The Planify Podcast

Beyond the Meta Algorithm: Squeezing the Juice from Your Funnel w/ Megan Shields | The Planify Podcast Ep. 7

• Planify Agency • Season 1 • Episode 7

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Stop wasting ad spend on unpredictable algorithms. Casey Cease and Megan Shields break down how to optimize revenue and escape the Meta loop. Navigating the modern paid advertising landscape has become a game of constant, uncommunicated adaptation. With major updates like Meta’s algorithmic shifts destabilizing traditional lead-generation funnels, modern business owners can no longer afford to blindly trust automated optimization tools.

In this episode of the Planify Podcast, Casey sits down with Megan Shields, Founder and CEO of Chimehouse Media, to diagnose the frustrations surrounding shifting platform algorithms and the critical transition toward first-party customer data ownership. Megan shares her trajectory from the financial services sector to becoming an elite paid media strategist, breaking down how businesses can execute low-risk, high-return strategic pivots. Instead of chasing cheaper front-end leads, they analyze why true business stability relies on revenue optimization, identifying funnel bottlenecks, and maximizing long-term customer lifetime value. If your business model feels overly dependent on external advertising networks, this conversation provides the tactical architecture needed to reclaim control of your digital asset distribution, protect your margins, and scale without stress.

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE:

  • Algorithmic Insulated Tracking: Why relying purely on Meta's Advantage+ or automated AI targeting leaves your customer acquisition pipeline vulnerable, and how investing in independent data platforms safeguards your audience targeting.
  • The Lifetime Value (LTV) Multiplier: Shaving a few dollars off your front-end cost-per-lead does not move the needle. Real scaling happens by building robust back-end offers that transition a $2,000 client into a $12,000 lifetime relationship.
  • Risk-Mitigated Testing: How to systematically test new outbound marketing systems and verticals using clean response-rate metrics without burning down your existing, functional revenue streams.
  • The Quality-of-Life Framework: Why strategic business pivots must align with the owner's personal boundaries, core values, and desire for operational freedom rather than just top-line growth.

CHAPTERS & TIMESTAMPS:

  • 00:00:00 - Welcome And What We’re Tackling
  • 00:01:32 - Megan’s Path To Ad Buying
  • 00:05:23 - When Platforms Change Without Warning
  • 00:09:26 - The Niche: Online Courses And Coaching
  • 00:11:07 - A Practical Framework For Pivots
  • 00:17:39 - Using Data To Find High-Intent Buyers
  • 00:22:34 - Testing Benchmarks For Cold Email
  • 00:24:27 - Knowing When A Pivot Becomes Primary
  • 00:30:06 - Revenue Optimization And Funnel Bottlenecks
  • 00:32:43 - Where To Connect With Megan

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

  • Chimehouse Media: https://chimehousemedia.com
  • Strategic Coach & Dan Sullivan Frameworks: https://www.strategiccoach.com
  • Amy Porterfield Courses & Live Launching Systems: https://www.amyporterfield.com/

CONNECT WITH OUR GUEST:

  • Connect with Megan Shields on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganshields/
  • Follow Chimehouse Media on Facebook: https://facebook.com/chimehousemedia
  • Follow Chimehouse Media on Instagram: @ChimehouseMedia https://instagram.com/chimehousemedia
  • Email Megan Directly: Megan@ChimehouseMedia.com

CONNECT WITH THE PLANIFY TEAM:

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#planifyagency #planifyyourbusiness #marketingthatworks #revenueoptimization #paidmedia #metaalgorithms #businessstrategy

Welcome And What We’re Tackling

Casey Cease

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Planify Podcast. I'm Casey Cease, founder and CEO of Planify Agency and a bunch of other things. But, anyways, today I have my friend Megan Shields joining me on the podcast. And it's going to be a great time. She is the founder and CEO of Chimehouse Media. She is the go-to ad buyer, especially if you're doing coaching or online platforms or things. She's amazing. But we're going to talk about what she does in ad buying. We're going to talk about the frustrations that many businesses have felt over the last several months and the last year, dealing primarily with meta and Google algorithms and the changes that have happened and how she's been navigating that. We're also going to talk about the increasing importance of customer data and how to really handle that well to leverage and grow your business. We're going to talk about how to pivot regardless of what business you're in. Many businesses are realizing that things are not the same as they were and things are going to need to change. And she has a great way of looking at it and approaching how to pivot, how to test it while you're still having to do your regular business. And so you're going to want to hang around and learn from Megan Shields. And so enjoy the show.

