SPEAKER_01: 0:50

Welcome back to Plan Like a Boss. I'm your host, Tanya Lawson, and today I'm sitting down with Shelby Fowler Moss, a paid ad strategist and sales expert who's helped her clients generate tens of millions of dollars from paid advertising. After running one of the top boutique ad agencies for seven years, she now teaches entrepreneurs how to think like investors, using ads to build real leverage, not chaos. Her teaching style is straight talking, high energy, and rooted in what actually works in today's market. Shelby, welcome. I'm so happy to have you. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. So we're gonna definitely be talking ads today, but I wanted to start with if you could just share your story. How did you get here? How did you get into ads?

SPEAKER_00: 1:40

Yeah. So I started essentially doing marketing while I was in college. And I kind of fell in love with paid ads because um I started to kind of dabble with them, right? And what I what I figured out pretty quickly is that social media marketing is a long game and it matters, but it it takes it can take a long time to see results. So what I loved about paid ads was that we could see results pretty quickly, and I kind of fell in love with that process. And so I began to invest more time, study what what kind of the big names in the industry were doing, and I realized that there was a lot of opportunity in that area. You know, when I started, certainly there weren't a ton of ad agencies out there. So that's how I got started. Um, you know, I think soon after that I ended up dropping out of college because I realized that I could make more money helping other business owners online than I was ever gonna make as a speech geologist.

SPEAKER_01: 2:46

I love that. I love that. So, and and it sounds like you found something you were really passionate about too, along the way.

SPEAKER_00: 2:52

Yeah, absolutely. My parents were entrepreneurs growing up, so I think watching them build businesses made me really passionate about business in general. And this just seemed kind of like such a powerful way to help business owners get clients. I mean, truly, if we can get more customers or get more clients, then um your income potential is limitless.

SPEAKER_01: 3:19

That is so true. Now, my audience is mostly solopreneurs who don't have big ad agency money. And I know a lot of them have thought about ads. Maybe they've even looked into running ads, but then they get into the Facebook ads manager and get completely overwhelmed and just quit. So, what's some advice you can give to them? Like, what is what is the best way to just get started in ads when you don't have the ad agency money to spend on an agency to run ads for you?

SPEAKER_00: 3:50

Yeah, I would actually I would counter that with most businesses don't have ad agency money. Um, you know, as somebody who owned an ad agency, I'll tell you like the level of clientele we were working with, the people that get the best results are usually somebody who is definitely doing like half a million dollars in business or more if you hire an agency, right? And the reason why, if we could just math it out for a bit, is that your agency fee is gonna be several four figures per month. You have a contract sign that's typically three, six, nine months, sometimes twelve. And if you if you kind of think of that, you're spending anywhere from let's say three to maybe eight thousand dollars. I've seen up to ten thousand dollars a month in fees. That's not including your ad spend. Now, you might say, who would do that? Well, it makes sense if you're running a, let's say, multi-seven-figure business and you don't have the in-house infrastructure and technical skill and strategic skill to run those ads, right? But for people that are the solopreneurs, the service providers, the creatives, the, you know, oftentimes actually hiring an agency is likely not going to be your best bet, anyways. So I think learning how to run paid ads, though, is your best bet. And I think we tend to overcomplicate it and we we also it gets it's overwhelming, like you mentioned. So I think, you know, kind of destigmatizing that it it is some like crazy complex thing. It is, it can be simple. And I want you to think of paid ads like it is an investment. And I think that's the biggest mindset shift that has to go into it. If you think about investments like real estate or will you stock market, right? You have to think of it like whatever you have to spend in paid ads, the profit that you make, you want to reinvest it back into paid ads because that's how your money grows. And it's oftentimes not that you're gonna see results immediately, but you want to track the sales that come after a weed comes in, and you can start to see how much money a client or customer is worth to you. And I think once you can figure out kind of those fundamentals, which I'm so passionate about teaching, you start to create predictability. It's fun, right? Because then you're winning. And when you win, like nobody has ever said winning isn't fun. Like winning is so fun.

SPEAKER_01: 6:29

Winning is totally fun. So it in a way, it's almost like it can give you that that high that gambling can give you that you're excited about it. Not that I'm saying you should go gamble or that spending money on ads is like gambling. Because if you do it smart, it's not like gambling. But if you just go into meta ads and just click a bunch of buttons, then you're you're basically putting your money in a slot machine.

