Sales Funnel Radio (Steve J Larsen)
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| Pub. Date | Title | Duration | |
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| 17 Aug 2018 | SFR 166: Keep The Thrill Of Buying... | 00:16:48 | |
Boom. What's going on everyone, this is Steve Larsen. This is Sales Funnel Radio - and today we are going to talk about JCPenney.
I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now I've left my nine-to-five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.
The real question is, how will I do it without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer.
Join me and follow along as I learn, apply and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels.
My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.
What's up guys.
Okay, first off this is probably one of my favorite case studies ever that I've read. This is from a Harvard one that I read, and it's really, really fascinating stuff.
First of all, I would not consider myself a clothing connoisseur. But this is a very fascinating case study.
I am not gonna be able to say dates or even names correctly, it's the lesson though. I remember when I read this the first time, I was sitting in a very tiny room, listening to 400 words a minute, reading through and going through…
I was like, oh my gosh, this is a great lesson, right. And it completely applies to everything that's going on here. So here's the story…
The story goes that the guy who... You know when Apple first started making their Genius Bar in the Apple Stores, right.
There was a guy, right, that went through and he started thinking through this amazing Genius Bar and this amazing experience when you walk in and the design of it, the layout, the look of it, right.
When you walk into an Apple Store, you know you're in an Apple Store, right?
And, again, I can't remember his name, so if anyone remembers, awesome. I don't right now off the top of my head. But the guy, what he did is he went and created this Genius Bar and he created this awesome feel when you walk in there. It's very premium feel when you walk in.
The Apple Store was launched, right, very small, and then they started replicating, replicating just, and blast them all over the place when they got the base test correct, right. Well, they started thinking to themselves, so why don't I keep building this out and put this around other areas. Other department stores started seeing what Apple is doing. It's about this time JCPenney came along and said, Hey what's up guy, do you wanna leave Apple, come on over here and design our stores instead?
And so he left designing these Apple Stores, with the Genius Bars and that premium feel when you walk in, he left doing that and what he did instead was he came and he started doing designing and doing very similar for JCPenney.
He moved into the JCPenney and he gutted tons and tons of stuff inside of there. Gutted it.
He got rid of this and that - the normal shirt racks and the rings, things like that. I mean he got rid of, it literally looked like an Apple Store but with JCPenney clothing inside of it:
#1: He completely redesigned the entire feel
#2: He got rid of mailers
He started saying things like, “Hey look, people know that we mark this up and then when they come in with a coupon they're actually buying it at the normal price it was anyways. Well instead, we know that customers are smart. We know the customers are smart. Why don't we just not do that? And instead of, right, let's say they get a shirt in, and it's 40 bucks they mark it up to, I don't know, 60, 70 dollars and then send out a coupon that brings it back down to 40 bucks, right.” That's like the classic Kohl's model; that's why there's always a deal going on, always clearance right now - there's always this going on. That's how they run all those department stores.
So instead of sending mailers - they didn't send anything. He started telling the customers, and his message to the market was, “Look, customers, we know, you know what's going on. We know that you know that these mailers we send out are not really an extra 50% off, or 40% off or 30% off.”
What, oh my gosh! Right.
All they did was they marked it up like crazy - so then it seems like this huge discount.
It's kinda like, my favorite thing, I went and I just grabbed a quick pair of like, swim shorts at Kohl's the other day and they're like, “You saved $97!” when I go and check out.
They don't tell you how much you spent, they tell you how much you saved.
That's very clever and I'm starting to do that in some of my sales funnels; right on the thank you page, “You saved blank, blank, blank” - instead of you spent this much.
Like you still say that, but the message is, “You saved this, this, this.” And I was looking at them kinda funny. I'm like “I bought a pair of socks and a shirt, you're telling me I saved $147 today?” And I always kinda look at them and smile, and they know and they're like, “Thank you. Congratulations.” But it's the psychology behind what they're doing, right?
Anyways, so this guy said, “Hey we're not gonna do that, we're not gonna send out these mailers.” Instead, if a shirt is $20 we're not gonna say it's $19.97 - we’ll just say it's 20 bucks. We're not gonna mark it up and then give you a coupon. We know you're a smart customer.
A very interesting thing happened…
Their stock price dropped, it like, I think it was uh, like a full fourth. I mean they lost so much value - it may even have been more that. It dropped a gigantic level in a matter of two months - I mean really really fast.
All their foot traffic stopped in the stores, no one showed up anymore… There was no reason to show up, right?
Eventually, they ended up getting rid of the apple guy, getting back their old model. And then suddenly, you know, it's no longer that tight. JCPenney lived and moved on.
What's the lesson there? Guys, even if people know…
Okay, we do this thing when we do webinars called the stack. The stack in the webinar is beautiful, it's amazing, it's brilliant, it’s incredible. The stack is a way to structure your offers and then present the offers.
However, it can feel a little bit weird to the person who's doing it, right? Cause you're like, “First, you get this…” This is totally like an infomercial. This is why they do it, this is called the stack. It's inside an infomercial, right?
First, you're gonna get this, and that's valued at this price, but wait, if you act now I'm gonna give you two for the price of one. But wait, if you act now we're actually gonna give you a third for absolutely free, but wait, if you act now we'll give you this, and this, and this, and this, and this - that's a total value of blank
And they stack this value up and then do a massive price drop. People know what they're doing, right? You know what they're doing, right?
Go open up your mailbox next time the mail comes in, I guarantee there's some kind of mailer in there. And you know what people are doing, right? But buyers love the game!
It doesn't mean you don't play the game just because like, “Oh they're gonna know what I'm doing.” Great, good, then they know that you're asking for their money soon, right?
It's pretty common, especially for a funnel builder, to be like, “Well, I don't know if I want to put like the whole like price slash thing. I don't know if I wanna put like a countdown clock, I don't know if I wanna put like.... You know, all these little scarcity urgency things..”
All these little scarcity urgency things we used to get someone to push over the edge, they're there for a reason! Don't feel awkward about it. Don't feel weird about it. People want an excuse to act now.
The coupon mailers that go out - that’s a reason for people to get off of their butt and buy now.
Could they buy the same shirt probably the next day for the same amount of money? Yes. But the mailer is the lever that you have, right?
It's the ad. It's the scarcity and urgency, specifically that gets them to get off of their butt and take action immediately rather than wait.
If they wanna buy, give them a reason to now.
That's why I love this case study so much. JCPenney literally took away the deal. It took away the endorphin rush that I'm going to get knowing that I saved $147 today on socks from Kohls.
I did not save $140, I spent $20. But it's the way that you say it that makes it an offer. And you can do that with your copy, not just what you're selling. You can do that with your scarcity and your urgency.
This is a huge lesson. Let people play the game. Buying is a game.
What's funny is, if you look at the sales process psychology from beginning to end, there's a game that gets played inside of there.
There's an endorphin rush that happens that people get to feel when they purchase. It's an actual endorphin rush. They want to feel it. Let them feel it.
When you take away the deal, they don't feel it. And even though they've got the same product, they are less satisfied with it. Does that make sense?
You can give the exact same product away and not play some of these games… Not play some of these scarcity and urgency moves. Not give them a reason to act now. And you will literally kill the fun of them purchasing. They know. They're still buying, they're still responsible purchasers (most of the time, right?)
What you want to do is find ways to get - so that's my challenge, that's literally the entire point of this entire episode....
This might be a little bit short. But that's the whole point of the episode, okay? Figure out what it is people want to purchase.
There's this weird thing that happens, guys…
Anything that I sell, the 80/20 rule always applies. 20 percent of my people are going to run forward after they purchase. Which is true for any product.
When I was doing Two Comma Club coaching for Clickfunnels, a year ago, I still am, but a year ago I started looking at the numbers.
There were several hundred people who were inside the course, and when I looked at how many people were actually active, it was literally 20 percent.
The other people who were in the course would still get what they needed, the 20% were just the hardcore people who stuck. You know, the hardcore believers that were with me like crazy. They're the true believers. They were about 20 percent.
It's the exact same rule when you're actually selling this stuff. If you think through the actual buyer psychology; they want to feel the warm fuzzies of them purchasing.
I did an episode about this a little bit ago, about the pre-purchase. This is one of the easiest ways to have a pre-purchase. Don't take away the deal. Don't take away the warm fuzzies. Don't take away the fun of buying, right?
People want to purchase. When you show something cool, they already want to buy. People want to buy. They want to buy things. There's a consumption instinct. (There’s a great book called the consuming instinct.)
We want to consume things. And that's not a bad thing. But sometimes you, the entrepreneur, get in the way with your own emotions of what you feel awkward over. Don't do that!
If something is proven to help you sell a product, then you stay the course and use it to sell the product - as long as it's ethical and moral. I think that goes without saying, but maybe it doesn't, so let me go ahead and just say it. As long as it's ethical and moral, okay?
So, figure out what those mechanisms are.
One of the easiest ways for you to go ahead and do that is to start looking at what other products your customers are buying to get the same solution.
Like if they wanna get money, and let's say they buy your product here and they buy someone else's and buy somebody else's and buy somebody else's.
Go look at not just like the funnel, but also what scarcity and urgency, what thrills of purchase thay have laced into their product.
There's a thrill of purchase. Give them the thrill of purchasing. That’s exactly what JCPenney lost when they brought that other guy in.
They're sending all these mailers out to all these women who wanted to buy, then they took away the thrill of purchase because they didn't save.
My mom's awesome, but she would spend tons of time clipping coupons. She would go gather coupons from all over the place.
She would end up getting money from the store and two carts of groceries for free. It's like crazy, right? Amazing. But mentality it’s very different... so to take away part the thrill of the savings…
It's kind of like when you go on a vacation, right? I said this a few episodes ago, the vacation itself has been shown to have the same amount of fun and excitement, as the expectation leading up to the vacation.
When you see a movie preview come out six months in advance and you put the time on the calendar. You get the babysitter set up, you're planning everything so that you go, that's the exact same thing.
It's the reason you open carts and close carts. It's the reason you do scarcity and urgency. It's the reason you have a countdown clock. It's the reason you do price slashes and price drops - little things like that.
Does the customer know what you're doing? 99 percent of the time, the answer is yes, but that does not mean you don't do it?
The customer wants to play the game. It is a courtship, it is a dance that they're playing with you.
And when you look at it that way, it is a lot of fun.
So anyways, that is the whole point of this episode… Keep the fun, keep the thrill of purchasing for your customers.
Make sure you've got these little things laced inside there, so they like to buy. Make it so it's easy for them to buy. Make it so it's fun.
One of the easiest ways, have success paths. Little cultural things.
We have a product we just launched called My Funnel Stache, as in a mustache. My Funnel Stache is ALL the top end funnels that I built while at Clickfunnels for Russell and his clients.
I rebuilt them in front of a live audience and you could buy them and use them. So like the top of the top, the freakin' awesome, okay? But with My Funnel Stache, I send out they're Clickfunnels sunglasses - one lens is red, one lens is blue - they're 3D glasses, but they look like the Clickfunnels colors.
Then I send you out a Clickfunnels mustache, it's not Clickfunnels, but it's a fake adhesive mustache. Why? Because it's fun. That's the only reason. It builds CULTure - it's the thrill of the purchase that we're lacing inside there.
We got another cool little few tools we've been using lately.
When somebody goes in and they buy from me, I'll just flip my phone open and send them a video real fast and say thank you to them personally with their name. “Hey, what's up, thanks so much,” and I'll crack stupid jokes. I don't care if they're stupid.
That's not the point. I'm keeping the thrill of the purchase laced inside of the buying process.
Don't be boring to buy from - don't be boring in general ;-) - but don't be boring in the actual order process.
Anyway, there's a lot of tiny little things we've been doing like that lately. It’s even laced inside of my copy:
“All right, if you don't get this now, are you ever going to be successful doing this stuff? Absolutely not!”
I'll say things like that just as a joke, and they know that. I’m lacing in my personality. I’m lacing in scarcity and urgency. The courtship of the purchasing experience is so important.
Don't take away the fuel from their sales. They already wanna buy from you - just give them reasons to do it now.
So that's what I've got for you guys today. Remember the JCPenney rule, and the time you go get your mail from your mailbox, and you're leafing through your crap and you're like, “that's junk, that's real, that's junk, that's real,” I guarantee you guys all do that - so do I. But I like to read them...
Every once in a while you get one of those coupons, and you're like, “Sweet. You know what, we should go do this.” What did they give you? Their numbers work at the discounted rate - they just marked it up most of the time to get you in.
They gave you a reason to act now - that's a close.
Coupons are a close. It's not even marketing anymore, we're in the sales, especially the close area. They're closing you, “Come on in,” let's get that foot traffic up and rocking.
So anyway, keep the thrill of the purchase going.
Hope you guys enjoyed this episode. If you guys liked it, please rate and review in iTunes and share it. I have a lot of fun making these for you guys.
If you guys want to check out My Funnel Stache, literally go to myfunnelstache.com and you can watch how I built that whole thing and the marketing behind it.
I built the funnel live in front of an audience, built the marketing itself, designed the funnel. Built the script live in front of the audience. The entire thing was really fun.
It includes the application funnels, webinar funnels, event funnels, e-com funnels, supplement funnels, B2B - all the top ones that are built out of Clickfunnels. These aren't your grandma's funnels - these are awesome funnels. That's my Funnel Stash.
I decided it would be cool if it was “stache,” so we got 500 fake mustaches right behind the camera right now, and we're shipping them out!
All right guys, thanks so much, and talk to you later. Bye.
Boom! Just try to tell me you didn't like that!
Hey, whoever controls content controls the game. Want to interview me or get interviewed yourself? Grab a time now at SteveJLarsen.com!
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| 06 May 2024 | How to use a Dramatic Demonstration in your business? (FHL 2022 & 2023 Replay!) | 02:03:14 | |
In this episode, you'll hear the audio replays of the two speech that started all of this buzz about Dramatic Demonstrations. These 2 hours are both speeches, mixed with live commentary Russell Brunson and I made after each speech. This formula is 'c'uring LeadFlow for businesses and I'm excited for you to use these lessons in your own marketing. Truly this formula is a marketing formula at it's purest. Enjoy! | |||
| 04 Jan 2017 | SFR 28: Interview - Nick Arapkiles Exposes Some Of His Youtube Traffic "Hacks" | 00:34:00 | |
Click above to listen in iTunes... I LOVE video…. And traffic. I have over 200 videos on Youtube now and here's what I wish I'd known…
Steve: Hey, everyone. This is Steve Larsen. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. Announcer: Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. Steve: All right, you guys. Hey, I'm super excited. I'm super pumped for today because we get to talk about something that has always intrigued me. It's actually kind of the way it got started in internet when I first started working for Paul Mitchel and driving internet traffic with one of my buddies. Since then I really haven't done much so I'm excited to welcome on to the podcast an expert in this area, thank you so much, Nick Arapkiles. How are you doing? Nick: I'm great, man. Thanks for having me on. Steve: Hey, thanks. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for coming on. I was just looking through Facebook messages before you and I got on here and I didn't realize I think you had asked if we could push the time back and I'm such a morning person, thanks for getting up this early to do this. Nick: Hey, no problem at all, man. I'm happy to do it. Like you said I'm not much of a morning person, but when someone like you gives me an opportunity like this I'm happy to get on. Steve: It's nice that you did, I appreciate it. For everyone listening, this really is probably the first time, I mean, this is the first time that we'd really spoken like this. The guy that connected us is Ben Wilson obviously. Ben is the guy. He and I we're doing that things, Paul Mitchel and several other companies just think the world of him. He sent me a message and he goes, "Dude, I got this awesome guy. He's the man." I think I still have the message just to put it on the podcast or something. It's pretty funny. He's like, "This sweet guy, man, he's this genius and he said he wants to come." "Hey, sweet." I'm always looking for talent, for people because I get boring for everyone I'm sure. I'm excited to have some mix out. Nick: It's kind of a funny story. I met him at an event here in Colorado and then I actually ran into him at the Rockies, in the baseball game. Then he messaged me about you and here we are. Steve: Dude, that's great. What event was it? Nick: It was actually for a book publishing event ironically ... Steve: He told me he's going to that. Okay, cool. That's fantastic. It's funny this whole internet marketing world, it's actually a lot smaller than people think it is because people get in it, they'll get out of it, they'll get in it but the people that stick around I don't think there's ... Anyways, get around quick. What is exactly that you're doing then? You told me that you're awesome with YouTube which is awesome.
Nick: Basically, I've been doing this stuff for a lot. Do you want me to just go on to my story a little bit? Steve: Okay, man. Let's hear it. Nick: Okay, cool. I've actually been online for about six years now and two and a half of those first six years were complete and utter struggle. It's usually the case with a lot of people's stories. I don't think I'm too much different... Steve: Anyone who says otherwise I feel like they are just lying or throwing a sales video. Nick: Yeah, I mean, it sucked at the time. Obviously it sucked at the time not having, you always expect when you get started you're thinking you're going to make money in your first day, first week, first month at least but it was tough man, it really was. I forfeited a lot of things going on.
It was the summer before my last year of college so all my friends were going out partying and going to pool parties, different stuff like that. I was just dedicated to this thing. I essentially locked myself in my room that whole summer and I was dedicated to making it work and I didn't even make it work that entire summer and even years after that. It just led me on this path I think once you get into this like you're essentially infected with the entrepreneurial bug as I like to call it. You can't really go back from that. I mean, I kept on trying different things. I even went into the trading Forex and stuff like that but eventually came back into the marketing realm and that's where I am now like you're asking I've done a lot of YouTube stuff. That's the big thing is I really always focus on driving traffic because if you can drive traffic then you have a business. You really can do anything, it depends on what traffic you're using. Most the time I promote different funnels like business opportunities or just affiliate programs... I haven't really dove into much of my own stuff. I just leverage other systems that people put out and that's pretty much what I'm doing but it all stems from driving traffic and then calling people from YouTube into my world. I like to really call it my world more so than my list. I think a lot of people say my list or build a list. That's great, obviously you need to build a list but I think it helps me come from a better mentality than it's I'm building a list of people or a list. It's more so I'm building an audience of people, they are in my world now. Because I think a lot of people secure a list and they just think of numbers and what it really comes down to is that these are people that are interested and they want to connect with you and they want to learn more. You have to treat them as such and I think when you do that you get a lot better results. Steve: Interesting. That's interesting. A lot of people I know will talk about, they'll have you fill out something. Who are you trying to attract? What's their likes? What's their dislikes? What do they hate? Sometimes I feel like that gets pretty artificial after a while. You're just targeting people like yourself. I feel like it's the easiest way to go... Nick: Yeah, to be honest I didn't express this fully but basically what I do right now is I don't actually do too much advertising where I'm paying for the clicks and stuff like that. It's mostly just all organic. I've done a little bit of advertising here and there but the big thing is just putting content up. I know you're asking if I could drop some nuggets for YouTube and stuff like that but the biggest thing is just to continually put out content just like any other type of platform whether that's Facebook, Instagram, even Snapchat now. It's just continually putting out content because the more content you have out there, the more likely people are going to find you... I mean, there are some videos that I have that have seven views but there's also other videos that have 100,000 views. You never really know exactly which videos are going to hit. You might have an idea depending on the keywords and how optimized your videos are but the biggest thing that I stress and every day I learn more and more, I'm always learning is the fact that you never really know exactly until you start putting up content which videos are really going to stick and gain some traction until you upload them. Steve: That's interesting you say that. Back in college also I started really, really diving into this also, same thing. I sucked at it. There's a guy I listen to and he was saying, "You should always be publishing. Try and get a way to be in front of your people. Produce content." Just exactly what you're saying. I started doing that and making all these Periscope videos and I would put the recordings on YouTube. I can't tell you how cool that was. Stuff started happening when I did that. The exact reason you're saying. I had some videos that were terrible but then others were completely surprising to me. People started watching them and pushing them around. What the heck is this? My products started getting sold organically. I was like, "This is kind of cool," I totally agree with that but I have to ask though, you're putting YouTube videos out. Try to put as many up as you can. How do you rank a YouTube video? It's hard to... these words for spiders to go crawl and stuff like that like a blog post. What are some strategies you use to actually try and get them out there? Nick: It almost feels like it's changed throughout the years, I think the algorithms and everything. I'm not that geeky like that but I just noticed some trends here and there. As of late, I've noticed that a bigger channel with more subscribers and just a little bit more authority, maybe it's been on for a little bit of while or a little while, those are the videos that's pushing up towards the top of the search engines. You can pull back links. I know that probably gets a little bit more complex. I don't know if you're familiar with back linking. Steve: 100%, yeah definitely. Nick: Okay, I just didn't know if your audience would or not but that's basically you can go out there and get some other people to put your video in a bunch of different places. The idea behind that is that the search engines see your video all over the place and they are like, "This must be a video that is good. Let's start pushing it up towards the top of the search engine." Especially a couple of years ago that was huge and it definitely got me a lot of results but the thing again that I've noticed lately is that just having a big channel and having some decent subscribers and having people actually watch majority of your video is what's really pushing your videos up. I've had some videos where I just started making videos and they don't get much traction at all but then I have one of my bigger channels and I just put it up and I don't really optimize it at all, I don't really do anything to it and right away it's like one of the first videos on the search engine. Steve: I hear of Traffic Geyser. Nick: Yeah the name sounds familiar. Steve: These sites where you just submit your video and they'll just blast it across the internet so that you could get more views. I mean, totally spam-my stuff, you know what I mean? It's the dream for every entrepreneur or internet guys to just put your stuff everywhere.
Nick: Not necessarily. I use a website called Fiverr a lot of the times or at least I used to. I haven't been using it as much lately but it's a really cool website. You're obviously familiar with it but I'll explain it for your audience. Basically, it's just a website. It's called fiverr.com, F-I-V-E-R-R dot com and basically it's a site that has a bunch of people doing a bunch of different gigs. They'll literally do anything for you for $5. I think there's a processing fee now for like 50 cents. Essentially people will do anything for you on the internet. I should be more specific with that. Steve: It's funny though because I've had people like, "Rap my name." I've had people, "Beat box stuff," they'll do anything for five bucks. Nick: Exactly, there's a lot of different stuff that you can do. Basically I just go on there and look for back links or maybe social signals and it's not to complicated. I mean, you just have to find someone with good rating, good track record and just test them out and that's the whole thing that I always tell people too is that you just have to test things out. You'll never really know what's working, what's not working until you go out there and actually apply it yourself... I think a lot of people are always asking me for the secret, asking me for different things that are just going to make it click and they're going to make hundreds of thousands of dollars. That's really never the case. You know this just as well as anybody is that you actually have to go out there and do the work, see what's working, see what's not working and then throw out the stuff that's not working and then just ramp up the stuff that is working... Steve: This is one of the reasons why I laugh so much when you brought up Fiverr because it started out as a great class. I'm sorry if anyone's listening that was in that class. It was like an SEO class in college and it started out great. We're learning all these cool strategies for SEO and things like that. Then it just got like the strategies were really old. I've been doing it long enough by that point that I just knew that what I was earning wasn't significant or anything. He's like, "Hey, what you're all going to go do is you got to go create a YouTube video and think about a topic a lot and the competition in the class to see whose video can get the most views." I was like, "I could totally game that." We went and we made this, you know that, "Do you even lift, bro?" Those videos that are out there right now, have you seen it though? Nick: I'm not sure. Steve: "Bro, do you even lift?" Nick: Okay, yeah. Steve: The next Star Wars is coming out and we said, "Do you even Jedi, bro?" We made all these funny videos of people. It was pretty cool but I totally went to Fiverr and I paid this dude $5 to send like 10,000 bot clicks. For no views at all to just this massive spike and we went and we gave the ending presentation stuff like that like we have over 10,000 clicks on this thing and everyone's like, "Oh my gosh, that's amazing." It's in the last few weeks and what's funny is that we ended up getting contacted right before the class ended by this ad agency. They were like, "Hey, we want to use your video to promote Star Wars stuff on." I was like, "Okay." None of them knew that this were like ... I'm sure that 50 of them were real clicks out of the ... Maybe. What's funny though is that obviously YouTube after a while can start to see if that's crap. The views on the bottom went from 0 to 10,000 to 12 and it stayed there. We're looking at the analytics for a while and then just totally drop. They took away all of them all the way back down to 3 views or something like that after the class was ended. Anyways, the only reason I bring that up is because A, it was a total failure and I knew what happened. I knew enough about that world that time but it was I mean, how do you go through Fiverr and figure out who's going to be sending you real clicks and not. You know what I mean or who's going to be pushing your video around the right way or not? Because most of it ... I like Fiverr for testing a lot of the lower level stuff but it sounds like you've got a cool way to do it that isn't that way. Nick: Yeah, that's actually a good point... I'm glad you brought that up because that's very important that you find good gigs because if you are sending a bunch of fake traffic to your YouTube videos it can get your video shut down and even your account shut down because YouTube will recognize that and they see that you're just throwing all these views on there and they are all fake. They don't like that. I've had the experience of getting a lot of my stuff shut down because of that in the early stages. Anyone listening, make sure that you're not sending crap gigs over to your videos because YouTube will shut that down real quick. In terms of finding good stuff, basically I just make sure that the vendor has a good track record. There's one specific guy that he's probably one of the bigger gigs. He's got so many different gigs on there. I'll just let you know his name is Crorkservice. Steve: Crorkservice, you know, I might actually seen him before. Nick: I'm sure you have. Honestly he's probably one of the best out there and he's got the best ratings. He's like the top of the top sellers... I mean, it's no hidden secret. You just have to go through his gigs and figure out what exactly it is that you want. If you are going to purchase views I really haven't done that in a long time. I know there are some people that do it and they do actually have success because again like I was saying before, if you can get high retention views where people are watching the majority of your video, that actually can really, really help you with ranking your video on YouTube in specifics. Just make sure that is a high retention view and again it has a good track record because that can definitely help with rankings on YouTube. Steve: Interesting, okay. What are you doing? I heard some people talk about we’ll give some formula or outline for what to make, what to put in the video to make sure that they’ll push pass minute seven or whatever it is. Do you have anything that you would recommend there? Nick: Yeah, for sure. There’s a couple of things. The first thing that you definitely need to know, basically how I get all my traffic for the most part is it’s all based on keywords. People come into the search engines and this is just like general in terms of search traffic. Basically people will come in, they’ll be searching for something, I mean you and I have done this just as much as anybody else is that they have a concern, they have an issue, they need help with something. They come into the search engines and they start typing it out whether that is how to lose weight, how to grow tomatoes. It doesn’t really matter, it just pertains to whatever your business is but they’ll start searching things in and then they’ll find your videos if you start uploading videos, you do it on a good channel, you start optimizing it. Your videos are going to start rising towards the top of the search engines. What you need to do when you’re making your videos is that you need to let your viewers know that they are at the right place. Let’s say for example that you did make a video about how to grow heirloom tomatoes for example. What you need to say in the beginning of the video, you need to let your viewer know that they’re in the right place at the right time. You say, “Hey, you probably landed on this video because you are looking, you started searching out how to grow heirloom tomatoes,” right then and there they know that they are at the right place. That's what starts it out and then if you can get technical and say, you need to say this, you need to say this, but I think it ultimately comes down to is that you need to let them know that they’re in the right place and then give them value.
People are smart, you can’t bullshit people... When you’re genuine, when you give value and you’re just a real down to earth person then that’s when people recognize that. People will connect with you just on that fact based alone, they might be coming searching for information they want to learn how to grow tomatoes or lose weight or whatever it is. A lot of times people just want to connect with somebody and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had that happen where people just, they’ll hit me up on Facebook and they’re like, “Yeah, I mean, your video is great and all that but you just seem like you’re a down to earth person, you seem like a good dude and that’s why I came out and connected with you.” Steve: Interesting...
Interesting. Yeah, that’s cool you bring that up... There really is as simple as that just answer the question, let them know that they’re there and then connect with them. There’s a guy I was listening to and he was saying something like, “The first 20 seconds you have to do something crazy to keep their attention. The next 60 seconds then you got to teach a little nugget then the final two minutes do something that’s also a little crazy to make sure they come back next time.” I was like, “Man, that’s a lot. All right,” but that’s so much more simpler route to do that. What kind of timeline do you usually look at when you’re trying to rank a video? You know what I mean, like how long it usually take? Nick: Again, it’s kind of goes along the same thing I was talking about just before and there’ll be a lot of people that say, “You got to make two to four minutes.” I certainly agree to that to an extent because like I was saying before it’ll help you start ranking your videos a little bit more if people are watching more of your video. If you have a shorter video it’s more likely that people are just going to watch more of it. If you have an 11 minute video then obviously less people are just going to watch it just because everyone has shorter attention spans. It does depend on the video that you’re doing because specific keywords especially like I do a lot of reviews. I’ll be honest that’s where a lot of my traffic comes from, a lot of my buyer traffic. That's just kind of a nugget right there. If you can start doing some reviews like that’s going to be some of your best traffic out there. I’ve got review videos that are like 10, 11, 12 minutes long and people watch the majority of it because buyers, think about this, buyers will watch, they will watch everything and they’ll read everything because they're thinking about it from your perspective. If you’re going out there and let's just say for example you want to buy a new MacBook or yeah, let’s just go with that example. Are you going to go to the website and just like look at a couple of pictures and then buy? No, you’re probably going to be going, you’re going to watch the hour long keynote presentation, you’re going to watch the ten minute video that shows all the details and all the benefits and features on the MacBook. You’re going to be talking to people, you might even reach out to a support. Buyers they will do their research. To just tell you, “You have to have it four minutes long,” or, “You have to have it ten minutes long,” I can’t really tell you that exactly because if you just target keywords that are buyer keywords, people are going to be searching that stuff until they make that buyer decision. Does that all makes sense? Steve: Yeah, it does. That’s a great insight. It’s not like a two to four minutes, there's not a hard fast rule, it's just hey whatever is … Make sure first that you’re actually delivering value and answering the question and coming back to them. Nick: Yeah, and if you’re asking for a short answer, I would say keep it shorter if you can but if you need more time to explain everything that you need I think there’s nothing wrong with that. Steve: What kind of buyer keywords? I mean is there’s a trend in good buying keywords, you know what I mean that you’re saying? Like across mostly internet or things that will pull your videos apart because those keywords are more valuable or you know what I mean? Nick: I’ll just be honest, review videos are probably the best videos that you can possibly make. Steve: Really? Nick: Yeah, because the reason people are coming and looking for reviews is because they saw a video or they saw a product and they’re a buyer. They’re looking for more information on that, they want to get everything they can possibly know about that. Once they figured out, once they see your video, once something clicks and they make sure it’s the right product for them then they’re ready to buy right there. Does that makes sense? Steve: Interesting. Yeah, 100%. I was just thinking too I’ve got like, I don’t know, 150 videos on YouTube but 90 of them are unlisted or whatever so that I can put them inside of websites and things like that. Do you have a preference at all? Have you found that there’s any kind of, I don’t know. I don’t even know, favoritism given to people who stay on the YouTube website versus watching YouTube video embedded on a page? Nick: I haven’t really done too much embedding on different pages so I can’t really speak for that. One other thing I was going to touch is the fact that you can actually look at your analytics too and you can see which videos people are watching longer. You can see the average duration on how long your viewers are staying on your video... Steve: Yeah, I love the stat section in the back of YouTube, it’s nuts. Most people don't look at that by a part but it’s pretty fascinating. Nick: Yeah, it’s great stuff and I actually just like within the last few months I’ve really started looking at that stuff a lot more and it’s really helped me. We just go back to the whole thing about testing seeing what works and then start doing more of what works.
