Hi there, my name is Evelyn Weiss. I’ve spent over 1.5 million on Facebook and Instagram ads to grow my online business to over 8 million in sales. And in this blog post, I want to demonstrate how your mindset is sabotaging your ads success. So if you’ve not been able to make ads work for your business, this video is for you.

I’m going to walk you through a post that one of my members recently made in my community, because it very beautifully illustrates the mindset shifts needed to finally make ads work for you. So I’m going to read through his post, and I’m going to add my commentary—because I think nobody can explain it better than a person who’s just been through that mind shift. And I just want to add all of those years of experience that I have running ads myself, making them work for myself, and helping thousands of people with their Facebook and Instagram ads.

Let me introduce you to Andre.

He’s one of my amazing members from Grow with Evelyn. He has this beautiful community where he helps people to take action on their goals, and it’s rooted in his story.

He lost a $250,000 grant due to his black box of inaction. And he basically learned to take action on anything, and he’s helping others on this journey as well.

Check out Andre’s community: https://www.skool.com/actionequalstoday/about

He’s really pouring all of his heart and soul into this, and I can highly recommend checking it out so you can see the type of things that he’s helping people with.

Andre started to run ads for his community, and this was the first post where he was like,

“First two signups through Facebook and Instagram ads.

TL;DR—I got my first two signups through ads while sleeping.” This was a major breakthrough that helped him to overcome limiting beliefs about advertising.”

The win was that he started to run his ads—and he got his first two sales while he was sleeping. And of course, he was super excited about this, but he had to overcome quite a few limiting beliefs to even get to the point of running the ads in the way that he does.

So, his old belief was that ads are only effective when you already have product-to-market fit. And his new belief is: used strategically, ads can actually help you find product-to-market fit faster. And so he also says, “Not that I haven’t found it yet—and it’s still a progress,” right? But he has definitely made significant progress towards that goal by getting his first two sales towards cold—from cold traffic—directly.

What does he refer to here? It’s something that I’ve been teaching for years and keep repeating like a broken record. Most people think that advertising and running ads is: you put a dollar in and you get X amount of dollars out. Dollar in, five dollars out. You have a 5x return on your investment, and this is how ads should work.

The truth is that there is a more nuanced approach to running ads, where you can leverage them strategically at different points in your business to get to certain outcomes. At the very beginning of your business, you would want to use ads to validate your offer and test messaging against ice cold traffic to be able to mold your offer faster and get to a place of product-to-market fit faster.

Because when we are truthful, then a lot of you watching right now will have to admit that—even if you’re selling your offer—you don’t have true product-to-market fit.

I help with offers, ads, funnels and emails.

Since 2020, I’ve generated $8M+ with 30k paid members, won the Two Comma Club Award, ranked 4th in Hormozi’s 100 challenge ($247k in 90 days), and secured 2nd place in the first-ever Skool™ Games with my partner Jessa ($81k MRR in 30 days). Known as the Facebook™ and Instagram™ ads expert with 1.5M€ invested, I’m excited to help you with these challenges. Check out my YouTube to learn for free, join my Skool™ waitlist, or apply for my mastermind.

I help with offers, ads, funnels and emails.

Since 2020, I’ve generated $8M+ with 30k paid members, won the Two Comma Club Award, ranked 4th in Hormozi’s 100 challenge ($247k in 90 days), and secured 2nd place in the first-ever Skool Games with my partner Jessa ($81k MRR in 30 days). Known as the Facebook™ and Instagram™ ads expert with 1.5M€ invested, I’m excited to help you with these challenges. Check out my YouTube to learn for free, join my skool waitlist, or apply for my mastermind.

What do I mean by that? True product-to-market fit means that people are buying the product—and just the product, right? So they’re not buying you, for example.

What do I mean by that, especially in the space of online education, courses, digital products, memberships, coaching programs—but also with other physical products like supplements, clothes, etc.? A lot of people are buying because they’re influenced to buy by the founder. There is a real-life or parasocial relationship that is like a lubricant into the purchase. Or the person selling it has built up solid sales systems to sell the offer. And sometimes it’s also very intense sales systems.

And sometimes, even when they’re running ads or when they are marketing in this way, it’s claims about the product that fake product-to-market fit—because of the things that are promised. But it’s actually false advertising, right? Because the product does not live up to the expectations that are set through the way it’s marketed.

So a lot of lifestyle marketing kind of falls for me into this bucket. A lot of income-claim marketing falls to me in this bucket. Because when you are selling the income that you made from a product, it actually is selling that income—versus not the product, not the path to that outcome, if that makes sense.