Megan’s Path To Ad Buying

Megan Shields

Yeah, I always feel like this is like a wild question to answer. I'm like, let's go on this journey of my background. That's right. Um, so thank you for having me, first of all. It's always a pleasure to spend time with you and just nerd out on business. Um, yeah, so my background is a little funky. So I started my like professional background um in insurance and financial service sales. So up until that time, I was actually in the service industry, um, waiting tables. I worked at a casino, and I would decided that I was like staring down 30, and I was like, I need to do something different. Um, and so I ended up getting into sales and insurance because I wanted to get trained and learn. And so I joined a Fortune 100 company to do that. And so um I also liked the entrepreneurship thing that they pitched me, right? Is like build your own book of business, you know, grow however you want, you know, run your own time. Um, and so I had success doing that. And I did that for a couple of years. And because I had success, I got recruited into management. So I became a partner at the firm. Um, and then I ended up getting further away from the entrepreneurial stuff that I got into that industry for. So I was building my sales team, I was going on appointments, doing all that stuff, and ended up being a partner for about five years. But the entire time that I was at this company, which I think was a total of like seven, um, I was like using LinkedIn and teaching people how to build a book of business and grow um that way, because financial services are heavily regulated, so you can't like do all the modern things that a lot of people can do nowadays on funnels and all of that for growing a business. And so I became in like the LinkedIn girl, and everyone's asking me how I was doing every doing all of it. So even when I was an agent, and then when I moved into management, I was doing workshops and teaching other partners, teaching other agents how to leverage this platform. Um, and at that time, after about five years, I decided that I wanted to move from Ohio to Charlotte, North Carolina. So I actually switched firms. Um, and the reason I did that was because I wanted to have more flexibility in my contract, which allowed me then to pursue my current business. Because when I moved to Charlotte, I got on LinkedIn, did the same thing I was doing previously. And the firm I was at was like, How are you doing this? How are you bringing in so many candidates? How are you bringing in, you know, all of these people? You just moved here, you don't know anybody. And so I would, they're like, Can you teach partner with our marketing team and teach other people how to use LinkedIn to do this? I was like, oh, okay, this is interesting. Like, this is something that people are interested in. And so that's how I actually started my business, Chime House Media, um, was really on the heels of a lot of the stuff that I learned in financial services and insurance around, you know, building sales teams, building a book of business, being an entrepreneur and all that kind of stuff, but leveraging LinkedIn. And so from there, I ended up learning how to do ads because I was like, well, if I know LinkedIn, then I learn Facebook and Instagram. These are kind of the places where most business owners are, which this was like obviously, you know, pre-TikTok and Clubhouse RIP, um, and all that. And so I dove into the world of paid advertising as well, and then did kind of all three of those for the first probably six, eight months of the business. And then after that, um, just went in fully in on like the paid advertising space, which is pretty much where I've been for the last six years. So um, yeah, so I quit my full-time job in April of 2021 and have been running Chime House Media ever since. So it's been kind of a wild journey how things kind of progress. Getting older is weird, I think. You know, it's just like you kind of see how when you look back, you're like, oh, that makes sense. But when you're doing it, you're like, what's happening? Um, so anyway, yeah, so that's my crazy elaborate background. And here I am today running Chime House Media.

When Platforms Change Without Warning

Casey Cease

So with the ad buying bit, I mean, you and I are both ad buyers, and uh, we've been navigating all the changes that have been happening on the platforms and navigating that with business owners, and maybe rightfully so, there's some level of suspicion with ad buyers and marketing agencies from businesses. And so as you've as you've been confronted with these rapid changes that all of us are having to navigate, what's that been like for you in navigating that and trying to problem solve against all these changes that are not very well communicated by these platforms?