Because there’s some videos where people are staying on for less than a minute through an average of 10,000 views. I’m like, “Okay, that obviously didn’t work so let’s throw that away. It was a good test, that was some good feedback, I won’t do that anymore so let’s move on and let’s find something better.” Steve: I just wanted to touch on something because this really matters a lot in kind of my world. I build funnels all day long, just tons of sales funnels and that’s kind of what I was looking through on your site mentorwithnick.com which is super cool, everyone should go there, mentorwithnick.com. You’ve got a quiz there and we’re a huge a fan of quizzes, it kind of pre-frame people. You got a welcome video from you and automated email that I got and then a link over to $1 offer. Kind of a cool biz opportunity there or business product I should say. Usually what we do when I build these types of funnels. You just kind of took me through in that mentorwithnick.com is we’ll always take those videos and enlist them and put them inside a funnel. I mean, I never let people just sit inside of YouTube format. I think it’s interesting that you just said … I mean it sounds like almost all of your review videos they’re all on YouTube anyway which makes sense. That’s what people are searching. That’s fascinating though. I guess I’m just recapping that. That’s cool though. Do you ever embed it all I guess, I mean you obviously did on that welcome video with Mentor With Nick. Nick: Yeah, that is one place that I do embed, I kind of almost forgot about that but those are like the only places. Mostly just like welcome videos or I like to call as bridge pages, like you said I do promote different things, different opportunities and stuff like that. What a lot of people will do is they’ll just send traffic directly to an offer and while that can work for sure like I’m not saying it can. Steve: It’s rough though. Nick: Yeah, pre-frame that a little bit and kind of just introduce them, kind of welcome them into your world. That’s a big thing it’s just like saying, “Hey, I’m here for you,” like, “I got your back,” like, “Don’t worry,” like, “We got this taken care of and you know I’m going to introduce you to this thing and you can certainly take us up on that but if not, you know, just connect with us.” So many people just want to connect with somebody, that’s what my whole video is about and after they opt in it’s just kind of saying, “Hey, I’m here,” like, “If you need anything from me you’ll be receiving some emails from me and you know I’m here to help you out.” I think that’s just a lot better way to do things instead of just like hard driving traffic to offers... My honest opinion that’s going to drop convergence but it’s also going to drop your audience where they just think that you’re just trying to sell them all the time. Steve: Yeah, 100% I agree with that and I was impressed with that video that you put out there, I thought that was really good. I always draw out funnels like crazy and in my world we call it funnel hacking. I was going through your funnel and drawing all that out, the emails that came, things like that and it’s not like you need that welcome video, the one from you. Technically you don’t but I thought it was interesting and cool that you put it in there because I watched the whole thing and it made sense to me is like, “Hey, there’s a lot of trust and there was a lot of ...” What’s the word?
Anyways, great example right there, I thought that was fantastic... Nick: Thank you. I appreciate that. Steve: Yeah, everyone go checkout mentorwithnick.com, that’s an interesting process for a bridge page right there. That’s really good. Nick: Thank you. Steve: Do you send people to quizzes a lot also? Nick: I use that capture page right now because it seems to be converting the best. I’ve noticed that in the past like I even got opt in pages like that up to like 50% opt in rate for all my traffic which is really good. Right now I’m sitting at around like 39%. I mean that’s for the best that I’ve done. I’ve tested with a lot of different stuff and everything else have been kind of sitting around like 32 to 33 maybe like a little bit higher than that. I just use that because it just kind of like gets them invested... They have the two step opt in and you are obviously very familiar with all this stuff and that works really well where you have to click on something that makes it a little bit more congruent. They’ve already invested a little something to make sure they put their email address in but the survey just kind of adds a little bit more like they’re taking a quiz and then they’re like, “Okay.” Now, they need to put their email address in and they’re already a little bit more invested so they’re more likely to continue with that action, that whole congruency. Steve: 100% plus then you can follow up with them, you got their email address and you can re-market to them and ask them if they got the trial. Yeah, great for you, great for them. Yeah, I completely agree with that too. I had this quiz who’s probably about 50% also, same thing. It’s just quizzes are great things for people. It was only like four questions but it set them into my … It was the same thing that you did which is what I was laughing at, “Where did you hear about us from?” and it was like, “Facebook, Oprah, Obama mentioned me,” and then other. I’ve never been on those things before but because they heard those names first and then your name last or even other, it’s a lot more stock also. Just increases your authority like crazy, not that you want to be deceptive but it does give you more authority. The next question was like, “What age range are you in?” and these are questions that sometimes don’t even matter or you can ask questions that just kind of poke them in the eye a little bit. “How much do you make on your side business every week?” “Zero. A hundred bucks,” and then just, “I got to choose the lowest one.” For a weight loss product, “How many products have you tried?” but at the time your solution comes up they’re like, “Man, he’s right. I fail every time at this. I do need to buy this product.” That’s interesting though. Cool. Hey man, I don’t want to just keep taking your time. I appreciate you getting up early to do this with me. Where can people learn more about you and join your world like you were saying? Nick: You can add me on Facebook, that’s a good place. I am kind of maxing that out now. Lately I’ve been going pretty hard with getting people add me and everything like that. My friend list is kind of maxing out right now so I did also start up a new Instagram account, a new Snapchat account which my usernames are Mentor With Nick, just kind of goes along with my website. You can also go to my website like you mentioned before which is mentorwithnick.com. Steve: Mentor With Nick Instagram and Snapchat, mentorwithnick.com also and then also on Facebook. Hey Nick, I appreciate it man. Thank you so much for taking the time again and for dropping all the nuggets you did. Nick: Yeah, for sure man. It was fun. I always love getting on with like-minded people and just chat marketing something I’m very passionate about. Steve: Yeah, I appreciate it. Everyone else usually who talks about it, sometimes they feel alone in this world. Anyways, it’s cool to meet you man and I do appreciate it. Nick: No problem, man. Happy to be on. Steve: All right, talk to you later. Announcer:
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| 08 May 2018 | SFR 143: Dana Derricks Shares His Top Revenue Method... | 00:50:43 | |
Click above to listen in iTunes... I've come to know and be increasingly amazed by Dana. His knowledge and skillset never ending and very impressive. Dive into this episode with notes to learn how he's using the Dream 100...
What's going on everyone, this is Steve Larsen, and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business. The real question is how will I do it without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels. My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. How's it going everyone, I am super excited for today. I have a very special guest on. Please go stop whatever else you're doing. Again this is another one. Take a piece of paper out, write down notes, write down inspiring things that come to you. This is the kind of episode that not just has the ability to teach you a lot, but have a direct impact on the thickness of your wallet. I'm very excited for our guest today. I have known him for quite some time. I'm always extremely impressed with everything that he does. I want to welcome to the show, Dana Derricks. How you doing man? Dana Derricks: What's up man? Hey, thanks for having me. And for anybody that's listening, if you're in your car, pull over, put your hazards on. Just stop what you're doing. Tell your dog to go away. Your about to get hit with some gold here. Steve Larsen: This is awesome stuff. Thanks for being on. Anyway, I've been just been super impressed with you. I think honestly the first time we met though was we were redoing the homepage of ClickFunnels and Russel's like ... I remember I came in one day and Russel was like ... He was like, "Hey man. Dude I got Dana Derricks man. He's going to come on over and he's going to help us rewrite the entire, all the copy for ClickFunnels' homepage." And I was like, "Cool. Wait, who's this?" "He's the goat farmer." I was like, "Wait there's a guy ... There's a goat farmer who's an internet marketer?" He's like, "Yeah yeah yeah yeah." And then you came out and you showed up, and you had overalls and like, sweet straw farmer hats. And I was like, "This guys is the man." And like ever since then I've just been diving into your stuff. I'm super impressed with what you do. Dana Derricks: Dude, thanks man. I'm glad I have one fan. Steve Larsen: Whatever. Dana Derricks: No, that was so much fun and don't forget what ... By the end of that trip, what did you end up wearing home? Steve Larsen: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So he came in one day, just so everyone on the show ... He came in one day, it was one of the last days, and he had a full chicken suit costume for me. What was ... You gave Dave a massive bear. Russell had ... He was the gorilla right? Dana Derricks: Yeah. Russell was a gorilla, Dave was a bear, you were the chicken. Steve Larsen: That's right. And I thought that it'd be funny to ride that on my motorcycle home. So I did. And we'll put that - Dana Derricks: And... Steve Larsen: In the show notes. Dana Derricks: Yeah. Please. And can we put the picture? Can we dig up the picture too? Steve Larsen: Yeah. I'll go find the picture. I'm just writing that down.
Steve Larsen: Chicken. Dana Derricks: Such a good sport everybody. Steve Larsen, everybody. Steve Larsen: Oh thanks man. Appreciate it. Well hey, just so ... If you guys don't know, if you're not aware, Dana Derricks is one of the, I would say foremost experts on this whole concept that I feel like is extremely kind of gray, cloudy. A lot of people don't understand it, but it's this whole thing around the Dream 100 and how to actually implement it.
And I mean you literally wrote a book on it right? And when did that come out? Dana Derricks: When did the book come out? Steve Larsen: Yeah yeah. Dana Derricks: I think it's been out for about eight months. So probably about towards the end of last, of 2017.
Was it ... I mean, I know the story, but for everyone else who's listening, like how does a goat farmer who's also a copywriter, who's also an internet marketer overall product creator, go directly into Dream 100 stuff as well? Could you give us a little backstory there? Dana Derricks: I know. Everybody at this point is probably thinking, "Stephen, what is wrong with you? Where did you find this guy?" Steve Larsen: "Who is this guy?" Dana Derricks: Yeah. "What's happening?" So yeah. So I guess a little bit of a backstory that got me into the Dream 100 was I'm the type of guy that's going to try everything, and then figure out what works and what doesn't. And when I figure out something doesn't work, I just keep moving. Like, so I always say like honestly, there's two things about me that work well. Like, number one I'm too dumb to overthink things so I don't get paralyzed by that. And then number two, for every ten things I try, one of them works and I'm thrilled. Like I'm so grateful for the other nine that didn't work so that I could get those out of the way to find the one that did. Right? So like for me, like I look at like major league baseball right? The best in the world, on the planet, go up to the plate and they end up getting a base hit or you know a single, double, triple home run only three out of ten times. Right? Like nobody goes over four out of ten. So what's happening the other seven out of ten times? They're striking out. They're hitting the ball and getting it caught. Like bad stuff's happening almost over two thirds of the time. Yet like, us in business we go and try one thing, we step up to the plate and we expect to hit a home run, and then when we don't we're like devastated and never want to step up to the plate again. So for me, I was not ... I wish I could share this amazing story of how I fell in love with the Dream 100, and it was this love story. But reality is dude, I tried everything. So back in the days of Google SEO, like, Google AdWords, and then YouTube, and then Facebook, and then like all these things I tried and tried and tried, and it just like, it sucked and I failed. I kept failing, and failing, and then I realized, "Wait a minute." I was already doing the Dream 100 before I even knew what it was, and that was the only thing that ever worked for me. So that's why I got obsessed, doubled down, wrote a book about it, and all that other good stuff. Steve Larsen: I mean, how did you first find out about it though? Was it straight from Chet Holmes course, from Russel's stuff, from ... Where'd you learn about it? Dana Derricks: Yes. So I actually first figured it out through Russell. I think he had something ... One of his things was like the lost chapter on the Dream 100, and he just kind of described what it was, and then he was talking about Chet and I was like, "Oh man. I have sifted through many stacks of hay looking for this needle, and I finally found it." And then I grabbed Chet's trainings and it was like game over from there... Steve Larsen: So what ended up happening. I mean you read this thing, and you go start implementing. Like what did you do first? Because there's a lot of ... I feel like there's just a ton of misconceptions. Everyone thinks it has to be this package, or it has to be this ... I don't know. I think we all over complicate it a bit. Like what did you end up go doing? Dana Derricks: Totally. So well, the first that I think everybody thinks when they first learn about the Dream 100 is, "Oh my gosh, I've already kind of been doing that. Right? I didn't realize it." So for me, the big epiphany immediately was, "Holy crap." So for those that don't know my story, I grew up in a town of, I kid you not, 512 people. Steve Larsen: Oh no way. Dana Derricks: Yeah. My graduating class was 30 and we had a big class. Steve Larsen: Wow. Cool. Dana Derricks: Yeah. So my life growing up, because we didn't have a movie theater, we didn't have a grocery store in town. We had nothing. We had a bunch of cows and not even a goat. Like what the heck? Right? So football was our life, and I love football so much that I didn't want to stop playing after high school. I wanted to play in college. And nobody from my school, or area for that matter, played in college or did anything after high school. Like it was just, like we're too small. Nobody knows about it. Like it's not for real. So I'm like, "Screw that." So none of my coaches ever played college football. They don't know how to help with recruiting and all this. So I'm like, "Screw that. I'm going to do it myself then." And basically what I did is I created these ... Well first I started with ... I printed out a list of 40 schools that I potentially wanted to play football for. And then I made a packet for each school, like literally a box, and in it had like the highlight tape, a letter of recommendation from a coach, a personalized letter addressed to the coach that I was sending it to, all this stuff right. And I mailed all 40. And I was like, "All right, sweet. Let's see what happens." Two weeks goes by nothing. I'm like, "Wow that was a waste of time." Third week, I get called to the principal's office which for me is not a good thing. Like, "Oh man. What did I do?" I go in there and there's a football coach in there, and I'm like, "Whoa." He's like, "Are you Dana," and I'm like, "Yeah. Who are you?" He's like, "I'm Coach so and so." And he's like, "I'm here to recruit you." And I'm like, "What? You're here to recruit me? You came all the way to my town?" He's like, "Yeah," and then day or two goes by and then I get called back in and suddenly there's two coaches in there from two different schools at the same time. And I'm like, "Oh my gosh." And I remember like ... Yeah. Like my principal pulled me aside and he's like, "Dana when is this going to stop. It's really disruptive." I'm like, "I'm sorry Mr.C, it's like a broken fire hose. I can't do anything." So long story short, because of the Dream 100, I didn't even realize what it was at the time, I ended up getting a pretty major football scholarship, and I'm the only person in the history of my school that's ever gotten any sort of athletic scholarship, and it's 100% thanks to the Dream 100. So that's like the first emotion you go through I think when you learn about the Dream 100 is like, "Oh my gosh. Why didn't I know about this sooner? I was already doing it."
I looked at it, I'm like, "There's no way that I could ever get that guy to ever pay attention to me or do anything with me." Right? And I erased it. I literally erased it, and then I was like, "Oh maybe." Right? "YOLO." So I put it back up on the side of the list, like with an asterisk. And I'm like, "Eh. Maybe." Right? And then fast forward like couple years, and then I go up, get to meet you and hang out with Russell, and speak at a Funnel Hacking Live, and all this other crazy stuff, and it's all 100% thanks to the Dream 100. Steve Larsen: So for everyone else also, before we started this Dana is an amazing copywriter. He's amazing and Dream 100, and between those two topics I asked him, I was like, "Which one do you want to talk about?" And he said, "Which one do you want to talk about?" I said, "Which one gets you the most frustrated and mad?" And he immediately said, "Dream 100." Why is that? Before we dive into some how you actually put this together, how come the Dream 100 gets you most ticked off compared to copywriting which is also very important? Dana Derricks: I love this question. So for me it's because I feel like it's sort of a tragedy that most ... Every single business isn't ... Like first of all that everybody just doesn't know about it, number one. And then every single business or entrepreneur isn't using it. Like to me that is such a tragedy. And for some reason, like I still don't know why. For some reason when people think of traffic and getting people into their funnels or eyeballs on their offers, or whatever, they instantly think, "Oh Facebook ads. I need Facebook ads." And for some reason, like that apparently is the only traffic source in the world. Right? Like, it's just this crazy misconception and the reality is is the Dream 100 is a much ... How do I want to say it? It's a much more sustainable approach because it will never go away. It worked 50 years ago, it works now, it'll work 50 years from now. And it also ... It's free. I mean it's targeted eyeballs on your stuff for free. And it's all about ... It's really not that difficult. It's just building relationships with people. So that ... I guess that fires me up is like why everybody thinks they need to have Facebook ads or whatever else when they could be using the Dream 100 instead. Steve Larsen: Yeah, I feel like maybe that is part of the issue though is like, most internet marketers now are ... We're just spoiled. I mean before Facebook days, I mean how did everyone get the traffic that they needed. It's exactly what you're talking about right now and I feel like that's ... Not that Facebook's a bad thing, but I don't know how to drive ads.
How did you make your list? I feel like that's the ... Do you feel like that's the reason people actually never do this? Like one of the choke points? Or how do you actually put it together? Dana Derricks: I think that's a big one. And that's probably the most common question I'm asked when I'm talking about it. Yeah. It's like, "Who was my Dream 100? Who was it?" And I'm like, "Well ..." So finally I came up with a very simplistic equation I can give you and your listeners if you want it. Steve Larsen: Yeah. I'd love that. Dana Derricks: So basically it starts ... It doesn't start with your Dream 100, it starts with you and then your customer avatar. So it's literally this simple. Who is your customer avatar? And that to me is a function of who do you want, as well as who do you not want? So it's who you want, minus who you don't want, equals your customer avatar. Right? And then so I've got my customer avatar, because if you don't have that then the Dream 100 is a very complex, difficult thing because you don't know. Right? So all right. The next question is, where are your customer avatar? Like where do they hang out? Right? Is it certain Facebook groups? Is it associations they're in? Is it ... Are they buying the same book? Are they all subscribed to the same software? Do they listen to the same podcast? Like if you can figure out who your avatar is, figuring out where they are is not that hard, and then wherever they are, whoever owns and controls the group that they're in, the groups I should say, or the audiences, that right there is your Dream 100. Steve Larsen: Interesting. So you go from your customer avatar meaning who you want and don't want, and then you go from where they are, and then who already has them. Dana Derricks: Exactly. Boom. Done. Steve Larsen: Who has them. I'm just taking notes. Dana Derricks: Sure. Steve Larsen: Who has them. Okay, so then from that point, like ... So I'm just ... From when I've launched a lot of stuff and I've got Dream 100 stuff all over my office right now. What ... Huge believer. Huge believer. So I'm excited I get to - Dana Derricks: Yeah man... Steve Larsen: I feel like ... I mean I like to sit down and start creating somewhat of a campaign for each one of these people with a blend of personalization, but also my ability to do it kind of en masse. You know what I mean? To each one of these people. I don't know if that makes sense. But what do you do next to actually get a hold of them? Are you going one by one for each of them? Are you doing something mass that kind of blankets all 100? Dana Derricks: Great questions. So I actually, gosh this is just a little bit off topic but it helps to kind of illustrate this. So how build my system around what's working is I do everything the hardest, longest way possible and then that becomes my system. So for example, if I launch a new offer for something, like if I have a ... If I come out with a new $2000 book right? I will find the person who is absolutely unqualified to buy it, who might want it, but who's totally ... Like for example, maybe they're totally broke. Right? And I will literally go through and answer every single question for them, and have 1500 back and forths if I have to, to then have basically, after the point of first contact to the point where they actually buy the thing, which is like a humongously long duration of time and effort. That is my system. Right? So that is now my system because very single objection basically has already been taken care of, and those are now all scripts that I can use for the next person. So I do the basically ... That's how I look at everything. So for my Dream 100, like let's say I have a target. And I'll use more of a short term target. So like a smaller kind of, more accessible one. Because Russell, that's a long term play. Right? But like a smaller one that you could start the conversation with already is like ... You definitely have the elements of personalization, so figuring out ... And this all comes obviously from ... So for those of you that are Dream 100'ing Stephen, you're in the right place because listening to his podcast is a great way to get his attention and get to know him, and the second secret sauce I'll tell you is, buy all of his stuff. Okay? So there's a correlation usually between how much access you get to someone, and how much money you've spent with them. So - Steve Larsen: That is fascinating actually. Dana Derricks: Right? Steve Larsen: Man. You say too much good stuff man. You got to slow down. I can't write that fast. Dana Derricks: Yeah. So for me it's like, I'll just pick ... So when you're starting out, it's really critically important to just pick one that isn't years down the road, so don't go after Tony Robbins on your first one. But also don't go after somebody that is already in your network that you could get a yes from without even having to go through all the hoops of all the other stuff right? And then just figure out what it is that can just showcase to them that you care about what they say, and you listen, and you consume their stuff, and you buy their stuff. Right? So I've had people ... I learned this myself, they're like, "Well are you ..." I wanted to partner with software companies before and they asked, "Well are you a subscriber of the software?" And I'm like, "Good question." Right? Like, "I should probably get an account and get to know it really well before I should expect them to want to do anything with me." Right? So that's the beginning. If you're not already doing that, then it's going to be really really difficult. But once you are, then ... Because it's like you're part of the community right? And - Steve Larsen: It's funny that ... There's a few times I've tried to reach out, or someone reached out to me, and they're like, "How do I learn this?" I'm like, "You serious? I have a course on this."
Dana Derricks: That's funny man. But yeah, like if you think about it, makes total sense too. Like, if you're already ... And the other ... To take that a step further, is if you can contribute value to their community, right? So like for me with Russell, I have intentionally ... I don't ... I love helping people, but like I'm not getting paid and I'll go into the ClickFunnels community, the Facebook group or whatever, and I just go help people. I'm not there, I don't have an agenda. I don't have ... I'm not selling them. I'm just going in there and helping. So if they have a question to something that I know the answer to, I'll spend five, ten minutes helping them. Steve Larsen: Which you're so good at man. I've seen you pop around all over the place doing that. Like I watch you do that all the time. You're such a ... Ah, it's awesome. Okay cool. Yeah. Dana Derricks: Thanks man. Well hey, see I'm glad somebody notices. Steve Larsen: I do man. Yeah I turn back around I'm like, "Man this group doesn't even ... It's not even active anymore. Or this." I'm like, "Man, Dana wrote a long incredible response to that. This is cool. He spent a lot of time on this." Dana Derricks: So yeah. Because if you think about it, who's the perfect person for a guy like Russell to put on stage at his live event? Somebody that the community already knows, likes, and trusts. Right? Somebody that has invested in him and what he's building. And then, not only like monetarily. Yeah I gave him a lot of money to get into his inner circle, right? But also like, I spend quite a bit of time, and energy, and effort on helping his people for free. I don't ask for anything in return you know? So it's like ... That's a deadly combination for anybody to ... How can you say no? Right? Steve Larsen: Right. Oh interesting. Dana Derricks: So if somebody's saying no to you, ask yourself those three things. Am I already buying their stuff and consuming their stuff, and in the community? Am I contributing to the community? And have I ... What was the last one? Oh. I think, have I given them a lot of money? Steve Larsen: Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Okay okay. So once ... Let's say ... Let's say ... Right. Because there was some point when Russell's like, "Wow. I'm now aware of Dana," and you realize that he is. How do you move forward? I feel like that's one of the other major questions kind of from the community that happens. They'll be like, "What do I say to him next?" You know, "When do I drop, 'Hey we need stuff?'" What's the steps forward after you've gotten their attention? Dana Derricks: This is like the second most frequently asked question is like, "I don't know what to say to him" or "I just feel like ..." Whatever. And I'll share quick like ... So Lady Boss, Brandon and Kaelin Poulin, amazing human beings, I work with them. They're in my intensive I call it. It's kind of like a course mastermind blend. And they build a $10 million company off of paid ads. And I'm just thinking to myself, "Holy crap. If I could make $10 off paid ads I'd be thrilled," right? And they're like, "We should probably try this Dream 100 thing." And I'm like, "Yeah you probably should. Good idea." So three days before Funnel Hacking Live, Brandon the action taker he is, he enrolled in my course and then he's like, "You know what? I got a guy I think I'm going to put in this spot." And Jeff asked me three days before the event this exact question right? Because Kaelin was going to be on stage, which is an amazing opportunity for people to know Lady Boss, and I'm sure there are people in the sea of the 3000 plus that they could potentially work with somehow right? Or they know somebody that they could. So Jeff's like, "Dana," he's like, "I'm really new to this. What do I say to people?" And I'm like, "Jeff, this is the only thing you have to make sure you say. Everything else just be yourself, but this is what you have to say. Before you end any conversation, just ask the question, 'How can we help each other?'" That's it.
And then that's how it came to, "Hey. You could probably help me by coming out here and knocking this copy for the homepage." Right? So a really long winded way of saying like, if you can just always have that question in your mind, "How can we help each other," then it just takes care of the rest. Steve Larsen: You know, it's interesting, with that approach, which I absolutely love because it comes from a place of friendship, and adding value, I mean you think about Dream 100 ... I mean, doing that 100 times, I mean it's easy to see how ... You easily could have a full-time position with somebody just doing that alone. Managing those relationships, working on the next pieces. Is there ever ... What's the point in the relationship after you've been adding value, because I'm sure it's different for everybody. We're all different, but is there a time where ... Because some of them probably come up and go, "Hey. Let me promote your stuff." But then there's probably other times you have to come back out and say, "Oh my gosh, he's not getting it, or maybe I do have to be a little more forward." Like how do you approach somebody and say that without sounding ... After you've given value, they know you're there, they know you're there to help, you've clearly developed a relationship. What's the way that you approach them and say, "Promote my stuff?" Dana Derricks: Love it. So I basically relate it to marriage. So me personally I would never get down on a knee if I didn't know the gal was going to say yes. I just don't want to be the next YouTube marriage proposal fail video. Right? Steve Larsen: Which are great to watch. Dana Derricks: Oh yeah. As a viewer. Yeah. So I look at it the same way as like ... Like I ask myself, "Have I built up enough goodwill with this person," whether that's buying their stuff, consuming their stuff, being in their community, contributing to their community, or whatever. Contributing directly to them. "Have I done enough of that for them to say yes to what I'm going to ask?" And if the answer isn't a clear yes, I just keep giving value. And usually for me, it's get to the point where people will ask me, "How can I help you?" Like all the time. That's one of the most common asked questions I have is from people just when I see them at events and stuff, and it's like, "How can we help you?" And then I'm like, "Hm. Well let me think about that for a second..." And then it's just the perfect ... So that's the thing is like, can you confidently say yes you've built enough goodwill up for them to say yes. And then number two, if not just continue to give them more value somehow. Steve Larsen: That makes total sense. Okay okay. So we've gone through ... Okay. Gone through how you make the list, psychology of ... I love your approach by the way. That is just pure gold. Choose the hardest way possible because that becomes a system. That way all the objections popup and you can address those in scripts. Things like that. Just brilliant. How to actually ... What do you do with the Dream 100 next? How can we help each other? On to promoting. Okay. You are notoriously known in the inner circle, in pretty much everywhere who's ever come in contact with you, for your incredible packages that you do send. Dana Derricks: Oh man. Steve Larsen: Could you talk a little bit about the way that you do that? I know that Dream 100 itself is not packages, but obviously that is a strategy and a method. Could you tell us a little bit about what it is that you're sending out and what you're working through as you go through each person? Because I've heard some pretty amazing stuff get sent around from you. Dana Derricks: Oh man. Well do I have your address? I'll have to get it. So yeah. Russell talks about ... Because somebody asked him this once, and he had a great response. He said that he likes to theme things. And I didn't even realize that I was doing it, but he mentioned me as well. But he does superheroes. You know. So that kind of takes some of the question out of what you should be sending is if you can latch onto a theme. So for me, obviously goats. So I've got ... Let's see if I have one. Oh I must have sent it out. Oh no I have one. Hold on, wait for it. Steve Larsen: Is that the screaming goat thing? Dana Derricks: That's the screaming goat. Steve Larsen: Nice.
Steve Larsen: Just play that. Dana Derricks: Yeah. So my stuff is really goat related. And then the other thing that I look at is ... And the other thing, if you're creative you don't have to spend a lot of money. I know that's a concern for people, and at the end of the day though this stuff is so valuable, as soon as you get one, yes everything's paid for. So I keep that in the back of my mind. That keeps me going. But as far as like making it stand out and be cool, because I get stuff ... People send me stuff and I hope ... I don't care if they're listening or not. Steve Larsen: It's a lesson. It's a lesson. We're all good. Dana Derricks: Yeah. Like I love you guys. Keep sending me stuff. There is a difference though between something that somebody personally put together in a box, and somebody that just sends me a gift from Amazon with like a gift card, or the typed out thing from Amazon. Like both are cool, and you doing just the Amazon thing is better than 99% of people. But like there's something to be said about that hand touch and stuff. So for me like, I guess my creativity comes out because one of the things I sent to everybody in the inner circle that kind of got everybody kind of, I don't know, in a frenzy was - Steve Larsen: Yeah.. Dana Derricks: Yeah. Was a wizard stick. So long story short, my dad lives in Texas, I'm in Wisconsin and I like to send to his Christmas gifts. So a couple years ago I bought this weird like weed puller thing where it's like you don't have to bend over to pull weeds out. It's like ... You know what I'm talking about? Steve Larsen: Yeah yeah. Totally. Dana Derricks: And I open it up from Amazon or whatever, and then I forgot. Threw the box away and then I was like, "Oh man. It's like 4:50 PM on a Friday. I need to get this out to my dad." So I went to the post office and I'm like, "Do you have a box that this would maybe fit in?" And they're like, "No not at all." And I'm like, "Oh crap." But he's like, the post master was like, "But we could send it like that." I'm like, "What?" He's like, "Yeah." Like picture basically like a shovel. Essentially a shovel. He's like, "We could send it just like that." I'm like, "Wait what? You don't have to put in a box?" He's like, "No." So basically, picture the shovel. They just printed off the label, and then like stuck it to the handle of the shovel, and then the shovel got sent in the mail just like that. Like no box. And so I'm like, "Huh. You don't have to put things in boxes. That's amazing." So I sent out these wizard staffs or whatever, and I zip tied a wizard hat on top, and didn't put it in a box, and all these sticks essentially showed up at people's mailboxes and it was just this big crazy viral thing. And stuff like that that's just way more memorable and exciting when stuff like that shows up than just a box from Amazon. You know? Steve Larsen: Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah. Let's say ... Okay. So I've identified my Dream 100, I've contributed some things to the community, I really want to do things to grab their attention, what are some of the ... I mean, how much money are you spending on each one of these packages? You mentioned it could be cheap, and sometimes that's better, but how much money per package do you expect, or ... I guess that's the question. How much money do you expect to be spending on each one of them? Dana Derricks: If I can keep it under ... So depends on the target too. I segment my Dream 100 with A, B, and C. Steve Larsen: Oh really? Dana Derricks: Yeah. A is being like the top, B is being like middle, and then C is being like quick wins. Reason for that is because another things that people ask is like, "Well how high should I shoot?" And if you have all like, Russell, Gary V., Grant Cardone's on your list, like it's not that it won't happen, it's just that's not going to happen any time soon. You know? So I learned an expensive lesson from my football scholarship. And that was I ended up playing in a division two school, which they still give great football scholarships, and mine was a huge one, but wasn't a D one school because I listened to the doubt in my head that I was never good enough to play D one so I didn't even print off any D one schools. I really regret that to this day. So I just had B's on the list. And so if I'm looking at ... Typically for a B campaign, or even some C's, if I can keep my packages between $20 and $40 a piece, I'm pretty happy with that. But again, there come ... It comes with like, pretty relentless followup. Because if you just sent the box to somebody, good luck. But you got to do more than that. You know? Steve Larsen: Right. Right right. Followup process. What does your followup process typically look like? Dana Derricks: Oh man. So - Steve Larsen: Because you're a beast at this man. I'm pumped to hear this. Dana Derricks: It's very extensive. So ... Oh man. Do you want the whole ... Not like the whole thing, but do you want to know the extent I go? Steve Larsen: Yeah, totally. I do. Because I feel like what people do is, let's say I go put the package together, I go to the mailbox, I drop the thing off. Boom. I've now done Dream 100. You know? That's kind of it, and people kind of like rinse their hands. "Yes, I get my success cookie for the day." But it's really not over... Dana Derricks: No. It's just beginning. Steve Larsen: You're brilliant at this part. I'm so pumped. Dana Derricks: Thanks man. So that's like ... If you're running a marathon, that's the gun that just started the marathon. But you can go home with your marathon number on, and you've dressed up, and congrats you participated, but you didn't finish. Right? So for me it's like, I'll send them ... For me really the lumpy mail is permission to follow up with them. That's all it is. Because if I send somebody a gift card, or I don't care, wizard stick in the mail, like I have the right to follow up with you now. Right? I've spent money, invested time and money into you, now you don't have to work with me, or say yes to what I'm asking, but you do have to reply. Like that's the decent thing to do. So I will then send them an email followup, and it's never like, "Hey did you get my email?" Like have you ever had somebody message you 17 times on 17 platforms saying, "Did you see my email?" Steve Larsen: Yeah. "I called you. I called you. I called you. I called you." You're like, "Oh my. I know. I saw it, okay?" Dana Derricks: Dude. Yeah. Like we saw it. Like - Steve Larsen: It drives me nuts.