SPEAKER_00: 6:52

Uh-huh. Yeah, and I'll tell you, like, I'm not a gambler at all. Like my my husband loves to like play poker, and I am not, you take me to a casino and I will find the spa. Like, I am just not a gambling gal. Um, but I just can't think of very, very many things that I would, you know want to do less than going to a casino for me. Um, and but you're right, like if you don't have a plan and you don't have skill, it's skill, right? Just like anything, you have to learn the skill. But if you can understand the skill, it doesn't mean you need to be an expert. But if you understand the skill, um you're you're betting safely, if you will. And also, if you do end up growing past the point of running your own paid ads or having maybe someone on your team run them for you and you need to hire an agency, if you understand the skill or you have that skill, you're less likely to get screwed over. Oftentimes I'd share, you know, there are full departments in big ad agencies whose sole dedication is to spin the data so that you feel like you're winning. You're really not. And it's all about getting you to keep paying them, right? And so, and that's oftentimes led by the CEOs and the people running the company. It's not necessarily the the buyers, but I definitely will say I pride myself on never doing that. But but there, that is a fact that there are those ad agencies often do have people that their job is to get on call with you and go, oh my gosh, look at you spent all this money. You didn't get any results, but look at all this great things that are happening, and somehow make you feel like you won. And again, like that will happen more to you if you don't have the skill. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01: 8:47

So once people have a basic understanding of ads, I know another thing is creating the ad content. Like, what kind of ads are converting best right now? Is it static post? Is it uh reels? What is converting at the moment? Because I know I personally have been out there snooping around and seeing what other people are doing, and some people are just using video ads, and some people are just using graphics, and some people have a mix of both. What is your opinion on this?

SPEAKER_00: 9:22

It it depends. It just is gonna depend. And I think everybody has to test different types of ads to figure out what works best for you and your brand and your audience because you can look at big, you know, brands and say, well, this is working for them, so it'll likely work for me. But that's not necessarily the case at all. And I've seen in many counts, like what works for one client really well absolutely does not work for another. And so it's it's there is no like simple answer here. Like, this is the new strategy that's gonna work for everybody. In fact, I'm always like, if you see that stuff online, I prom like, don't click on it, don't buy it, or go into it at least knowing that they're sharing from a limited experience, limited experience. So there is no new thing, there's no one size fits all, unfortunately. You have to test. And oftentimes what I think might work for you, you know, maybe a static image does. And I told you to run reels. Like it, it just is gotta depend. So test, test, test. I will say, if I could give you one tip though, if I could give you one golden nugget in this, it's that demonstration. Okay. So I think when when you're looking at creating ads, I want you to think of creative specifically. I want you to think of when you were a child and you had show and tell at school. And instead of standing up there and telling about this, maybe it's a medal that you won because you like I'll use my kids as an example because I think this actually happened. One of my kids have show and tell at school. And my daughter won uh, they were undefeated in volleyball. And so she brought her medal to show and tell. And so she could, you know, instead of just saying, like, oh yeah, we were undefeated, she gets to show them the proof. She shows the medal to everybody. They get to look at it and go, wow, you guys did really great. And she can be like, Yeah, I'm gonna do it, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, she can brag on herself a little bit. But uh, and it kind of boosts her confidence, but also it makes people believe her, right? And oftentimes, and especially in this market, people are taking longer to make buying decisions. That's a fact across marketing and sales. Every single company, I promise you, I promise you, I promise you, is down on sales and marketing or their sales and their sales process is longer. And so, meaning like the we call it DTC in marketing terms, which is days to close. That's a number that you might I would track if I were you, but track how often it takes on average for a client or a lead to come in and then to close. And you're gonna look at all these brands that we're all comparing ourselves to online, and I promise you there it's happening to them too. You're not an anomaly. I say that not to I say that so that maybe it encourages you that like you're not alone. And they're making adjustments too. I say this because when trust is this low, it's very important that you demonstrate. And so in your creatives, I highly suggest instead of just saying something, show it. Show it, show it, show it. I'll give you a quick example. There was a we I have a client, a consulted client, and she deals with high-performing women. Okay. So, like women who run businesses, have these corporate careers, like total badass women, right? And they're typically her ideal client is typically somebody who's married, who has who's a mom, who might have multiple children, who's running a company, who has team members. She has a level of success, and there's a lot of pressure associated with that success. Okay. So we were kind of figuring out what her creative strategy should be for for ads she was gonna launch. And I said, Okay, why don't you pull out? Do you have a pressure cooker at home? Like, do you have like an Instapot or like a pressure cooker? She said, Yeah, I do. And I said, Okay, I want you to film the video ad um in in um horizontal, so like in story or real placement, right? Vertical. Vertical. Yeah. And I want you to set it up on a tripod in your kitchen, and I want you to pull the pressure cooker out, put it on the counter, and then before you hit record, write down all the things that are running through her mind at all times. Like what's all the things she's trying to remember to do? And is it like making sure that her kids' uh cheerleading uniform is clean because she has a game snip? It's also checking in with that team member who said who needs to get something to you. It is, you know, going through like all the things. It's like prioritizing, you know, intimacy in your marriage. It is planning date night. It is getting making sure your grocery orders in. It's, you know, making your three posts on Facebook, whatever it is, right? It's all those things. And I said, make them specific. Because even if it's even if somebody's kid doesn't do cheerleading, a mom is gonna be like, oh yeah. Even if they aren't a mom, they're gonna say, Oh, I do that with, you know, m maybe my pets or something. Like, we find ways to um make it relevant for us, right? So I was like, put those on a post-it note, and then in the video, she's reading off, like, I know this is who you are, and these are the kind of things that you're thinking of. And she pulls these post-it notes, shows them to the camera, throws them in the inst Instapot or the pressure cooker. And then she puts the lid on and she says, and if you don't expand your capacity, it will blow, like it'll blow up. And so this was a masterclass she was doing around capacity. And so she's showing what this looks like. She's demonstrating it. And I want you to think of yourself kind of like QVC or HSN, like you are demonstrating this. They're not selling something just by telling you, this eyeliner is great and we love it and we use it all the time. No, they're showing you how it works, and I think that is that what that's what you're gonna see working really well. It is double down, double down on showing, not just telling. And even if it's a static graphic, show me, like, show me what life is gonna look like if I don't change something. Show me what, show me before and afters, or show me what it like what it is that you do. I want to see it. And I want to be, I want you to demonstrate it.