Megan Shields

Yeah, well, that was actually what I was gonna start off and saying is like it's a very reactive situation because they don't tell us what they're doing. Like there's that meta blog, I guess, for lack of a better term, where they like quote announce certain things, but it's not everything that they're doing. And it's hard to keep up with. And so it's one of those things where you start noticing stuff is off and then you have to go digging and figure out kind of what's happening. Um, and it's just been challenging. Like, I just I don't I don't love the way that the you know, higher-ups in Meta are making decisions. I don't know how they're making these decisions, but I think I gave that analogy to you one time where it's like I feel like I'm in like a broken down car and all the tires are slashed, but they're trying to fix my windshield. Like it's just very, you know, it's very difficult. And so it's been a lot of just almost relearning and just digging in and trying to figure out kind of like what is going on, and then trying to also look forward and figure out, okay, like these things are happening. This is how it's going to be going forward until some other change or whatever happens. But like trying to plan, it's just been tricky, especially just because they don't they don't communicate it very well.

Casey Cease

Yeah, it I know when AI gets confused that it's confusing because I took some of their announcements and try to have AI explain what they're talking about. And typically AI is pretty good at inference, but on some of their recent releases, they didn't know what they're talking about. And one of the things that it's always alarming is like we had a client that we'd been running ads for, lead gen for a long time, and all of our metrics were the same, right? Still converting, still, you know, having roughly the same cost per acquisition, everything else, but the lead quality started diminishing quickly, which we didn't know of until about two weeks in when they said, Hey, our lead quality is bad. And we had to clarify, like, okay, bad in what way? Well, demographically bad, everything else. So what was working very well and had been fixed the last time they rolled out Andromeda, um, had now then started deteriorating again. And so, but we're not really sure what they changed, so how to adapt it. So it's it's I always tell people it's like trying to you're on the movie speed. I don't know if you're old enough to remember that movie, but it's a bus, it's a bus going 60 miles an hour. If you go below it, the bomb blows up. That's what it feels like as an ad buyer when they make these changes, is like you can't totally cut lead volume because they need the volume of leads, but you're trying to adjust for quality. And then when you have multiple sales reps, you know, giving different feedback on what quali quantifies or qualifies as a good lead, it's very challenging. And I I realized, I think it was March this year in 26th, they rolled out another update without any sort of communication. Yeah. And and we, you know, at the time of this recording, we're in May, and we we've been hustling trying to figure out what's going wrong, how to fix it, how to adapt, because there's very little content online on spelling out what's changed. And so, you know, over the years, I mean, thinking about I'm just hearing your story from you know, going from working at a casino as a waitress to financial services to becoming the LinkedIn gal to then becoming management and training other people how to do that into then, you know, uh lead generation and things like that. Um, you know, you've had to, you've had to adjust every time. And that's one thing I've always appreciated about our meetings is you are thinking ahead and you do really well in breaking down how to respond.

The Niche: Online Courses And Coaching

Casey Cease

But also you've had quite a bit of success in a certain, as in Texas, would I say niche, but niche. Um, tell us a little bit about the niche that you found a lot of success in ad buying with.

Megan Shields

Yeah, so since I started my business in 2020, obviously everybody was going online. And so I have spent the bulk of the last six years working specifically in online business. And so a lot of digital courses, digital programs, online coaching programs, those types of things. Um, and obviously, you know, during COVID, it's like everybody was trying to figure out how to get online. They're like, oh, I either need to like beef up my presence or I need to like focus a lot there and just come online because I haven't been. Um and so obviously there's a lot of people that had all of these digital courses and products and things like that that they wanted to sell. And so I got into that world actually um pretty heavily because I was in like Amy Porterfield's world, who's a big online marketer. I ended up working later on with like her team to support her students. Um, but she talks all about like live launching digital courses. And so I really just got into that niche over the last, you know, six years, and that's pretty much exclusively where I've worked. I've worked also with a lot of podcasters um as well. But even then, at the baseline, like all of my clients were still online business owners that had online programs, and they also happen to have a podcast. Um, so that's really been the main niche that I've been in. So doing a lot of work with a lot of funnels, live master classes, live launching, um, and all of that type of stuff in the online space.

Casey Cease

So you're

A Practical Framework For Pivots

Casey Cease

also though really good at realizing when it's time to pivot and evolve, right? And and you you have a pretty unique way that you approach these pivots. And it may not feel that unique or that organized as the practitioner, but as I observe from the outside looking in.

Megan Shields

It certainly does not. So I appreciate you saying that.

Casey Cease

I'm like really to know, like it it is observably, uh, if that's even a word, but I I've observed that you are really good at asking the right questions, looking for opportunities. And so I'm sure there's a lot of people watching, maybe their business is changing, maybe they're dealing with, you know, disruptions, whether they're concerned about AI or they're worried about the market or whatever. But how do you approach when you're starting one, how can you tell when it's time to think through a pivot? And two, how do you think through that approach of what to do or what to move towards?

