Dave:Hey this DaveWoodward and welcome again to our ClickFunnels Radio Podcast. I'm super, super excited today. I have one of my favorite people of all time on with me and that is Liz Benny, the Queen of Kapow! We are super excited to have her here. Some of you may not know Liz, but I met Liz last year at our first Funnel Hacking Live event and when you meet Liz, it is a massive amount of energy that flows into your life from her. It's just crazy. She's got so much going on all the time and just exudes enthusiasm and a love for life. I'm going to jump right in and have Liz start talking here as well, but first of all let me just thank Liz for coming on. She's our poster child for success within ClickFunnels, and wanted to make sure she was one of our very first people on our ClickFunnels Radio Podcast, so welcome Liz.
Liz:Hey, thank you so much! I'm super, super, super excited to be here.
Dave:Well thank you again for joining us. I know you're coming from out in the New Zealand area right now and so we appreciate your taking time.
Liz:You're very, very, very welcome. I hope everyone everyone that's listening to this right now will be able to understand my crazy New Zealand accent.
Dave:(laughs) Well, we love your accent. First of all, I've got to find out more about this whole Kapow! thing. Why are you known as the Queen of Kapow!? What is Kapow!?
Liz:[01:35] It's so funny, I actually literally do not know where that came from. It was just like it was something that started to come up in my life, and I was like, ah Kapow!! Kapow! was...like wow. You know, I just went out for a Kapow! coffee, or I went out and did something Kapow!. You know what, I remember the first time when I chose to put that as part of my Facebook ads [02:00], and I was like oh, that one really took off and then all of a sudden, it just became part of the way that my customer service team talked. They all say Kapow! too. I really don't know where it came from, but what I found is that it draws attention and it lifts people's energy up.
Dave:Well we love it as well. I think that's the key is, you have so much energy. I think for us at ClickFunnels as we work with you that's the part we just love working with you, is you always have a ton of energy and are able to go out and accomplish so many different things, but I know it wasn't always that way for you, Liz. I know when you first got started things weren't, I guess, as Kapow! as they are right. Would you say?
Liz:Oh my gosh, you're 100% correct there.
Dave:If you don't mind, Liz, give us a little background real quick here on what's happened over the last couple of year.
Liz:[02:52] Okay, cool. I used to be in a dead-end job. Actually I'm going to step back a little bit before that. The funny thing Dave is I have literally just used ClickFunnels to tell this whole story that I'm about to tell right now, I used the launch template in ClickFunnels to tell the exact story that I'm about to tell right now. A couple of years ago, like three years ago now I was trying to make the world happy. I started a project called Together Be Happy with a business partner is Arizona. We worked so hard. We had this whole idea of it going viral, and it was crazy. We were using WordPress and we really just wanted to make the world happy, but for some reason he's just turned a bit, I don't know, maybe he turned to the dark side of the force, and that's, you know, the whole Star Wars thing going on right now. He ripped me off. I sent him thousands of dollars to help pay his rent and he literally, I just never heard from him again.
I was really disheartened with the whole concept of business partnership, with the whole concept of everything business. I was really skint for cash [00:04:00] so I had to go get a job. I did and I was working in SEO. You can fall asleep now if you want.
Dave:(laughing)
Liz:[04:10] It was just not fun at all. I was doing SEO and I started doing some social media marketing for these companies as well and what I saw was that there was this ceiling above head. I knew in my heart I was an entrepreneur. I'd always, ever since I was a little kid, I had this entrepreneurial flare. Even when I was mowing the lawn as a kid, I would look underneath the mower and I would see all the grass clippings and go wow, what can I make with this? Maybe I can make a face mask or something. Just crazy things. When I was in this job I went, I just can't do this anymore. They wouldn't turn any heating on. I had to take my sleeping bag to work with me just to stay warm, and I eventually just got sicker and sicker and sicker, physically ill. From there started Jinga Social. I was like I have to go out on my own, so I started Jinga Social.
In the beginning of my career with Jinga Social, I struggled, dude. I could only just pay the rent. I'm actually putting together a rerun of my webinar right now, looking at the house that I used to live in, I had no bricks on the outside of it. When the wind came up, literally the wind would howl right through our house. I had to wear a hat in bed at nighttime because it was just that cold. It got to the point where, in my first year I made $25,000. That's not much. If you think about with bills and kids and rent and all that stuff, it was just crazy. If we fast forward a couple of years, I knew that I needed to, I wrote up on the wall, I need to find leverage in my business. I just have to find leverage.