SPEAKER_01: 15:58

I love that. That is such a brilliant way of thinking about it. Now, you had said earlier, you know, you have to test. Maybe it's a static, maybe it's a video ad. I know a lot of people who get out there and they get nervous and and they do the same thing with investing. They they put their money in and then the market drops and they instantly want to pull it out, and that's the worst thing you can do. Yeah. That is the absolute worst thing. How long on average should they say they're doing A B testing between a video and a graphic? On average, how long should they give the ads before they decide to pick one or pull them both and start over?

SPEAKER_00: 16:37

Yeah, great question. It's typically gonna be about four to five days because you can't make decisions based on weekends. And then if you if you throw in holidays, holidays throw things off too. So you can't count on holiday results being been to warm. And that would be good or bad, right? Because maybe maybe you have like a viral product that does really well because people are Christmas shopping or whatever, or that's relevant for the exact moment we're in. So typically we're looking at a pattern between four and five days. I always tell people too like if you have a tendency to go back into ads manager and get like anxious and you want to tweak things after a day or two and you're looking at it several times a day. I promise you, looking at it several times a day, with I'm gonna assume what is your budget, which is less than, you know, tens of thousands of dollars a day, you don't need to check it every, like every couple of minutes. Like it's not gonna do anything but make your anxiety worse. So you can check it daily, like once in the morning or once in the evening, but you don't need to over because what we're we're not making decisions based on one day, because you're gonna have ebbs and flows just like the market. You're gonna have good days, bad days. What we're looking for is an average and we're looking for trends. So you can pretty you can see trends after like four to five days typically.

SPEAKER_01: 17:58

Gotcha. Yeah, no, that's great advice. I personally, I don't even look at mine for at least three days because I know I'm gonna start second guessing myself and I I know I have to write it out. Now, you were talking about, you know, they're they're not spending tens of thousands a day. So let's talk about how much people should be spending because I know, and you know, we see the stuff out there all the time. Oh, get new leads for just five dollars a day in ads. And I know, I know I've seen your content, you're very anti that. And and to me, that goes back to that whole gambling analogy. Yeah, you can put a nickel in a slot machine and you might win a dollar. Right. But the more you put in, the higher the chances of you getting a bigger yield. Or the same thing with investing. So, how much should people, you know, small businesses on average, be spending on ads per day or per week?