Steve Larsen: Wait you send them an actual dodge ball in the mail? Dana Derricks: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Steve Larsen: So you're calling them out? Dana Derricks: Oh yeah. If I have their address, they're so screwed man. Steve Larsen: I didn't know you do that. That's funny man. Dana Derricks: Oh yeah. Well that's because you've replied to me. Steve Larsen: Oh that's funny. Dana Derricks: So dodge ball. Rubber snakes work really well. It's literally ... And it's always ... Here's a thing. It's always got to be around humor though, and sarcastic, otherwise it's just ... It wouldn't work. So like the dodge ball's like, "Come on man. You're dodging me." And they know I'm not going to stop at this point. And the rubber snake, I think it's just to hilarious to think of the thought of them opening a box to see a snake inside. Like, it's just so funny. So I've never had to go past the snake, but the next one ... This is kind of naughty, but I will, I am prepared to send a certified with like a W9 inside that basically says, "All right man, have it your way. If you don't want to reply, then I guess you can pay the taxes on all this stuff I sent you." It's all a big joke, but that's the extent. Like people don't see ... They think you ... Like you said, they just send something and then all these good things happen and it's not. You have to really work. Steve Larsen: You have to really keep going on them. Dana Derricks: Yeah. And just be ... But being like ... Not badgering them though either. Steve Larsen: There's a line. Dana Derricks: Value. Yeah. For sure. Steve Larsen: Okay, so someone ... Is the package ... I've heard you say this before, but just for everyone listening. Is the package the first thing you send to them? Dana Derricks: No. So what I've found is ... I'm not sure the number, like the percentage. I'd say it's close to half. Probably close to half the Dream 100 deals I've made, I've never had to send anything in the mail. Steve Larsen: Wow. Dana Derricks: Yeah. So that's more of like, it's in the tool belt, it's like a special kind of like drill. Right? You can use it when you need to, but you don't have to use it. So for me it's like more so cutting through the noise, and then giving me permission to continue to followup. Steve Larsen: Interesting. Okay. You just turn up the heat when you get to packages. Dana Derricks: For sure. And then also though, it's also about nurturing too. So I send my existing affiliate Dream 100 people, like my number one affiliate last year, I sent him ... I think I probably told you this before, but I sent him a big screen TV and surround sound just out of the blue. Right? Just to keep him happy and yeah. So that's when it comes back in is really just spoiling people and giving them gifts and all that good stuff. Steve Larsen: So ... Okay. So I mean you've given a lot of ways to actually pull this off, to get attention. As far as like pulling off a JV with them, and them ... Could you go through some of the practices that you have when someone says yes. Like, "Yeah I'm super super excited to dropout." You know, my people [ Dana. I've heard a lot of people that go by ... I don't know. They'll pull like a URL up. There's a whole lot of like small little isms and little practices that are out there. Do you mind going through just a few of those? Dana Derricks: Yeah, sure. So is this ... What's the goal? To get them to promote? Steve Larsen: Yeah. I guess as far as like they've said yes. As far as pulling off the JV with them. What are some of the things that you do to make that go smoothly? Dana Derricks: Sure. Great question. So the number one hurdle that you'll have to get through first is getting them to actually do it. Because all these people will tell you yes because they don't want to disappoint you or whatever. But few will actually follow through and do the promotion. Steve Larsen: Interesting. Dana Derricks: Yeah. And Russell talked about this too. He said ... I don't know if he's faxed me this or where I heard it but, he said for every hundred people you target, you'll probably only end up with maybe about six that actually do the promotion with you. And of those six probably only about three will actually be worth all that time and energy. Steve Larsen: Totally believe that. Dana Derricks: Yeah. Right? So I break it down like this for ... And my students do it this way. So it's like, first things first. Once we're to the point where we think we can ask, we do. And then when they say yes, we're always selling the thing that sells the thing. So it's not like ... It's getting the calendar. Getting it penciled in on the calendar. That is like the next win we need. That's what we're trying to sell. If we can get that dang spot locked up, I can remember there were ... I was on the phone with the CEO of very well known company in our space, and he's just like, "Yeah we're booked through whatever." And I'm just like, "Dude. You know what? That's totally cool. Let's just do October. Right? How's that? Like, October clean for you?" He's like, "Yeah, yeah okay." And then I'm like, "All right cool. How about the 12th?" And then just getting it on there because if they're going to be like, "Oh I want to look at my schedule, I have to view calendar, I'll have to get back to you," or whatever. But more friction right? Steve Larsen: Sidestep. Yeah. Dana Derricks: Yeah. So I found too like where it was ... Excuse the sirens this is a big deal for a town of 1000. Steve Larsen: You're good. No worries. Dana Derricks: So like, also I've been surprised too where like I had it penciled in, I'm thinking, "Yeah they just told me that so I would keep them happy, or keep me happy." And then they actually did do it on that date and time. So it was like, "Wow, this is awesome." So that's the first big thing. And then making sure that you take everything off their plate. Because the minute they thing that they're going to have to lift a finger for this, they don't want to do it. Right? So from beginning to end, we do every single thing. We will create all the swipe files for them to send out. We'll create all the affiliate ... I call them co-branded funnels. So if we're pushing a webinar for example, it'll be a co-branded webinar funnel. We'll offer to host a webinar if they are cool with that. And then we deliver everything to them about like two weeks in advance just so that everything's done. And then we followup and make sure. That's what's really cool about having an affiliate manager is that they kind of take care of all that, but like we'll make sure that every step of the way is covered so they don't - Steve Larsen: That's fascinating. Oh man that's super ... Okay wow. That's crazy cool. And what do you when you ... Because I mean, I'm sure it happens right? You go out and you're getting ... I mean I've had those people ...I've had this happen also. Like you go out and someone says yes. You get the few yes's. Six say yes, three actually do it. What do you do with those other three? Dana Derricks: Good question. So - Steve Larsen: Is that when you send them the W9? Dana Derricks: So if they've said yes but you just haven't got it scheduled yet, right? So I would try, just throw it way out in the future, and if you still don't then there's something there they want to do something with you, but apparently the way that it presented was ... That might not be what they're actually going to be comfortable doing. So I would like at trying to down sell it somehow. So if it was originally, "We're going to do a, you know, a joint venture webinar together," maybe starting out with a Facebook live might be better right? Something that's a little bit easier them to not have to fully commit to, or even just like doing an email to their list or something like that. Because even that's going to be better than nothing, and if you look at ... That's another thing that we ... Is pretty cool. So if you can do something successful with them, even if it's something small, you can go back to them and do something big. So you know, look at Russell with Grant Cardone. He went to 10X last year, and basically wasn't given ... He got on stage, and he was allowed to pitch kind of, but he wasn't allowed to do half of what he asked to do. Steve Larsen: Right. The true Russell style. Dana Derricks: Exactly right. Grant's like, "We're going to do it my way." He's like, "Okay, fine." And Russell did it Grant's way, got some wins out of it, but then look what happened the next year. Russell go to to go there and call the shots. He said, "I want this. I need that." Grant and his team said, "Okay. Whatever. You proved yourself last time." And then boom. Closes $3 million in an hour and a half. Right? But he would have never been able to do that had it not been the year before doing it Grant's way, doing it smaller, doing it in a way that Grant was more comfortable with. Steve Larsen: That's cool. That's cool. Okay. I know I'm just pounding you man. I got one more question for you. Scenario is, right, you go off, you've done the successful ones with the three, you're obviously continuing to work and warm up the leads for the other 97 as you go through. With the ones that you have done it with though, what's kind of your play as you move forward? Are you hitting them again for the next promo? Are you ... I guess post successful campaign, what kind of actions do you take with that person? Dana Derricks: Yeah. So for me, especially like once you've figured out who's good, for me it's like how can we integrate? So I just want to turn and take it to the next level. So for me personally, like let's say that I'm JVing with somebody from my course, and we do a webinar together, kill it. We do five, six figures together, whatever. I want to work with that person. I don't want to just do once a year, once a quarter. I want like full on, how can we work together. So I always offer ... What I've been doing a lot is I'll create a bonus module for whatever their thing is, if they've got a course. I'll come in there and basically teach a bonus module, or I will throw in my book in their value stack, or whatever just so that I can get not just access to their audience, on the one off promotions, but for every single buyer that comes into their world, they see me and the affiliate doesn't have to do a thing. Right? And it comes back to value. Like this module I make, it's not like a pitch necessarily. There might be call to action. There is a call to action of course, but this is value, value, value and it's always enhancing the thing that they already sold. That's kind of the secret there. So I look at integration after a successful one. Steve Larsen: Oh man, that's interesting. That's so cool. Man you have just like, just divulged. I have a full page of notes. Just given so much. I just appreciate that like crazy. I mean right, there's only a few people that ever really even written about this topic. The Chet Holmes. Amazing Chet Holmes, Russell himself, and you. That's it man. Like those are the options.
Dana Derricks: Yeah. For sure. For anybody that's kind of vibing with this, and you're like, "Oh man, that sounds a lot better than running Facebook ads or running after the next shiny object," Stephen and I are totally Dream 100 junkies, and I'd love for you guys to do the same. So it's called The Dream 100 Book. Actually had the foreword written by Russell. It's pretty cool. I think Stephen's read it. Steve Larsen: Woo-hoo. Yeah. Dana Derricks: There is a caveat. Actually listen to Stephen's advice. So one of things you have really made famous Stephen is the concept of sell it before you make it. Right? Which I love by the way. I actually did that. Stephen said to do that - Steve Larsen: No way. Dana Derricks: Yeah dude. So I sold a copy of The Dream 100 Book, my first copy, for $2000 before I wrote one page of it. Steve Larsen: No way. I didn't know that. Dana Derricks: Yeah dude. Because Russell says writing a book is similar to giving childbirth. Which is...None of us know, but it's probably true. And so there was no better incentive to write a book than to have somebody on the hook for two grand that's waiting for it. Right? So anyway, that's the caveat. It is $2000. However, because Stephen was so gracious to put on a chicken suit and drive around on a motorcycle in Boise, Idaho - Steve Larsen: I secretly just loved it. I was excited. Dana Derricks: Yeah. I mean if he didn't like it, he was putting on a good show. So for you guys listening, if you're vibing with this, I'm actually going to let you guys get a copy of it for free. Steve Larsen: Holy crap. Dana Derricks: I don't do this really for money that much anymore, so I'm cool with that as long as you guys don't share this with the rest of the world. [inaudible 00:48:48] The mad buyers that paid two grand for it. So the link is going to be ListentoStephen.com. ListentoStephen.com. Steve Larsen: That's cool man. Appreciate that. It's S-T-E-P-H-E-N. Yeah? Dana Derricks: Correct. The good spelling. Steve Larsen: Yeah, the good spelling. The biblical way. No but seriously, just echo what Dana's saying here like I ... Funnel's nothing without traffic. And especially as an entrepreneur and those of you guys who were listening. I know you guys are go getters. This podcast is getting a significant amount of downloads daily now and I thank you all for listening, but what I want you to know ... And that's the way that I think about it too. Russell thinks about it, Dana thinks about it. Like all these top guys, they're not out looking usually for like this little tiny trick insight of a platform. Right? A Facebook trick. A Twitter trick. They're not looking ... That's not how they do it. Instead, they outsource that piece of it, because we all know it's still important, and they go focus 100% of the time on developing these kinds of relationships. That was very very generous of you give that Dana. So it's ListentoStephen.com. Dana Derricks: Totally. And you all should listen to Stephen. Keep listening to him. Steve Larsen: I appreciate that. Well thanks for being on the show man, and where can everyone go to follow you as well? Dana Derricks: So being the farmer I am, I don't think I'm on instant grams. I'm over on Facebook, or DanaDerricks.com, or just keep listening to Stephen, and every once in a while I'll probably pop up. Steve Larsen: Absolutely. All right. Hey, thanks so much for being on the show. And everyone go to ListentoStephen.com and get the free copy of ... It's literally called Dream 100. Was two grand, for this audience it's free. Dana Derricks: Go get it. Steve Larsen: Boom. Just try to tell me you didn't like that. Hey whoever controls content controls the game. Want to interview or get interviewed yourself? Grab a time now at SteveJLarsen.com. | |||
| 01 Nov 2016 | SFR 17: Bend The Crap Out Of Rules (My Part-Montra) | 00:20:02 | |
Click Above To Listen Or Listen In iTunes...
Hey my name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now here's your host, Steve Larsen. All right guys, what's going on? I have story for you today. What's funny is that every time you start publishing anything, you're going to start getting a lot of questions, right? I published this podcast. I have 600 followers on Periscope and I think you can still look at it, actually, if you look at my YouTube channel and stuff. There's not that many videos but 40, I think. I show a lot of strategies that sometimes require a screen on the internet and things like that. It's interesting though. That's actually an aspect I was not expecting when I started... I just wanted to show people how to do some cool stuff with online marketing and it's kind of developed into this thing as people started asking. Anyways, I get probably one to two questions a day right now, which isn't a lot, but it's surprising me how many people that even is right there because sometimes their not small questions. They're like, "Hey, will you build my sales funnel for me?" And I'm like, "Sure. My fee is 10 grand, but yeah." Anyways, it's funny though what it does to your friends when you start publishing and when you actually try and make a personal brand. If any of you guys are thinking about this, just know this is about to happen. You're going to get some friends that are okay with and then other friends that are almost like, I don't know how to describe it. Almost like, they're not jealous because it's not like I'm ... I'm Steve Larsen from Littleton, Colorado. It's not like my name's on the news or anything. I just like to publish. I feel like I have things to say and I've got a sweet job, a sweet personal business, and I get asked a lot of questions anyways so I thought I might was well publish what people are asking and answer it. That's the basis of this podcast, right? Anyways, you'll get a divide, you'll see, of people who are openly supporting you and then some people just kind of fade away into the distance and they kind of get pissed off. I think a lot of it is because on what I'm publishing, like right here on Sales Funnel Radio or anywhere else, is intimidating to them meaning they don't want to do what I'm saying, even though what I'm saying, I know it works because I do it all day. I figured out a little bit ago, I'm spending about 12 hours a day building sales funnels right now. 12 hours a day! Oh my gosh, and doing things that are related to it. It's a lot of time. Anyways, I had a buddy who is texting me and he's like, "Hey man. Dude, I love what you're doing. I remember when you and I did that together a while." If you're listening to this right now, man, this is out of love, all right? This is medicine. He said, "I so wish that I could be doing what you are." I wanted to just like flick my computer, like, "You were doing it! We did do it together!" You can't get in that mentality. If you guys are listening to this and you're in that mentality of, "Oh I just so wish I could build sales funnels." Or, "I so wish I had a business." Or, "I so wish I could do my hobby and make money with it." You freaking can! My hands are literally up right now. Stop. That's one of my biggest pet peeves. Stop. I get up at 5:00 everyday and I don't want to hear it. That's how I built my business on the side of a full-time job is I get up early and it sucks sometimes. I mean, I'm crazy tired. I've been tired for five years so I have nothing to complain about. Nothing's new. I get up at 5 and I get ready for the day and then I live so close to our office that I just bike there. It's 1.6 miles away. The other was 4 and half miles aways. That was a longer bike ride. I bike to the office everyday which I know that might sound goofy. I sit at a computer all day long so why would I not try and move? I haven't lifted in a long time. All right, so I'm getting on side tangents. I have a lot of thoughts this morning. The point is you can and you need to be able to see yourself as an exception, right? A lot of people live. They want to live exceptionally, but they are very, very, very scared to do anything that's exceptional on the way. It's that path that leads up to being exceptional, to doing things that's amazing. I used to call myself the student of exceptions and I still do. The reason why is because when I was in college, I literally was the student of exceptions. I should not have been accepted to that college, my grades were so bad in high school, right? Then I got around and I learned how to learn and I got straight As, basically. I never got any Cs but I got very few Bs. I ended with a 3.8 with 170 credits. Now I went to BYU Idaho and they kick you out after 140 credits because the point of college is not to stay there forever. They want you to move on, so they put a credit limit on there. I had 170 credits. That's like 2 and half, 3 semesters more than I should have been there. Why? I don't do it because I think I'm better than people but I just want to ... There are certain things that I want and by merely asking for them I get them. That's why I work for Russell Brunson. You need to get out of the same ... Now there's this commercial. I can't remember what commercial was or what company it was for but he's in the exact same grooves every single day so his footprints are already in the ground, exactly where his feet are. In the grass, his footprint is worn away in the grass. Wherever he puts his hands everyday there's a sunken imprint. He's doing the same thing every single day and then one day he turns and he sees something new and it's their product or whatever, and he changes his path, changes his course. It's the exact same thing. I want to cure you guys of this. I'm not saying you need to, if you're listening to this, but if you want to know the cure, here it is. You got to go do things that are a little bit crazy to get you out of your comfort zone that require you asking for them. There's so many things that I have done in my life that is sweet because I've asked for them. When I went through basic training for the Army, the reason I was able to do so many cool, extra things in there that a lot of people were not able to do and they were getting smoked and doing push-ups and stuff like that, I did a lot of that too, but it's because I was asking for it. They'd be like, "Oh dude, if the drill sergeants, if they come to you, they're looking for volunteers, always say no." I was like, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Why would you do that? You guys are here to experience it. Experience it! Who cares if it's freaking hard. You have to get up a little bit early." It just pisses me off when people say that. "I have to get up early." All right, then you clearly are not ever going to do anything exceptional in your life. If sleep is the thing that you're like, all right. Anyways, I still get 6 hours of sleep a night. You can survive off that. That's totally fine. I'm not stretching it to the limit and about to have a heart attack. What's cool is that, like, in basic I was able to do all these extra things. So many extra things. I was able to do a lot with ... Some of you guys that have been, you know what I'm talking about. A lot of extra cool things with ammo and just being on the side of the drill sergeant, I got to learn a lot more about what they do rather than just be a peasant. My philosophy was to volunteer for everything... It's the same in church. I used to do that a lot more. That's pretty open. I used to do that a lot more. Any time any volunteers popped up, boom, raise your hand. "Hey I need ..." Just raise your hand. Just be in the mode and mindset of raising your hand and just do that stuff. Just volunteer for everything in your life. If there's an opportunity, take it. Even if you don't know how to do it. I am not a programmer, I'm not a coder, but I just taught myself CSS a month ago and I'm using it like crazy. I would never consider myself a coder, programmer, because that's an easy code language. That's the point though is that, man, you can learn all the stuff you need to from YouTube. Be willing to sacrifice for what it is that you want and if you're not willing to, stop complaining. Don't contact me and tell me that you need to change your life but you're not willing to do anything different with your habits, right? There was a, I think, a Tony Robbins quote. He said, I'm going to butcher it. He said basically that successful people are standing on a foundation of good habits. That's basically what he said... You can't do anything without good habits. That's all they are. When I realized that, that's when I was like, "Oh. That makes sense." If you can't control your own day and your own time, you're not going to be able to control anything else. I'm going to get up at 5 so I can still spend evenings with my family, which 5 is not that early. Then I'm going to go build my business during that time, and I've done some crazy stuff since the beginning of this podcast. I've interviewed some other really cool people for this podcast. You guys have seen them on the episode list if you haven't already. I just want to cure you guys of it... Okay, here's a story. Get into the mode of doing goofy things, also. You really need to get out of your comfort zone on this stuff. I'm telling you right now, you've got to go do something crazy. I was a crazy kid growing up, right? A lot of people say that. "Oh yeah. We did all this crazy stuff," but then they'll say, "Yeah, we were nuts one day. We did a prank phone call. " I was like, "Okay. Let me redefine crazy for you." We used to go, just to get out of our comfort zone and just to be funny and goofy, we'd go through the Taco Bell drive-thru backwards and just stare at the people who were behind us in line. Crazy stuff like that. We would go ... I don't have much stuff I want to tell you guys because that's pretty lightweight. I'll skip one other one because that one is a little bit sketchy. We would go park our car in front of drive-thrus and just set the car alarm off. Stupid stuff like that that teenagers do that isn't good or whatever, but I feel like because I was able to go do that kind of stuff. We had these potato cannons that we built and we lived near the back 9 of a public golf course, right? Anytime we saw someone teeing off, after they'd tee off we would just shoot potato cannons with golf balls in them to rain golf balls across the fairway and the person couldn't find their ball. Not because we took it, because we added so many. Goofy crap like that. You have to be willing to highlight your differences. It's not about focusing on your weaknesses or focusing on your strengths. It's actually about focusing on what you're different at. Why are you different? Everyone has strengths and we all categorize them so your strengths end up being similar to someone else's anyways. It's more about highlighting differences. Become a student of exceptions in what entertains you, in your business, in what it is that you ... And just merely do it by asking. Just the way I should've graduated the way I did. I ended up graduating the way I did with the entrepreneurial award and all these other cool things because I asked. I didn't ask for the award. They gave that to you, obviously. I got in the position to get it by asking for certain things that others were not willing to do because of rules and things that, oh, I can't do this or that. Anyways, I'm rambling. The point's already been made. I'm rambling on way too much. What I want you to go do is do things that get you way outside your comfort zone and just start asking for stuff, right? Call the sales guy, ask him to pitch you. I've done that. It's really interesting. Ask people to ... I don't know. It could be simple stupid stuff that just gets you out of your comfort zone, like when the car's parked at a red light, run around and do the fireman drill or whatever. The Chinese Fire Drill. Anything. You just can't stay in the same path, that's the point, right? If you're so scared for other people to see you and think about what it is you're doing and, "Oh, what are they thinking?" And, "Are they judging me?" Man, who gives a crap? I don't care. I don't care if you like this podcast or not. It's fun. It's as much for me as it is for people that are listening and a lot of people I know who do find value in it. If it's not for you, that's fine. It means I'm not speaking to you. You're not in my audience and that's okay. It's the same thing with your personal business. Find your differences and find where your exceptions are and be willing to say yes. That is my exception. I am an exception, right? I am exceptional. I'm an exception to the rule. I have been an exception to the rule for the last 5 years specifically on purpose. I've tried to do that and it's cool what happens when you start to do that. It's not because I think I'm better than other people. I just think those rules don't apply to me because there are no rules in life. That's my philosophy... If you've been listening to my podcast or followed me at all in any other platform, you know I've said that before. I really don't think that there's any ... There's no rules in life. There's only models, right? What's the model to become someone who's wealthy? Well, you can look at other wealthy people and see what they've done and just do what they did. That's a model. What's the model to get in jail? I can tell you exactly how to get in jail. There's a model for how to get in jail. There's certain things that you can do and not do and I guess that's where people would argue, well that's what the rules are. Still, I can tell you how to get in jail, I can tell you how to get out of it. You all know that too... I can tell you how to make money, I can tell you how to not. There's models. I can tell you how to get fat, I can tell you how to get healthy. There's models, right? I'm telling you right now my model for getting up and doing exceptional things is to get up at 5:00, that's funnel building time. Then I get up and crush it. I get up and I literally think to myself, "Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, crush, crush. I am going to destroy. I am going to destroy it!" I used to look in the mirror and I would smack my fists, and you guys will probably laugh at this but I would hit the counter with my hand. Boom. I would slam it and go, "I am Steven freaking Larsen! I am the man!" I did that a lot when I didn't feel a lot of confidence. "I can do anything. Don't tell me what I can't do." I'd be yelling, pumping myself up in the mirror. I firmly believe in that stuff! Self talk. Self talk is totally fine but as you're going through this mental shift of being a student of exceptions, right? Just ask for exceptions. Be an exception to the rule in some things. If you're not breaking the law then it doesn't matter, right? Right? There's really only 3 codes, right? Don't break your moral code. Don't break the ... I'm Mormon, all right. Don't break your religious code, right? Then my third one is to bend the crap out of rules. I purposely do that. That's been one of my mantras for 10, 15 years. Maybe not 15 but probably 10 years. Don't break rules, don't break commandments, bend the living crap out of rules and on purpose... I do that all the time and I'm just trying to tell you guys, and I'm sorry I've been going on for 15 minutes now, but that's just ... Oh, it bugs me so much when people come and they'll say, "Well, I can't do it because I have a full-time job." Bull crap, I do too. Stop. Anyways, "I can't do it because I don't have any money." I don't either. I go sell something, I get a commission off of it whenever my business needs money, right? I have money now but that's how I started, right? Whenever I needed money I'd just go sell something. You don't need funding to get a business going. That's total garbage, all right. I don't need funding to go sell $10,000 custom sales funnels to people. I don't. I focus on the real estate niche. I build mostly real estate funnels. I just don't. I don't need to do that. Why do you need to do that at all? If you need money for ads, go mow a lawn. Bootstrap the thing. You'll get way more out of it. The business will remain yours. You're not going to give any of it away. Anyways guys, I'm on crazy rants right now. It really makes me ... I guess I should call this the rant session. The student of exceptions rant style or something like that. Maybe I'll put that in there. Anyways, that's your homework assignment. Go do things that get out of your comfort zone, become a student of exemptions. I'm not even saying it right anymore. Remember to don't break the law, don't break whatever your moral code is, but break rules. They're not even real anyways... Someone who is an authority figure decided them and that doesn't mean they represent the law and it doesn't mean they represent your moral code. A lot of times they don't matter. If it's a fence, do not cross this fence. I'm not saying go trespass, but on a golf course, that's what we used to go on a golf course all the time growing up. Not for golfing. We'd collect golf balls and things like that. Anyways, my point is made. Go do that and I want to hear. Go on the Facebook page if you will and just say I am a student of exceptions because, dot dot dot. Please fill it out. Tell me what crazy thing you've done whether it's something entertaining, something with business, some other personal goal. Just let me know what it is because I want to bond with someone out there because this has been my mentality for the last, probably about 10 years, 5, 10 years, something like that. There's not a lot of people that have that mentality and what's funny is I get kind of lonely about it. I actually really do want to hear if you also have done things that make you an exception because it's my goal to be an exception. I am not going to be a rote routine, cookie cutter individual. I do that on purpose so I challenge you to do the same. Anyways guys, thank you so much and please remember to comment, rate, and please subscribe to this or share this episode if you liked it at all. I'm sorry this was more of a rand session. Usually I'm critiquing a sales funnel or dropping some kind of marketing bomb on you. I just woke up and had that thought, especially after I saw the text from one of my friends. I was like, "Ah dude, you got to get out of that mentality. Stop." It is poison. You will not get anywhere if you keep thinking that. Anyways guys, I'll talk to you later. Bye. Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Have a question you want answered on the show? Get your free t-shirt when your question gets answered on the live "HeySteve!" show. Visit salesfunnelbroker.com now to submit your question.
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| 21 Dec 2018 | SFR 202: 7 Business-Changing Lessons... | 00:31:00 | |
"business development" "business process" "strategic framework" OfferMind, success framework, offer creation
These are some of the BIGGEST needle-moving lessons I've been applying in the last year…
When I did my live event OfferMind, I didn’t just jump straight into the marketing bit… I started out by walking through some mental attributes that have really shifted the needle for me.
This isn’t something that I’d normally do, but after coaching thousands of people, I’ve noticed that if somebody doesn't have these sign posts inside their brain, a lot of times their business won't do very well.
So I want to share with you seven of the most life-altering lessons I've learned in the last three years.
These are especially potent when it comes to being able to function as the entrepreneur inside your business.
ARE YOU WILLING TO LISTEN?
A few weeks ago, Russell was doing a big push for Cyber Monday and Black Friday. I was watching the way that some people were reacting to the Funnel Hacking Live tickets being sold…
I was like "Dude, let me teach some things to help people actually make 2000 dollars in a day."
I woke up the next morning, and looked at my phone, and I was stoked to see my an email with my name there next to Russells.
I've pushed really hard in the game, and to see that he'd blasted his whole list about the training meant a lot to me.
I taught for three and a half hours, and it was really funny what happened…
There was a group of people who really appreciated what I was teaching, BUT it was not necessarily a marketing education, and I think that threw some people.
There was a small group of people who were very unhappy with the fact that I was not teaching my usual content.
It was amusing to see the stark divide.
However, there are some patterns that I've noticed inside of somebody's brain that makes them successful.
These are some of the biggest lessons I've distilled down, especially in the last year.
These aren't flash in the pan things - they’re the lessons that have made the BIGGEST difference for me in my life and my business as I've moved forward.
So, I'm gonna walk you through each of them real quick: 7 BUSINESS CHANGING LESSONS
(An early Christmas present from Papa Larsen)
LESSON #1: FOLLOW THE FRAMEWORK
It’s really common for people to ask me, "Hey, Stephen, I'm gonna start building a funnel. What's the what's the checklist I need to make sure that my funnel gets off the ground well?" I understand what they're asking, but the biggest thing I've noticed is that people will get distracted by the creative process. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a:
… the creative is the cherry on the top. It’s the exact opposite of what you need to focus on to succeed in this game.
You add the cherry AFTER you’ve made the cake… NOT before!
Let me explain…
When I was in college guys, a lot of times I was taught, "Make something that's brand new and completely prolific. Something that no one's ever seen before."
That’s some risky crap, and I never would follow that advice ever.
Instead, you need to follow the 80% framework. 80% of this entire game is just following the pattern. It's the 20% that allows you add your little glaze on top.
I get stressed out when people wanna know about “this little trick or gimmick.” They have no idea that they're focused on the 20% instead of the 80 that makes it work. You understand what I'm saying?
You can get an F in funnel building or make a design that's crappy, and still make enough money to have a fantastic lifestyle just by understanding the 80% framework.
If you are NOT a creative person, that's not a handicap. You just need to follow the framework to the ‘T.’
So, here's my lesson to you:
If you can't name, or tell somebody what framework you're following, then you’re spinning your wheels.
If you’re frustrated because you’ve been doing this game for so long, and tried tons of stuff..." But you have no idea what model you’re following, and I'm not talking about funnels, I'm talking about business models….
If you can't say this is the 80% framework l that I'm following, that’s your problem, right there!
For years, I felt like I was spinning my wheels. I was like, "I know what I'd do in that guy's business, I know what I'd do in that guy's business... Why aren’t I making any money?"
And it's because I would always go out on the cusp to these places where I was trying to learn the 20%. And that's the 20% doesn't matter.
It's so much better to learn the 80% framework that causes cash. I only care about the frameworks that cause cash by a rule.
If you haven’t checked it out already there’s a really powerful episode called Cash Causing Models that talks about this in detail.
I don't wanna have to learn the exception to the rule in order to make money.
I'm not throwing rocks at the financial market, but I don't do much stuff in the stock market or stuff like that anymore because I felt like I had to learn exceptions to the rule to make money.
It was the same with a lot of the things I was trying back in the day… that’s why I was broke :-(
The thing I like about funnels is that you can learn the 80% and then just build them and make money. You don't have to learn these crazy flash in the pan strategies in order to make it work out.
WANT A STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK?
Ok, well, what I recommend to find a framework that works is this... (I'm gonna teach you right now how to shortcut your time to success)
For example:
If you're trying to be the best traffic driver for Instagram ads. What you need to do is start looking at the industry to work out WHO is yesteryear's framework master?
Let me walk through this real quick:
Let’s look at Sales Funnels...
Who's the person, right now, who understands the most about sales funnels? That'd be Russell Brunson, right!
The reason Russell knows so much about sales funnels is that he’s studied yesteryear's gurus.
He's obsessed over the last generation of gurus. He knows the frameworks that they teach so well that he's learned how to distill them down, find the gaps, and create his own frameworks.
I know one of the major reasons why I am where I am right now is because I decided, "I wanted be one of the best funnel builders in the world." Am I? I have no idea.
...But the pursuit of that led me to follow Russell Brunson, and he’s what I call ( and I know it sounds cheesy) A Framework Master. He’s the master of frameworks that cause success in funnel building.
So if you're gonna be the best traffic driver for Instagram, you need to ask, “Who is the yesteryear's guru's framework master?”
Meaning they’ve intensely followed loads of different gurus, consumed all their material, applied it, saw the gaps, and then produced their own frameworks. MY OFFERMIND
My friend, I know that the reason why OfferMind was such a big success was because I was teaching my own frameworks.
I've spent so much time preoccupied with the offer creation and the funnel building space, that I know where the gaps are between learning it, and actually doing it.
That’s knowledge comes from the time spent with the thousands of students I've help with offer creation. That’s a lot of mat time.
YOUR MISSION:
That's huge. You cannot fake that - and that's why I follow Russell Brunson on funnels.
LESSON #2: BE PEAK FOCUSED, NOT PATH FOCUSED
An individual who’s path focused always takes a long time to start moving.
I used to do a lot of backpacking, I remember this time when we were climbing a mountain on a three-week backpacking trip...