Most people who are not scaling have not found product-to-market fit. When you find product-to-market fit, it starts to look something like this, right? Because then you can scale it up towards cold traffic, and people are really buying the product. And so at this stage in the journey, your main goal is to find that product-to-market fit.

Later on, once you have found product-market fit, what your ads can do is they can lift the sales—right?

Right. And they can help you build brands in reverse organic. If you’re interested in this concept, we have a video about that. It’s the content light that keeps 99% stuck. So this is the reverse organic in which ads will grow your brand.

But then there also needs to be another way that the brand needs to be built beyond the ads so you can actually lift that.

So when you truly want to scale with ads, you need to have that brand lift.

And the brand lift will come from the good customer experience that’s there. It will come from a founder being present and building those parasocial relationships, etc.

Then your brand can lift your ad campaigns while your ad campaigns are also lifting your brand. And it’s this beautiful synergy that then leads to scale.

That’s the role of the ads later on in the game. Even those people who are thinking, “Oh, later on it’s dollar in, dollar out,” they’re often neglecting the branding—which is why they cannot maintain the ROAS. Ads are always embedded in an ecosystem, and you would want to be strategic about when you use them and for what purpose.

Are you using them to gather data? To validate? Or are you using them to lift other efforts? They never work isolated in a vacuum, right? They can only help your other business goals, and this is how you need to think about them.

Okay, so now he says: Key lessons for cold audiences—keep your ads structure simple and focused.

So now we are zooming into that part of finding your product-to-market fit, because that’s the experience that Andre just had.

• Strong hook that stops the scroll

• Brief self-introduction to establish credibility

• Clear offer that solves a specific problem

• Pain points they avoid by using the solution

• Call to action to join and take the next steps

So this is very close to the base ad copy that I recommend for testing to find your messaging.

The strong hook is basically a reflection of the visual callout on the ad.

For example, this is an ad from one of my business partners, Neta.

Here you can see these are the callouts that we’re testing on the ads, and we’re testing with simple visual ads so we can validate different callouts. The hook that he’s talking about here is the first sentence that basically is another hook in itself, but it also explains what we’re saying here on the visual.

Then the brief self-introduction—that’s something that I recommend you do because it primes people on understanding the solution discovery and who is making the offer, right? It just helps to connect the dots, as in: why they should buy an offer from you, specifically.

So it’s basically the background—the credibility—that you have, right? So I would personally say something like:

“Hi there, my name is Evelyn Weiss. I spent over 1.5 million on Facebook ads to build my business to over 7 million in sales.”

So you would want to have something that is your background. Andre might say something like:

“Hi there, my name is Andre Valdez. It took me losing over $250,000 on a grant to realize that I had a black box of inaction that was taking me back. Since then, I’ve taken X steps, I’ve been able to do this, which led me to this conclusion.”

The key is that you also need to make sure that the net impression of your ad does not make your introduction an implied earnings or outcome claim. Rather, it should help people understand who is the person representing it. Be mindful of the overall net impression when you’re using this to establish credibility.

Then the clear offer breakdown and the pain points—I just like to then introduce the offer and say exactly what it does, with bullet points. And then we have a strong call to action at the end.

Couple things that I want to note there: If this is a paid offer, I want you to say the price of the paid offer in the ad and on the ad visual itself.

Right? So just like this says “free” here, I would like you to say “Free trial,” “$410 per month community,” and the same needs to be reiterated in the ad copy too.

Because otherwise, we might get really low cost per click, and we might think that our ad is doing better than it actually does. People need to have all the information about the product.

Now, I’m speaking about running a sales campaign, optimizing for purchase. They need to have all the information they need about the product on the ad itself to make a buying decision.

Your sales page is a mere reinforcement of that clarification and a checkout. And the ads are going directly to school, by the way—right? So people are directly coming from the ad to this checkout, and they can start their free trial here.

After this, we have—so I helped him refine the structure. Now he has some advice for beginners…

Now he has some advice for beginners:

“It’s completely normal to feel anxious when spending money with uncertain outcomes. Here’s the perspective shift that helped me stop obsessively changing my About page and questioning my value: Think of yourself as a researcher with a solution to a specific problem. Your potential customers recognize their symptoms but don’t understand the root cause or how to solve it. Just as you invested time and money experimenting to find the solution, now you’re experimenting to find the best way to communicate with people who need your help—but don’t know it yet.”

I love this reframe. And we are stopping by finding the solution, and we are reluctant to invest time and resources into communicating the solution—which is an equally important part of the puzzle. Because if nobody understands who we help, how and why, and why us and why now, our solution will not come to market. Right?

So I love this reframe here. And I think it’s very helpful.

He gave a few more practical tips:

“View your ad spend as an investment in research data that will improve your ability to help others.”

I love this. And I also think of it like this: when I’m running an advertisement campaign, I am guaranteed to receive something—and that is data.