Megan Shields

This is a good question. Cause I think, like you said, like it might not be something that I realize that I do. So I'm gonna try to like think through it because I think it's just one of those things that comes naturally for me. Um, but I think like for me, because we are sort of pivoting, there's a lot of changes happening in the marketplace. And a lot of it for me comes down to like my personal satisfaction. So I make a lot of choices based on me and like how I want to work and what I want my life to look like and like what can give me what I'm trying to do. Um, and so that's always at the core of everything for me, I guess, is like my personal values and what you know, what I want out of my life and the work that I'm doing. So that's always a part of it. And then, too, obviously, is just like looking at then like the marketplace and trying to look at okay, looking forward, like where is this going? So for me, I'm an ad buyer. I've been doing ads for many, many years. And with this recent meta update and all these things, and just really trying to see where they're going, where it's like there's less and less and less and less of control and all this stuff. I'm just like, I don't particularly love that. It makes it more difficult, you know, all these different things. And just trying to look down the line of like, okay, where is this going? What's the marketplace doing? What do people want? And then what do I want? And then trying to figure out what might be able to give me that. And so for me, I don't really know if that's a systematic approach or whatever, but I'm trying to think through it as as you asked me this question, because it's a great question. Um, and I've never really thought through how I make decisions. So I need to think about how I think, I need to join strategic coach. But um, but yeah, I mean, I think for me, it's just like what do I want? And do I see what I'm doing now like continuing to grow and provide the sort of lifestyle client experience results, those types of things that like I want to have. And then that from there, that's I think when I decided and have just you know gone through the pivot process and thinking about pivoting is just looking at those things. So I don't know if that's a good answer, but that's well let me share what I got.

Casey Cease

And and you tell me if my observations are are right or not.

Megan Shields

Yeah, this might be more helpful. Mirror me. That's okay.

Casey Cease

No, that that's what what I watch in our conversations the last few months, especially, is you are acutely aware of where you've been, you see what's happening now, and you have a really good way of drawing inferences of what's coming down the pipeline. And what I've noticed then is you start asking the questions of how do we disrupt what's coming our way, or how do we help people get the results? And then you start applying some testing to adjust your trajectory to continue to provide the outcomes and the desires of your ideal client. And you do that really well of saying, okay, there's okay, data is going to be more important. How do we leverage data? How do we come in and address address this structural issue? Because one of the things that I've appreciated about the way you think and work is you're able to break down things that are otherwise objectively complex into smaller pieces and really be thoughtful about how each one affects the one before it and after it, right? And marketing, we'll call that a funnel or a pipeline or whatever, but be your background in sales, your background in marketing, the behavior of a customer, and then what mediums and venues do we then apply that? And then how do we find those people now and put that offer right in front of them? That's how I see you still pulling the pieces together where you may not have all the answers, but you're asking similar questions on okay, where have we been? Okay, I helped coaches and and course providers and podcasters get in front of the right people, generate connections for them, and then help them think through what are the next steps. Well, now the venue and the mediums by which we're able to do that are complex and changing. So, what are other ways that I can continue to add value, whether it's that target market or a different market? But how do I apply the same thinking now with the resources available to us to move them, continue towards that success? Yeah. Am I making a decent observation?

Megan Shields

It sounds a lot better when you say it back to me because like that makes sense. And yes, I agree. Um, that's what I heard you say.

Casey Cease

That's what no. That's the reason I have people on here to help process through kind of the thinking and articulating. Yeah, it's not corrective, but it's like, Casey, how do you do what you do? Well, my unique abilities are difficult to explain. Yeah. Because I show up and I do them. They come so easy to me. I'm like, oh, why is that valuable? What I found is when I'm able to articulate that and people experience it, they're willing to exchange value, usually money and time, for my value experience and the gifts I bring to the table. And I think what I've appreciated about watching, because many businesses are going to have to pivot over the next two to five years, right? And how they do what they do, what they're offering, how they're offering it, not only because of AI, but because the demand of the market is changing. And so they're they're going to have to ask that question. And I've really appreciated the way you approach it. So, what are you currently testing? What can you share with us that you're testing, keeping Chime House media as it is going? You're still having success for your clients. We've all had been hustling around since March trying to figure out, okay, how do we adjust? How do we get the right places? And it's hard sometimes to communicate to a client because they think you were doing a great job and now you're not doing a great job. But overall, we're having to figure out how do we continue to serve the market. So, what do you what are you working on now?