We’d just come out of this beautiful valley. It was afternoon; the clouds had come can over and it started drizzling. There was a nice smell of rain in the air.
Suddenly, we found ourselves on the top of a ridge we’d been scaling, only to see another summit beyond it.
We’d keep going, but time after time, there’d be another summit to scale. You’d think you’d reached the peak, but it only revealed that you’ve further to go - it’s what’s known as a false summit.
Here’s how this relates to success…
I've noticed is that when the individual is focused on the peak, the path stops mattering so much.
The people that I've noticed who don't do anything in this game are the people who sit back trying to analyze every single path.
They wanna see from beginning to end before they get started, and that’s crap. It doesn't happen that way.
You’ve gotta be peak focused, not path focused.
I'm not saying you shouldn't learn the path as best as you can, but *reality check* ...everyone switches paths on the way up to the top. Everyone does!
For a while, I studied SEO. I hate SEO. I'm never gonna do SEO again. SEO drives me nuts. I would rather hire people to do that for me. In all reality, I hate it…
BUT that doesn't keep me from getting a cool online business online off the ground.
If you’re not sure about your path, the best thing you can do is get going.
Something aren’t revealed until you’re in motion
That’s just the way it is…
If you start on a path and find that you don’t like it, alright, then just switch paths, you're still heading to the same peak.
When I coach people, I know that if they’re peak NOT path focused, then they're a lot harder to stop.
If stuff starting to come up against them that they weren't expecting, they just keep focusing on that peak and they keep moving… and that's a big, big deal because it happens to everybody in anything that you pursue...EVER.
YOUR MISSION
I'm very, very proud of my lady right now. She's doing some cool seminars and things that, she's never done before... and without me telling her... there's been no encouragement. I'm not like, "You gotta do this thing.” She's just doing it.
I was like, I’m so proud of you, most people don't take action for freaking ever." They just sit back and ask, "But what's it gonna be like in session two?"
Man, I don't know…
I planned OfferMind the week before it started, NOT before I started selling tickets. You understand?
Some people react, "Stephen, you guys are so risky, oh my gosh." No, we're not. We're letting the market guide us, and that can only happen when we’re in motion.
You can't steer a parked car, people - move!
NUMBER #3: LEAN IN TO YOUR CONSTRAINTS
You’ve heard me riff on this one before, but the constraints that you have... they're not real constraints.
You need to realize that everything that feels it’s against you is actually your superpower.
That's why when someone's like, "I don't have enough time or money..." I'm like "Bullcrap; I don't believe you. I have zero sympathy for you."
Once you recognise that, it's amazing how fast you can move in the game and there's so much less anxiety. You stop comparing yourself to other people. And you stop saying thing like:
... You stop saying crap like that because you realize that:
Everything obstacle you've been given is a tailored opposition just for you.
Lean into your constraints and be willing to live your hook
If you aren't willing to live the hook in front of your audience, that's a big deal because your audience is gonna call your bluff.
YOUR MISSION
NUMBER #4: BUILD A BUSINESS THAT CHANGES YOUR WORLD BEFORE YOU CHANGE THE WORLD
Please, please, please, for the love…
Stop trying to build a business that changes The World before you’ve changed Your World.
That's why I call myself the capitalist pig. I’m telling YOU to Make Money.
There's nothing wrong with making money. Make so much money that you can change your world, because then you'll be in a position to change The World.
Let me ask you a question…
“How much power do you have if you're living paycheck to paycheck?”
Not much, right? You're very limited in the options that you have. I know, I’ve been there.
HOW TO CHANGE YOUR WORLD…
About six weeks ago, and we launched a new project…it's really awesome, but I want to tell you WHY we launched it in the way we did…
Number #1: I chose the wealth industry. I did that on purpose because people expect to spend money in the wealth industry.
It's not that they don't in relationships or in health, it just that they particularly expect to spend money in the wealth industry. So, it's an easier sell.
I'm gonna stack all the cards in my favor that I possibly can.
I don't have to turn around and say, "Hey you wanna spend 25 grand on this free plus shipping book?" Cause people will be, " Errm, No."
I choose an industry where I don't have to sell people on the fact that they need to spend money. There's already an expectation.
Key move right there…
Number #2: I choose an industry that has existed for a while because it’s gotten so good that it continues to create new customers.
I sell in the MLM space, and that's the reason why. MLMs have been around for freaking ever and people are already convinced that it's good.
The industry creates the customers. I don't have to create a customer. They make the customer for me.
How amazing is that!
When somebody builds a product and they say, “Who shall I sell it to?” *Wrong Order*
The first thing I do is I look for is bloody red oceans that have been in existence for a while, and create customers.
I want the sales message to be alluring enough that it creates a customer for me, and then I just need to figure out what message I can send into that red ocean to pull customers back out to me.
I didn't create the customer; I collected the customer.
As an ocean starts to expand, and the idea behind it gets more valid, the market will move from customer collection to customer creation.
Here’s what I'm looking for:
There's a process...
I never have to worry about who to sell to again. I'd never have to worry about how to create a customer. I'm just collecting them. It's a lot easier. Does that make sense?
There's a lot of things that I walk through to see if that read ocean is ready to be picked:
There's a lot of things, and I'll definitely do a full episode on this, but I want you to understand:
Change YOUR world before trying to change The World.
It's hard to pull margins out in a change the world business for quite some time and so you end up losing steam. Guys, go get money. Get rich.
I'm all about making an absolutely sickening amount of cash and then doing cool things in the world with it that help people. That's kinda my thing. That's why I'm doing what I'm doing.
However, I know it’ll be waaay easier if I change my world first.
NUMBER #5: THE MARKET WILL ALWAYS TELL YOU WHAT TO DO
Now, what you have to understand is this game is about you learning how to be a good detective, rather than a creative genius.
You need to learn how to go into an ocean and see what's actually going on inside it, and have it start to guide you in the creation of a blue ocean.
It's the EXACT OPPOSITE of what I was taught in college and by a lot of the books that are out there today which tell you to,"Come up with a cool, brand-new idea..."
Okay, but people don't just spend money because they say they're going to....
You need to discover WHAT people are actually spending money on, NOT what they say they're gonna spend money on.
It's all about discovering a blue ocean with a red ocean customer - that's way easier to do it that way.
YOUR MISSION
NUMBER #6: CASH IS NOT KING; CASH FLOW IS KING
Let me say that again, "Cash is not king, cash flow is king."
Too many times, I see somebody hit the Two Comma Club Award... they make a million dollars through the funnel and get this big payout, but then if it's not sustainable, they die.
I'm not saying it's not worth it, but I am saying that it’s not security.
I look for opportunities...
I have two value ladders right now that I'm building, two businesses.
I think of businesses as value ladders with systems in them.
There's two different value ladders that I'm building right now. In both of them there's:
So I'm ascending, I'm monetizing, and I'm actually acquiring customers inside the value ladder. However, it is incomplete without the fourth step, which is:
It's not always super clear before I start, what that will be... but I want you to know that I'm always looking for a way to add a continuity base thing into each thing that I build because that continuity is what lets you build everything.
Is there a way for me to gain a consistent monthly check from my customers?
Bringing in this huge cash influx is cool, but it's freakin’ scary if it never comes again. And so I don't look for businesses where it's like, "Boom, tons of money all at once."
I'm not saying I don't do that, but I'm saying I don't let my emotional hair down and go," Oh my gosh, I'm totally set now." Because that's freaky.
I look for ways to build my business and build my stuff so that I have cash flow. And when I have cash flow - when things are rocking, that's a huge deal.
That's actually what lets you build the business, NOT the funnel. The business is what supports the funnel. A business is systems.
Because of the cash flows that we have, I can go hire a team. I take that cash flows and hire out different pieces of the funnel build or content machine.
I think ten people on the content team now between the two shows that I've got. Ten. It's not cheap. The reason I can do it is not because of cash flow.
So I'm looking for businesses where I can get money coming in. The funnel breaks even on the customer coming in, then I upsell them, and then there is continuity....
When I have that, I have a business.
YOUR MISSION
NUMBER #7: CONFIDENCE EQUALS COMPETENCE
If you don’t feel competent in the funnel game or inside of a business, you’ve gotta learn more… But you have to do it in a focused way.
I don't learn anything about SEO or social media posting because I don't want to learn it. It's not what I need in order to solve the next problem in front of me.
On my whiteboard, I have two questions I'm trying to answer right now. That's it.
I know that if any other question that pops up, it's either something I need to solve on the way to solving the big problem... or it's not a real question.
There's two problems I'm trying to solve right now. I can name them, so I know exactly what I need to learn.
I don't just learn generally. I don't just learn for the sake of, "Oh, it's good to just learn." No, it's not! That’s the best way to make your brain feel clouded. It'll literally clog your mental shelf space.
Go on what Tim Ferris calls a Low Information Diet
YOUR MISSION
THE ‘CRUSH IT’ TEAM
So, there you have it, the most 7 MOST important lessons I've learned during the last three years - and especially in the last year out on my own.
If I look back on the things that have made the big difference in my life, these are the players:
#1: It's all about the framework: If you can’t name the 80% proven will make money framework, you're gonna feel like you're spinning your wheels. You're gonna fire off your next funnel and not know why.
#2: You have gotta be peak focused, not path focused: Find the framework and just start moving.
#3: Lean into the constraints: Anything that you feel, realize these are not constraint but super powers - specifically this has to do with the feelings and emotions of the individual:
... blah blah blah, wah wah wah... and everytime I hear that it’s usually because somebody's starting to believe their constraints are actual constraints, they're not.
Constraints are superpowers - but not until you flip the way you're seeing them. You’ve gotta be willing to feel a little pain, a little pressure, and a slight amount of discomfort in order to push through them.
#4: Change your world before you change The World: That's a huge one. I want to change the world, that's why I'm doing what I'm doing. I wanna change the world. I don't know exactly how, but right now I'm changing my world and funny enough, that changes a lot of other people's’ world as well.
The pursuit of me changing my world has been changing a lot of other worlds, but it's also been giving me more in a position of power and increasing my capacity to change the world.
I know that those projects will come up soon, in fact, I can kinda feel they will be, but right now, doesn't matter, I'm trying to change My world before I change The World.
#5: The market will always tell me what to do: I totally believe that.
#6: Cash is not king; cash flow is king: Big old wins are awesome, but please build something that's sustainable.
#7:Confidence equals competence. Stop learning generally and for the sake of it. It is the best way to feel like you're going nowhere.
Until Next Time - Lean into Your Constraints!
Hey, there's more marketing resources than there are sands in the sea, am I right?
Okay, maybe not, but there's a lot. How do you know if you're paying for good ones?
Recently I went to my business bank statement, and I counted 51 internet tools and resources that I use to run my business every day and actually keep my team size small.
If you want to see the list, I actually filmed an individual video teaching you why I use each tool and the strategy behind it, and then I dropped the link straight to the source right below it. I
f you want to see the list and see what you can use yourself, go to bestmarketingresources.com That's bestmarketingresources.com.
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| 29 Jun 2023 | Creating My Linchpin-Style Event Funnel | 00:13:27 | |
I love the Linchpin model. In fact, I have changed everything in my business to it. And yours truly even got to write the foreword on Russell Brunson's upcoming book about the said business model. But I haven't seen anyone turn their event funnel into this Linchpin model yet. So while I was on an airplane to Miami, with some caffeine and dubstep, I had another epiphany that blew my mind. I created a fantastic new event funnel type using the Linchpin model! And I can't wait to share it with you. Here's how it goes…
Key Takeaways: The new Linchpin model (01:25) How to do a Linchpin-style event funnel (02:21) My plans for Offer Launch and Offer Mind (07:51) The reason why I've slowed down (10:17) Blackout speaking explained (11:38) The future of Sales Funnel Radio (12:34)
Additional Resources - Connect with me here --- Download Season 1 episodes here -- Sales Funnels Radio is a podcast for all passionate digital marketing pros looking to up their game and stay ahead. Follow us on your favorite podcasting platform so you never miss an episode!
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| 20 Sep 2022 | Preparing our Speech at FHL with Russell Brunson | 00:12:24 | |
Here are a few takeaways from the prep sessions Russell and I have been doing to get ready for our speech. Anytime I go out to make speeches, it's always on the basis of what already exists. I'm teaching my frameworks all over again. There's this really crazy superpower that teaching brings in understanding your own frameworks; you get to turn back around and have all these other epiphanies. And it'll be even clearer and clearer, and you'll teach simpler and simpler, and your framework becomes easier and easier for people to apply. And the easier it is for someone to apply it, the more the success rate is in the back, and then the more it gets sold. Tune in for more on how I approach speech writing and also wiring a book Key Takeaways - Envision your path down the road (01:19) - Epiphanies that you have while preparing a speech/book (02:38) - The crazy superpower that teaching brings (03:01) - Keep it all simple (04:04) - How I create every core framework (07:25) Additional Resources - Connect with me here --- Download Season 1 episodes here -- Sales Funnels Radio is a podcast for all passionate digital marketing pros looking to up their game and stay ahead. | |||
| 21 Feb 2018 | SFR 114: Hacking The Live Webinar Funnel... | 00:19:11 | |
I'm tripling how often I deliver my webinar. BUT, sometimes I can't be there to do it live, so...
Hey, what's going on everyone. This is Steve Larsen, and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. So I was just outside. We've been shipping just a whole bunch of stuff into the house, stuff for our garage, stuff for ... just lots of different stuff. And a lot of the stuff has come on big pallets and things like that. We've been shipping a lot of cool stuff in here. It's been fun. But funny enough, we've just had this stack of boxes and pallets and all this stuff all over the place and so we've been wondering what to do with it. There's no one who comes out and says, "Hey, you've got a whole bunch of pallets you've got to get rid of?" You know what I mean? So it's funny, for Valentine's Day, my wife got me an ax, which is kind of fun, actually. So I've been outside for the last three hours just bashing apart and burning these pallets, and it's been a whole lot of fun. It's totally manly. Hey, this last week has been kind of interesting with my webinar. A lot of sales at first, kind of trickled down, and then it really slowed down quite a bit, and I know ... I figured out why. I think I figured out why. I think it's because ... So here's the numbers, right. I still have a 56 percent opt in rate on my first page. 56 percent. It's awesome. It's really, really ... I mean super, super cool. I'll get 150 to 200 people registering from my webinar each week. But there's only like a 7 to 10 percent show up rate. Of the people who show up, I still end up usually closing anywhere from 10 to 20 percent, which is an awesome close rate for a webinar. But the actual show up rate is so low that the last little bit here hasn't been that many sales. I'm like, okay, what's the problem? And I know there's probably some guru or whatever's out there who's like, "Why would you ever share these numbers? Don't make yourself look bad." What I'm trying to help you understand and to know and show and see, is that my reaction to what the market is telling me is what is key right here. And so I was ... I'm not going to lie, I was super frustrated, like, what the heck's going on? C'mon. I know the product's freaking awesome. There's no one else selling anything that's like this. I know it's incredible. I've had amazing success stories with it. People are doing amazing things with it. Like, ah. It's been so cool. So I'm like, okay. But that just goes to show what I keep saying to all these people too. Stop focusing and freaking out so much about the product. Start focusing and be obsessive over the sales message and the product will take care of itself. You go and you make something awesome. And it should still be awesome, but you know what I mean? Focus on that second... Anyway, so I was boxing Russell, and I was like, "Dude, I don't know what the heck's going on. It's nerve-wracking doing one webinar per week, and ... " Follow me on this okay? There's something very specific I want to tell you guys on this webinar because I'm very excited you guys. I think I hacked out the way cook funnels works a little bit. It's so cool. So anyway, I was boxing Russell and I was like, dude, what's going on. What do you think's happening? What do you ... " And he was making fun of me because I'm still putting a dollar in on ads and I'll get like $4 back out. And he was like, "I'm Stephen. I only 4Xed my money." And I was like okay, "Okay, I get it." And it's still that kind of thing. But it's like the numbers are tiny. I was like, "How do I scale this thing up so that my show up rate's higher?" And he was like, "Yeah, my show up rate ..." He usually gets a 25% show up rate. And I was like, "I'm floating around anywhere from 7% down to ... up to 15%. It's still kind of low. You know?" So that's the number I'm working on. And so, all these little things that I've been doing to my webinar to get it to increase.
So I was telling him all this and was like, "Once per week is rough because I'm eating what I kill. You know?" And he goes, "Well, what if you just do it twice a week?" I was like, "Huh." Why have I never thought about that? So I was like, "Okay.' So I ... A few nights later, I was like, "Okay, I got to think through this model." How do I from a technical standpoint run this thing in a way so that when group one is going through my replay sequence, they're not also seeing the Facebook ads that I'm running for group two that week. Right? And so, I was sitting there and I don't know what it is about Dubstep guys but I was putting my headphones on and it always gets me in the creative zone just a little bit. I don't know. But maybe that weird but whatever. Different kinds of music do affect me differently and my creative zen, you know what I mean? So I was sitting there and actually I put my headphones on and I started just pacing around my office here. And this is how I solve problems. I don't know if anyone knows ... I've never really told you guys this. That is how I solve problems. And I solved ... What I will do, and one of the commonalities of people I see who don't solve problems in their life is they see that there's a problem and then rather than accept the fact that there's a problem and they don't know the answer, they just act like it's not there and move on and ... Or they'll say, "I can't move on because it's here." And they don't look to themselves and their own noggin to try and figure it out. I was listening to this really cool interview ... it wasn't an interview, it was a speech. I don't know who it was. It was some guy on the internet speaking in front of a ton of people. And he said some things that were really profound and he was going through some interesting numbers that they were finding. And what they figured out was that successful people will solve 80% of the problems the first time that they hear them. I think I was saying that right. Meaning they solve literally almost every single problem. They make a decision. Solve isn't the right word. They make a decision. There we go. That's what it was. They make a decision 80% of the time. Right? So something comes to them and they're like, "Hey I've got this thing. Go make a choice on it, Steven. Go make a choice." 80% of the time, they make a decision right then. And that's what he was teaching. He was trying to show, look, successful people don't take forever to make a decision. They just make a decision and they move forward. And they just get crap done and they know ... They make the decision as best they can with the information they have right there with the understanding that it could be wrong. But they're so good at making decisions on a fast basis that their chances of actually being successful are so much higher and it's one of the reasons they are successful is because they make decisions very, very quickly. And so, I had that in my mind and I was walking around. And I love getting into the zone, guys. It is one of my favorite things to do ever. I was going to go to sleep. It was late at night but for whatever reason ... It was late at night and I was in the zen state and the creativity ... I don't really control when those moments happen. I just follow them when they do. And so I stayed up. I had the music on. I was pacing around and I had this ... that kind of lesson in my head of hey look, I've got to make decisions 80% of the time the very first time I have to make ... that I need to be making it. I hope that makes sense what I'm saying with that. And it gets a little bit detrimental sometimes with my eyes closed but I do. And I'll have music going and it's loud and I'm trying to find a thread. That's how I think of it. I'm looking for a thread. And I think of it like there's all these threads, these possible solutions to the thing I'm looking for. I don't really know what it is. And I don't really know that it's going to be the solution yet. But what I do is I start thinking through in my head ... I don't know if this is weird but this is how I think about it. This is what I do. And what I do those is I start thinking through all these threads and I grab a thread that's there that exists and I start following it. That's how I think of it. I think of it as I'm going hand over hand following this thread. And I don't know what's on the other end of it. I love those states because what always ends up happening is the first thing I have to do is I have to draw the end of the thread. And so, that's what I did is I came over and I was like, I think I know how to solve this problem. I think I know how to solve this problem. I don't know how it's totally done yet but I know enough that I could start drawing. And so, I go to my whiteboard. And that's always the next step that I always go through. I go to my whiteboard and I start drawing the end of the thread, whatever it is that I believe will lead to the solution. And it was a very interesting thing that happened. And I started drawing it. I started drawing it and I put the marker back down and I kind of paced around for a little while and I was like, okay, but what's the next step after that? What is it? What is it? And I started walking around and usually I'm pacing kind of quick. And funny enough, it wasn't the right solution but another one took its place and I followed that one and that's how I solved it... Here's what I was trying to figure out. And I hope that makes sense what I'm saying is like, I've seen that most entrepreneurs out there do this. Certainly, Russell does. Certainly most of the ultra-successful people that I've seen or been around or gotten to work with or just gleaned info from, most of them, they don't always know what the outcome's going to be, they just know that the beginning's real good and if they can sprint at it hard enough, make as many decisions on a fast basis as they can, usually it'll be shown to them the kind of thing they need to be doing. So here's what I was figuring out though. So Russell's like, "Hey, do two webinars a week." And I was like, "Well, what's better than two webinars a week? Three webinars a week." And I was like, Cool." So, I am doing starting this Tuesday, I'm doing my webinar live three times a week. Okay? It's very aggressive but there's a lot of reasons why I'm doing it that way. So I'm doing it literally Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. And what I've done is I figured out a model because usually the model that we teach at Click Funnels, that I teach Two Coaching and Secrets of Master Guide, even in Expert Secrets and all the different trainings. The webinars are in this one per week model where Monday through Thursday you're promoting, Thursday do the webinar, and Friday through Sunday you do your replay sequence. I was like, okay, but how do I squish into this thing three webinars a week without overlapping. And so what I did was I figured out how to do it. And I figured out this model. Which is super cool because it still feels like an isolated event to the people who in the middle of it. They don't know that there are these other webinars that are going on also. And what's cool about that is it lets me perfect the message at a faster pace, right? Brandon and Katelyn Pullman, I think they did their webinar thirty some times before they actually automated it.
I'm trying to get to that number. I'm trying to get to those volumes of having done it so I know the script so well, so well. And I know what the issues are. I know that the good, the bad, the ugly. I know what's converting well. I know the stories that work well. I know the stories that are not good to tell. You know what I mean? I'm trying to figure out what that is but I'm trying to run at it because I feel like you can't skirt that process. You know what I mean? There's shortcuts. There certainly are shortcuts. There really are secrets. There really are hacks. But some stuff you just can't shortcut. And so rather than me trying to shortcut it and go straight to an automated webinar, I'm actually trying to just marry the process. I'm looking at it like a sport, okay? This is mat time. This is gym time. This is me just spending time in my craft. And so, that's what I've been doing. And I just figured out, I'm about to build it right now. I just figured out how to do the entire thing. And I was checking with my amazing ads lady and she's fantastic and she's like, "Yeah, that could totally work." And so, I will probably do some kind of training on it in the future here because it's super powerful. So as I was looking at it, it was like three times a week. I am zapped from a single webinar. The way I do them with such high energy. If you want to check it out guys I would love to have you one it. It's secretmlmhacks.com if you guys want to. But it's been really, really cool. And I convert really well on the webinar. And I get an amazing opt in rate. The one thing I'm tweaking right now, and I know exactly what I'm going to do. And I'll tell you guys about it in the future which probably means next week. Because I think I figured out how to solve my problem, my show up rate problem. And I got some just awesome stuff down that's coming. Oh my gosh. It's cutting edge. There's only two other people on earth that have what I'm about to go put out and I'm really excited about it. Anyway, it's super cutting edge but I'll tell you guys about it in the future. How's that for salting the oats, right? Anyway, so what I did though was I figured out how to do this and run this thing in a way. And I was like, three webinars in a week, we got Funnel Hacking Live coming up. I'm speaking at an event. There's 2,500 people at it. I'm super excited about it. I just got asked. It's going to be so cool. It's the beginning of March. I'm going to go to Grant Cardone's 10X event. What do I do when I can't do one of these webinars? Three a week? That's a lot...
So for that one time ... So Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, right? Let's say Thursday, I'm at an event and I can't do it. Well, for that group, that scenario, I will run an automated webinar with a single click and switch the entire funnel from an automated funnel ... from a live one to an automated one. And then in a click, turn it all back. That's what I figured out that night. Thank you Dubstep and pacing around and following threads in my noggin. That's what I figured out. And at some point, I'll probably do some cool trainings. I want to show you guys this stuff. It's really ninja. I don't think that there's a way you can sidestep having to do it live over and over and over again. I even asked Russell, I was like, "Dude, maybe I should just automate it." And he started laughing and he's like, "I'm not going to let you off the hook that easy dude. You keep doing it live." And I was like, "Gosh dang it. Just let me automate this thing." Oh man. Anyway, I've been pumped about it and I'm trying to marry the process and keep to what works. You know what I mean? When I was in basic training, I shot really, really well with my M16, a shot expert. I shot so well that it was only me and another guy out of 200 that actually won a phone call home which was awesome. And what I was doing though is I was marrying the process. And I love it. Shooting's tons of fun. And so, there's all these different things they teach us. And one of the things they'd have us do is they'd have us lay down, obviously on the prone, but on concrete. And we'd lay in the prone and hold our M16 and then we'd just start smacking our elbows on the ground. And the reason why is it would toughen the elbows and we could hold steadier for a long time. We'd literally be trying to bruise our elbows. And we'd take our elbows and we'd just start smacking them on the floor. Sounds kind of crazy but it worked... So I would be in the barracks when everyone's hanging out and I'd be in the prone smacking my elbows on the ground. I'd be putting canteens on the very end of my barrel, full ones, and try to hold it as steady as possible for 30 minutes. We'd put dimes on the end of the barrel and hold it as steady as possible and do an entire cycle meaning I would charge the weapon, fire it, and try and hold the dime at the very end of the barrel and keep it that steady so it wouldn't fall off during the entire cycle. And so, my body moves. I charge the weapon ... I put a round it. Nothing in, a blank or whatever, and I'd fire and then try and not have that dime fall off. And so I'm trying to do that. That's, as far as documenting the journey, that's what I'm doing right now... So anyway, been a ton of fun and that's what I'm doing. So, I am literally right now I'm about to go and build an automated version of the webinar for those scenarios when I can't do it the third time that week. You know what I mean? But I'll flip it right back out. I don't want to ... I'm not ready to automate the thing yet. I don't want to yet. I'm not quite dreaming about the slides yet. When I start dreaming about it, that's when I know that it's really a part of my subconscious but I'm not doing it. It sounds stupid but it's true. Okay? I've had dreams in the editor. I've built whole funnels in my sleep. And brainstormed headlines, okay? There's a level of obsession that you've got to have with this stuff and so anyways. All righty. So, that's been it and that's what I'm excited about. And that's what I'm literally about to go do right now. So I'm going to shut this thing off and got ClickFunnels up right here, got my two monitors. And I'm looking at my little map that I drew that night. And sometime, I'll make a cool map out of it and I'll probably do some training on it and toss that out there. But anyway, it's been a lot of fun. It's been ... I'm just trying to show you guys the process. Like okay, when the funnel does well, and it did well for a while, but there's either ad fatigue going on which I don't think that's what it is at all. There's this or that but as I look at the numbers, the numbers are telling me a story. And the story is you've got to talk ... You've got to increase your show up rate. So I'm just ... I know what that plan is. I'll tell you guys what it is in a little bit here. I think it's going to work really, really well. I'll tell you about it in a little bit.
Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best sales funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today. | |||
| 12 Oct 2023 | 2 Ways Entrepreneurs Get Paid From Their Business with Brad Gibb | 00:24:40 | |
I think a lot of people jump into the entrepreneurial space because they are a bit of an artist. However, many of them don't know how to manage money in terms of separating business finance from personal finance. This is where someone like Brad Gibb, a dear friend, investor, financial expert, and one of our featured speakers at this coming OffferLaunch 2023 event, comes in. Brad helps entrepreneurs build wealth while they build their businesses. Apparently, I was once like you, who've paid everybody else apart from myself. And Brad made me realize that getting PAID from your business is by design, not luck. So, when should your business pay you (and when to take cash)? Here are the two ways to plan profit TO YOU…
Key Takeaways: Intro (00:00) When should your business pay you? (01:27) Two ways to get paid as an entrepreneur (07:17) When to reinvest the money back into your business (10:10) Should you reinvest your excess money on new investments (14:30) How you should be investing your money (16:15) The only reason you reinvest (17:22) What entrepreneurs must realize (20:29) Two skill sets you need to master to win the game (23:10)
Additional Resources - Reserve Your Seat at the OfferLaunch 2023 event here - Connect with me here --- Download Season 1 episodes here -- Sales Funnels Radio is a podcast for all passionate digital marketing pros looking to up their game and stay ahead. Follow us on your favorite podcasting platform so you never miss an episode!
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| 19 Apr 2018 | SFR 136: Myron Golden Shares The Laws Of Wealth... | 01:05:05 | |
I have the most incredible respect for Myron. Come learn some of the laws of wealth from his gift of clarity... What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larson and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. I have a very special episode for you today. I'm going to be interviewing and going and through and chatting with one of my favorite people in this planet. His name is Myron Golden. There's a lot of voices out there, there's a lot of people out there that tell you to do this or tell you to do that. I'm not calling them out but every once in a while some not done this, they're not walking with their talking. They haven't actually been down the path.
Myron is one of those people that I have come to not just know and like and become friends with but I trust him, I trust what he says, I trust what he's saying because I know that he's been down that path. I learn so much from him every time he speaks, very excited to have him on the show here.
As I've mentioned before, a lot of it has to do with personal development that's tailored directly to you. That's what you're going to find out as you listen to this episode. He's going to go through and dive in and do also a bit of a recap of what he spoke about at this last Funnel Hacking Live. Very honored to have him on the show to be honest.
He's spoken for years. He's helped a lot of people gain their goals. He started out as a trash man. He has made millions of dollars now, very fascinating to watch the process and watch what he's done and his attitude towards that kind of learning, towards that kind of process. Very fascinating, please take notes, you guys are in for a special treat. Just stick around if you want to, decided to toss in some of the conversation that he and I had before we were actually officially making the episode together, a fun conversation will be afterwards, after the very last little outro piece...
Now, I've left my 9 to 5 to take the plunge and build my million dollar business. The real question is how will I do it with VC funding or debt, completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learn, apply and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels. My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.
If you're driving somewhere, pull over, take out a pen and paper, everything that you're about to hear it can be life-changing to you, certainly has been as I've learned from them. We have a very special guest on today who has blessed my life immensely.
In fact, he just barely spoke at Funnel Hacking Live. I went home immediately and I started teaching my wife and my friends and family all the things that I heard from this man.
Myron Golden: I am excellent as always, Steve, and better now that I'm talking to you. Thank you for all those kind words by the way. Steve Larsen: Absolutely. I remember the first time that we chatted really face to face. I've seen you in Russell's inner circle around the ClickFunnels office, places like that. It was after a Funnel Hackathon event, one of those 3-day Death Marches. Myron Golden: Intense, intense. Steve Larsen: Yeah, intense, right? You walked up to me and you said something to me that I actually wrote on my wall and I'm looking at it right now. Myron Golden: Can't imagine. Hope it was something good. Steve Larsen: Yeah, it was really good. It totally helped. Anyway, I have a wall full of quotes and you're on my quote wall. You said, "What makes you you is the ability to see things others can't." ...You said that and I wrote it on my wall, and I look at that a lot. It has made me look for more connections, it's made me look for more things. I really believe that it's brought me in places that I may not otherwise have been in. I just want to, anyway, thank you for that. Myron Golden: Wow! Absolutely my pleasure, bro. I call it like I see it. I just say it. Steve Larsen: I love it, I love it. You have a lot of ... you have a book, "From the Trash Man to the Cash Man", in ways that anyone can become profitable. Really, you obsess this expertise about how the laws of how money work. Could you tell us a little bit of your backstory and how you got into that? It's an area, it's not something you learn that from school. It's not like you ... you know what I mean? ...You obviously have this obsession about this topic and it's impressive. Myron Golden: You know what I learned from school? I learned to hate school. Anyway, that's all another conversation. I was a trash man, I wrote the book long time after that, but I was a trash man. I was making $6.25 an hour. It's the first job that I got after I got married. ...I can remember saying to my young wife, who I love more than life itself, and I can remember saying to her, if we can just make $300 a week, if I can just make $300 a week with overtime from this job, we're going to be okay. That was my vision. When I think about that now, $300 a week, that's where my head was. I drove a trash truck during the day but I had a business at night. I had a part time business at night where I sold insurance and investments. I say, I shouldn't say I sold insurance and investments, I should say I sold that insurance and investments. ...When I got started Steven, I was probably the worst salesman in world history. If there was a Guinness Book of World Records for a salesperson who could be in sales the longest without making a sale, I probably would have gotten that award and it would probably last until this day. That's how ... it took me literally that long to make my first sale.
