Why you've got to check out today's episode
1. Carolyn Choate shares how to create simple, powerful funnels that boost conversions and sales.
2. Learn how to identify and fix roadblocks that are preventing leads from converting on your website.
3. Carolyn gives actionable tips on how to automate your business and free up time for what matters most.
4. Discover why funnels don’t have to be complicated to work and how simplicity can lead to better results.
5. Learn how to use funnels to ethically and effectively guide potential customers to your offer.
In this episode, Carolyn Choate, a marketing strategist and funnel expert, shares her insights on creating simple, ethical sales funnels that attract and convert leads. She discusses how funnels can automate your sales process and save time. Carolyn also explains how to identify and fix common funnel roadblocks on your website.
02:44 Ideal Client: Entrepreneurs who are doing everything manually and want to automate their business to free up time.
03:10 Problem Solved: Carolyn helps entrepreneurs build simple, powerful sales funnels and fix common roadblocks that prevent lead conversions.
04:20 Valuable Free Action (VFA): Make your lead magnet clear and enticing by explaining the value people will get when they sign up, increasing conversions.
06:54 Valuable Productive Action (VPA): Automate your sales processes and set up funnels to save time and ensure consistent lead generation.
08:40 Bonus Material: Carolyn emphasizes that funnels should be simple and efficient, avoiding unnecessary complexity to make them more effective.
10:45 Valuable Free Resource (VFR): Take the Funnel Stoppers quiz at financiallyfreeauthor.com/funnel-stoppers to identify where leads get stuck on your website and learn how to fix it.
(Note, this was transcribed using transcription software and may not fully reflect the exact words used in the podcast)
Welcome to the Goalbusters Expert Peak Productivity Tips podcast, where top business experts get just seven minutes to answer five rapid fire questions about what they do and how they stay productive.
Each episode is packed with actionable insights to help boost your efficiency and achieve your goals. Let's dive in and unlock the secrets to peak performance.
00:22 ROBIN
Well, hello, everyone. My name is Robin J Emdon, and I'm an accountability coach and author of GetResultsology® - The Science of Getting Stuff Done. I work with people who run their own business, no boss, distractions everywhere, and never enough hours in the day. Together, we cut through the noise, sharpen their focus, and follow through on the big ideas that actually move the needle.
That's what I call The Momentum Formula. Do it today. Profit tomorrow, and Repeat!
If that sounds like the kind of breakthrough you've been looking for, then you're in exactly the right place.
And speaking of being in exactly the right place, I am delighted to welcome our guest expert today, Carolyn Choate. Carolyn is a novelist turned marketing strategist who discovered her love for sales funnels while promoting her own books, generating over fifty thousand dollars in passive income. She now helps entrepreneurs build simple, powerful funnels through her signature Funnel in a Day service. With a gift for turning complex tech into clear pathways, Carolyn brings a refreshing take on ethical human centered marketing. She's also a YouTuber and author on all things funnel, traffics, and traffics?
She's also a YouTuber and author on all things funnels, traffic, and launches.
Carolyn, welcome to GoalBusters!
CAROLYN
Thank you so much. I am so excited to talk with you.
ROBIN
I'm excited to have you here too. And I told you I would fluff the last line of that, didn't I? And I was true to my word.
CAROLYN
Not the way that you thought you would.
ROBIN
No. No. I thought of something completely different. Whereabouts in the world are you, Carolyn?
I am in Concord, Massachusetts, which is on the East Coast of the US.
ROBIN
Oh, fantastic. And we've just and we've established today that it's the summer holidays in America, which is something us Brits, we don't do anything like what as much holidays as you do.
CAROLYN
We have months and months of trying to figure out where to put the children.
ROBIN
Yes. Indeed. Yes. Well yeah. Well, we won't get into that, or I might get into trouble. So shall we do the questions instead?
CAROLYN
Absolutely.
ROBIN
Alright. I'll get the clock up on the screen.
And there it goes. Carolyn, could you tell me, please, who is your ideal client?
02:44 CAROLYN – Ideal Client
I work with entrepreneurs who are doing all the things themselves and usually doing everything manually, so they don't have as much time as they want to, like, their actual work because they're busy, like, sending a welcome email by hand.
ROBIN
Okay. That's great. Perfect. And, also, although I've mentioned it very briefly in the introduction, you may actually could elaborate more on the problem or problems that you solve.
03:10 CAROLYN – Problem Solved
Yes. I really like to help people lay out a clearer path to help their ideal clients to understand what they do and how they help, and automate to free up your time. So I often will map out a we call it a funnel. You know, funnel has kind of a a bad connotation at times. I like to look at it as a cobblestone garden path that leads people straight to your doorstep, which is your your offers.