Using Data To Find High-Intent Buyers

Megan Shields

Yeah. So for us in looking at like where our meta was going, all the things that are happening and all of that, to your point, like what can we do to help our clients get better results? Um, but not necessarily it be like meta-focused. And so what we did is we invested in a data platform to be able to create custom audiences of high-intent people looking for whatever our clients sell so that we we can run ads to them, build audiences from that. So in an ideal world, obviously, we're going to hit people when they are wanting to buy something because meta is getting more into their advantage plus, more into their AI, and more into the trust us mode, which I don't love. And so for me, again, maybe it's just like the ad buyer like wanting all the control. But I'm like, okay, if I can create these audiences and have, you know, different ways to um get the ads in front of the right people, that was one way. There's another platform also that I invested in that allows us to like build audiences from our like competitors and competitor pages, competitor followings, competitor Facebook groups, and just really trying to find other ways to help our clients reach the right people better because meta is they don't know what they're doing with their AI. Um, and so that was one piece of it. And the second piece is being able to actually on the back end, because I do work with so many funnels and that type of stuff, and I pay a lot of attention to the customer journey and like where are things falling off? And so I've moved into more of like a revenue optimization sort of eye of okay, where is the bottleneck? What do we need to fix in diagnosing that? And so part of our approach too with this data platform is being able to actually identify anonymous website traffic to help our clients that are using paid ads get more from what they're already spending and be able to identify those users. And so we were trying to just think forward of really how can we squeeze the juice out of what we're doing? We can't control Meta, obviously. And so they're gonna do what they're gonna do. Meta's gonna meta. And so, what can we do to sort of put parentheses around some of that to help our clients continue to get better results and squeeze the juice of what we're they're doing? And so that's kind of what we've been testing and exploring in is leveraging some of that stuff to help our clients. And then for our own personal business too, then changing our offerings and testing some of our offerings that are more focused on, you know, outbound outreach, not necessarily from paid ads. So obviously, we've been in the paid ad silo for many, many years. And now what we're testing is leveraging these lists and these high-intent people and being able to do email marketing to them to schedule, you know, appointments for our clients. And we're working on sort of building out that offer suite. Um, for us and how we're testing, we're doing that exact same thing where we are building targeted lists, doing cold outreach and setting appointments for ourselves, which we've seen success with, which has been great. Um, but you know, for advertising, it's difficult because it's like, okay, they pay you and then they're paying the ad spend, and it's a really, really big lift. Um, and so we've been talking for a while of like what are some other things that we can potentially offer. And so that's something that we're testing right now is, you know, the outbound email marketing and potentially bringing in um a sales team as well. So we can basically do the whole shebang. So that's kind of where we're pivoting because I think going forward, like people, what people want are results. And like they're the days are gone of people just paying for impressions and reach and whatever. Like, I think we're in a very unique place right now where it's like the cold COVID bubble burst. Everybody made money in COVID. And so now a lot of the people we're seeing getting out of their businesses, that type of stuff. And now it's gonna be the people that are gonna pivot and really move forward and figure out how to navigate and all this new stuff, plus AI. And so that's what you know we're trying to do.

Casey Cease

So, how do you measure success? Like, I mean, you're trying different things and everything else, but how do you know when to double down on something? How do you know when to cut it? You know, what what are your metrics that you and your team look at in testing? Because I know a lot of owners maybe they test, but I but they call it like in the Crypto market and everything else, hopium, right? There's this idea of like we're rather than opium, but like we're just getting high off the hope it's gonna work. Like, what are some benchmarks? Like, how long do you test it? How much do you invest in it? When do you realize it's working but needs to be, you know, you know, uh adjusted or uh adapted? Like what are your benchmarks? And even if you don't have them like written down, like what do you look for? And yeah, I mean, obviously, people saying yes and buying, that's that's the first one results, but how do you measure as you're pivoting and testing? I think it's important to kind of lay out how different people think about that.

Megan Shields

Yeah.