Steve Larsen: Looking at you now, that's hard to believe. Myron Golden: I know. Even when I think about it, and the beauty of that is ... let me just tell you. I got started in the insurance business, the financial services business in October of 1985. You pro weren't even born yet, October 1985. Steve Larsen: I was not. Myron Golden: Right. This is way before that. October of 1985, I did not make my first sale until April of 1987. I was working, I was doing presentation, I was talking to people, I was talking to friends, I was doing presentation to the family, I was doing presentation with strangers, I'd knock on people's doors, I'd talk to people I meet, and it literally took me 18 months to make my first sale and my first check was $125.66. If you take ... you have to note that if you take $125.66 and you divide it by 18, that's not very much a month. Quite less than [inaudible 00:07:39] a month. I was horrible.
...This is Sales Funnel Radio. You don't have to be good to get started in sales but you have to get started to get good. I got started but getting started is not enough. Most people think that selling is a talent... People who can sell are people who have a gift of gab and they're good at talking. I've discovered that people who are good at sales are people who have the gift of listening and people who are good at shutting up.
Steve Larsen: Yeah, that's true. Absolutely. What did you do to lash through that learning curve like you said? That's an interesting way to put that. Myron Golden: How did I lash through the learning curve? I was basically optionless. I think one of the reason people fail is because they have too many choices. I didn't have any other choice. ...Steven, you know me so you know I walk with a limp, I've got a brace on my leg. I had polio as an infant. I'm a very athletic individual, I'm a black belter in martial Arts, I'm a single-digit handicapped golfer, but there were no sports teams trying to recruit me in my 20s. It wasn't like I was going to go and get recruited by a professional football team or a professional basketball, or a professional baseball team. That wasn't going to happen.
...The only people that I knew in the world that were making, this is back at the 80s now, that we're making $10,000 a month where people who are in that business. In my mind, the only hope I ever had to get to $10,000 a month or $100,000 a year was to last and get good at this thing that other people had gotten good at. The fact that other people had gotten good at it, let me know that I could get good at it as well. Steve Larsen: That's amazing. It's optionless. I think the back against the wall mentality, got to get plata o plomo just like girls was talking about, looking at other model, you're modeling other people, you talked a lot about ... there was something that you said right at the beginning of Funnel Hacking Live. Your speech is just amazing. You said, I wrote it down as fast I can, looking at your page of notes that I took from your speech right now. You said, "Some of you are not willing to be bad at something long enough to get good at it. I stayed in the game long enough to learn the game." It just exploded my head when you said that. Myron Golden: Yup. I really didn't have a choice. I am a very determined person. That's not the word my parents used or my brothers. They called me stubborn. I like the word determined better. I can remember going to work with my dad when I was a kid. We might be working on a car or something maybe and a bolt that stuck and it won't come out. I said, "Wow dad, it won't come out." He said, "Oh it's going to come out, it didn't have a choice. It didn't have a brain, we have a brain, it has to come out." I was like, "Wow! It doesn't have a choice. Okay." When I look at learning how to sell I look at, get it, becoming good at business. ...Business is not going to be one of those things that's going to evade me. It doesn't have a choice. I have a brain, it doesn't have a brain, this is something I can learn, I'm going to learn. Steve Larsen: Where did you turn to? I think one of the things that people run into ... I've got this desire. I get a lot of people reach out to me asking thing actually. Steven, I want to go get this done. I really want to learn this funnel game. I really want to be wealthy. ...I really want to learn these pieces. There is so much noise. There's places all over. We could get distracted with the next book, the next CD, whatever, the next guru, the next thing. How did you figure out what to learn? Myron Golden: I didn't figure out what to learn. That's the reality of it. I literally learned everything I could from everywhere I could. We're talking about the 80s, there was no Internet. There was an Internet for the government but there was no Internet for the rest of us. There was no Internet, there was no YouTube, there was no Facebook, there were no webinars, there was none of that stuff. On the weekends, I would go to seminars, at least one seminar a month, I would go to one seminar a month. ...Every week they had trainings at our office. I went to all the trainings. I was bad at selling so guess what I did. Watch this. I was broke and I was bad at selling so guess what I did. I went to the library. Remember those things they used to have, the buildings with all the books in them?
Steve Larsen: Yeah, I've heard of them. Myron Golden: I went to the library and I said, "okay, I'm going to find a book on selling." Guess what book I found. Tom Hopkins, "How To Master The Art Of Selling Anything". Steve Larsen: That sounds like the exact answer. Myron Golden: Exactly. I started reading that book. There are three things that I got from Tom Hopkins book in the forefront of my mind even to this very day. They were something that I put a lot of conscious effort into and now they've become subconscious parts of me. One, he had this thing called STP20. This is old school now. He said, "The key to success in sales see 20 people, STP, see 20 people belly to belly every day and you will be successful in sales. See 20 people. I said, "Okay. Well, I can see 20 people." Guess what. It all starts with seeing that first one. That's the first thing I got from Tom Hopkins, see 20 people.
Steve Larsen: Interesting. Myron Golden: There's pain in change. In other words, if I'm going to change from being who I am to being some ... from being the Myron who can't sell to being the Myron who can sell, it's going to be painful. Steve Larsen: What happens after you got- Myron Golden: It's always going to be painful until I get good at it. There's pain in change until the benefits of that change appear. Steve Larsen: I imagine that. Myron Golden: You're going to say what? Steve Larsen: I'm sorry, I was going to say what happened after you got that first $125.66 check. Myron Golden: It was like a floodgate opened. It was like, "Oh! I got this." Then I became the top salesperson in our office like month after month after month after month because I got one. ...A lot of people don't realize there are things that you can only learn about doing the thing by doing the thing. People want to learn how to do a webinar by watching Russell's perfect webinar. There are things you can learn from Russell's Perfect Webinar, no doubt, we all have, but there are things that you will only learn about doing a webinar by doing a webinar, which is why people ignore it. ...He says, Russell says, "Do your webinar 100 times before you turn it into an automated webinar." We want easy streak. Here's the problem, Steven, how I perceive the problem to be. People want to have wealth. People want to have things without doing the things that give them the right to have them. People are frustrated because they can't do a thing but they haven't become the person who can do them.
Steve Larsen: We're good. They know, me too. Myron Golden: Here's how God set it up. The very first thing that God ever said to a human being, to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the first thing he ever said to them, I call it the first command which came a thousand years before the Ten Commandments. Here's what he said, "Be, do, have." ...I'm going to give you the whole thing he said but I just want you to get the essence of it. Be, do have, here's what that means. That means, "Don't be can't do, don't do can't have." Some people say, "Where did God say Be, do, have?" I forgot "made man". Here's what he said, "Be fruitful and multiply." Fruitfulness is something that you've become. Be fruitful. He said, "Multiply". Multiply is not a be, it's a do. Be fruitful and do multiply. He didn't say "do multiply", just the multiple but the do is...
Then, have dominion over the works of my hands. If you don't become fruitful, if you won't be fruitful, you can't do multiply, do subdue or do replenish. If you don't do subdue and multiply and replenish, you can't have dominion. Be, do, have, that's the formula. Stop trying to have success without doing things successful people do. Stop attempting to do things successful people do without becoming a successful person. If you will focus more on becoming the person you should be, everything else will fall into place. Anyway, that's my rant... Steve Larsen: I love the rant. I don't want to stop you. This is awesome. I think that's a ... there's a little phrase I've been saying. It's interesting people want to ... they want to enjoy progression but have a hard time enjoying the process of progression... There's this process that you have to go through. I remember when it clicked for me as well. It's fascinating that you said that. I was like, "Wait a second. The first taste of success suddenly all these ceilings got a lot higher and breaking. I was like, "Whoa! Look at everything we go do and create. Pretty amazing."
I went nuts when I saw that... I wrote down everything I could, I was writing as fast as you were talking and getting all these pieces together. Do you mind teaching that here? I've put it on the spot but that was life-changing. Myron Golden: I'm here already so whatever you want me to do, I'm all in. I talk about the fours levels of value. Here's what it boils down to. A lot of people would go through life whining about the fact that life isn't fair. Here's what I'm going to ... I've got a good word for all of you who are whining about the fact that life isn't fair. Get over it... Steve Larsen: Woohoo! Thanks for saying it, yes. Myron Golden: If life was fair, a chicken would have you sitting on its dining room table tonight for supper. Get over it. Life isn't fair. My dad taught me that one, I was in elementary school. Steve Larsen: Amen. Myron Golden: Hey Steven, how about this? Steve Larsen: Yeah. Myron Golden: I was born, this is so hard for you to wrap your mind around. I was born in a segregated hospital that was started by a civil war nurse because the black soldiers couldn't be treated by the white soldiers. Granted, I wasn't born during the Civil War. I was born almost a hundred years later. Here's what people say. "That's not fair." Get over it. The conditions of that hospital were so poor that I contracted polio. My parents moved all the way from Tampa, Florida to somewhere in Pennsylvania before I even got diagnosed to be treated. My left leg doesn't ... basically there's a placeholder. That's pretty funny, placeholder. Somebody will say, "Well, that's not fair." Get over it. Life is not supposed to be fair. Everybody has a different assignment...
We have to understand something. We have to understand that income inequality does not exist in a vacuum. Income inequality is the result of something. What produces income? The only thing that produces income is value. If there's income inequality, there has to be value creation inequality. Okay? If you desire to make more money, you don't make more money by whining about how unfair it is. ...Here's what you do. You go create so much value that the marketplace has no choice but to pay you because they want what you have so desperately. That's the foundation of the four levels of value.
That's something that people really have a hard ... but I'm working really hard. I know but you're working really hard at something the marketplace doesn't value.
Steve Larsen: Please go take notes everybody. Oh my gosh, go get a piece a paper. Myron Golden: The lowest level of value is called implementation. Those are the people who do the thing. They mow the grass, they hammer the nail, they dig the hole, they drive the truck, they type the paper, they clean the room. These are the people who do that thing. They are implementers. That is not to imply, it's not to say nor is it to imply, that the work that the implementers do is not valuable. It's just to say that ... it's not to say that those people aren't valuable. Obviously, one person is not more valuable than another person. What it does say is the value that they deliver in the marketplace is not something that the marketplace values as highly as things they pay more money for.
We would have to all agree that the housekeeping staff in the hotel are some of the most important staff in the hotel. You can't even run up the rooms if you don't have a housekeeping staff. The housekeeping staff makes the least amount of money of everybody who works at a hotel. Some may say it's not fair. It may or may not be fair, I don't know if it's fair or not, I just know that that's the way it is.
That's the key... Implementation, if you offer value in the implementation level, the resource that you use to make money is your muscles. You make use of your muscles to make money. Because, I'm going to have to do this part quickly, because the essence of money is spiritual, in order to earn more money you have to operate on a higher spiritual plane. Physicality is the opposite of spirituality. If you're using your muscles, a physical resource to make something to create, to earn something that's essence is spiritual, then no wonder you're having a hard time making money.
You manage people... The unification level, you use your management skills to make money. You will make more money than people who operate on the implementation level. On the implementation level, you're going to make on the low end. You're going to make about minimum wage on the low end. On the high end, you might make $80,000 if you work on Bentleys or Rolls Royce. When I take my Bentley to the shop, they charge me $215 an hour. They have to apy that mechanic probably I would guess $100 an hour. If you're a mechanic working on Rolls Royces, or Bentleys or even Mercedes probably, you might make $60,000 to $80,000 a year as an implement. Why? Because those people value getting their car fixed at a higher level.
...It all depends on where you're using your unification skills. That's the second from the bottom level of value. We're talking about the potential to make a high five figures or low six figures on the unification level. But the next level- Steve Larsen: Sorry, I love also that you said in Funnel Hacking Live, you said, "Unification, the lie those people believe." Myron Golden: People believe, okay. Steve Larsen: Yeah, so good. When you said that my brain went nuts, sorry man. Myron Golden: I don't have yet the PowerPoint in front so I'm glad you reminded me that day. The lie that keep a people stuck on the implementation level, the lie they believe is that the key to success is hard work. They work harder at something that's a lower level of value. They don't get ahead and they think life has dealt them a bad hand. ...The reality is they just signed up for the wrong program. The next level is unification and on the unification level, the lie they believe that keeps them stuck is the key to success is more education so people going back to school and get another degree. A degree on top of the degree. They get to master the Greek. They get the Master's Degree, they get Doctor's degree and they can't even earn as much per year as they pay for their education. Mindblowing... Steve Larsen: It is mindblowing. I went nuts when you said that. Myron Golden: I don't have a college degree. I don't have a college degree. Steven, as far as income is concerned, on multiple occasions I've made multiple six figures in an hour. It almost doesn't even sound real. I'm not ... it doesn't make me wonderful. I figured out which level of value to work on and I just work in those levels. I do a little bit of implementation on my business but very little. I do a little unification in my business but very little. I operate predominantly on the top two levels. The second to the highest level of value, by the way, is a higher spiritual plane. You're saying that managing people is a higher spiritual, on a higher spiritual plane, but just going out and digging a hole. It requires a higher, that's why it earns more money.
The only creatures that have language are spiritual creatures. I don't mean like parrots. Parrots can say words but they don't have language. A parent can say the word concept but has no concept of the word, what the word concept means.
I'm talking about singers, I'm talking about politicians, I'm talking about talk show hosts. I'm talking about talk show hosts, I'm talking about authors, speakers, coached, seminar speaker, salespeople. All of these people operate on the level of called communication.
People are really horrible at conversation to create cash flow... It's really interesting, Steven...When I think about why people struggle in their presenting like people who are in sales. They've got something for sale, they want to sell it on the internet or they create an add and the ad doesn't convert. ...I can almost guarantee you the number one reason ads don't convert and offers don't convert above all over things, the number one reason, sales, messages don't convert is because they were selfish. Steve Larsen: Interesting. Myron Golden: What I mean selfish is, you're talking to your potential customer about you. If they don't care about you, you either talk to them about your product, you're talking to him about your opportunity. You're talking to them about your website, you're talking to him about your invention. You're talking to about your stuff and they don't care about your stuff at all, they only care about them. Until you have like the greatest quality of a very high performing salesperson, the most important quality, in my opinion or a high performing sales person is a high level of empathy. You have to be able to feel what other people were feeling while they're feeling. Anyway, communication, messages that move the masses, conversations that create cash flow.
Then we get to the highest level of value which is, drum roll please, Imagination.
Steve Larsen: Awesome. Myron Golden: Only somebody would say, "Really, really powerful imagination could come up with something that's great. Steven, I did this at Funnel Hacking Live. I don't know if you remember that part or not. I said, "I'm going to name a company and I want you to tell me the first person that comes to mind. Do you remember me doing this? Steve Larsen: Yeah. Myron Golden: Then I said, "I'm going to name a company. I'm going to name the company, if you're listening to the podcast right now, will you say the first person's name that comes to mind. Apple, and everybody said- Steve Larsen: Steve Jobs. Myron Golden: Steve Jobs. I say that's fascinating. Why does everybody say Steve Jobs? Steve Jobs didn't invent the first Apple computer, Steve Wozniak did. When people think of the Apple computer, they don't think of Steve Wozniak, they think of Steve Jobs. Why? Because Steve Wozniak was an implementer and Steve Jobs was an imagineer. Steve Wozniak knew how to make it, Steve Jobs knew what Steve Wozniak had made... I'm going to tell you something. When you learn to use your imagination, when I say use your imagination, the resource that you use at this level is your mind. When you learn to use your mind at a higher level, it's going to create for you opportunities the like of which nothing else can touch.
You use your mind and your money on the imagination level. When I talk about using your mind, I'm going to do this really quickly. There are a couple of things that you have to ... there are a couple of mind skills that you must master if you're going to create wealth. ...The first one you have to master is you master learning. In order for you to master learning, you have to first learn what learning is, what learning is not, and then learn how to learn. Steve Larsen: This is so good. Again, it's so good. I wrote all this down too. I'm a big Myron Golden fanboy. Myron Golden: I'm a big Steven Larsen fan too. We already have that conversation so you know. Here's the reality. Most people don't know the purpose of learning, like the stuff .. like school. The purpose of school is not learning. The educational system is not designed for people who are ... In fact, I believe that the educational, really, is one of the biggest hindrance in learning because they teach you that the purpose of learning is knowing. The purpose of learning is not knowing. In fact, knowing is the enemy of learning. In fact, if somebody attempts to teach you something that you think already know, you'll stop listening because you all say to yourself, "I know that already." Knowing is the enemy of learning...
I'm not going to say, the purpose of learning is mastery... Then, we're done. Two many teachers use words without defining those world and leave people hanging. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to define Mastery. Mastery is the ability to execute effortlessly without the use of conscious resources. Let me say that again. Steve Larsen: Wow! Myron Golden: Mastery is the ability to execute effortlessly without the use of conscious resources. What do I mean by that? I mean you've mastered, I know there's at least one thing in your life you've mastered. You Amy have mastered several but I know there's one thing you've completely mastered, requires no conscious resources. It's called tying your shoe.
You can tie your shoe, have a conversation, and be holding something under your arm all at the same time. Why? Because you're not using any of your random access memory to tie your shoes. Why? Tying your shoes is in the cache. For computer people, you understand exactly. Cache, CACHE.
No, the reason you're overwhelmed is because you never learned how to learn. What you do is you learn about something and you think that's the same as learning. You take this things that you've learned about and you attempt to implement it while you attempt to learn about something else and then you stack one unlearn thing on top of another unlearn thing on top of another unlearn thing, so you're stacking lack of clarity, on top of lack of clarity, on top of lack of clarity, until finally you feel like you can't breathe. I'm overwhelmed.
You can do a webinar without using a conscious resources. I have been selling, I don't want to sound like I'm patting myself on the back but I've been selling for so long, for me, selling doesn't require any conscious effort at all.
Why? Because I've done it so many times that I've mastered the skills. Most people are so impatient they won't become a person of mastery. They can't do things masterfully so they don't get to have what only masters have. Steve Larsen: Interesting. You should pat yourself on the back, that's quite a talent. You married the process, you didn't sidestep or look for a short cut or look for an easy way out. You do it. Myron Golden: I used to look for shortcuts. You know what I found out about shortcuts? They take too long. Steve Larsen: They're actually longer. Myron Golden: They're a huge waste of time. I'm going to tell you something. People who get out of their car, they ate a candy bar, they get out of the car. They said, we'll I'd get that candy wrapper later. Right? Steve Larsen: Right. Myron Golden: It takes more time to get it later than it does to take it now. People who leave messes everywhere they go, they think, well, I'll get to it later. Later they get to it and guess what? It's a big mess that they have to take all this time to cleanup. They could have really done it as a ... I'm a little Geeky and a little work but I already know that so I've accepted that. Steve Larsen: Join the club, I'm right with you, right at home. Myron Golden: If I'm making food, if I'm making ... I like fried eggs and I eat fried eggs maybe three or four times a month. If I make fried eggs and turkey bacon and toast and breakfast potatoes from some leftover potatoes or something, if I make that breakfast, I will not eat one morsel until I put away every condiment that I used to make those eggs. I put away the cooking oil, the salt, the pepper, the garlic powder, I quashed the pants that I cooked it in.
I dried the pants, put them away ... you say, "Don't let your food get cold." It doesn't get cold because I'm putting stuff away as I'm using it. When I'm done, that's given the ability to save so much time. Wheat happens, the reason I'm talking about cooking it's because it's just what? How you do anything is how you do everything?
Master one thing at a time... The other resource you use at the highest level is your money. Let me talk about, can I talk about the other learning thing? I know I've been going ranting forever and ever. Steve Larsen: I'm loving it. This is great. I'm afraid I'll say something it'll take you out of your flow. I'm not saying anything. Myron Golden: The other thing that we have to learn to use our mind for after we learned to use our mind for learning, we have to learn to use our mind to harness our superpower. Every human being like whose of normal mental capacity has a superpower that if you don't learn to harness and use it for your own good and for the good of others, the machine, a cultural hypnotic societal mechanism also know as the matrix, the machine, the powers that be, whatever you want to call it. That thing is going to use your superpower against you.
Steve Larsen: Yeah. Writing it down. Myron Golden: It's called expectations. Expectation is your greatest superpower. Here's the challenge though. Expectation manifests itself into mental manifestations and two, emotional manifestations. Mental manifestation number one is called faith. Mental manifestation number two is called doubt. The mental manifestation of faith and doubt are a big deal because ... but those are concepts. One of the things that I've learned and am learning is that people don't do the things they know how to do, people do therapy things they feel like doing.
Steve Larsen: Yeah it is. Myron Golden: The reason I say that is because I recognize procrastination for what it is. It is not a problem, it is a symptom of a problem. It's a symptom of the emotional effect of your superpower, expectation being used against you. I'm going to tell you what that is. It's called anxiety. Procrastination is always the result of anxiety. Notice I didn't say it sometimes a result of anxiety. I know I'm speaking in absolute and that's because I'm absolutely certain of... Steve Larsen: It's on purpose everyone. Myron Golden: Yes, I know. Oh no, but you don't understand. The reason I put off working out is because I don't have now. The reason you put off working out is because you have more anxiety about working out than you do about having a heart attack. Period. ...The expectation, the feeling that it manifest self in and our lives, that steals all of our dreams is anxiety. Anxiety is the thief of all your dreams.
That will always, without exception, like there are no exceptions where I'm talking about, that we'll always help a person to take the action they desire to take. We've been programmed to believe or doubt and doubt our beliefs. We have to reprogram ourselves to believe our beliefs and doubt our doubts. Steve Larsen: I love that because it seems like one of this was a thought that gets tossed around which I have a hard time with is, well, if you're not doing something in life it just means you haven't felt enough pain around it. ...I was like, "whoa! Instead if we flip that around and say, let's find the things that we are in ... and switch that, foot that into anticipation, that's so much more positive than let's go to a place of pain all the time to get something done. Myron Golden: Pain can sometimes cause people to move but that's because that now they finally have anxiety about the negative result about not taking action. That's all that is... One of the things that I am learning to do, notice I didn't say I've learned to do, I do it pretty well most of the time but I don't do it all the way, but it's something that I do remind when I catch myself not doing, I remind myself too. That is to never give any energy at all to outcomes that are undesirable to me. Most people give most of their energy to undesirable outcomes and then they wonder why they have all this junk in their life that they don't desire. Steve Larsen: Gave it attention. Myron Golden: That's right. Where attention goes, intention follows. Anyway, that's my rant on the highest level of value. If you learn to use your superpower of expectation, like you can make yourself believe anything is possible. The biggest sale that I ever made like one sell to one person Steven, the biggest sale I ever made was a $400,000 sale. Steve Larsen: Wow, Myron Golden: I made that sale to a guy I met that day I had never seen him before in my life. I met him that day. We talked, had lunch, we connected, we thought, "Okay, we'll do some business in the future." Then I thought to myself, "Why wait till the future? Why don't I just make him an offer now? I made him an offer for $400,000. In a big company, and they needed some help with their marketing, and I came up with an idea that could help a little marketing. This offer that I made them was an offer for $400,000 and it was $200,000 profit for me in my pocket. Steve Larsen: Wow. Myron Golden: I made the offer and I say, it's only $200,000 down and $200,000 in delivery. You know what he said to me when I made the offer? He said, "You'd do that for us?" As I thought to myself, "Just as sure as you write that check."
Steve Larsen: Thought I was, should've gone higher. Myron Golden: Exactly. He picks up his phone he calls his accounting department. He says, "Bring me a check for $200,000". He says, "Do you want it made out to you? Do you want to make it out to your company?" Make it out to my company. Then i called my assistant, had her fax me a purchase order and we closed that deal on the spot. Steve Larsen: Wow, that's incredible. Myron Golden: That was because I didn't allow myself to talk myself out of making an offer just because I just met this guy today. I only gave him like a 15-minute presentation with no flip chart, no brochures, no nothing just told him what I could do for him. He's like, "I'll take that deal." My expectation was ... let me talk about that for a hot second. My expectation is that when I create an offer people will buy it. If I'm talking to you Steven, even though I expect you to buy it I am not attached to you buying it. I will do nothing whatsoever, I will not use any of my powers to convince you to buy it. But I will use all of my powers to persuade you to buy it. Just thought I threw that out there. Steve Larsen: Yeah, I'm just writing it. I'm just writing everything. Myron Golden: To clarify, for those of you who were saying, "Didn't he just say he's not going to use any of his powers?" And then he say he's going, I said, "I'm not going to use any of my powers to convince people to buy it. ...I'm going to use all of my powers to persuade them to buy it. Most people don't understand that there's a ... not only is there a difference between convincing and persuading. Convincing and persuading are exact opposites of each other. Steve Larsen: Interesting. I never thought of that before, that they're opposites. Myron Golden: When you convince somebody to do something you're attempting to get them to do something you desire them to do for your reasons. Steve Larsen: Interesting. Myron Golden: But when you persuade somebody you are helping them come to a conclusion that you've already come to for their own reasons. Steve Larsen: That's awesome. Myron Golden: I don't use any of my power whatsoever to convince anybody. I'll never try to talk to somebody into buying something from me. In fact, if somebody gives me a little resistance, like does anybody ever ask you like if you're closing, why should I buy this from you? People say that in sales, right Steven? Steve Larsen: Totally. Myron Golden: Ask me that question. Steve Larsen: I don't know if I should get this from you, Myron. Myron Golden: Then you probably shouldn't. Steve Larsen: I love it. I do something similar now, it's so nice. Myron Golden: If you don't instantly recognize that what I have can help you, you should not get it from me. In fact, you should go buy something from somebody else and see if it works and I hope it does. If you've got any doubt at all, I'm not your dude. Steve Larsen: Right. Myron Golden: By the way, that's not a ploy. I am so not ... I already know if somebody's going to buy it. I also know that it don't have to be you. I know that it would be a blessing in your life, in your family's life to have the privilege of working with me. I don't mean that in an arrogant way, I just mean I know what I'm doing. Steve Larsen: Right. Myron Golden: If you can't see that, then congratulations, you get to stay on the search a little while. What that does is that frees me from needing them to need me. I am a leader of people, I am not a needer of people. I will lead someone to buy but I will never need someone to buy. Steve Larsen: That's awesome. Those are like side ... what's the word? It's like a by product of staying in the game long enough to gain the confidence to have that expectation. Myron Golden: Absolutely. I know that somebody's going to buy this that's why I don't need it to be you. Maybe you've got somebody who's going to come along and change your life for the better and teach you how to create wealth and maybe you don't. I don't know. You are not my best chance. I don't say this to people but this is what I'm thinking when I'm a one on one selling situation. You are not my best chance at making a sale but I am your best chance of creating wealth. What are you going to do about it? Steve Larsen: That's great. It gives them a chance to flex their own agency. Myron Golden: Exactly. Now, they can't say, "because you talked me into", I didn't talk to you in anything, not me, I don't do that. That is not a game I participate in. Steve Larsen: I want to thank you for this. Before we jump out here, what would you say to people, I don't know, who are in the thick of it, they're still in the, they're still lashing through the learning curve. I've often learned that especially from listening to guys like you and my own experience, this little game is really a relationship with yourself, kind of a side story. It's just some kind of piece of advice as well you could give to someone who's in the thick of it. They're still learning to have that vision, that grand vision.
Myron Golden: Yes. Here's what I would say. The struggle is not real, it's imagined. Steve Larsen: That just made the quote wall. Myron Golden: What do I mean by that? People say the struggle is real. The struggle is not real, the struggle is imagined. You could take the very thing that you're struggling with and turn it into a game and make it fun. To me, selling is like a game. It's like the whole business is like a game. If you're in the thick of it, learn the rules of the game, master the moves of the game, and become a winner of the game, and stop convincing yourself that it's hard. The things that's hard about business is becoming the person who can do the thing. Steve Larsen: Whether or not you are that person yet, that's fascinating. Whether or not you're the person yet. Myron Golden: If you're not that person, become that person and be cool with becoming. Be cool with all. The other thing that I didn't tell you that I learned from Tom Hopkins, the third thing I never told so it just brought me back to that. He said, "You got to learn to love no." Steve Larsen: I'm writing it down. Myron Golden: Learn to love no. Steve Larsen: That's true, learn to love no. Myron Golden: One of the things that I created in my training back in the days when I used to do a lot of one on one selling was a fast no is better than a slow yes and a hundred percent better than a forever maybe. Steve Larsen: That's so true. Myron Golden: Get people to get off the fence. The reason you're struggling is because you want to get off the fence on the yes side. You got to get over your need of needing them. You got to stop needing people to need you. You just got to go ahead with people and say, "Look, do it or don't do it, I don't care. This is where the train's going. ...Get on the train or miss the train. Be sure not to get run over by the train. Stay off the track." I don't want people to think I'm mean though because I'm a really nice guy. Business is like, you got to have a level of conviction if you're going to be a business owner. Pretend to believe the stuff, you got to believe it. Steve Larsen: My product's good, I guess. That's not true. That's not how it works. Myron Golden: Exactly. Steve Larsen: Absolutely. Myron, I appreciate it. This has been huge. You call your business Skillionnaire and clearly you are. Where can people go to follow you, to get your stuff, buy everything you have, which everybody should by the way. Myron Golden: You know what, can I start by giving people something free and the only place I have, the only place I have it is on a website that I put up for Funnel hacking Live. I've got a video on procrastination, on how to overcome procrastination and three videos on how the law of attraction really works, they're going to blow your mind. They're mindblowing. ...If you think you know something about it, it's nothing you've heard. If they will go myrongoldenconsulting.com/fhl2018. If they go there, they put their name and email just send, they'll get the three videos for free. Then, they'll get emails from me now and then. If they want to follow me on Facebook, I'm TheMyronGolden. I think I'm TheMyronGolden on Instagram too. I think it's the same time. Steve Larsen: I think you are, yeah. Myron Golden: It might be Myron Golden. If you want to follow me there, those are good places to go. If you want to get a free of my book just pay shipping, go to trashmantocashman.com. Those are a couple of places you can go. Start with the free stuff to see if you like me. You might just think you like because Steven like alley-oop me with all these fun questions. Go get the free stuff before you buy something. Make sure you really like me, you just don't think you like me. Steve Larsen: I'm a huge fan. Also it's myrongoldenconsulting.com/fhl2018. Awesome. Thank you so much Myron, appreciate it, this has been very, very helpful. Thanks for going a little longer than I think we talked right even to. Myron Golden: No worries. Steve Larsen: Fun to have you in flow. Myron Golden: It was fun, it was fun. Wow, we went for a long time did we? Steve Larsen: We did. I didn't even realize that actually. Myron Golden: I didn't either I was looking at my clock and I was, "Woo!" We got some videos to shoot today so that's good. All good, man. Steve Larsen: We appreciate it, thank you so much. Hey, thanks for listening. The most common question I get is Steve, will you look at my funnel? Of course. Whether you want me to coach you, give some handholding and guidance during your funnel build, or simply review the one you have, head over to coachmesteve.com and book your session now. Myron Golden: I got some pretty cool millionaire formulas that are pretty epic. Steve Larsen: Yeah. I'm actually very excited to hear more about them. I'm trying not to dive into what I want to say in the actual show because what you taught at Funnel Hacking Live was so good. Myron Golden: Really? Thank you. Steve Larsen: I ran home and taught my wife immediately. Myron Golden: Wow, that's awesome, that's awesome. I'm glad it was helpful for you, bro. Steve Larsen: Absolutely. Myron Golden: That's why we do what we do. Steve Larsen: Thank you, thank you. Myron Golden: I love your podcast too, by the way. Steve Larsen: Oh yeah, you listen? Myron Golden: Yeah, I do. Steve Larsen: That's awesome. Myron Golden: In fact, I need to leave you a review. You'll know it's me because it's going to start with Esteban. Yeah, I'm going to tell you, when I came to the Funnel Hackathon, you changed my life seriously. I'm not just saying that. I'm not a workaholic like a lot of people in the inner circle, at least I haven't been. I guess I am now that I signed up for this too comical act. I'm more chillionaire. I'm 57, I'll be 57 next month so I've worked hard for a very long time and I don't really need to make more money. You get to a certain point and more money is like it's totally nebulous. I like living my life. The reason I decided to become rich is so that I could have my time freedom so I could have two things, more time and then choose what I do with that time. I wasn't really a workaholic.
