where maybe you’re just kind of testing everything at once is that you know exactly what type of difference every change that you make has on your profitability.

So, for example, one of the biggest things that frustrated me when I first started running ads is everything I read – one of the big techniques was a technique that I like to call the shotgun technique. It was essentially like create as many ads as you can with as many different creatives and as many different copy types and test as many different audiences and just maybe use software or something to create as many ad sets as you can so you’re testing everything and then see which ones work really well and turn the rest off and then just run the ones that work really well. That works, but the problem with that is you have no idea why Ad A and B worked really, really great –

JLD: Right.

Ethan: – and Ad Z didn’t, right? And so, ads always decay, and so, what’s going to happen is Ad A and B are going to work really great for you, and then a week later, they’re not going to work and you’re going to have no idea how to replicate the results that they got because you don’t know what it is in that ad that performed so much better than others. Where this formula, you’ll know exactly why that ad worked good. Maybe it was the image. Maybe it was the copy. Maybe it was the headline. And then you can just simply refresh that portion that worked really, really well for you and you’re off to the races again getting amazing results.

JLD: So, you are making this full formula available. I mean we can obviously only talk about so much in an audio-only podcast where there’s no visuals and graphics, etcetera, etcetera, but you’re making this full formula available. And so, where can someone who is listening right now and is like this is something I want to learn more about. I want to apply it to my business to see these results. Where can they go to find more?

Ethan: Yeah, absolutely. So, for everybody listening today, me and John chatted and I said, hey, let’s give something special to Fire Nation here. So, if you had over to eofire.com/ethan – E-T-H-A-N – you’re going to be able to hit a page where you can claim your Flawless Facebook Ads Formula. And what that includes is we’re actually going to ship you out a physical copy of the formula. So, you’ll get that, and then, you’re also going to get a USB drive with an hour and a half long training on it where we walk you through the exact formula.

Honestly, if you just look at the formula, it’s going to look like some hieroglyphics to you and it’s not going to make a lot of sense. And so, the training is really what’s going to walk it through for you and then you’ll be able to have that formula that you can put it by your desk or wherever you need to remind you to go through this process when you’re setting up ads. And we’re giving that out for free. All we ask is that you help cover the cost of shipping and handling. It’s the same whether you’re in Nigeria or in Vancouver or in Maine.

JLD: Yay! Yay!

Ethan: Your home state, right?

JLD: Yeah.

Ethan: And it’s just right around $4.00 there for you and we’ve sent these all around the world and we know that people are having amazing results applying this formula. It’s crazy seeing the messages that we’re getting from people about how they’ve reduced their cost per lead by over three times by just simply applying this formula and tons of stuff. So, I just want to hook everybody up in Fire Nation here with that free gift.

JLD: I mean, Fire Nation, what if this just helped you convert one more sale? One more customer? One more client? How many hundreds of thousands of dollars would that be? That would just be for one conversion, but of course, this is going to be a complete overhaul of how you approach your Facebook ads strategy which could just have unbelievable great long-term effects for you all for $4.00. And what are you getting for that $4.00? Not like some virtual e-book you’re going to download, no. You’re getting a physical copy of the formula, and believe me, Ethan goes all out on these things.

I did a campaign with him about a year ago and people are still emailing me about the newspaper that he sent out and some other things. Like this guy does things right. So, you’re going to get a physical copy of the formula plus a USB drive with a 90-minute training on that all for $4.00 no matter where you are in the world – eofire.comethan – eofire.comethan – E-T-H-A-N – go there. Make it happen. Check it out.

And Ethan, let’s kind of even wet Fire Nation’s appetite even a little bit more. You shared a lot about this Flawless Facebook Ads Formula, but reveal something that they’re going to learn in this training that’s super valuable for anybody listening right now.

Ethan: Yeah. So, one of the biggest things that I’ve found makes all the difference when you’re running your Facebook ads is how you’re structuring your campaigns because the truth is, when you’re really running an effective ad, you want to be testing one variable at a time so you know what difference that variable makes. And so, I’m going to give you the exact method on how you can make sure you’re always testing one variable at a time, but in addition to that, I’m going to show you what we found over spending hundreds of millions of dollars in ad spend.

We’ve managed so much money in ad spend. I’m going to prioritize what variables we have found statistically make the biggest difference or percentage in change through – I think we have 20-plus variables listed there for you – so that you know, hey, all right, before I even start looking at the manual bidding, I should be trying to test my objectives first or my audience first because that has a much bigger impact than this other variable here. And so, that’s just one tiny thing.

And John, I just want to add, I know a lot of people listening are maybe thinking, well, I’ve never run a Facebook ad before –

JLD: Right.

Ethan: – and I know I should do it. What you just said literally sounds like Greek to me. I have no idea what’s going on. Don’t be scared. Like I said, this is the formula that we used and we would literally use it to hire people who had never run Facebook ads before as well and give them this same training. And after they came out of this training, they had a very solid foundation that they could go into the ads manager and start to apply these things and use them. So, if you are somebody who has never run a Facebook ad before or are nervous to, this is going to the best $4.00 you ever spend on shipping in your life.

JLD: I love this. So, Fire Nation, I’ve told you this before. I’m going to tell you again. You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with and you’ve been hanging out with ES and JLD today. So, please keep up the heat. And Ethan, just give us one final theme that we really can walk away from our entire chat today. Like if we can take away anything from the conversation that we’ve had today being a listener – being Fire Nation – what would you want us to make sure that we remember?

Ethan: The biggest thing I would want everybody to walk away hopefully remembering is not even to do with Facebook ads but just to do with business and entrepreneurship in general. And that’s that everything you do should have a system and a process. Like I said, that was the biggest problem that I ran into when we tried to scale our ads agency. So, I didn’t have a system or a process to train more people to be able to have the knowledge that I had and it led to a very big bottleneck and a lot of pain in my business.

And I think the same is true for anything you do in your business – whether that’s Facebook ads – whether that’s content creation – whether it’s product optimization – whatever it might be. And so, if you feel like you need a system or want a system and a process in your business around Facebook ads, what we talked about today is definitely the thing that you need to check out and go grab.

JLD: Fire Nation, the call to action today is skip one trip to Starbucks, dig in your pocket, pull out $4.00, and get the physical copy of this formula – this Flawless Facebook Ads Formula. It’s going to come with a USB drive with a 90-minute training. It’s going to be everything that you need all for $4.00 no matter where you are in the world. Your call to action – eofire.comethan – E-T-H-A-N – eofire.comethan. Don’t hesitate. Take action. Learn this content. Invest in this for somebody on your team – an assistant that you want to learn this content. Make it happen.

Ethan, thank you, brother, for sharing your truth with Fire Nation today. For that, we solute you and we will catch you on the flip side.

Ethan: Catch you later.