Testing Benchmarks For Cold Email

Megan Shields

So for us in exploring this new, you know, outbound email marketing, that type of stuff, like obviously at first we're like, okay, we're gonna send X amount of emails, we're gonna do a thousand emails a day. That's gonna be our test. And so that's where we really started. And so obviously, we were looking at like response rates, because open rates don't matter anymore because it's all whatever, like Apple does all these crazy things. It doesn't matter. You want to pay attention to your click rate or your response rate, that type of thing. So we were sending these emails, we were getting like a 2% response rate, 2.2% response rate, which then led to like the calls that we had, and we had a hundred percent show up rate for the calls, which was huge. And then we closed everybody that we had on the calls. So for us, I'm like, well, that's great. Like we had best case scenario. Um, but I think, you know, if that wasn't the case, what we had planned, and we were like, okay, well, we want to make sure like we're at least getting a one to three response rate. And if we're not doing that, then we need to work on the copy of the emails. Um, and then from there, you know, okay, if we're getting people that are booking calls, but they're not showing up, okay, then that's a bottleneck we need to figure out. And, you know, so on and so forth. And so that's kind of how we have approached it. The good thing about this particular like strategy that we're testing right now is it's fast and we can figure it out quickly. And it's not a high investment. It's very different than ads. And so we're able to find out, like, okay, we're testing this vertical. Like right now, we're testing a specific vertical, and now we're doing also market research on the next vertical we're gonna test, and we're just gonna systematically keep doing that to find, I guess, the niche that we want to sort of super settle in. Um so yeah, that's kind of how we're approaching it.

Casey Cease

So

Knowing When A Pivot Becomes Primary

Casey Cease

when you when you make these pivots and adjust, I mean, obviously you can't do everything all the time for everybody. At what point do you start thinking through, okay, this pivot now becomes primary and we don't push as hard on these other things? I'm not asking necessarily for you. I mean, because you you have a great agency, but I do know business owners that are saying, like, you know, it's scary to change what you're doing, especially if you've been doing it a long time. And especially the longer you've been doing one thing, the idea of change becomes more intimidating because a wrong move could be catastrophic. But doing nothing could also be catastrophic. Yeah. And so what are your your thoughts on when you okay, you I mean, because we could look at one campaign and be like, okay, that was, you know, luck, it was Provident, whatever, whatever word you want to put on it. But at what point do you say, like, this is really the path we want to really press into? How do you make that decision? Is it just by feel, or do you kind of in your mind know that, hey, when we hit this critical mass or we match our revenue on this based on revenue there, then we don't, it's not that we just drop the other things, it's just that isn't our primary focus. Because that's something I think a lot of businesses are having to ask that question right now.

Megan Shields

Yeah, for sure. For me, and I had said this earlier too, like all my decisions come down to like my ultimate goal. Like, I'm very like quality of life motivated. So, like I'm working for my quality of life. I don't want to live, work to live, live to work, whatever it is. Um, and so for me, that takes precedent of like, okay, if I'm now testing this thing and I'm finding that it is providing, you know, better quality of life, not working as hard, getting great results for clients, you know, those types of things. For me, that's probably when I would make a full-on switch. I wouldn't, you know, like if I was thinking through the process, if I would do this, like I definitely wouldn't burn it down. I would be strategic in how I would switch things over. But for me, it would be very much um focused on that larger goal. Like, is this going to get me closer to what I want or give me more of the lifestyle that I want, more of the goals that I want to hit with this particular business model versus this business model? That for me, that's what motivates me. Um, so that's really what I make the crux of all of my decisions on is like, oh, am I gonna have to work a hundred times harder to like do this particular service? I'm not doing that. So I'm not offering that. And so when we were thinking about pivoting, it's like, okay, we could do um, and and testing different things. I'm like, oh, we could do this, this, this, and this. And I'm like, yeah, but I know that like this means this and this means more work or this means blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, I don't want to do that. And so I think knowing yourself as a business owner and managing yourself is probably one of the hardest things to do as a business owner. Um, but I think if you really know what you want and you stick to that and then find the things that are going to give you that or get you closer to it, that I guess would be my advice on, you know, approaching a pivot and figuring out when that time is to do that. Cause for me, that's what it all comes down to is this going to get me closer to what I want without running myself into the ground? Um, because I that is not, I did that when I was in insurance. I don't want to do that again.