About three weeks later, Russell's ad came into my news feed [00:06:00] and I was like right, cool, it's time to create a course. The crazy thing is, Russell told me to do exactly the thing that I didn't want to do, but because I'm a really good student and because I recognized that Russell had results that I didn't have, he had leverage in his business, he had absolutely Kapow! income and I had no leverage in Jinga Social. So, I created a course called Social Monkey Business and I've used ClickFunnels. I think I was pretty much the first beta tester, or I felt like I was the first beta tester.
Dave:You've done a great job with it. I think the neat thing for me is, you're one who never gives up. I know recently you just bought a new house. Coming from a home where the wind was blowing through, and I've seen pictures of what you've got going on now, life has changed quite a bit over the last couple of years for you, all for the positive.
Liz:[06:50] Definitely, and look, I just want to say to everyone listening to this, it wasn't easy. It really wasn't and I didn't give up because I couldn't. I made it my absolute must, I had to get into a new house. I had to because I wanted my family to feel safe and secure and warm and happy. My new house is just incredible. I just look at it, even to this day. I've only been in here for two months, three months, and I look at it every day and go oh my gosh, this is incredible. This is just wow. It blows me away.
Dave:You've done an amazing job, Liz, but I think the part I'm most excited about and hope that those people who are listening understand is you made a choice to never give up. As an entrepreneur, so many people think well, if I get a job I'm quitting. No, you get a job because that's what you had to do to pay the bills but you kept pushing forward and you kept going for your dreams, and you did everything you possibly could to make sure that dream never died. Sometimes just a little sidestep doesn't mean your quitting, and you did a great job of making sure you had the income that you needed to have to pay the bills but you kept pursing your dream and your passion even though [00:08:00] a guy a ripped you off and stole from you.
I think for the other entrepreneurs who are listening to this, I know that at times you kind of get beat up and being an entrepreneur can be a lonely world. That's why, again, we talk so much about mentors and coaching programs and all that kind of thing, just so you can be around other people like yourself.
Liz, tell me real quick, I know that as you started getting into it, it still wasn't something that just happened overnight. This has been an ongoing process now, as I've know you for the last year, year and a half, to see that the steps you've taken have been fantastic as far as a person from an outsider looking in. Tell me, what are some of the obstacles and the trials that you've gone through personally and the growth that has occurred, really even over the course of the last six months.
Liz:[08:48] Wow, what a brilliant question because I actually love that you've acknowledged that you're looking from the outside in. Sometimes I look at myself and I go oh my gosh, people look at me and I get this Liz Benny syndrome. They're like oh my gosh, you're Liz Benny. You're like incredible, and do you know what I say to my students, I say look I'm just like you, I've just made a decision to do what I've done. That's it. People seem to go oh yeah, but you're an extrovert. I hear a lot of excuses as to why they can't be successful. Do you want to know a secret, Dave?
Dave:Love to.
Liz:I'm not an extrovert. I am an omnivert, so I have days where I do posses extroversion. I can get up on stage and I can rock it out and I can have some fun, but I tell you what, the thing that I have to do on a daily basis is be alone for as much time as humanly possible. I'm not kidding you right now. I close the, the number of times where I literally, I close all of the curtains in my office, I close the door and I put earplugs in.
Dave:I totally understand. I am the same way. I enjoy that private time [00:10:00] more than anything. I get that. I totally get that.
Liz:[10:04] Yeah. It's so wonderful. It's actually nice to talk to a fellow omnivert. It's really important. I think people look at me sometimes and they go, yeah you're Liz Benny, wow. I remember being at the ClickFunnels event last year and having so many, I literally had to run to the bathroom, because I had so many people going Liz Benny, can I talk. I'm like, cool, cool, cool, cool. I've just got to go to the bathroom first, one second. What I've found is that in my journey to quote-unquote "success" and this rags to riches type thing is that I recognize a lot of who I used to be in who the people are as they're talking to me. What mean by that is people seem to talk as though this thing called success is something that they can't have, and I used to think that way. I used to think oh, wow, when I'm successful I'll be able to blah... I guess this journey to success it was really and truly just a decision and there have been so many times when I have been knocked down.