And so I just have a gift for seeing, like, what is the clearest way for your ideal clients to see why you're the person who will help them and how they can take the next step and the next step and the next step.
ROBIN
Oh, I love that. I love the imagery as well. Cobblestone garden path.
CAROLYN
It’s so much nicer.
ROBIN
It does sound nicer, and you won't believe me, but it's true. I used to own a cobblestone garden path that leads to a gift shop, and you mentioned about gifts.
So there I was reminiscing about the past and not paying enough attention to what you were saying, which would actually help answer the question.
Alright. So let's do the next question, which is what is one valuable free action that the audience can implement that will help them to solve that problem?
04:20 CAROLYN – Valuable Free Action (VFA)
I think that a lot of the people I talk to know that they should have some kind of a free gift in return for an email address, but a lot of times it's not thought through very well, and it might be sort of slapped on the website. Somewhere at the bottom, it says, you know, sign up for my newsletter here. And what I would recommend is tell people why. What will they get when they sign up for your newsletter?
Even if you don't have, like, a free checklist, a lead magnet, whatever it is, just give them a little taste of, like, sign up for my newsletter so that you can get valuable tips about gratitude so that you can. Just fill in that gap, and you'll get a lot more people saying yes to that, giving their email address out, and make it really visible on your site because it's a great way to stay in touch with people who are not ready to purchase from you yet. But they might be in the future, and if you don't give them a chance to stay in touch, they're gonna say to themselves, I'll come back here, and then they're gonna completely forget to.
ROBIN
Yes. And will I be right in saying, I think people we they need to progress as quickly as they can away from the newsletter, do the newsletter. But there are millions of news letters, billions probably out there. It's as old as the Internet, and you need to offer more than that now. I find that newsletters are great. If it's someone I already won't know, like, and trust, and wanna know more about, I might be interested in getting their newsletter. There's very few that the newsletter alone is in enough of a pull. Am I right?
CAROLYN
Yes. Ideally, you are offering something that is a natural first step towards what you want to ultimately be offering them and something that's very enticing to your ideal client. It's okay if it repels other people. Right? It's a magnet. So push away your not ideal clients. Pull in your ideal clients.
And, it's… I think we look down on it as like, oh, tire kickers, freebie seekers. I don't want that. But they're giving you their email address and permission to contact them, and that is Internet currency. That is very valuable. So respect that people allowing you into their inboxes is a really big deal, and give them wonderful things in return for it.
ROBIN
Yes. I could probably talk about this with you all day, but I'm going to we've only got four minutes, three minutes left, so I better move on. So now that we have a better understanding of what you do, let's dive into GoalBusting, which is focusing on to how to maximize productive time to achieve business goals. So, Carolyn, could you share any tips or advice for someone looking to improve their productivity habits?
06:54 CAROLYN – Valuable Productive Action (VPA)
I really love systems and automations, and a lot of the tech that you're already using in your business now can do more than what you are doing with it. Many, many websites, email CRMs have abilities to put in different kinds of automations, which is just like when you were at school and you were like, if this, then this. If this action, then this consequence.
And once you set those up, it frees up so much of your time because you're basically making your website into a virtual assistant who can take some of that stuff off your plate that you do not need to be manually doing, and then you have more time for what is actually moving the needle in your business.
ROBIN
Yeah. I've lost count the number of times I've said to my son. I've said, I need more hours in the day. I genuinely need more hours because there is just so many moving parts to a modern business online. There's so many things.
And as you know, and as our listeners will know if they've even started to get into this kind of thing is they break. So then you spend time, oh, why isn't that working? It worked yesterday!
CAROLYN
Yeah. I often remind people, like, around once a month, I'll put on out on my Instagram, check your funnel. Like, go through your own website. Make sure nothing's broken. You didn't change a link and then forget to whatever. And...
ROBIN
Yeah. And they break!
CAROLYN
There's so many things. It's not. It's not your fault. I don't know why it happens. It's very complex stuff in the background. So, yeah, it's gonna happen.
ROBIN
So, I'm having a little rant, aren't I? So I better move on. What should I have asked you today, Carolyn, that I didn't and your answer, please?
08:40 CAROLYN – Bonus Material
Oh, gosh. I could I don't know. I could talk about funnel stuff, like, all day, every day. I love it.
And, yeah, I I wish that people understood that funnels are supposed to be simple. We see a lot of marketers out there saying, like, oh, do away with the complex funnels.