SPEAKER_00: 18:55

So if we're talking about meta, you're right. I am like very anti-five dollar a day ads. There's a reason behind that. And it a lot of it is just like I again, it's I don't I don't come from a personal experience. Like I had great success one time with a this type of ad. And so I'm gonna tell everybody that they need to have it. Like I have years and years and like thousands of pieces of data that I'm coming from. And so I'm very anti-slot machine in this sense, right? I don't want you wasting money just to waste money. Um, and I would rather you save the$5 and invest in maybe some video marketing course or something so that you can make short form video content that's better and get some organic reach going before you invest in ads, if you have that level of a budget. And no shame in that. Just like let's be honest with ourselves. So it's gonna depend on your industry for sure. I typically don't recommend spending anything less than like$30 a day if possible. And really, I for most of my programs, like I make people sign off now on like$50 a day or more. And it's again, it's gonna depend on what you're running ads to, of course, and your industry and your type of business. Like if you're a local-based business, you can get away with spending a lot more money. If you have a business that serves people all over the world, like you're gonna have to spend a little bit more money. And they're and because you're you're re you have to reach more people too, right? So if you think about it like this, and this is just to give you a little bit of a glimpse on how ads work, if it's ads are just when you when you're putting in um your when you're submitting your meta ad, for instance, that it's gonna go to Facebook and Instagram, your Facebook ad, you are in like a bidding war against everybody else who also wants to, you know, bid for space or real estate on your ideal client or your target audience's feed. So whether that's their Facebook feed or their Instagram feed, they're bid you're bidding with them. So you're gonna get outbid by people who are spending more money, right? And so if you're only spending five dollars a day, you know, they're gonna they're gonna eat your lunch. And so just be mindful of that. Oftentimes when you see$5 a day ads, it's typically running like reach campaigns, which is just getting your content in front of it's like boosting posts, like getting your content in front of more people, which could work and that like you might get in front of more people. Um, but that doesn't mean you're gonna get more sales. And at the end of the day, the only paid ads I'm interested in and that I suggest for you are ones that actually make you money perfect, yes, 100%, because otherwise you're just you might as well take your money and just light it on fire.

SPEAKER_01: 24:00

Right. Now, I I think it's interesting that you say you should take your your five dollars and maybe invest it in a marketing course or something, and you bring up a good point because the purpose of ads is to bring in leads. It just brings in the lead. You have to then convert the lead. It doesn't do that for you.

SPEAKER_00: 24:22

Correct. Correct. Like even if you were running ads to like a low-ticket product, that's a popular thing too. Even if you did that, you still like you might sell them on something low ticket, you still need to keep selling them on your other offers so that you make money, right? That's just a front-end offer. That's something to kind of, you know, ensure that you have maybe more qualified leads coming in because they're paying you, or to help, you know, pay for some ad spent, maybe. But at the end of the day, you have to have sales skills. So if you are struggling with sales and getting people to close, dear golly gosh, do not invest in ads because ads are just gonna amplify the problems that exist, which for a business owner who thinks like an investor, that actually could be super valuable to you. Because when you can figure out what your issues are, your bottlenecks are, and then you can go and fix them quickly, you're gonna get more results. You're gonna have faster growth, right? If you are, if it's out of desperation, like I have leads in the business, but no one ever wants to buy from me, okay. Well, then we need to work on our sales skills. Don't invest in ads because that's just gonna make it worse.

SPEAKER_01: 25:36

Oh, absolutely. And I I will use myself as an example in that one because full disclosure, I've worked with Shelby. I've paid Shelby a fair chunk of change to learn how to do ads. And one of the things that we uncovered was that I was my sales strategy was way off. So I actually stopped ads for a while and I really worked on getting a better sales strategy before I started them back up because they weren't serving me. I was I did the low-ticket offer as she said, and I was selling lots of my low-ticket offer, but it was not converting. So you're right. For me, which I've been in business for many, many years, over 20 years. So for me, I can then look at that and go, okay, there's a problem here, and it's not the ads. The problem is me, and I need to figure out how to fix it.

SPEAKER_00: 26:24

But how how valuable is that though? Like, that's so good. Because if you didn't know that, you might spend another five, 10 years like chasing your tail. And I think that that's a you know, a valuable piece of data.

SPEAKER_01: 26:38

Oh no, 100%. I am I had you were preaching to the choir here. That is 100% valuable, and I was so grateful that I learned it. Like, no regrets whatsoever. And now I have the knowledge on running ads, and and I'm in your program, which we'll start, we will talk to talk about in a minute, uh, so other people can can get your valuable insight as well. But I have one more question. So this is something I hear a lot. Now, I work with a lot of musicians, a lot of creatives in general. And we're we're talking a lot of artists, so musicians, actors, visual artists, dancers, and I hear this all the time. Ads just feel icky. So tell us how can you run ads without the ick?