...You need the big domino, the one thing, the three secrets and the stack. I'm like, "See, I like that. That's like boiled down." I like boiled down. I didn't get lost to the details when you did that. I said, "You know what? I can do that." I took Russell's Perfect Webinar script and I turned it into an outline and that's how I build all my stuff now. Steve Larsen: That's awesome. Myron Golden: Based on one thing, three secrets, stack. Bro, I can do that. Steve Larsen: Right. Myron Golden: Shoot. Man, you must got me confused with the other Myron Golden, I can do that. ...Anyway, that helped me tremendously because a lot of the details like are just ... they're just grueling for me because some because somewhat I already know and do intuitively because I've been doing this for a long time, and some of this just because, if I don't see where it's going, the details to me, if I can't see the big picture, the details to me don't matter. I can't process them. Steve Larsen: Yeah, I get lost. Myron Golden: You too? Steve Larsen: I get lost in them 100%. Myron Golden: If I feel like I'm teaching somebody something ... my gift is pastor teacher. I like to teach people like they're make and do better if they knew better. People could do better if they knew better. Steve Larsen: That's a good t-shirt right there. That's the next ClickFunnels t-shirt. I think that's one reason I've been so drawn to following is I'm learning that about myself. I feel alive, I feel aflow, I feel like I can help people most. For some reason, teaching on stage, it's my. Myron Golden: You already know I'm not a workaholic, I'm a chillionaire so I'm not a workaholic, but I love teaching. I breathe it. When I learn something I'm like, "This is so cool. Anybody should know this." Anyway, I don't mean to get all Myronesque on you. I didn't mean to go all soapbox [inaudible 01:04:29]. It is my nature. Steve Larsen: I love it. Myron Golden: The name of my company is Skillionnaire Enterprises, Inc. Steve Larsen: Yeah, I wrote that down when you said it at Funnel Hacking Live, I was like, "That's awesome." Myron Golden: Got to have the skills if you want to be a millionaire. Steve Larsen: Absolutely. I'm taking notes like crazy as you say stuff. Myron Golden: That's hilarious. Steve Larsen: I always do. I got a full, I got a lot on you from Funnel Hacking Live. Myron Golden: That's funny. I'm glad it was helpful, bro. You helped me. Teamwork makes the dream work. Steve Larsen: Absolutely. I'm all for that. Myron Golden: Me too. Steve Larsen: Awesome, I'll do my little intro here and we'll go ahead and we'll get started. | |||
| 21 Jul 2022 | 3 of the Most Overrated Marketing Tactics | 00:11:26 | |
Some strategies sell better than they work. They work better on paper than in practice, but people continue using them. These overrated tactics might be hemorrhaging your money with little in the way of results. I know because I have, at some point, I've wasted a lot of money on some of these strategies. Not that I did anything wrong, but they simply are not worth it. The one thing to remember is that marketing is all about leads. In this episode, I took the audio from one of my YouTube videos to share with you what I think isn't worth your time but still very popular. Let's dive in... Key Takeaways - Why omnipresence is overrated (01:45) - YouTube is still the king platform (03:01) - You don't have to automate all follow up (04:35) - A sales funnel is NOT a marketing funnel (07:47) Additional Resources Learn more about: --- Download Season 1 episodes here -- Sales Funnels Radio is a podcast for all passionate digital marketing pros looking to up their game and stay ahead. | |||
| 23 Aug 2022 | What Russell Brunson And I Are Speaking About Together At Funnel Hacking Live 2022 | 00:27:55 | |
I LOVE FUNNEL HACKING LIVE. That event changed my life and continues to. I don't really believe in shortcuts, but I absolutely believe in accelerants! FHL is one of those for any marketer. I'm excited to share more about what Russell Brunson and I will be speaking about on stage this year (and our project together) Hint: It has something to do with rich marketers of yesteryears and how they captivated their audiences without the internet. The internet is a tool, not a crutch! Tune in to learn more about Funnel HAcking Live 2022. Key Takeaways - Funnel Hacking Live speech (00:48) - One of the most outstanding marketers of all time (07:56) - The Power of Dramatic Demonstrations (09:03) - Why you should attend the FHL 2022 (12:20) - You are the only person who cares about your success (17:43) - Make launches great again (19:05) - How far are you willing to go (22:48) Additional Resources 5 Day Content for leads challenge --- Download Season 1 episodes here -- Sales Funnels Radio is a podcast for all passionate digital marketing pros looking to up their game and stay ahead. | |||
| 29 Nov 2017 | SFR 88: 11 "Brunson-isms"... | 00:31:12 | |
Heres some of the best business lessons I've learned while sitting next to Russell Brunson for 20 months...
Hey, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Oh, yeah. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. I'm still such a dork. Hey, I want to, so just real quick, I know I talked about in an episode ago, my voice is just rocked right now. I want you guys to know a really cool success I just had. It's good that we all ... Your successes, too. I want to hear about them. Don't shun your successes. Everyone, you got to go embrace your successes. Here's one of mine. I used to call them brag moments. When I was in the army, we'd be doing push ups. There was a time when I was commanding 150 people, and I was pretty good at push ups. I've got, honestly, longer arms than most people so they were a little bit harder for me, but I wanted to be good at them. I'd be doing these push ups, and I'd look up in the eyes of all the guys looking at me while I was doing it, and I'd be like yelling at them, getting them going. We were all fired up. You know, we were trying to keep each other motivated. It was a lot of fun. I used to have these brag moments to distract them while we were in those painful episodes, right? I would say, "Hey, Johnson. Brag to me, man? What's sweet in your life? What are you doing right now that's just kicking butt? Don't be humble. You tell me what's awesome in your life. What are you doing awesome at?" He would tell me. "Well, I did great at this," or, "There's a test I killed it at at this," or, "I did this over here. I did this." He would tell me that stuff, and it was cool how much confidence that brought the individual. I wasn't planning on saying this at all, but be cognizant of those things. Whenever you have a win, take time to win. You know, I'm not saying you've got to stop your whole operation and throw a party every time, but take time to acknowledge it, and be like, "Yeah, I'm the freaking man." Not in a cocky way, you know, but take pride in what it is your own personal progression. Be in competition with you, and get excited about those successes. Those are the successes to get braggy about. The ones where you're in competition with yourself and go kill it. Anyways, here's a cool one for me. I was asked to speak at a B2B Mastermind last weekend. It was a ton of fun. There was a FHAT event, though, two weeks ago, and I was solely focused on that. By the time the Funnel Hack-a-thon, the FHAT event, was done, I only had one week ... Actually, it was like five days. Only like five days to create an entire three hour presentation. Okay, I've done a lot of four hour presentations without stopping. I've done a lot of 15 hour ones at the FHAT event, too, but three hours, that's still a long time to prepare for, when it's a new material the whole time. You know what I mean? Meaning I had to reorganize and restructure it. I was spending all the evenings, I was thinking through strategy, I was talking to all my buddies, I was trying to figure out all the pieces in place. I was like, "You know, let me know what you think." I was trying to get a heartbeat on the industry, trying to figure out where people are.
It was cool because I got to pitch. This was my first time ever pitching from stage, so I wanted to do a good job. I went, and I was flying over there, and I've got longer arms than the average bear, like I said before, so anytime I'm trying to do work on a computer in an airplane, it is not easy. My hand is contorted into the weirdest positions just for me to ... It doesn't work. Anyways, it's like a five hour flight with one stop and all that stuff over there. I'm getting stuff done, and it's like 10 o'clock in the evening. Wait, no. When did I land? It was 11. I landed at 11, got to the hotel at midnight, and I'm presenting this thing in eight hours. I was like, "I have barely even started the slides on this thing. I've barely made a dent in them. Oh my gosh. Okay, well, buckle up. When in Rome. Let's just get this done." I sat down in the hotel room, and I just put on tons of awesome music. I was listening to the Foo Fighters, and Muse, and Incubus, and all my favorite bands, and I was jamming out. I was just cranking out these slides, and I was working the formula, and I was putting the pieces together. All the things that we know, do the best. I put those pieces together, and I look up, and it's 3:30 in the morning. I was like, "Crap. I'm only going to sleep a few hours. Ah, whatever, let's make this sweet." Then I went back through, and I was making things, and I was fixing it. I was like, "When in Rome, baby. Let's go, get this done." I went through and I was writing the script, and putting all the pieces together, and about four o'clock ... I only lasted another half hour after that, but about four o'clock, I fell asleep, and I finished, and it reminded me of all these other hack-a-thons that I'd done with Russel, where we're like just dying, but we have a deadline, you know? It's letter gold. Are you going to get it done, or are you not? You know, just do it. Time's not going to wait for you, just get it done. I was like, "All right, well, I'm going to get it done." Anyways, I went to bed at four a.m., and I was on stage talking and teaching at 8:30 a.m. I only slept four hours, got up, didn't eat, didn't nothing else, I just dressed and showered real quick, and I got downstairs, and I started teaching. It was a lot of fun. There is a rush. If you guys have never done a webinar, I beg you to, because it's like the fastest way to cash we've ever seen. Myself, personally, as well as with Russell, and all the two comma club coaching students that I have, but especially though from stage. There is a huge endorphin rush from stage. I love it. I didn't feel like I only slept four hours. I felt like I had a full night's rest. I was on fire. It was awesome. I actually got the recordings back, which is awesome. I was teaching B2B people how to make new opportunities from their offers, and a whole bunch of other stuff, which is really a whole lot of fun. My first session ended, there was a bit of a break, and I hadn't even made order forms yet, so I run to the back with my buddy James Smiley, shout out to you, buddy. Hey, a little side note, actually. You guys know when I did that six part series where I interviewed someone from the six different industries that we know are using click funnels? James Smiley is still the guy who represents the B2B industry for me. He is killing it. He's doing awesome. From that one podcast episode, and the things that he's created from that, only two, three months ago, they've done huge numbers. I'm not allowed to say how much, but a lot of money, and it's been awesome. Very, very proud of what he's created. Super pumped for him. Anyway, he's been a friend to me for a long time.
I don't think anyone in there knew. I started feeling like crap, so I took some more caffeine. "Let's take some vitamin C, baby, some caffeine. Let's get this thing rocking." I did my first ever stage pitch. I've taught in the whole perfect webinar format many times, but I take out the last part where there's the actual offer, and this time I didn't stop it. I'm really excited, you guys. I closed 28% of the room on my very first time ever pitching from stage. By comparison to other stage presenters, that's actually quite good. I'm very excited, you guys. That's my brag moment for this episode, and I'm super, super stoked about it. Well, what I wanted to go through real quick with you guys is, there's two different directions I could take this episode. I've pre-written out a lot of stuff, a lot of ideas. There's two different things, okay? Anyway, so what I was going to tell you, though, is that was Friday, and I went to bed at like midnight, and got up early again, and I had a full day of meetings with another group of people that was over there in Dallas, and then I went to bed again at four a.m. that next night. It's Monday, and my throat is on fire. I'm actually going to stop here, shortly. Principle number one, just get it done, just do it, okay? You set the goal. It's like when I would buy tickets to triathlons. The first triathlon I did, I just bought the ticket before I was in shape, because I knew now I had to get in shape. You know, same thing. All right, set the date, start sending traffic to your registration page. Just get it out there, and you will figure out a way because you have to. You hold your own feet to the fire, feel a little pain over it. I dare you to feel a little pain over it, but you'll find out actually really quickly that it's the secret to getting a crap ton of stuff done and actually your goals much faster. I've got to get some water. Just a second. There you go. This is live. Unedited. Raw. Steve Larsen, raw. That means different things in different places. All right. Hey, so what I wanted to go through really quick was, it reminded me of this, is I was thinking through a lot of the lessons I've learned, because I was teaching a lot of cool stuff at the B2B Mastermind, and super stoked I get to speak again in January, probably in February. In March, I will be, as well. I'm kind of off to the races. I'm going to speak a lot next year, so I'm kind of warming up baby. I'm excited. Hopefully I'll sleep more next time... Anyway, guys, as I was starting thinking through the different lessons that I've learned while at ClickFunnels, things that I could share at the B2B Mastermind, I was reminded of a list that I kept for a long time when I first got hired at ClickFunnels. I first thought to myself, "Oh my gosh. I get to sit next to, in my opinion, the most brilliant marketer that is alive, Russell Bronson." I was like, "How on Earth am I going to be able to capitalize on this? You know, how am I going to learn the most? How am I going to take away the most I can from this?" What I did is I keep a list of "Brunson-isms", okay? These are "Brunson-isms." These are 12 "Brunson-isms" that I've kept over the years. Well, I shouldn't say years. It's been almost two years. It feels like years, though, guys. We've been hauling cojones for a long time. I feel like I just have not stopped. I'm in a whirlwind. Anyway, but I call them "Brunson-isms." These are the things that I have written down while sitting next to him. When I say that I don't mean in like the same building, I literally mean arm's length away. As he'll be on coaching calls, as he'll be coaching in a circle, as he'll be talking to someone on a podcast interview, as he'll be launching this or that, or creating this video, or making this podcast episode of this own. You know what I mean? This is just 12, okay? I sifted out a lot of stuff. I didn't want to talk specifically about funnel building strategy. I wanted to talk more about how you act as an individual, as an entrepreneur. Anyways, these are 12 "Brunson-isms." I won't dive too deeply into these, simply because some of these, the lesson just kind of speaks for itself, but guys, one of these lessons alone has changed my life, in my personal business, I mean. Anyways, I'm excited to go through these. I realize it's 12 of them. Usually, it's easier if I say like, the three things, the two things, the one thing, maybe five, but there's 12, okay? I wanted to get them all done in one episode, so that you guys could hear what they are. These are the 12 "Brunson-isms" that have had probably the most impact on my life. My life, not just my business. I sifted out those. This is my life, okay? Number one "Brunson-ism," and these aren't ranked. They're not ranked. I wrote them down. I was actually in a Trello card, and this is just a running thing that I've had for a long time. Number one is don't create stuff. Document and sell instead, okay? Huge lesson. I did a whole episode about this a few episodes ago. It changed everything, okay? Anyway, it's crazy you guys. Review, document, and sell what you're doing instead of take the time to create it... I spent eight months making my first info product, and no one bought it for the first few months because I hadn't spent any time creating any market pressure, creating any interest. I didn't know what I was doing, okay? You can go spend a ton of time figuring out the actual like, "Let me go make the whole thing first." No, no, no. Flip it. Sell it first, then document it and create it as you go. Sorry, document and sell as you go. All right. That's number one. Number two, and I'll do like a review, just I'll read all of them real fast at the end, too. All right, so that's number one. Number two, design doesn't sell stuff. Okay, design doesn't sell stuff. As sad as that is to a lot of designers that are out there. If you look at Frank Kern's funnels, he's got a completely white background, and all he has is a headline, a video, and a button. That's pretty much it... The more I've been doing this game, the more subtle my design's become. I do think that design will help with follow-up sales, but it's still not the thing that sells. If you're getting hung up, like, "What should my funnel look like? What should this look like?" Scrap that attitude...
If you're going to spend a lot of time on the funnel, the place to spend the time most on, after an offer, after all that stuff, is on your video. I don't mean like making it all professional, and stuff like that. I mean the script. I mean actually what are you going to say in that thing, and how are you going to come across as human rather than it being scripted? The actual words on the page, that's what does the converting. As much as we sometimes want to trick ourselves and think that it's the colors, and how good it looks, and things like that. That'll help you for a little bit, but there's no longevity with it. Anyways, that's number two. Design does not sell stuff, copy does. All right, number three. This is a big one. A little bit ago, Russell talked about, we realized that one of the reasons why Russell is where he is is because ... and honestly a lot of the other people that I know who are wealthy that have become wealthy quickly on the internet, is because they stopped selling one to one, okay? Bear with me a little bit, okay? Understand where I'm taking this... I'm not saying not to have call centers or people doing outbound or inbound calls, or taking inbound calls. I'm not saying not to do that stuff. What Russell, as the main entrepreneur, the entrepreneur of the company, has learned to do is sell not one to one, he's learned to sell one to many. Think of the scenarios where that applies most, okay? One to many. One to one, that's when I was like doing door to door sells, right? That's when I was a telemarketer, right? I was good at those things, but it's still only one person hearing the pitch, right? 28% of the people I closed in that room before, let's think through that, though. 28% of the people. That means I've got to talk to a lot of people one on one conversations. I've got to do that pitch a ton of times to really make a dent in my wallet. Well, what Russell's learned to do is get a lot of people in a room, or a lot of people in a webinar, or whatever it is, and pitch one to many. If you can learn to do that, wealth is easier to be yours, okay? All right, that's number three... Number four, this whole thing has been all about movement. There have been many times both personally and with Russell in the office there, where we'll look around, and we'll be like, "I don't know what to do next." Personally, in my own business, I've run into this many times, and you probably have, too, where you're like, "I don't know what to do next. What am I supposed to do next to actually be successful with whatever I'm trying to do?" You've got to come up with that plan. One of the biggest lessons I've learned from Russell is that this is all about movement, all of it. All about movement. Just move, okay? Think about a river, okay? There was this river I was rafting down once. We went on this 36 mile kayak trip, and it was a lot of fun. 36 miles, that's long, it's not like crazy long, but it's pretty long. It wasn't supposed to be that long, because the river was supposed to be moving, but what's funny is like the first 12 miles it was moving. It was fast. It was a lot of fun. Going through, I'm an adventuresome kind of guy. The last 24 miles, though, the river stopped moving. We literally paddled 24 freaking miles. We were so sunburnt, because we were planning to be out there like four hours. We were out there 12 hours. 12 hours, no sunscreen, like none of that stuff. Barely enough water. Actually, we pretty much were all incredibly dehydrated. We were so sunburnt that we couldn't stand for like two weeks. We actually got hurt over it, okay? Eventually, you've got to steer the ship in the right direction, but if the thing isn't moving in the first place, then who cares? If you don't know what to do, just move. Think to yourself, "I don't know. What should I do next? I think that." Like, cool. Move forward. If you really have no idea, just do something, okay? Don't worry about placing your foot in the most perfect place before you start going, or having all the steps planned out. It doesn't work like that. Hardly ever does. Never has for us. Never has for me personally either. Just about movement. Some people are like, "Well, that means you're going to do like 13 things you didn't need to do." It's like, yeah, but I found the three that made a ton of money, and you still haven't done anything yet. Anyway, this is number five. Number five is a big one. One of the first things Russell said to me when I sat down next to him, is he turned around and he looked over at me, and he goes, "Hey Steven, I want you to know why you're here." I was like, "Cool, I would love to know that, too, because you chose me out of a bunch of people. Why am I sitting next to you?" He's like, "Someone told me early on," I don't remember who told him this. He's like, "Someone told me early on, though, that there are starters and there are finishers." He goes, "Steven, I think that you are a finisher. I'm a starter." What's funny is that's true for me as far as funnels go, but it's part of the reasons I'm leaving ClickFunnels, is because I'm actually a starter. I know how to finish, but I'm actually a starter, and I can't not start stuff, and I've been doing that the whole time since I've been there. Anyway, just know, though. Usually, most of us have a predominate side. Are you a starter or are you a finisher? Sometimes one of the reasons people aren't being successful is because they're a finisher and they're trying to do all these starting things. Go find a starter. Attach yourself. Same thing as the opposite. If you know you can start a ton of stuff, but you take forever to finish things, find a finisher and connect yourself to them. Russell told me early on that's one of the reasons he's hired who he has, is because he's like, "I'm a huge ridiculous starter," which is true. You guys will see all the things that he does. He moves fast. He goes to sprints quickly, but he said, "I have tried to hire as many finishers as I possibly can." Anyways, huge sage advice. All right, number six. Russell's a delegation master. One of the "Brunson-isms" that I've learned probably most from him is, I'll make comments like, "Oh man, I wish I knew JavaScript better." Or, "Oh man, I wish I knew CSS better." He'll be like, "Why? We've got a guy for that." I was like, "Yeah, but then I'll be able to do X, Y, Z." He's like, "No, no, no. We have a guy for that." I was like, "Yeah, but I'm interested. It would be cool to know that." He was like, "That doesn't matter, dude. It's not what makes the money." He's done that to me many times. I like video editing. I like sound editing. I geek out over the process. I like geek out over the process of doing the thing that I do. It's a lot of fun. All of the pieces of it, all of the aspects of it, but one of the things he's helped me realize is like, "Man, you just delegate like a beast." That's exactly what he does. He's a visionary, he moves forward, he's a mover, he's a shaker, he figures those things out, and what he's very good at doing is figuring out what he shouldn't be doing. Not what he can't do, but what he shouldn't do. There are many things that he could do that he's not, because he shouldn't be doing those things... He should be focusing on the other parts of the business. Does that make sense? One of the biggest lessons I learned from him. It's not that I didn't know it before, but seeing it in action. It's insane, you guys. It's how he gets so much done. He doesn't do it all on his own. He doesn't try to. Sometimes, a lot of us, especially for brand new, for kind of a solopreneur, I actually have a team. I haven't told you guys much about them. I will interview them shortly. I want you guys to know who they are and how I found them. Specifically how I found them, so that you guys can do and start to replicate yourself as well, but I have my own team for my own stuff. I have for a long time, for this exact same reason. I delegate like a beast... I've got all sorts of stuff going on. I've got software being created, I've got an app being made right now, I've got tons of stuff that I do that I juggle on the side of working at ClickFunnels, which is kind of ridiculous, but it's because of this principle that I can do that. I'm not doing it all on my own, and neither is Russell. Anyways, delegate like a beast, you guys. Okay, next one. Moving on. Selling is all about status. Okay, if I'm trying to sell stuff, you guys got to understand that if you're selling things to people, in the person's mind, this is what's really happening. "If I buy this dude's thing and I fail at it, I'm going to look like an idiot." That's one of the biggest hang ups. That's one of the biggest reasons people don't buy from you. One of the things that he's taught me a lot of is that, "Look, selling's all about status." Okay, that's why there's a guarantee. It has less to do with them being able to recoup their money. It has more to do with them being able to protect their status, so that when they go to their spouse who didn't know they bought the thing, and they go and something breaks, they can say, you're giving them the excuse, you're giving them an out, you're giving them the ability to say something like, "Oh, don't worry. It's under warranty. Total crap. I shouldn't have done that, but I got the money back." It protects their status. It's all about status. You're trying to increase their status and protect them from losing it at the exact same time. Anyway, next thing. Biggest thing I see from Russell, also, he's a huge planner. Big massive wall calendar. Since seeing that, I got one last year, and I just got my one for next year, also. It's for macro level planning. We really don't do that much micro level planning, but we almost always have what we're going to do the next day totally planned out before we get there. Meaning, I know what I'm doing tomorrow. I know what I'm doing the next day. I know what those things are, but we've got a macro level view on these big massive wall calendars. "Okay, we've got this event this day. We've got these things this day. We've got that that day. We've got these pieces here. We've got that there." What's cool about it is that it actually really ... In my juvenile years, I used to think that planning would cause some kind of stress, because I had to think through details that I didn't need to know yet, and there's an element to that, but if I keep it macro, it actually takes more off my head. I actually increase my shelf space, my mental shelf space, when I use a macro level planner. Then I'll have a micro level one on just a legal pad. Russell does the same thing.
All right, there's a few other delegation points here, so I guess some of these could have been combined. When you hire people, your only focus is to hire those people to do business stuff, to tend to the actual business, so that you can do what your role is. As the entrepreneur, your only role, the only thing you need to worry about is selling. That's it. Stop worrying about your dang logo, okay? I know it's cliché, I say it all the time, but it's true. Stop worrying about your logo. It doesn't matter, okay? For a long time, it does not matter. What you're trying to do, is it's proof of concept that you're looking for. Just sell it. Sell stuff, and know that at the beginning, you know what? You'll probably have some refunds because you didn't sell it right. So what? You're moving. Anyway, so when you hire people, you hire people explicitly to handle business stuff, right, so that you can do your job, which is to sell, sell, sell. Basically, if something doesn't make you money, you shouldn't be doing it, okay? Yeah. Okay, another huge thing that I see Russell do, which you guys actually have also been a part of, you may not have known it though, is that do your best to include your customers in the creation of your business, or at least your product. I mean, how many things does Russell publish? A lot of stuff... How many secrets does he keep? He doesn't keep any secrets. Everything that he tells you is everything that I get, too. Everything that he publishes, all the pieces that are out there, he tells it all. What's funny, is it's contrary to what most people think. "I've got this idea, and if I tell anyone my idea, they're going to steal it." Okay, I've told everyone my ideas for such a long time. I can tell you that's not true. You'll have one percent of people who try to pull it off, but even if they do, they're not going to pull it off the same way you will, so stop hiding your ideas. Start telling them. Get feedback, okay? Include your customers in the creation of your thing. All right, next one is whenever we're about to go on stage ... He taught me this early on, also. I thought I'd pass this on, because this has been a huge piece. Whenever we're about to go on stage ... What's funny is that at first it was just him, and then I've started doing it, too, but now we do it together, especially when we're about to collaborate on stage together. Like at the last FHAT event, I was on stage for a while, he was on stage for a while, and then back and forth, and then for a while also, we were on stage together, which was really awesome. Actually, it was a lot of fun. Anyway, he taught me this. My voice is going, guys. I've got to end this thing quickly. I've been going for 26 minutes, too. I've got to end it soon, anyways. You guys are probably like, "Shut up, Steven." Here's the last one, and then I'll recap real fast. All right, the frame work is what saves you. That's what it is. Now let me explain it. Whenever we're about to go on stage, we drop pictures, okay? You know all those little graphs inside Expert Secrets and DotCom Secrets book? Those were once stage presentation images. Okay, so when we're trying to figure out what to teach, a lot of times what we'll do is we'll use that opportunity to test stuff, to test concepts, to test things that we know we're on the brink of that we haven't quite been able to formulate yet, though. It's not that when we get on stage it's always polished. We obviously present it very polishedly, but if there's a concept, or there's this technique, or there's something like that that we want to make sure that we can test or whatever, we actually will draw it in pictures, which is why we have so many pictures. We draw it on a legal pad or a piece of paper. That's the thing that we take on stage with us. I do the same thing, and then when I'm teaching, and when Russell's teaching, we can just look real fast at that picture, and it represents that entire idea, okay? Rather than write out all these bullet points, which we'll do sometimes, which I'll do sometimes also, but mostly it's just this big, big thing of pictures, because if you can explain something in a hand drawn picture with a stick figure, it means you've probably dumbed it Not that the people are dumb, but that you've put it and an area, and in a concept, and in a way that can be grasped and digested quickly. Hence lots of pictures formulate cool book, okay, that's the formula. Anyway, so that's actually 11. I thought there were 12. It's actually 11. 11 "Brunson-isms". Number one, document and sell. Document and sell rather than create. Number two, design doesn't sell stuff. Number three, learn to sell one to many instead of one to one. Number four, it's all about movement. Just move. Just do stuff. Number five, are you a starter or a finisher? Whatever your answer is, hire the other. Number six, be a delegation master, okay? Just delegate like crazy, you guys. It's funny because there's a lot of personalities out there that are begging for that kind of thing. They want to be led. They want to know what they're supposed to be doing. So tell them.All right, what is this? Number seven? Selling is all about status. Number eight, plan your day the day before. Number nine, hire people to do the business stuff so you can focus on just selling. If something doesn't have to do with selling, you should not be doing it. What is this? Number 10? Hold on. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Yeah, 10. Include customers in the creation of your thing. Number 11, the frame work of what you create is what saves you. That's what saves you on stage. That's what saves you in tons of areas. Guys, my voice is going like crazy, and it actually is killing, but I hope that that helps. There's an episode I did a little while ago called My Black Book of Business. All I would do is write down business ideas and lessons. I beg you to start tracking those things for yourself. If you keep track ... Just something to writing stuff down that frankly drives me nuts, because sometimes I don't like to write stuff down, but I know if I do, it'll be there. Just write down the thing. Keep a list. I don't care if it's on Trello or whatever it is, but start writing down the lessons you're learning, and they'll stick longer, you can teach them, you'll actually end up doing them, you'll remember them, you'll actually get them digested and start applying this stuff. Anyway, so that's kind of what I've been doing this last little bit, and I just wanted to share that list with you. That's my 11 "Brunson-isms." Remember to have your brag moments. Remember to have your lessons written down. This is a long Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to SalesFunnelBroker.com/FreeFunnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today. | |||
| 04 Jan 2018 | SFR 100: Choose The Right Peak For 2018… | 00:12:40 | |
Every year i set a public goal for my income. It’s always weird and kinda challenging but it helps me get clear on what I want. Welp, this is that video. I just ripped the audio from the video. Make sure to get public about your goals…
Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. Hey, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen, and I'm super excited for this video. At the beginning of every single year, this is the fourth time I've done it in a row now, every January 1st I go and I find a spot, and I think through what it is I want to get done in the next year. And then I publicly declare what that thing is. It's one of the scariest things I do. I honestly started it because I was tired of not feeling like, I felt like I was going nowhere in life four years ago. Financially, I mean. Professionally, it was where I was going with my goals. All those things. I felt like, I don't know.
I wasn't really setting goals. I didn't have those. I didn't have things that there were ... I didn't have any of that kind of stuff. So what I decided to do is, what if I was to go set a goal publicly, and tell everybody. And the interesting thing that happened is exactly what I thought. Number one, it was scary. Number two, it felt weird publicly to be saying a number. And then, what was kind of interesting is, all these people started kind of coming out of the woodwork and saying, "Stephen you can do this. You've got this. You're the man. Go for it." Stuff like that. And you know what's funny is, I don't think ever, I've actually hit the goal on target. I don't think ever. And that's okay. The first year I was like, "If I could just make an extra $1,000 a month, it would change our entire life." We had almost nothing. We were living on student loans. It was hard as a man to go through that. I didn't feel like I was being a provider, which was really rough. So it was like, "Man, if I could just do a $1,000 a month." That was four years ago. And then this next one, the last one I did was, $30,000 a month, which was significantly higher, obviously. But I'm pleased to say that I actually hit it a couple times. And this is excluding my salaried position. You know what I mean? It was exciting for me to see that. It was exciting for me to see that progress happen. I'm not really like a, "Let's set a billion goals out there." When I'm onstage, when I'm teaching, when I'm doing the different things I do, one of the things, especially with a lot of my students, one of the things that I see happen over and over and over again is, somebody won't get started, simply because they can't see all the path in between where they are and where they're trying to go. And that's not how life works. You see the few steps in front of you. You see the peak of the mountain, but you don't see all the trails in between. You don't see that there's a canyon in the middle. You don't see that there's going to be all these different obstacles along the way. That's how life works. There's all these unexpected things that happen.
But I also know that's okay, and I sprint as hard as I can towards it. And it's cool. That first year, there was only a couple times I hit $1,000 a month. And it felt like this insurmountable, massive thing. It was like, "Oh, my gosh! This is changing my life!" Then the second year, when it was just $3,000 a month, the same thing. I only hit it a couple times, I think, and it was like, "Holy crap! That's massive!"
I don't totally know all the steps and pieces to be able to hit the goal that I'm going for, for this next year. But I know that I'm motivated enough now to go hit it, and people are watching me, which is kind of weird. But, you know, it's how I'm doing it, and it's been working. So, here's the goal. Okay, so the first year I hit $1,000 a month just a few rounds. Second year, I hit $3,000 a month a few rounds. Last year, I hit $30,000 a month a few rounds. And I decided I would take a leap, a huge leap of faith here and quit my job. And so, I actually, as of yesterday, am no longer employed by anybody. And I am self-employed, which might sound ludicrous, but I'm just following the pattern. I'm following the pattern I see from other people. I'm following the pattern I've seen the last few years. And I'm self-employed. And that extra little added good pressure, not bad pressure, good pressure, is helping me grow. I can already feel it. It's only day two. I already feel my feet being held to the fire, which would be nice right now. It's pretty cold out. But I was sitting in a Mastermind. And I was listening to all these other people, and I was listening to how they were talking. I was watching, most of them were all self-employed, and I was watching each one of them and the struggles and the challenges they were going through. And I was like, I feel like the thing that I need to do to keep my progress going is something that I'm afraid of admitting. And I remember sitting in the room right there, I sat in the room, and I couldn't get the stupid topic out of my head for weeks, that I should probably leave my job. I was like, "I can't. Are you serious?" And I was trying to distract myself from my own head. And then one day, it was sitting in the Mastermind when I kind of came to terms with it. I was like, "Okay. For me to move forward, I have to leave my job." And I was like, "Oh, my gosh." It scared me. It actually really freaked me out. Because, I understood clearly ... Because of where I worked, click funnels, right, there's like 56,000, at the time we were making this, there was 56,000 active users of click funnels. That lets us see businesses and pretty much every single industry. What's working, what isn't. And as the lead funnel builder there, my role there, I saw a lot of funnels. I knew what worked, what didn't. What things were good, what things were bad. What was cutting edge versus what are things that are going to stay true forever in this industry and that industry. But not that one, nor this one. You know what I mean? It was cool to see this big broad thing. And so I was sitting there, and I was like, "I think I have to quit my job. And I think I know what I'm going to go do first. And I'm excited to go do it." And this feeling of, instead of fear, this feeling of almost like, I used to do sprint triathlons, and it was the feeling I'd get before a sprint triathlon. Little bit of nervous feeling. You know that what you're about to go through is actually going to hurt just a little bit. But, you ultimately know it's going to go pretty good. And even though you're going to get banged up, or scraps, or you're swimming in the lake and you're getting hit by a stick that's random in there, someone kicks you in the face. You know what I mean? That's all the stuff that would happen, and it still would end up being, I look back on all those memories with huge fondness.