Casey Cease

Yeah. And I think that's that's important to pay attention to, right? Where, you know, you you ask a question, and even though you said you maybe should join coach, that's something Dan Sulvin seems like you already have a good framework because he says wanting what you want. What is it that you want?

Megan Shields

Yeah.

Casey Cease

Right. And he even talks about Dan talks about the four freedoms freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom of relationship, freedom of per purpose, and being able to really focus on um how we approach that in the best way, um, and being able to really, you know, do what we want to do with who we want to do it, making the money we want to make and having real purpose behind it.

Megan Shields

Yeah.

Casey Cease

You know, and so I I think that sounds right. I mean, isn't that nice that we can, as business owners, ask that question? I think most people end up starting a job, they don't start an asset or a business. And I I can't I can't tell you how many business owners I talk to who focus more on, you know, they live to work rather than work to live. Right. And and so when you when you throw this concept of, hey, maybe there's a little bit easier way for you to continue to provide value, but to make money, they it's like they go cross-eyed and think that I have a third head. Um, and so, you know, I I think that is, I mean, we're we are answering that question, what do I want? Whether we want to admit it or not. Um, and I think I think being able to answer that question as we evaluate what's coming down the pipeline uh and acknowledge that things are changing are going to be important and then make a plan around it. One last thing I want to talk to you about that I think is important for people to realize is you you made this you know passive statement about revenue optimization. Uh, but I know in previous conversations of mine, with your sales background, your marketing background, the way you think, um, you have a unique gift of really breaking down where things are falling apart in order to recoup the money that's already or the potential revenue that people are leaving on the table. You know, let's say we have people, you know, listening or watching the podcast that are saying, like, hey, that's interesting. What how do you approach identifying those bottlenecks and what questions do you ask? You give kind of an overview of, because I've watched you do it so naturally that that you do that, but but tell us a little more about ref revenue optimization.

Revenue Optimization And Funnel Bottlenecks

Megan Shields

Yeah. So in working in the online space, you know, selling things online is a lot harder than people think that it is. Um, and especially when you're getting ads involved and you've got different funnels and all these different things, there's a lot of areas in a customer journey, online or offline, where things can break down. And so it's, you know, obviously important to track that, where there's, you know, a lot of businesses I've seen are just not tracking things like they should. Um, and also knowing the numbers, bring, you know, what is profitable, what is your average lifetime value of your customer? Like, how what are you doing to market and bring people in? Um, and really just taking a look of like the entire acquisition engine, because there's a lot of things like a lot of businesses are they want the cheapest leads. I want a cheaper lead, I want a cheaper lead. But like shaving a couple bucks off of a lead is not going to move the needle in your business. But if you can add more revenue to people that are already working with you or add something in on the back end or optimize something on the back end, that can really move the needle. For instance, if we're doing, let's say, a webinar funnel, because I've worked with a lot of those where it's like, okay, I we can only get the cost per lead so cheap. So let's say the cost per lead is whatever, $8. Shaving $3 a lead off of that is really not going to move the needle monetarily in your business. So, but if you bring people in and you're selling them a $2,000 offer, and then you have another offer on the back end that's now $1,000, and then you have something that's more long-term, let's say a membership or some program that's 12 months, now they're staying with you. So now your average lifetime value of your customer goes up from it was originally $2,000, now it's $12,000. That's gonna make a bigger movement on the bottom line than trimming down the leads. And so it's just really taking a look at the entire thing. And every business is different, but that's kind of how I approach it is like I'm looking at all of the things, like where are people coming in? What's it costing? What are your hard numbers and your lifetime values of your clients? And what is that entire process? And how can we make the most out of the whole thing? Where are the opportunities to really either optimize something, add things in? Um, because a lot of times people focus so much on the front end, and there's so much that you can do throughout the customer journey and on the back end that can really optimize that revenue.

Where To Connect With Megan

Casey Cease

Well, Megan, it's been a ton of fun. I know that uh you're busy, you know, try not to be too busy, but I appreciate you stopping by. I'm sure we'll chat again on the episode. So, where can people find you online? Where can they connect with you, find out more about working with you?

Megan Shields

Yeah, so um I hang out on Instagram a lot at Chimehouse Media, and then my website, ChimehouseMedia.com, has all of our links and everything there, and I'm always open for a voice note. Um, or you can email me directly at Megan Shields at Chimehouse Media.com.