Even if I don’t receive a purchase, right? Even if I don’t receive a lead, even if I don’t receive a positive return on that investment from a money perspective—I do receive a return as in data gathered. And with so many ways in which I could steer my business and so many decisions to be made, I love to have data to help me make the right decision earlier. Because that will also save me time and money down the line.

I will have a return on this ad.

It might just not be as direct as I expected it—or as I was hoping for.

Love this reframe. I definitely see it like this.

Start with the smallest budget.

Andre says:

“I got a conversion despite being told by Facebook that my budget was too low.”

This is also something that I really stress towards my members. You would want to spend one to two times as much as your front-end offer costs per day for this validation process.

Right? So Andre’s community is $10 per month—he can go as low as spending $10 a day for 72 hours to already have some insightful data that we can then use to make our next hypothesis. Right?

So you can—and should—test with a really small, lean budget. And the only way in which you can then lose is when you’re not looking at the data, not interpreting it, and not making your next best hypothesis based on the data… and then compare those two data sets to say, “Okay, did this improve based on my hypothesis or not?”

Definitely agree with him here.

“Create emotional distance between your ads and expectations of immediate success.”

Absolutely 100% agree.

I think when you’re shifting the focus on what are you getting, and you’re changing it to data versus immediate monetary outcomes, that in itself can already help.

I think another way in which you can help yourself is to mentally brace yourself in a way that you say:

“Okay, so this is scary for my brain. My brain tries to protect me. It will go monkey-minded. It will come up with all arguments that I should not be doing this. I will throw away money. You know, it will stop me from doing it.”

And so I need to be prepared.

What I personally like to do is to say:

I’m taking my seat of consciousness. I’m stepping back, and I’m looking down at my brain—at my mind—and I see it monkeying.

Right?

So I’m going to look at it, and I’m going to see what it all comes up with. And then I can choose to not believe these thoughts.

Sometimes I like to think of my thoughts as like there’s a drunken person on a park bench that is just ruminating and spitting out concepts. I can choose to disbelieve these thoughts.

That’s a way in which I create distance.

I visualize myself like taking the seat back. And I visualize looking down at it. And I choose to hear and disbelieve. Okay?

Because then it gives me options.

At one point, I was conscious and I made this decision because I understood what my goal is. And now I can—without drama—sustain it by mentally bracing myself that this is what is to be expected. My mind will rebel. My mind will try to protect me. It’s doing what it’s supposed to do.

And I can still choose to stay calm and relaxed and seated—and observe the madness that is going on with a loving heart, but still stay firm in my plan and in my decision.

It’s an overall beautiful skill if you’re running a business—to emotionally regulate. And whichever method works best for you is fine.

Define success using metrics you can actually measure to maintain your sanity.

Funnel approach—as Evelyn always says:

You have to design your funnel front to back.

• Visual: scroll-stopping image or video

• Compelling copy that speaks to their pain points

• Clear call to action

• About page that builds trust

“For each ad I track audience targeting, copy and visuals I used, link clicks, signups, and total cost.”

Okay, so I kind of want to put this a little bit into perspective and explain something about the pain points.

With pain points, people think like it has to be painful pain points—like actual physical or mental pain or struggle. It can also be something that is just a nuance. It can be something that is just bothering people. It can also be creative burden.

One example is:

“You don’t know what to cook when you’re trying to meal prep consistently. So these are my 15 go-to meals that I found, and you can just have access to these so you don’t have to take on the creative burden, the time and effort to come up with these yourself.”

Pain can also be time and effort and inconvenience. So think of pain like a little bit more broader nuance—and there’s also a weaker part of that spectrum of pain.

Now, the other thing that I want to say is what he’s referring to here, I like to break down into actual KPIs.

So your ad visual—that’s the first thing that needs to be measured.

How do you measure it?

You look at the CTR All, and the CTR All needs to be above 4% minimum.

Then you look at your copy, which the best indicator for this is the CTR Link Click. It should be about 50% of your CTR All—minimum 1.5%.

Those two KPIs—together with the CPM—will determine your cost per link click. And that’s a third KPI that I’m looking at.

So if your cost per link click towards a community is below $2, you’re doing extremely well. If you’re in a “make money online” space, right? Or any kind of business setting space—if your cost per link click is below $3, you actually are doing good.

Because we’re setting up the ad in a way that it completely pre-sells and primes, and people have all the information that they need to make the buying decision. Right?

Now we should see a higher conversion rate on the about page, and we want to see 5%+ there as a minimum. And then you would want to also add, for example, things like an annual upgrade so you can recoup some of that ad spend quicker.

Okay, so those are the kind of KPIs that I use to track funnel front to back.