My goal is a million dollars. That's my 2018 goal, is to get in the two comma club by the end of 2018... And I'm quite positive I'm going to be able to do it much faster than that, because of the stuff I've identified, where I'm going, what I'm selling. I mean, it is extremely calculated, everything that I'm doing. And I know life's all about curve balls, so that will probably change a billion times. But for right now, that's what the goal is. That's what the plan is. And I know exactly what I'm going to be doing for the next, especially the next six weeks. It's going to be straight up hustle time. I'm going to put down anything happy, or fun, or relaxing, or whatever. But I'm excited. And I hope that whatever you guys are doing, that you go set a goal for yourself, and get public about it. I don't care what it is. The important part is to not be afraid to tell people. Funny enough, we all think that by telling people our ideas, our ideas will get stolen. And I've never actually had that be the case. I try and tell everyone what my ideas are. I try and tell everybody what the things are that I'm doing. And I find that people actually end up adding to the idea, rather than steal it. I mean, there's only been maybe like one or two people, ever, who've actually tried to do the thing I'm talking about. And people don't, because it's not their idea. It's my ownership on my side. And even if they did go pull it off, even if they did go do the thing that I was doing, they still won't do it the same way. I'm the only one. I'm the only me. You know what I mean? Anyway. So, I'm excited. I'm really pumped. My goal's a million dollars. That's $83,000 a month. And I think I can do it. I've stacked a ton of high ticket sales scenarios and environments at the beginning of the year, to help me get towards that right off the bat. And then I think I know where I'm going to take it afterwards, and I'm excited. It's requiring that I go hire people. And it's requiring that I build a team around me. And it's requiring that I grow, that I learn how to manage, that learn how to delegate, that I actually have a structure and schedule for my days, personally as a human, as an individual. And I'm looking forward to the growth. And I know there's some discomfort that's going to come with it, but I'm actually excited about that, as well. I'm ready for the next change. So, this is it guys. Four years ago, my goal was $1,000 a month. And now, I'm going to $83,000 a month. It sounds ridiculous, but I kind of like that. So, I'm going to do it. So if you want to follow me on the journey from here on out, I'm going to be documenting what I do, and showing everyone what I do, so that we can all kind of, I don't know. It's not about me beating my chest. It's about actually, selfishly, everyone else is still kind of holding me to what I said that I was going to go do. So anyway, I thought I'd come to this park here. It's freezing out. But, that's my goal. 2018, a million bucks. It's crazy. I remember scraping by at the beginning of our marriage. Just like with nothing. We had like nothing. Not even two nickels to rub together. And the ridiculous stress that that pulls in. I used to think rich people were greedy. That's not true at all. I actually have experienced more of the greedy side when you have no money. And you're like, "Where's my next meal coming from? When am I going to eat? Where's this? Where's that?" And you get like scraping by, clawing. You're getting past everyone, every thing. Don't care about other's emotions. You are just thinking about how to make the next meal. I know that's a stereotype, but it's been my personal experience that it's actually a little bit the other way around.
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| 28 Jun 2019 | SFR 255: Alex Charfen's Essential Systems For Every Business... | 00:49:24 | |
Alex Charfen is one of the very select few coaches I continually plug into...
I have wanted to get this individual on here for quite some time, and Alex Charfen has been one of the reasons why my stuff is blowing up so much.
I have learned that I need to listen to less people, and I'm very, very picky on those that I choose to dive deeply with…
...and I have other various ones that are very carefully selected... and I don't listen to ANYBODY else!
I'm extremely careful about the content that I consume - so that I can spend most of my time just moving, rather than gathering MORE information…
... which I don't think many of us need more of.
So anyway, I'm excited for you guys to understand more of why Alex Charfen, for me, has been so key…
So I asked him to come on the show and to teach a little bit more about the systems that all businesses need, regardless of whatever you're in.
A lot of these are the systems that a brand new entrepreneur needs when they finally get that revenue coming in.
...and then there are systems that he creates for those who have an existing business and are ready to scale.
Alex answers the questions…
If you guys like this interview, please reach out to him, (he did not need to do this) and say “Thank You!”
At the very end, we have a special little thing for you, and so we're excited!
Boom, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen, welcome back to Sales Funnel Radio - we're really excited to have you guys here.
I'm with one of my good friends, who's become an amazing friend and definitely a mentor... I would call and consider him a brother as well.
I want to introduce everybody to Alex Charfen.
Before I really bring Alex on, I just want you all to understand, Alex Charfen was one of the guys that helped me understand why I am who I am... and that, it’s okay… and helped me lean into that.
I talk to you a lot about leaning into your obstacles, leaning into those things that have been crappy in your life…
… because they end up becoming your superpower.
You all know my story of going to the first Funnel Hacking Live, Alex Charfen was one of the first speakers, and I took so many notes…
I ran back home, I showed my wife and she goes "That's why you act the way you do?" And I was like "YES, it's because of this guy!”
He had a crazy deep gravelly voice and I loved it. He was the man!" ...and I'm so excited to bring him on the show here:
Guys, please welcome Alex Charfen, “How you doing, man?”
ALEX: Steve, it is so good to be here with you, man. Thank you, and I echo your sentiments completely, and I consider you a brother as well, man.
STEVE: Oh thank you so much, thank you so much.
You know it was like two weeks ago; me and my wife were chatting about your material and going on through it, and she goes "Oh yeah, I have to remember this is how your brain kind of works."
I was like, "Really naturally, yeah! You should really know that" so we'll go back through your stuff.
You know, I've got that Capitalist Pig shirt that I wear all the time, but I really want one that just says, "Charfen will explain," or something like that, you know what I mean?
That should be the next shirt…
So much of what I do in this world just is NOT explainable without you.
ALEX: Yeah, it's unique, you know, Stephen…
I think when you characterize it that way, so much of what you do is different than what anybody in the world would ever expect... and that's what I've found from the day I met you.
I think I walked up to you and said something like:
"Hey man, I think we should talk. You're a really unique entrepreneur and I don't think you understand just how unique."
STEVE: I remember you said that.
ALEX: Or something like that.
STEVE: Yeah I remember, and I felt like, you know in the Matrix when he's talking to that lady with the spoon bend... I felt like I was talking to her, and I was like:
"What does he see in me? What are you looking at?" You know, and "Please dissect me!"
So anyway, I really am pumped for you to be here and just massive incredible love.
You have to understand, your name; it's NOT just a noun, it’s a verb in my vocabulary.
People are like "How did you do that?” "I just Charfenized it, baby!"
I say ‘Charfenation’ all the time.
Anyways, you're very much a verb in my vocabulary, and with my family... so it's really quite an honor to have you on, it really is.
ALEX: Thank you Stephen, it's an honor to be here man, this is awesome.
STEVE: This is really cool. Well hey, I wanna just start right out and just, I wanted to ask…
My audience has heard a lot about you. I've talked about you a lot because there’s so much that ‘veI learned.
Just recently, I was going through some of my old notes, from two years ago, from one of your events, and I was like "Gosh, you're so right, this is so cool!"
It really has created additional leverage for what I'm trying to do.
It works, it's real, and I want everyone to listen to this and listen to what Alex has to say here.
Understand that *this* is how I've been doing what I’m doing.
I learned marketing and a lot of sales from Russell... but how to have a life, systemize, and make my business an asset from Alex Charfen.
So, anyway, could you just tell us how you got into this? 'Cause I know you weren't always…
I mean I call it entrepreneurial optimization, I mean it's really what you do - it's not just the systems, but like:
How did you get into this?
ALEX: - You know Stephen, I think if the question is, "How did I become an entrepreneur?”
I didn't find entrepreneurship, it found me.
This was really the only thing I ever felt comfortable doing in my life.
Ever since I was a little kid, I was always the kid that was different than everybody else, crazy socially awkward, like what you see today…
I don't try to be socially awkward, it's just natural.
… and then, when I was eight years old, my family went through kind of a financial downturn; my father lost a company.
He didn't go bankrupt, but he went really close, and to make money for the family we were selling stuff in a swap meet on the weekends.
I remember going to the swap meet for the first time and standing behind a folding card table, and a woman walked up, and I sold her a pen that had an LCD clock in it…
(Like that was big time for 1981 or whatever or '78 or '79, or whatever it was).
Stephen I can remember thinking at that moment, "Holy crap, I'm good at this. This is something I'm NOT terrible at."
… because up until that point, I really hadn't found anything where it was like, "Hey, that was good." It was always’ "Almost got it, kid. You don't suck as bad as you did yesterday."
I was the kid who consistently got *MOST IMPROVED* all the time, 'cause it's the award you give to ‘the kid who sucked the worst!’
And when that woman walked up, it was like "Hey, this is something I can do over and over again."
And the more that I worked with my Dad, and the more that I experienced business, I loved it.
The world is so random, but when you get into the world of business there are rules.
…. there's an outcome.
People are in it together, and you actually have to work together to accomplish and achieve.
… if everybody cares about the outcome, it'll happen.
And so *this* is where I feel comfortable.
You know, it's funny, when I was a kid I used to create businesses, create business plans, write out time cards and all this other stuff, and as an adult, I thought that was like ‘the weirdest thing.’
I would reflect back and think like, "Man, I was such a weird kid."
Now, that's exactly what my daughters do.
My daughter this morning was at the kitchen table for three hours writing out a schematic for a water park she wants to build one day.
STEVE: Wow!
ALEX: And you are who you are, and I think, from the very beginning, this is who I've been.
STEVE: That's amazing, and when did you decide to make a business around this and go actually help other entrepreneurs, like myself, who need these systems?
ALEX: Well, the business that I have today, we started…
So let me give you a little brief history.
So in my twenties, I was a consultant, and you know, a lot of people ask about that.
I did some consulting at a very high level at the Fortune 500 level...
I built a very large business that almost killed me.
And so I can tell the story really good...
I can give you all the highlights and make it sound great:
Or I can tell you the other side of that coin…
STEVE: Wow.
ALEX: And so when I got out of that business, I wanted to do something completely different.
So in my early thirties, I got into real estate, and we were taken out by the real estate market in 2007.
Cadey and I introduced our first information product, and that's how we got into this world.
We created a product called the Certified Distressed Property Expert Designation.
In 2007 we were bankrupt, we introduced our product at the end of the year:
We went from bankruptcy to liquid millionaires in a year.
In 2013, the US Treasury came to our office and did a broadcast with us, where they said that, according to their research…
Our company had pulled forward the foreclosure crisis five to seven years
….so it was intense.
STEVE: Oh, yeah...
ALEX: Really intense!
And what happened was, right around 2011…
A lot of our clients who were buying our product wanted help growing their business; so I took all of the stuff that I used to use as a consultant; the systems and structure Cadey and I used to run our business, and we started training it.
And so since 2011, we've been training it in classes/ courses.
In 2017, we started the products that we have today. So now we have :
STEVE: That's awesome! That's so cool.
ALEX: Yeah it is the most fun I've ever had, Stephen…
It's like every day, I wake up and here's what I get to do:
I get to play in this playground with game-changing entrepreneurs that are starting businesses that are doing things that are just unreal.
...and our systems, our structures are kind of the backbone for how they're doing things.
So on a daily basis, me and everyone on my team, wake up knowing that we are helping the game-changers change the world, and we recruit people who want to do that…
We recruit for people who are passionate about our mission…
Everyone on my team feels like their life's mission is being fulfilled through being in this business right now.
It's the greatest thing I've ever done.
STEVE: That's incredible, and I can tell everyone else who's listening and watching this now, it's exactly as he says it.
I think I've been to three of your events now, and they have just been life-changing.
I go through and it gives structure to the idea, but then, also, how I behave against the idea. So I can actually go in and breathe; I can live.
I watched my Dad create this awesome company when I was a young boy, but it took him too.
But everyone does that, it's super natural - so you to go in and…
... it's incredible.
I know it's not magical, but it feels magical, to me! I'm like "Oh my gosh!"
I've actually had a tab open with your course open for like the last month and I'll just dive into another video, and I'm like "Oh my gosh! Back to the drawing board, that was so good!"
And I go back to it again and again and again... it's just always up, everybody who's listening to me, it's always up.
That's really what's teaching me how to run a company, rather than ‘me’ being the company, and I've loved that.
*Just so powerful*
I wanted to ask you kind of a key question here, and it's a question that I get asked a lot...
People come through my programs, I'll help them make money. They go and make a lot of cash, and it's awesome... but then after that, like what do you do?
What are the first systems that you find that new entrepreneurs with a sizeable amount of cash should actually go create first?
What are those first few moves?
ALEX: You know I think I definitely want to share a couple of systems Stephen, but first, I want to just share a thought process. ..and this is a tough thought process for most entrepreneurs to take on, and it's interesting 'cause I've watched you go through this shift too, right? '
Cause at the beginning, (and I just want everyone to know)...
When I met Stephen Larsen, he was ready to take on the entire world solo!
STEVE: Yeah.
ALEX: Like all alone, right?
And here's the thought process…
After you start making money, the next thing to ask yourself is:
when you get to the point where the momentum you're creating on your own isn't enough, and believe me, we all get there...
Like I know that if you're watching me, watching Stephen, you're one of those entrepreneurs... and in the back of your mind, you have this crazy voice that has always told you:
... and if you've always felt that, then there's a shift you have to make in your thinking.
Because here's the issue for people like us; I call it the Entrepreneurs Dilemma.
For people like us…
We need far more help than the average person to reach our full destination, but any request for help or support that we have to make, leaves us feeling vulnerable and exposed.
Stephen, you with me?
STEVE: Yes, yes, yes, yes, 100%!
ALEX: And so here's the shift…
We have to realize that if we're gonna change the world, that is a group activity, and leadership's a contact sport.
So we have to wake up to the fact that when we start to:
…. we will build the company that we have always wanted.
That's the only way it's ever been done. The myth of the solopreneur who's changed the world is a myth - it's a joke.
STEVE: So true
ALEX: It's one of the most damaging things out there in the entrepreneurial world today.
Because the fact is…
Show me anyone that looks like they changed the world on their own, and I will show you a massive team behind them.
STEVE: So true!
There's this idea that gets pushed around now, and it's like, “I'm gonna go and be this person that does all this stuff. I'm the gift to the world...”
...and it's like “Okay….” but you can't do that on your own.
In the last six months, I have begun to experience and feel burn-out.
ALEX: Yeah.
STEVE: I have never in my life experienced that, and it's been hard. The only way I've been able to create leverage is by listening to what you say and create those teams.
ALEX: Yeah. Well then, Stephen, that's the thing…
Here's the deal I want everybody to understand this:
If you're an entrepreneur, you have a job, and that job is to…
Because if you don't work with that equation to constantly lower the noise and increase the support, lower the noise, increase the support…
Here's what ends up happening…
You are in an equation that doesn't work.
… and it's not like anyone can come and argue against me here because this is like gravity.
This is like you know the facts of life, this is like taxes. We're all gonna pay 'em. There's no way to argue against this, you're going to lose.
And so in that situation, as an entrepreneur, you have to be really cautious about doing too much yourself, and about loading yourself up, because here's our instinct…
(You know you have this, I have this, we all have it.)
If there's something to be done, the first thought we have is, “How do I just get it done without telling anyone else,” right? Oh yeah!
STEVE: Yeah
ALEX: And it's like "I'm gonna conquer!"
STEVE: Freedom baby!
ALEX: We forget that humans are tribal animals, man.
We are all terrible at most things. Let's get real…
If you're good at a lot of things then you have a liability because you're not gonna be able to choose what you shouldn't do.
I'm very fortunate, I suck at most everything, and that's like an honest reality.
Anyone on my team will tell you like "Oh man, don't let Alex fill out a form, use the calendar, "send emails. We keep him out of all of our systems."
Seriously my team actually knows when I have a password for a system and they monitor me using it, 'cause I'm so bad at that stuff.
But on that same token, I know what I'm good at.
… and by doing those things, we can grow a massive organization and have a massive impact.
So for every entrepreneur, the key is to figure out what you're good at and do that to the exception of everything else
... and it's the hardest thing you'll ever do as an entrepreneur.
Here's why…
The second you start doing that you feel like you're being egotistical. You feel like you're being self-serving.
But here's the fact:
When you drive your business to get easier for you it will grow like crazy.
But driving your business to get easier for you will feel like you're doing the wrong thing.
It happens all the time.
There's a discussion right now on our Facebook group, one of the CEOs in our group made a post, and I'm paraphrasing, but she said something like :
"As I offload and reduce discomfort and get a team around me, I'm feeling less and less significant, am I doing this right?"
And my answer was "Yes! You're absolutely doing this right. That's exactly how it's gonna feel!"
Because we need to attach significance to the total contribution, NOT to your day-to-day activities.
STEVE: Mmmm, that's powerful.
You know it's funny I was It reminds me of …
You know when I first got to ClickFunnels, it was just he and I. There wasn't like a copywriter, a videographer... it was just he and I!
So we did every single role in getting these funnels out, occasionally there was an exception where he'd go "Oh someone's really good at X, Y, and Z," but then, by the time I left...
ALEX: - Probably design or something… but everything else was you guys?
STEVE: Yeah, yeah, yeah, right! I knew enough Indesign and Photoshop, I was the one doing it most of the time... and doing first copy rounds, and it like, it was nuts!
But by the time I left, it was funny because he had started implementing these types of things.
I remember watching him during these funnel launches just laying on the floor, bored out of his mind.
I've never seen him like that in my life, and he was almost going to a state of depression. He was like "I'm not needed in my own thing now. Ah no-one needs me anymore."
It's a funny thing to realize, we're just the orchestrators. We don't play all the instruments.
ALEX: We shouldn't, we shouldn't.
And so, you know, back to your question about what systems should an entrepreneur start looking at?
Now, I'm gonna talk high level, and I wanna share...
You and I are really close friends, and I wanna share the most critical content we have for entrepreneurs with your group.
STEVE: I appreciate that.
ALEX: This is what we normally share internally once somebody joins our program…
We share the five things that keep companies from scaling.
The reality is, there are really five things that keep companies that should scale, from scaling.
And here's what I mean ‘companies that should scale…’
You know, if you go talk to most consultants, venture capitalists, investment bankers, accountants, lawyers, whatever, they'll give you this laundry list of why companies don't scale:
The reality is, if you look at most companies that should scale, there are five clear reasons why they don't…
So let me share them with you, but let me give you this caveat…
Here's what I mean by "should scale..."
…. you should be scaling.
If those things aren't there for you right now, go resolve that and then start scaling. Far too many people try and scale before they actually have all the steps in place.
Then you just build infrastructure that does nothing.
So let me tell you what the five things are...
#1: So number one, first and foremost, absolutely most crucial, is…
So as a result, there's no go-forward strategy, and here's what happens in a business when you don't have a go-forward strategy.
If you don't know where you're going, neither does your team
... neither does anybody around you
And so you will, by virtue of math, become the biggest bottleneck in the company.
Here's why…
If there's no forward plan where all of us can point at and go get it and help you chase it down, every time we want to know what to do we have to ask you, and we have to go to you... and it's a death of a thousand paper cuts.
You're literally in a place where you're:
And if you've ever been in that situation as an entrepreneur, you know that somebody only has to ask you twice before you're ready to flip out and lose it.
Am I right Stephen?
STEVE: Yeah, yeah, usually once.
ALEX: Once, right, right, but by the second time you're like "Are you kidding me?"
And so the way we get past that is we create a clear strategic plan, we share it with our entire team…
... and if the team knows where they're going, here's what happens.
I want you to understand something about the people coming to work for you. If you're in a small business, you're hiring entrepreneurs.
I know that there's this saying in the market, "You're either an entrepreneur or you work for one."
I call complete and total BS - don't even bring that crap around me.
STEVE: Yeah!
ALEX:
Every person on my team is an incredibly talented, hyper-motivated, world-changing entrepreneur, they just choose to be part of a team.
And so you're gonna hire entrepreneurs, and the way you keep entrepreneurs absolutely and totally focused and excited, is you show them what they're hunting, you give them the kill.
You say:
And if you hire the right people, they will walk over hot glass to get to that destination for you.
STEVE: Yeah.
ALEX: But if they don't know where it is, you're gonna demotivate them and completely de-leverage them.
So number one, you have to have a strategic plan.
In my experience, less than 1% of businesses do. Also, less than 1% of businesses ever hit $100,000,000. In fact only 3% ever hit 1,000,000.
STEVE: Jesus. ALEX: So when you look at that, it's not 1% of businesses that hit 100,000,000, 0.01% of businesses ever hit 100,000,000, and the reason is...
Most businesses don't know where they're going.
And Stephen, by you having the tools to build a strategic plan in your business, hasn't it changed how you approach things?
STEVE: Oh gosh, you guys remember when I tell you those stories of I left my job...
I created 200 grand of revenue really quick but there were no systems
I was the…
I did every role, and I voluntarily, very painfully, had to turn down revenue to go build these structures.
And I want you all to know, it was Alex Charfen's stuff that helped me go in and actually set those systems in place... and so, please understand my affinity for this man and what he does.
About halfway through the year, I was only at like 300 - 400 grand, which is pretty good, but that last huge sprint came in because of the things that Alex Charfen and his team were teaching me.
All those planning things that I use, and all the things that I've just lightly mentioned, they've all come from Alex Charfen, and it helped scale me.
ALEX: That's awesome Stephen... Man, that makes me so proud.
This is so cool! Like there's only one Stephen Larsen in the world, and I told you that the first day I met you…
I'm like, "Dude you are completely and totally unique and I think I can help you build the company you really want."
STEVE: Yeah, you said
ALEX: And for us to be sitting here, and for you to say that, I got chills Stephen, that's so awesome. Thank you, man!
STEVE: Oh man, I'm so jazzed about what we do, but it's because of what you teach I'm like "I can do it... "
The first time I ever saw Stephen at an event, I did not leave the event until I'd cornered him and told him what I needed to tell him... because I knew you were gonna be exactly that type of person.
...and here's why it's so important to me, Stephen.
I could tell the first time I saw you, that you were gonna have a massive effect on the world.
But here's what I know about entrepreneurs; you're gonna have the biggest effect on the people closest to you - the people who are most proximal, your team.
And when I see an entrepreneur like you Stephen, I'm like:
"Man, if that guy builds a team he's gonna change hundreds of lives internally in his company. They're gonna change millions of lives externally, and I know those hundreds of people will build your legacy."
And when I see somebody like you, I'm like, “Man! That is the path, let me show you how to do this.”
The fact that it's working, is like, “Ah, it makes me so excited every day.”
This is why I get up out of bed every morning and do what I do.
STEVE: Ah, it's so fun man, feeling's mutual. You walked up, it was from that FHAT event that you were at.
ALEX: Ah ha.
STEVE: And you walked up and said, "There's a huge company in you and I don't think you know it, and I'm gonna help you pull it out of you."
I remember when you said that, I was so scared. I was like, "There's no way that this is real! I know who you are, are you kidding me?"
It freaked me out, and I had to own my own vision for a while. It actually took me a while to practice that.
Anyway, so much has gone on in mental clarity and development from what you've taught, not just these systems and things around, it's really cool.
ALEX: - So let's give the second one, Stephen
STEVE: Yeah, sorry, sorry.
ALEX: oh don't apologize, shit I love this part.
So first you have a strategic plan…
#2: Second, the thing that you need to have is
Let me tell you something about us as entrepreneurs…
We think we're good communicators, but we're lying to ourselves.
The fact is, we are haphazard and emotional, and we're pumped one second and we're not the next, and we're all over the place…
Here's what happens…
When we have a team that has to deal with a personality like ours, and there's NOT a system for communication, it's random and haphazard and overwhelming... and it comes from all angles, and they're waiting for word from on high. Here's the fact, if you're the entrepreneur in charge, you're the MOST important person in the building all the time.
You're the most important person on the team, in the tribe, in the group, and they're all waiting to see what you say.
And if they're waiting for days and nothing's happened, they start thinking:
So you need a system.
As an example:
So they all know when they're gonna communicate with me and how.
From the first day you're on our team there's a system that controls how you hear from me.
Not just me pumping stuff out there haphazardly.
As a result, my team knows they're gonna hear from me, they trust it and here's what happens.
I set the expectations, I meet the expectations, we create trust. I create trust with my team every time I do that.
And here's the fact:
... which means when they're driving, when they're showering, when they're doing something else, they're gonna be thinking about your business. Why?
...because it gives them momentum.
So if you have a strategic plan and a system to communicate it, you're ahead of 99% of companies out there.
And Stephen, same thing for you with the system, the structure?
Like…
We all fight structure, but once you put it in place, isn't it incredible?
STEVE: Oh, it's amazing! Stuff's getting done right now, that we set in place once. and then, I'll be like "Oh, podcast episode just launched,!Oh, what day is it? Oh, that's sweet! Everyone just put it out, all right, cool!"
ALEX: Right, I remember when I started getting messages like, "Hey, I love the new podcast!" And I'm like "Oh, we put a podcast out? Nice!"
STEVE: I didn't do that, what are you talking about?
ALEX: So you have #1: a strategic plan, then #2: a system to communicate.
#3: Here's the third one, now this is BIG, really big, and most business owners just, they don't look at this ever and it's the biggest struggle is, or one of the biggest struggles is;
And by documentation, I mean having:
For example:
If you walk into a McDonald's, and you look above the fry cooker, there is a process to cook fries above that fry cooker.
Anything that happens in that McDonald's, there's a process for literally every single thing, including:
That's why there's a consistent experience at McDonald's; I'm not saying it's a good experience, I'm saying it's consistent.
In most businesses, in most entrepreneurial businesses, there's no process.
In fact, it's even scarier than that...
The process lives either in the owner's head or in an individual's head - so you lose a person, you lose the company.
You lose a person, you lose a big chunk of what you're doing.
STEVE: Hmm.
ALEX: So you have to have a system in a business to consistently evaluate what processes are in the company, and then on a monthly and weekly basis document the right ones.
The way that I would suggest you start, is you look at your customer experience:
If you do that, you're gonna beat most people out there...
99% of entrepreneurial companies have little to nothing documented in any type of process.
STEVE: They're just shooting in random spots 24/7.
ALEX: Or they're doing stuff like, "Here's how we do our customer on-boarding…”
...and you're like "Oh, cool! Let's go and see what John's doing?"
Well, John's doing nothing close to what Suzy and Bob and everybody else was originally doing, and so you have these degrading processes in your business.
And here's what happens…
When you look at entrepreneurial businesses, they tend to…
If you're inside those companies, hundreds of times like I have been, here's what I can tell you…
Revenue goes up as the process is working, and then when it breaks, it comes back down.
*PERIOD*
That's why businesses don't continue to go forward - there are processes breaking in the business.
Whether it's marketing, sales, delivery, whatever it is there's a process breaking.
When you document your proceses, you make them bulletproof.
So in our business, we actually use:
So we have all of our processes in Process Street, and we have a distributed team around the world.
We have somebody in Ireland who can do their part of the process, as soon as they hit the last button it transfers to somebody here in the US who can do their part of the process.
STEVE: That's awesome.
ALEX:
Documenting your processes + Putting them in place = Game-changing
STEVE: Holy cow, okay I wrote that down.
I'm taking tons of notes so everyone knows, I hope they are as well…. And I'm not sharing! ;-) Process.st is the company, and we are so happy with it because... Stephen, here's what I want everyone to know,...
Cadey and I have had five businesses get over $10,000,000 a year, and all five of them ran them with paper checklists.
This is the first time we have automated checklists in Process Street.
The last information products business that we had, we literally had three-ring binders that we would carry around the office and check stuff off.
Having a three-ring binder with a process was so much better than having somebody trying to do it from memory.
Now with Process Street, we can distribute that three-ring binder, and I can get reporting on who's doing what.
STEVE: That's amazing.
Yeah, I've actually seen the three-ring binder and I've thought, "Holy crap, that really is how he's doing it.”
You would teach it and then I watched you actually do it.. 'cause you would record your stand up meeting calls in the morning
ALEX: Yeah.
STEVE: And I was, "Oh my gosh, that's so cool! I'm NOT doing that, interesting."
Then I’d go back and take notes and start it.
ALEX: And then implement.
Well, and you know, there's this phrase in the entrepreneurial world. Ah... I kind of get a little triggered, right!
STEVE: Let it out, baby!
ALEX: You know the thing that people say from stage:
"Here's what I want all of you to know. All you have to do is stop working in your business and start working on your business."
And I'm always like:
"Oh, good, thanks. Thanks for solving it all for us dude, that was awesome. You just solved all my problems with that really cliched BS thing that everybody tells entrepreneurs."
When I was in my twenties, my instant thought was like, "How do I get on stage to punch that guy in the face?"
And my then my second thought was like, "What a load of crap! If I don't work in the business nobody's answering the phones, sucker."
Like, what's going on here? I don't know how to make that change.
And so the way you make that change is…
Working on the business means documenting processes.
By making it:
And so you have…
#4: The next step,(and this is BIG), is..
STEVE: Ah, this changed my life. *HARDCORE*
ALEX: Whoa, Stephen, you know how game-changing this is because, here's the problem in most businesses…
Projects are selected emotionally.
Period, I can't tell you that they're done any other way - they're emotional.
In our business, if I have a really great idea that I want to implement today…
If I'm like, "Man, this is a really high sense of urgency, we should get this implemented."
It'll probably be somewhere around 45 days, and I'm totally okay with that.
That's the timing it should be in my business.
Now if there's an emergency we're gonna fix it that day, but if I'm like, "Hey, I see an opportunity here with something," it's probably a 45-day event…
Why?
I have a team and a structure, and a plan, and we have a system that's moving forward. We're already hitting our numbers, why would I mess with anything?
In just in the last 60 days, we've gone from two million recurring to two point three million recurring,
STEVE: That's awesome!
ALEX: So why would I mess with what we're doing?
STEVE: Yeah.
ALEX: Yeah, so when somebody's like "Hey Alex, I got this "great idea for your business." I'm like "Awesome, get in line."
And we'll put it into our system to see if we want to actually do this…
Because the fact is…
If you're getting sold as an entrepreneur on what your next project should be, you're probably in the wrong place.
STEVE: Yeah, that's fascinating. I really agree with that.
It was your planning system for figuring out which projects, I still do it.
Top of every three months and it has guided everything we do.
And while I do follow a few rabbits and I'm practicing bringing it back in, we still largely follow the plan as to what the business needs, and that's ‘grow and scale’ rather than this impulse of like:
"Yeah, oh shiny object, shiny object, "that looks good, that looks good!"
And it's been that discipline, that's the other thing that's always up is my waterfall...
ALEX: Yeah, yeah, always! I mean mine's up right now. I mean I could share it right now.
And the reason is I always have my strategic plan pulled up in front of me, I'm looking at it every single day.
I'm asking myself:
Because when you look at our strategic plan, here's what it's made up of.
. So that waterfall of long term, to one year, to 90 days, to 30 days, I can see it all on one document and it tells me EXACTLY where I should be supporting the team and what we're getting done.
And so here's what happens…
I went to an event a couple of weeks ago, and I had an idea that was like "Oh man, we have to do this."
Then I come back to the office, I look at the waterfall and I'm like "What do I want to kill in order to do this thing over here?"
And you know what the evaluation was? *NOTHING* I'm not going to take anything off this, that would be crazy.