SPEAKER_00: 27:32

Okay, that's a great question. Um, I would assume if we go deeper than that, maybe it's like the pushy sales tactics that are often used in ads, in which case you don't have to sound like that at all. In fact, you know, I don't think I sound like that in ads, but and quite and I don't really teach that either. I think you should be yourself because what you don't want to do is, and I talk about this a lot too, where you don't want to like come across one way and then they get behind the curtain and they're like, whoa, she's not like that, or he's not like that at all. And so you you don't want to kind of like bait and switch, right? You want to make sure we're kind of consistently building our brand in a positive way. So that's in alignment with who you are. So I would say understanding what advertising style you want to utilize because there's lots of advertising methods and styles creatively that work well. And we get a lot of examples in in traditional advertising with this. Like brands like Nike and Apple use use a lot of inspirational type advertising. And um, you know, brands like Mountain Dew and like utilize a lot of absurdism, right? Where you're like, what did I just watch? And there's, you know, they do it to an extreme, right? But of course, as an artist, like that might actually, if you really are drawn to that and it's funny and and it's and it gets your attention, that you might like doing that and trying that. So I say try different things, try different styles of creative um, you know, marketing, and then see what fits you and feels good. But you certainly don't have to do it so direct, or you know, I think of oftentimes like the bro marketing and advertising, where it's like, here's my fancy cars and my hot girlfriend, now we're on my boat, you know? And it's like that's like for me, that's never been relatable because even if I could afford that or I could or have those things, um, like at the end of the day, that's just not my personality at all. So yeah, you I think you have to be in alignment with who you are.

SPEAKER_01: 29:56

100% agree on that. So as we wrap things up, if you could give small business owners, solopreneurs, entrepreneurs one piece of advice when it comes to ads or something else business related, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00: 30:13

Okay, if I could give one piece of advice, I think this is gonna be something that's relevant right now, and that is don't give up. I think things are really hard right now for businesses, and I think a lot of people are scared to say that. And a lot of businesses are having a tougher 2025 and things are slower. And I want to tell you that um there's gonna always be the longer you're in the game, you understand that there's ups and downs. There's good years, bad years, the market's good, the market's not good, whatever. I want to tell you that this these aren't normal times, they're tough times, and you can make it through. And I want to encourage you that you have a I think a duty to also encourage your audience who also is feeling it. And I think the world needs more positivity now, more than ever before. I think a lot of what we see online is, you know, it is doomsday, everything's horrible. Some of it is good to know because it opens our eyes. But oftentimes, especially for those of us that are more creative and sensitive, I'm very sensitive. That really gets to me. It makes a pretty big emotional impact. And so I think we need to be filling ourselves up with um honest business advice and strategy. And I think we need to be filling ourselves up with encouragement and then so we can give that to other people because the world needs more of that right now.

SPEAKER_01: 31:53

I love that. That what the world needs now is love, sweet love, right? The whole song. Oh, that's wonderful. Now, Shelby, if my listeners want to work with you, how can they get in touch with you? How can they work with you?

SPEAKER_00: 32:06

Yeah. So the best thing to do is to join um my members. And that is really geared towards, you know, one of one of the biggest issues I see businesses face when they start running ads is they don't know what to run ads to. And by the way, this is for people who are doing maybe, you know,$5,000 a month up until I've had clients doing multi-million a year still come to me with the same problem. They're like, I don't know what to run ads to. What should I run ads to? And then they'll be like, I've had, you know, again, multi-seven figure year businesses be like, okay, we should we do this? And I'm like, that's a horrible. We're not running ads. So that that this really helps you create offers that you can run ads to and to really have um cover Instagram DM ads in there as well. So it's it's all about um you know creating offers though that you can run ads to and um ultimately those will also work with your organic marketing too. That's a side note. Anything that I ever teach prepaid ads will only be it will always work for your existing marketing.

SPEAKER_01: 33:20

Love that. And and people on the show know I only bring on people that I totally trust. I am in her membership and it is a hidden gem. It's wonderful. So thank you so much for coming on. It's been so great talking to you. Hopefully, you guys can glean something from this, take the fear out of running ads, and in the meantime, just keep planning like a boss.