Now he has another limiting belief that he’s handling, which is:

“I can’t afford this.”

If your brain is screaming, “I can’t spend this kind of money,” try these mindset shifts:

• View ad spend as a business investment—not a personal expense like vacation.
  Love this one. Totally subscribe.

• Compare efficiency: I can reach 500 people with an ad in the same time it takes me to individually message one person (15 minutes).

Right? So the amount of people you can reach—and that you can use your time for other things—and that, if you are consistent and focused with interpreting the data, you have product-to-market fit a lot faster.

I personally think that ads can save you a lot of time and money—even if they’re not profitable right away. So I also love this reframe. And especially, you know, the time that it takes you to do this—I think it’s a really, really beautiful reframe.

And also, you know, quite a few of you might still be working a job or have freelance work or other projects to fund the growth of a community or membership or course or coaching business. So you probably can earn more money in your other opportunity than you are getting paid trying to get this business off the ground with organic means.

So if you can be paid more on the hour in your current opportunity and then arbitrage it into ads—that’s a trade that I’d always make. Because it literally means that I can buy back my time.

When I was starting this business—as back then a single mom (I’m glad that I reunited with, you know, my now husband and baby daddy, but I was a single mom)—I was getting it off the ground, I was still having my agency as my main kind of income source. So there was not a lot of time in a day.

I 100% don’t think that I would be where I am if I didn’t use ads and build things up in reverse organic.

Your time is super valuable. And if you find a place where it arbitrages better than in the current opportunity or another opportunity than it does in your business just yet—then I’d make that trade anytime.

So in the beginning, I would also:

• Sell websites on Fiverr

• Do one-to-one coaching

• Do done-for-you work like website building

• Run ads for others

All to cross-fund, right? Because I was getting paid more there than I was getting paid in the current business. But I could use the ads to change that—which I eventually did.

This opportunity became like this from my hourly rate and how I’m paid to put in the work. But there was a transition period, right? And because I was smart—trading my time right there for more money where I could—and then arbitraging it into more reach and more leverage in the business, this is why this ratio has changed.

This is more profound than you might think.

“Find practical ways to fund your ads. I canceled free subscriptions and cut back on coffee shops to redirect money towards growing my community.”

I also really love that. And I know that a lot of people—I don’t have this option anymore, right? So I don’t want to be coming from a position of telling you, “Oh, just cut back expenses,” especially if you have already cut back all of them.

And at the same time, I have seen quite a few people that do have unnecessary spending that they can cut back on. So if that’s still an option for you, that’s wonderful. If that’s not an option for you, maybe there is a better opportunity for you to spend your time right now to get out more—so that you can then reinvest it into ads and grow the other opportunity quicker.

The Acceptance Factor

This is the last one that he shared here—and it’s such a gem:

“What ultimately helped me to pull the trigger was asking myself: Will I regret not giving this opportunity my all? Yes. I always have in the past. If ads don’t work, does it mean that I failed? No. It means I haven’t learned to communicate effectively yet.”

This is so good. This one is so good.

Every ad that fails is just like a:
“This was not an effective way to communicate.”

And if you’re not getting frustrated and bogged down by that, but actually say:

“Hmm, I wonder why? Looking at this again… how can I say this better? What can I do to make this more enticing? How do I need to shape my product to be more interesting? To be more valuable?”

This can be your biggest nightmare—or it can be your best teacher.
I absolutely love this reframe.

“Will having experience with ads help me in the future regardless of this specific adventure? Absolutely.”

Also beautiful, right? You’re acquiring a skill—or actually a set of skills—that you can translate to other opportunities.

When you know how to create an effective visual, you can do that for any business. When you start to learn to write effectively, communicate effectively—I argue that this will not only trickle into every area of your business, but also into your everyday life.

If you learn to be more nuanced in your communication… if you learn to think through how things are perceived… for me personally, it has changed me beyond even just the business opportunities.

And for me personally, it has been one of the most empowering skill sets to learn—was advertisement. From an emotional regulation perspective, from a strategy perspective, from a communication perspective.

So this was super helpful. Thank you Andre for sharing it again. And shout out—if you are feeling stuck in taking action and if you would like to have help, I would definitely check out Andre’s community. 

Like I said, I’ve seen him pouring his heart and soul into this—and just the way that he has showed up in my community, helping other members, makes me want to vouch for him. So this is what I’m officially doing with this here.

Definitely worth checking out. I’m so grateful to be able to work with him. And yeah, I can’t wait to see where he takes this venture—or any venture—because I know he’s going places.

Thank you so much for checking this out.
If you want to learn more about ads, we’re going to link some relevant video here—probably the reverse organic one—because this is something you really need to see. Thank you.