My very first webinar, I'd been working for three months. I had the membership area up, I'd be beating down the hatches and worked away with the beginning version of ClickFunnels to make sure that it was working. There were so many issues that I had to get through. Being in New Zealand, I can't have a Stripe account, so that was my number one issue. I had to then go get Infusion Soft. (sighs) Okay? That was a headache. Then I wanted to have all of my webinar emails going out relative to when the webinar was going to be, so I had to get Plus This to integrate with Infusion Soft to integrate with going to Webinar to integrate with ClickFunnels. Now we're talking four different things, and all I wanted to do in my heart was just get on a webinar and rock it out, but the behind the scenes is all the headaches that I had, trying to work out merchanting [00:12:00], trying to work at this. I paid 9.75% merchant fees for months.
Dave:Oh my gosh!
Liz:[12:10] I know. It's because I had to have an international merchant account and I was considered a risk. Then I paid 30% commissions out to a guy who ran Facebook traffic for me. I mean, oh my gosh, people go Liz, you've made so much money, and I'm yeah dude I have, but I had to learn some really hard lessons along the way as well.
Dave:But you know what Liz, that's the most important thing I think people forget is all of us go through that. We all take, again go back to the Funnel Hacking Live event where you couldn't even find enough time to even go to the bathroom because people wanted to spend time with you, but the reality is every single successful person has to go through the trials that you've gone through, because that's what makes you who you truly are. That's why you are Liz Benny.
Liz:[12:57] I agree 100%. I really, really do. I guess one last thing before we get to the next question is, I want to say to people, make sure that you've set yourself up with a solid why, like why you must be successful, because there will be times, I promise you right now if you're listening to this, I promise you will want to give. You will feel like a failure, you will feel alone, you will feel like no one understands you, but when you get what you actually want, it's just incredible. My why was I had to get my family safe. I had to succeed, because if I don't succeed I'm not being the full version of myself, and that for me is me not fulfilling my destiny and me fulfilling my destiny is really, really, really important. So there. Yeah.
Dave:I love it. I think that why, it has to become a must. I had a mentor years ago that basically said, Dave, you'll be successful as soon as you realize that your why is as strong as your desire to breathe. As soon as your can find that something that you absolutely have to do, just as much as you have to breathe, you'll find a way of making it work. Even if it's 9 point some odd [00:14:00] percent merchant fees. That's just how it works.
Let's get right in to some of the ClickFunnels stuff, I know that's what you, before we started recording here, one of the things you were talking about, you spent the last week just diving in to ClickFunnels because you're changing some things up. Tell me before you tell me that part, I want to tell them, what are the types of funnels you currently use in your business?
Liz:[14:22] What a brilliant question. I use the webinar funnel for my Social Monkey Business webinar and I use just some kind of opt-in funnels where I do the replay versions of those. I've got a high ticket coaching funnel there as well, so I've funnel hacked Russell. (laughing). I've got my coaching funnel there, I'm also using a launch funnel, so I've pretty much clicked every button in the back end of ClickFunnels.
Dave:I love it. Love it. Again, that's the whole idea, once you first get started using ClickFunnels it's new and you go through the learning curve, but after a while the idea as far as being able to Funnel Hack other people is really what makes ClickFunnels such an easy tool to use.
Right now, you spent the last week diving into ClickFunnels, and I know you've got a lot of cool, exciting things coming, so do you mind shedding some light on what is the future going to be for Liz Benny and what are some of the cool things you're doing with ClickFunnels?
Liz:[15:18] Oh Wow. Okay. As just a very quick side note, I've had a lot of people say to me, why are you using ClickFunnels? I actually just want to talk to everyone who is listening right now, because it's really fundamentally important that I say exactly what I'm about to say. There will be a lot of naysayers who try to sway you away from certain things because of their fundamental belief about what should be right. The one piece of advice that Russell gave me, not long ago he goes, Liz, do not listen to poor people. I went okay. People were saying, no, no, no, you need go and see that, put your members' area over on WordPress [00:16:00] and it's benefit this and that and this and that. I thought to myself hold up for a second. We're talking about the results if Russell Branson, multimillionaire, versus a person who doesn't really have two dimes to put together but is really, really, really, really, really set on what they want to do. I just kind of gave up listening to people who didn't have the results that I didn't want to achieve.
In terms of...
Dave:[crosstalk 00:16:25]
Liz:Sorry?
Dave:That is awesome advice. I think that is just brilliant advice because, especially in today's world, you get hit up by so many people who want to give you their opinion, and if they're not getting the results that you want don't listen to them. Love it.