And, yeah, do away with the complex funnels. What they're trying to sell you is still a funnel. They're just not calling it that.
It should really be the simplest path from a stranger to saying yes to your offer. Now depending on how complex your offer is, maybe the funnel needs to be complex.
But if it doesn't need to be, don't make it because the simpler it is for you, the simpler it is for your ideal client, and they won't get confused and frustrated. And, like, what the heck is going on here?
ROBIN
Yes. And I also think people resist funnels because although they are in the sales business, oh, I don't really like sales. I mean, some people do, but they are the minority.
CAROLYN
Here’s the nice thing about funnels. The nice thing about funnels is it can do the selling for you. Yes. You can set up that email to sell, and then you never have to have that conversation with people.
ROBIN
Yes. Well, yes. And then the other side of it is as I say as I've said to I've got two sons. I've said to both of them.
They oh, we don't like sales, dad. And I say, listen. You know, when you wanna date someone, you put them in a sales funnel. What you're selling them is yourself, but, you know, there's the sales funnel.
There's the initial meeting, and then there's drinks, and then there's dinner and dating and…
CAROLYN
Everything is sales.
ROBIN
Everything is sales.
CAROLYN
Funnels.
ROBIN
And they look at me as if I've come from Mars or Venus if you're a John Gray fan. And it's like, oh, he doesn't know what he's talking about. He's just that. Alright.
So, Carolyn, final question that I always ask at this point, which is how can people reach you? And also, is there, like, a valuable free resource they could get from you? Which, you know, we've been talking about these valuable free resources, but, actually, it's also a very it isn't just about getting people on a mailing list. It's about people connecting with you and finding out more about your offer and getting a taste of what you could do for them.
10:45 CAROLYN – Valuable Free Resource (VFR)
Absolutely. Yes. My website is financiallyfreeauthor.com, and I have a little quiz at financiallyfreeauthor.com/funnel-stoppers.
And even if you don't have a funnel yet, if you have a website, you can take this quiz, and it's going to help show where your leads are getting stuck when they arrive on your website.
So if you're not getting as many leads from your website as you thought you would, this is a great quiz to take, and it's gonna uncover where the holdup is and what you can do to get it unstuck.
ROBIN
Fantastic. And that's financially free author as in the writer, not offer as in a funnel.
CAROLYN
Good point. Yes. Because I started as an author. I still am an author. I do both fiction and nonfiction under different names now, but yes.
ROBIN
Yes. Indeed. Alright. That's perfect. Thank you very much indeed. I thoroughly enjoyed that. It's been inspiring and a master class.
And, I love it when people are passionate about what they do, and that's clearly you.
CAROLYN
I'm very passionate. Yes.
ROBIN
So, Carolyn, thank you so much.
Thank you. This is delightful and energizing to talk about funnels in such a quick format.
ROBIN
Yes. Indeed.
Yes.
Hurry up. Hurry up. Hurry up. Alright. So remember, everybody, keep GoalBusting and make your future self proud.
Bye bye.
OUTRO
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Robin J. Emdon is the creator of GetResultsology®: The Science of Getting Stuff Done!, a research-backed system that helps solopreneurs beat procrastination, build momentum, and follow through on what matters most.
Robin was one of a small, invitation-only group selected for an intensive life-coach programme taught by Tony Robbins* and his faculty in 2001. The training was meant to prepare them for roles at his organisation in San Diego, but when that opportunity changed Robin stayed in the UK, launched his own life-coaching practice, and later stepped back to raise his two young sons.
Known to clients today as The Procrastination Slayer, Robin had a face-palm moment in 2019 when he realised it had taken him ten years to finish a six-year degree. That wake-up call launched his mission to master procrastination.
During the Covid lockdowns in 2020 he discovered that researchers had published more than 900 studies on procrastination in a single decade and pulled the most practical lessons from the strongest research and leading books to shape his momentum formula:
Do it today, Profit tomorrow, Repeat.
Peer-reviewed research from the Dominican University of California shows that working with an accountability partner can raise goal-achievement rates by up to 33 percent, a finding woven into every GetResultsology® plan.
Robin hosts The GoalBusters Podcast, now past 100 episodes, where he talks with fellow solopreneurs and uncovers the real-world productivity tactics behind their success.
From South Devon, England, he coaches clients worldwide, helping solopreneurs, creatives, and other no-boss professionals turn scattered effort into consistent progress and profit.
Want an engaging guest who sparks action or an accountability coach who keeps you on track? Book Robin for your show or request coaching details.
*Tony Robbins and Robbins Research International are not affiliated with, and do not endorse, GetResultsology® or its services.
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