There's no way I'm gonna go to my team and say, "Hey guys, in addition to all the other stuff you're committed to, here's a hot potato."
I just backed down and I waited till the next time we had a planning meeting and I said, "Hey, there's this thing I think we should do."
There is very little knee-jerk reaction in our company because we are going so fast in a forward direction, that for me to challenge that in any way it has to be game-changing at a different level - so it rarely even happens.
STEVE: Yeah, black-ops right? Call them black-ops?
ALEX: Black-ops.
STEVE: No black-ops!
ALEX: No black-ops, baby! If it's NOT on the plan, you don't do it... or it's black-ops.
And usually, the biggest creators of black-ops are guys like Stephen and I.
So my team has an open license to tell me if I'm doing black-ops.
They will actually call me out in a huddle, in a meeting, they'll be like "Ah, this sounds like black-ops," and then we'll make a note, we'll put it in a parking lot and do it later.
STEVE: Oh, that's so cool, okay.
ALEX: Yeah, that's one of the most important things you can do when you have a team Stephen…
You train your team to criticize you and then you congratulate them when they do.
STEVE: That's really cool, then they have a license to actually flex their brain instead of feeling like they're in a box.
ALEX: Absolutely. You know I heard a story once about Larry Page, who runs Google,
He was in a meeting and he really strongly stated a point. and one of the team members got emotional about it and started yelling at him.
She was like, "I think you're wrong and this is why you're wrong," and Page was smiling…
Afterward, she asked somebody "Hey why was he smiling?"
‘Cause she backed him down, and he actually said "You know what, I think this deserves more investigation. Let's do this."
She walked out and she was shaking and all adrenalized up, she had just yelled at the CEO of Google, like, “What the heck's gonna happen to me?”
She turned to somebody next to her, and was like "He was smiling, is that because he's gonna come down hard on me?"
And the person was like, "No, he was smiling because you confronted him, he loves it, he wants it.”
He knows that if people aren't confronting him, he's in a bad place.
So I look at it in my team and I'm like, "Hey, if my team's not challenging me a little bit, then we're all just marching behind a duck."
You know, I don't wanna have ducklings behind me. I want people who are saying:
So you give your team license to criticize and license to call you on stuff.
STEVE: Gosh, I love that.
#5: So here's the fifth one...
So we have:
….and then, this is *BIG*
It's NOT just finding the right people, its…
And unfortunately, just like everything else I've named, planning, projects, process, all of those... people also become emotional.
An entrepreneur wakes up one morning and says, "I'm doing too much, I'm gonna hire an assistant."
Then they have the assistant sit next to them for three weeks, and they wonder why this doesn't work out?
It's because you had the thought to get help, (which by the way I congratulate you on), but there was no process there to actually make it work.
And so here's the process you need…
People tell me, "Hey man, doesn't that "feel like overkill?"
I'm like:
You don't understand what it means to have an executive team. Your job is to build relationships with those people.
You want to know how you build relationships?
There's one commodity that builds relationships. One!
*TIME* - that's it.
And so when I'm onboarding, when I'm bringing somebody on, (whether it's on my executive team or anywhere in the business), somebody is doing that high-intensity onboarding with them…
Up close and personal every single day for the first 30 days making sure we have no drift.
And so, when you have a system to select the right people, bring them on and then onboard them the right way…
Here's what you avoid, (and Stephen this is like, Ah, this statistic drives me crazy)...
In corporate America, I know because I used to be a consultant there.
In corporate America, they would say things like, "Well we just hired so-and-so in that position so they'll probably be productive in four to six months."
The first time I heard that I was like "Did he just say four to six months? Does he mean four to six days, or does he really mean four to six months?"
Because in my business, even way back then), if I had to wait four months for somebody to be productive I would have been, “They're gone”!
STEVE: Yeah, yeah, they're gone!
ALEX: And so in our business, we actually have this experience right now.
We recently brought on somebody else, a new person to help us in marketing, and with our onboarding process, he was actually achieving products within the first five days of his first week.
STEVE: That's so cool!
ALEX: And that's how it should be.
You want somebody to come in, be effective and start contributing and creating momentum.
Because here's what will happen…
As an entrepreneur, if you're wired anything like I am, (and I know Stephen is), if you have somebody on your team that starts to feel like they're not carrying their own weight, you won't sleep.
You won't sleep, it will rip you apart, Stephen am I right?
STEVE: Yeah! ALEX: It will destroy you…
And so here's the question though…
Are they not carrying their own weight because:
STEVE: They have no idea what they're doing. They don't have confidence...I didn't help them!
ALEX: Right, 'cause here's the thing.
Your team needs three things in order to ultimately be effective and to be the type of team you want.
And here's what I mean by that…
As an entrepreneur here's what you want, you want a team that just does stuff and asks permission later.
You want a team that achieves and lets you know how things worked out.
That's it! I just know this is how entrepreneurs work.
And if you want to have a team that actually moves things forward as an entrepreneur…
You gotta spend the time with them and let 'em know what your ethos is, and let 'em know how you make decisions…
That's how you duplicate decision making.
STEVE: Hm, gosh I love that. Okay, so…
...and I actually personally just went through your onboarding training and it's so awesome!
'Cause it goes through and it's like this, you basically create a runway for 'em, right?
And if they don't land, don't worry you've got parachutes and there are jumpy cords all over the place...
- you're doing everything you can to help 'em win fast and lots of small tiny wins that build that confidence, and I was like:
"That is brilliant. 'Cause that is not the way you're taught anywhere else.”
ALEX: So Stephen, check this out, man.
We recently fell out of the lucky tree on recruiting and we hired this guy named Greg Duby and he is, ah, amazing.
He's like, he's just one of the most exciting guys I've ever worked with because he's so solid and so centered, and just so good at what he does.
Greg is a former nuclear propulsion tech in the Navy, so you know what that is, that's the guy who rides the bomb around in the submarine, okay?
STEVE: Yeah, that's amazing!
ALEX: Yeah, you have to have advanced degrees in Physics, advanced degrees in Math.
He's literally a rocket scientist.
So he worked in the Navy, then he worked at NASA, then he worked for some of the larger consulting firms out there…
I mean, he's done incredible stuff in his career.
He's just one of the most solid people I've ever worked with, and within about two or three weeks into our company, in one of our daily huddles, we said, "Who got caught being awesome?"
It's where we call each other out, and he said:
You know, I just wanna call this company out for being awesome.
“ I've been here for three weeks, I've never had an experience like this getting on-boarded anywhere...
I'm up and running, I'm excited. I feel like I'm really part of the team. I feel like I've worked here forever and I'm three weeks in."
And this is somebody who worked at some of the best consulting firms in the world, NASA and the Navy!
And our little tiny company has impressed him so much because we did onboarding because he knew what he was supposed to do.
And as a result, Greg, I think we're about three months in with him, and dude, there are projects that I thought were gonna take a year or two that are getting done this week.
STEVE: That's so cool!
ALEX: It's crazy.
STEVE: It's just a completely different way to do it. One thing I hated in the military, I love the military, but you know, some things that are rough and that is that there are no clear guidelines on how to win ahead of time.
The way you're instructed is by hitting barriers and then you get punished for it, and you're like:
"Just tell me ahead of time and I wouldn't do it! But all right, let's do more push-ups."
Anyway...
ALEX: Something tells me you did a lot of push-ups, Steve!
STEVE: I just want to say thank you so much for being on here.
I asked for 30 minutes and you just completely over-delivered, and I just really want to say thank you to you.
My audience already knows very well of you.
Where can people go to learn more about you but specifically also get your help inside the business?
ALEX: So the best place to learn more about us is to go to our podcast.
I publish a podcast four days a week, which is essentially a one-on-one conversation with an entrepreneur growing a business.
And the way that I create each one of those episodes is when a question or issue comes up in our coaching groups, I create an episode around it, we distribute it to the group.
But then also we distribute it to anybody who's listening, so you can get the same coaching that I'm giving my high-level clients right on our podcast…
It's called Momentum for the Entrepreneurial Personality Type, and you can check it out at momentumpodcast.com.
And then, if you want to understand more about our products, about our coaching groups you can go to our website charfen.com, but better is to just reach out to me or to one of my team members through Facebook.
The easiest thing, is just reach out to me, and I'll connect you with the right person in our company, and we'll go through a process with you to help you understand if we can help you.
You know Stephen, we're pretty neat, we don't sell everybody. We actually get on the phone with a lot of people who we sell later, but we won't sell you unless it's time.
We know exactly what solutions we provide, and if you have those issues and they link up, then we'll work together... but we go through a personal inventory in order to help you do that.
So if anybody's interested in getting on a call with a member of my team, you can also shortcut the entire process by going to billionairecode.com…
Answer a few questions and you can just set up a call link and you'll be on a call with one of my team members and they'll help you qualify and understand where you are.
And just so you know, we don't do sales calls, they are all consulting calls.
When you get on a call with my team, you won't ever feel like you're being sold, you'll feel like you're being helped.
STEVE: Which is exactly what I have felt when I started doing that as well.
Just so you all know he's very serious about that - that's very real.
I always feel like I'm being helped by anyone on his team.
...and come to find out later, "Oh that was the sales guy!"
...You know what I mean?
They dare to go in and actually they want to change the world and they're very serious about it.
So thank you so much, appreciate it.
Check out Billionaire Code.
The Momentum podcast is a goldmine, it is one of those gems on the internet that is actually worth all of your time and attention.
Thanks so much for being on here, Alex, I really appreciate you and love you, and thank you for being on here.
ALEX: Stephen, dude, this has been an honor.
I hope to be able to get invited back again, and as a Sales Funnel Radio listener, this is really cool. I appreciate you, man!
STEVE: Thanks, I appreciate it!
Hey, awesome episode right?
Hey, once I figured out the simple patterns and formulas that make this game work, I had a new problem…
Back when I eventually left my job and launched my personal business, I sold about $200,000 of product in around three months-ish…
And while I thought I was King Kong, a new problem started.
I was the business, there weren't any systems...
And I knew I wouldn't survive it alone…
Better yet, I knew I'd never seen a rich solopreneur.
This game takes a team.
Contrast that to now, and my company does tons of stuff that I don't know how to do...
What changed?
His name is Alex Charfen, check him out at charfenrocks.com.
So I usually don't bring tons of people on Sales Funnel Radio, but you should know that his programs, combined with my marketing skills, are why my business is killing it in revenue today, and NOT killing me personally.
Alex Charfen's programs and training have been life-changing for me and my family... and taught me who I really am and what I'm meant to be.
So when you're ready to build an actual business, an actual asset and NOT just make this another job…
When you're ready to keep the role of entrepreneur but learn the role of CEO, go get started with Alex Charfen at charfenrocks.com. That's C-H-A-R-F-E-N rocks.com. | |||
| 10 May 2019 | SFR 241: Where Models Crack... | 00:23:04 | |
I believe heavily in models, patterns, formulas, and systems. However, there's one thing that will always trump a model…
I’m NOT a very creative person.
When I first started in this game, one of my BIGGEST challenges was finding a prolific idea that would generate income.
Have you ever struggled to produce an idea that makes money? I totally did.
I carried around a little black book to jot things down in…
My lack of creativity seemed to be sabotaging me. I didn’t know how to create stuff.
People would ask, “Stephen, what idea do you have?” And I'd be like, “Crap, I don't have any ideas. I just don't.”
… they'd look at me all confused, “...but, Stephen, you're doing all this stuff?”
*THE PLOT TWIST*
One of the reasons that I struggled with ideas was because I kept trying to come up with something that was completely fresh.
The Truth is…
Very few people on this planet know how to do that…
And here’s the Good News...
You don’t need to be a creative genius with a head jam-packed with originality to succeed in this game!
I’m probably gonna say somethings that’ll surprise you - especially if you’ve been following me for any length of time...
But I haven't been able to put this into words until now.
PRINCIPLES OF BUSINESS
I think the BIGGEST thing that can cripple you is when you start comparing yourself to entrepreneurs that have already been playing the game for a while.
When I first started working at ClickFunnels, I’d compare myself negatively to Russell and some of the Inner Circle Members, and that was a dangerous, stupid road to go down.
A lot of them had already…
They could do things without following as many models… which meant they could do things that a new entrepreneur can't.
… and that was one of the things I had to get over.
What was interesting was that I started looking at what they were doing in a different light…
“I SEE PATTERNS”
I'm an observant guy; it's one of my unique abilities... and one of the reasons why I can do what I do.
So I was sitting observing all this stuff, and I started seeing a pattern.
Let me share it with you…
It doesn’t matter whether it’s…
When you start out, you follow the yellow brick road. You follow the path that's already been paved, but eventually, the road stops. So the question is, how do you behave when there are no more bricks?
I’m guessing that you’ve probably heard me talking about the importance of following models and frameworks, and that’s still 100% true.
However, I started asking myself questions like:
… because if we were only able to hack, nothing NEW would ever be created.
Do you know what I'm saying?
So when the yellow bricks are done, it's your turn, as a marketer, to take the path one step further and build something different to what's already been done.
ENTER THE CRAZY ZONE
Let me tell you a story…
Back in the day, I’d sit next to Russell, and suddenly he would have an idea... which meant he'd go like this, “Uuuuuh!!!!”
And we all knew that meant, ‘get up and run.’
So we'd sprint barefoot over to the whiteboard, and Russell would start having these premonitions, kinda these visions...
“Oh my gosh! What if we did this? We could do this, this, and... Oh, my gosh! What if we do this?”
He'd start drawing them out… and we'd start coming up with offers.
(We'd usually brainstorm an offer or a funnel first.)
CREATING THE FUNNEL HACKER COOKBOOK
This is exactly what happened with the The Funnel Hacker Cookbook.
I helped write a good chunk of the book - especially the last bit which is specifically about what funnels to use in different industries.
That was my assignment; it took me FOREVER!
I went through all the...
When Russell came up with the idea for the book, he’d started by saying:
“Oh my gosh! What if we were to make a book that walks through the major funnel types.... it could be like a cookbook with recipes.”
And then Dave would say something... and we'd all be like, “Oh yeah!”
Then I was like, “What if you took adult Legos…” ‘cause that's how I taught in the 2 Comma Club Coaching Program.
Next, someone would say something like, “Yeah! We'll give em’ Russells pajamas too! Yeah, that sounds awesome.”
We’d start to go to these crazy zones...
Eventually, we’d go back and start taking out all the stuff that was too crazy.
Alright…
...and we'd back it way-way down.
That’s when I started to realize that we were no longer just following frameworks.
To a certain extent, we’d adhering to frameworks; paths and systems that had already been proven out…
But then, we'd use a combination of methods that would take things into a prolific zone.
It had a lot to do with the way we'd brainstorm; we'd go to the nut zone to make something truly amazing.
Then we'd go back and remove all of the nutso-crazy stuff, and add another brick at the end of the path.
What's cool about this is it helped me see that Russell wasn't necessarily always following the same models...
So I started applying the same principles to the way I build funnels.
WHAT TRUMPS FRAMEWORKS?
Q: What trumps models? There's something specific that trumps models and frameworks…
Can you guess what is it?
Compared to a lot of people, I don't have a huge company or a huge team, but we do pretty well... why is that?
I know why…
And it's not something I've really been self-aware of long enough to be able to teach about before, but it's something that I started doing…
Everything else I've been teaching is very much true, but there's this element on top of it that has allowed me to trump frameworks and models.
The Answer is…
*PRINCIPLES*
Principles trump models.
That's the biggest thing that I've realized.
The reason no one can really hack me out of my own markets is that I don't hack that much anymore. I just combined things that already existed in a way that has never been done before.
… and PRINCIPLES allow me to do that!
For example
We’ve had 37 out of 87 people reached back out to us in two weeks with our Dream 100 campaign... that's insane.
No one taught me how to do that.
Do you see what I'm saying?
HOW TO DISCOVER YOUR TALENTS
The more I’ve been on this path, the more I’ve realized that it has to do with self-discovery… as you go further and further down this path as an entrepreneur, you discover MORE of yourself and your talents.
... you have ‘em.
If you're like, “Oh, I don't have talents,” just hang on. Suck it up, and understand that you'll find 'em as you move forward.
I'm still finding mine.
The thing that I’ve realized, (and that I've been discovering) is that:
I'm really freakishly good at modeling something that works and that’s been proven, but my unique ability is being able to take principles from frameworks and combine them in a way that’s never been done before.
This is one of the reasons why my stuff has worked so well in the past... that and my ability to simplify and teach.
I suck at a lot of other stuff, but that stuff... I'm really good at.
USING PRINCIPLES I always hate it when someone approaches me and says, “Promote my product.”
Someone said that to me this morning. I'm like, “I'm not gonna promote your product just cause you ask. I've got my own promotion calendar I'm following.”
I don’t want to do that to anyone, so for or my Dream 100 stuff, I was like:
Let's write a webinar, and instead of selling the product, let's sell me to the influencer.
I came up with a way to drip out literally a sideways webinar across my Dream 100 campaigns.
I even used the same principle to pitch Russell to keynote at OfferMind.
Guess what…
It worked really freakin' well!
My Publishing Funnel, I kinda made that up too...
... that's the way I designed it. It worked really freakin' well too.
It feels like I'm tootin' my own horn... this makes me feel really awkward, but I'm trying to illustrate the principle.
PRINCIPLES MAKE MONEY
My Affiliate Marketing stuff has almost done $200 grand in the last year - just from ClickFunnels.
I don't consider myself an affiliate marketer…
Q: So why is it working so well?
A: Because I've taken principles from other models... and principles trump models.
My aim is NOT to be like, ‘Look how cool I am,’ that's not what I'm saying at all. I just want you to realize that...
Principles Trump Models.
IT’S ALL ABOUT TIMING
Here’s how it works...
When you're starting out, you follow models because you should…
My little girl is gonna start learning how to ride a bike without training wheels soon.
She's started by following the model we all know works well for learning how to ride a bike.
Pretty soon we'll be taking off the wheels, and she'll be off on her own. Then she'll discover things on her own that she wasn't taught.
There are certain elements that can be designed… and there are other elements that must be discovered.
They're both right; it's just about timing.
The model what keeps you on track in the beginning, like the frameworks that I talk about.
(Which by the way, someone was like you talk about this framework, but you never teach 'em. Yeah, I do. That's what OfferMind is. It's two days of me teaching straight up frameworks.)
You follow the framework until it stops being constricting and turns into Lego and Playdough... and then, you can go figure out what it is that causes this success in that scenario.
Does that make sense?
BREAKING THE HACK-LOOP
I think some people get stuck in a hack-loop. You should hack. Definitely... *meaning model.
You model all the stuff that's happening out there... but eventually, the apprentice starts to turn into more of a master.
Suddenly you have more assets... because things become malleable and they're not so constricting.
In the One Funnel Away Challenge, what I'm teaching is ‘models.’
I'm teaching frameworks. I'm teaching concrete things that cause cash.
The process in OFA is:
Then the biggest question I get asked, “Well how does it work for me?”
My answer is...
Stop worrying about it. You'll figure that out as you move forward.
Once you gain confidence, you’ll start doing things that you weren't taught because of principles that have worked in other scenarios.
...you’ll start doing things that are not explicitly taught.
That’s the reason why I haven't been hacked out of my own markets.
STAYING CATEGORY KING
I'm the category king in two areas; one was completely accidental, and then the other was by design.
There are two reasons why it’s still working so well:
I'm NOT necessarily hacking that much anymore. I still hack, but I'm NOT hacking frameworks or models. I'm hacking principles.
If I give people a piece of content ahead of time that's truly valuable, they're more likely to buy something even more expensive afterward.
*THAT’S A PRINCIPLE*
I'm trying to get you to understand is how malleable this game actually is.
DISCOVERING THE PATH So yes, hack, but don't get freaked if you want to do something that you haven't been taught...
You might be further down the path than you think.
Yes, it's about frameworks, but after a while, you’ll start doing things that you haven’t been taught... but that you’ve discovered.
When you get good enough in your industry, you're gonna start taking different elements from your red ocean and piecing them together in unique ways.
You’ll add little glazes from other industries and gurus who don’t teach explicitly what you teach, but who have a principle that you can apply.
You take EVERYTHING, and combined it in a way that did NOT exist before to create a freakishly insane, amazing, “Oh my gosh I can't believe he did that,” kind of thing!
THE PRODUCT BIG BANG THEORY
I'm NOT actually that creative. I'm not. One of the false beliefs I had to get over in my life was that I needed to be creative to succeed.
I used to call it The Product Big Bang Theory. Where you have this product idea - “ Boosh! Bam!” ... outta nowhere!
In fact, I wrote an e-book, (which I never released it) which talked about Product Big Bang Theory versus Product Evolution.
Product Big Bang Theory is NOT something that really exists, but we often compare ourselves to those kinds of ideas…
“I don't have those kinds of ideas, Stephen.” Yeah, I didn't either… that's why I'm trying to tell you this.
I learned principles and how to pull things together that already exist in NEW ways to create something that didn’t previously exist.
The things themselves already existed, I just put them in a way that hadn’t been done before.
It's the principle of the orchestrator...
...but I know people who do. They already exist.
I'm just using things that already exist in ways that have never been done before.
Follow the models; they’ll shortcut you tons of time. You’ll gain fluidity, confidence and the ability to move freely inside those frameworks. Then eventually, you can break out of 'em and pull in things in a unique way.
I don't think I've EVER taught this before, and not on purpose... I just didn't realize.
INCREASING MY SPEED
I'm not good at coming up with stuff that's never existed… but I am good at combining stuff in a way that’s never existed before.
What’s allowed me to do that more with a faster pace is the realization that principles trump models.
Models still matter. However, once you focus on principles, you’ll start to get these cool insights that make you look like a creative individual.
I didn't start that way.
When you start learning different principles they expand the model to make it more than what you learned initially.
One of my BIGGEST breakthroughs was realizing that I didn't need to be a creative genius. Just follow the models, and the principles come along.
A lot of times you don't see the principle at first, and you're like, “Why am I doing this?”
It’s like the Mr. Miyagi thing: “Daniel-san, just keep painting the fence, or sand the floor, or whatever…”
A lot of times we don't learn the principle until we've been doing the model for a while.
It's hard to really grasp the principle if I just come out and say, “Principle.”
… which is why the execution of the model is necessary to help you discover the principles within.
BOOM!
If you're just starting out you're probably studying a lot. That's good. You're probably geeking out on all the strategies, right? That's also good.
But the hardest part is figuring out what the market wants to buy and how you should sell it to them, right?
That's what I struggled with for a while until I learned the formula.
So I created a special Mastermind called an OfferMind to get you on track with the right offer, and more importantly the right sales script to get it off the ground and sell it.
Wanna come?
There are small groups on purpose, so I can answer your direct questions in person for two straight days.
You can hold your spot by going to OfferMind.com.
Again, that's OfferMind.com. | |||
| 28 Jun 2022 | "Steve, Go Recharge" | 00:17:31 | |
If you're like me, you've been asked, "do you ever stop?" many times. And my reaction to that question has gone from annoyance to a little anger, to "huh... maybe I should rest "to taking that incredible advice seriously. Not only is it important, but recharging has become a strategic move for my creativity. You can't just go, go, go and go and still be productive in the long term. If you try to do it, you'll suffer a breakdown, and I'd know because I have gone through that. Besides the typical ways of recharging like sleep, nutrition, and sauna, there is something else that I find quite effective. I got this from the book, The Way of the Superior Man. The masculine recharges through austerity and challenge. Tune in to find out how to do it and why it's effective. Key Takeaways My first 'free day' in a while (00:45) Avoid burnout (04:43) How the masculine recharges (05:34) How to feel fulfilled while achieving (08:06) Austerity challenge (09:00) Live NFT funnel build (14:35) Additional Resources Subscribe to the podcast newsletter here --- Download Season 1 episodes here -- Sales Funnels Radio is a podcast for all passionate digital marketing pros looking to up their game and stay ahead. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please follow and share!
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| 12 Sep 2017 | SFR 74: Publish! ...and get haters | 00:18:37 | |
WHEN To Interview, AND When NOT To...
Oh, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. You guys, it has been seriously six weeks since I had personally done a podcast and I'm very excited for this episode actually. I hope you've been enjoying the last six episode. What I decided to do is that, you know, when we found out that oh my gosh, look, there's six different categories really that most businesses fit in.
Almost all of them actually... I was like, "Why don't I go find someone who's killing it with internet sales funnels? Let me go find that person. Let me go interview them and go dive deep with them." Anyway, I hope that you've enjoyed it. If you've not had a chance to listen to each of them I would. What was coolest to think through especially as the interviewer, watch all of these similarities that everyone one of them was talking about. A lot of it had to do with just standard marketing principles, but then also the very specific ways of like, "Hey, this works only in this industry," or, "This works only in this industry." But what's funny, and the more I've talked with Russell and the more that I've learned from him, he's taught me in many aspects that a lot of the times some of the reasons why he goes and he crushes it so hard routinely, over and over and over and over again is because he will take tactics and use them cross-industry. There's a great book ... Oh my gosh, I can't remember the name of it. It's the story of the dude that was selling snake oil almost literally and he made tons of money and people found ... Ah, man, I can't remember the name of it. Crap, I should have found it before I started this episode, but basically what he's taught me is that hey look, one of the best ... And actually teaches that in the book too. Is that one of the best places to find the best working marketing tactics out there is actually inside of the medical industry, right? They've got weight loss, they've got different dieting, they've got liposuction, they've got procedures, they've got high ticket things, low ticket things, supplements, continuity. You know what I mean? They've got all this stuff just over and over and over again. There is so much money spent on having the best sales copy and the best advertorials, the best creatives, the best ...
Really red ocean. Funnel hack them and then take one step further, add your own piece into it and now you have a new niche, right? That's how you have a new opportunity. Well, one of the other ways you can protect the niche and protect your business is to start studying cross-industry tactics. That's one of the major reasons why I'm telling you. Even if it's one that you're like, "Hey, I did not think that at all I would get anything from that interview Steven did before," but my guess is that you will and that you'll learn something. Go, "Oh my gosh, if I was to take that from this industry and place it over here I wonder if it would work really well?" Now you'd be prepared it might flop, but it's also highly likely that you're gonna ... It's super fascinating to start thinking of it that way. Anyway, so go out and start trying to find different cross-industry tactics that you could be throwing in there. Now if you don't have a business yet, focus on the business. Focus on creating something. Get something out there. Start selling, start asking for people's credit cards... Don't get distracted by that when I'm telling you right here. But if you've got something up and you know how it sells, you figured out what you're selling and you figured out how to sell it, now it's time to start going cross-industry. Or maybe it is start going out and how can you create yourself to be more hard to beat, right? How can you create yourself even stiffer competition or stiffer for others to actually beat? Stronger marketing tactics, right? Make the offer even cooler. There's a whole bunch of different ways. That's actually part of a presentation I give elsewhere that I should maybe show you here and ways to protect your niche. But anyway, I recently, while I was in the middle of those interviews, I had somebody reach out. And it's always so funny to me the people that react on what I publish. It's hilarious. You always get people who love what you do and it's super fun to hear from them. I love that. It keeps you motivated. And then there's always people that reach out and you're like, "Did you get some kind of status by telling me how much you hated the last episode of something?" What was the motivation going on inside your head for why you felt you had to actually turn around and say, "Hey, that sucked." Or I don't know, when I knew it didn't. Or frankly I don't care. You know what I mean? If you're out there and you're starting to publish just understand it. I wanted to just tell you guys why I actually publish. Why I do this. Because a lot of you know I did not want to publish for a long time and I want you to know why you should be. I've written out several reasons here... I want you to know why you need to be publishing, because this individual reached out and they were like, "Look ..." They said, "Steven ..." Which I totally disagree with, but I see what they're saying too. They said, "Steven, you're so much better interviewing people and you're terrible by yourself." I was like, "Mmmm, that's a strong opinion. I can see that." But I want you to know why I interview and I want you to know why I will have ones where I just teach my own thoughts. I recently was sitting in a room with JLD, right? John Lee Dumas, Entrepreneur On Fire. Great guy. Do not take anything I'm about to say as a jab at him. Understand that it is completely out of a positioning move of what I'm about to say. I listened to him teach on stage and the man is amazing. He's done how many thousand interviews literally. That's his whole model. He interviews people like crazy, right? Like Letterman. You know, David Letterman. He just interviews. The interview and the interview and the interview and the interview and the interview and the interview. And that's it, and I don't know any of his personal thoughts. While he was talking I had the very, very distinct thought pop into my head. I was like, "You know what's interesting ...?" Because he started doing Q and A and every single one of the questions that was coming to him all had to do on how he podcasts. None of the questions had anything to do about business or marketing. It was all about, "Hey, how the heck do you pull off recording that many interviews? Oh my gosh. Hey, how on earth are you able to get it done?" And I'm not taking jabs at him. What he's done is fabulous. It's amazing. He's made obviously a huge name for himself, but when Russell stands up, who also has a podcast, who publishes in many places, people know very well who he is. People don't ask him how he podcasts. Meaning he'll get that question, but it's not the main topic...
I don't get questions about ... I mean more than two or three that I've had that has spurred a few podcast episodes where I teach you how I do my podcasts and how I publish, but I positioned myself as wanting ... You know, I want people to know that I'm in a unique spot where literally all day, every day I'm building stuff in click funnels in different industries and get to see cool places. You know, "Hey, this works well here. This works well there. This doesn't work well here." That's a unique place to be in and I was like, "That's a unique place to be in." And I was like, "That's a unique positioning." I don't want to do interview after interview after interview where suddenly I become the guy who is just the interviewer. Right? And so start think ... I want you to go publish. It will change your life... Give yourself one year to publish. Even just do a bare minimum once a week and I promise you your life and your situation and your trajectory will be in a different spot because of publishing. It helps you figure out your craft. And you know what? That person was right. Especially at the beginning of my podcast show. You can go back and listen to them. They're not that amazing. Like what I am saying is good, how I'm saying it, my delivery, me, my message, my polarity, my attractive character wasn't that good and I know that, and Russell knows that and everyone who listens to it knows that. But the reason that I podcast and the reason that I do it is because it made me better. I've been doing this over a year now, which I'm very proud of. I had some great episodes, had some ones that probably aren't that amazing, but the reason that I podcast and the reason that I do a few shows ... Yeah right, kind of sporadic in between. There was a season there where I kind of didn't do many interviews, but I like to sprinkle them throughout and I've got some great interviews coming up for you guys... Oh my gosh, it's so freakin awesome. I got some good ones coming up for you, but the reason I do is because I find my own voice by doing this and one of the biggest issues that we find why people are not being successful ... I'm about to go run a FHAT event tomorrow for three days. Why can I stand up ... And I'm not saying that I'm as good as Russell or I'm not trying to compare myself to him, but how can Russell Brunson let a guy ... Again, I'm not tooting my own horn, but just think about this. I'm not drinking my own Kool-Aid. I'm very, very aware of that. Just think with me through this on the process. How is it on earth that the CEO of ClickFunnels, guy like Russell Brunson, could let a guy like Steve Larsen stand up on his stage for three straight days and teach in his place? Well, it's because I've been practicing my own voice, right? I figured out my message, I figured out those things. There's a piece of value I can now give and at the beginning when I was publishing I didn't have those things, so I went and I interviewed and I found my voice along the way and it got stronger and stronger and it still does get stronger and more intense. The power of publishing is ridiculous. It's amazing. If you think of it, it's almost like ... A lot of you guys know I like to backpack a lot. I love being out in the mountains. There's something about it. I think it's ... For whatever reason it's very, like, a combination of calming to the nerves but also I feel like there's a lot of great meditation, things like that, you can do. I actually don't really know how to meditate, but I like the quiet and maybe that's close enough. I like the quiet and I like to think while it's quiet and dream and things like that. You know what I mean? And have my own little visions on where I want to be and things like ... Like that's cool. I really enjoy that, but just thinking about that, any time there's ever been a trail ... You know, I've done a lot of high altitude backpacking where the oxygen is so thin the trees can't grow. You know, like the super, super high mountains. I love that stuff. It's extreme, it's hard, it's very challenging, it's very taxing on the body. It's fun to go through something like that. Well every time ... And you might laugh and go ... Anyway, let me finish that. Every time we go climb a mountain, if there are moments where there's no trail ... Which might shock you. There's a lot of moments, especially high altitude where there's not a lot of people, humans, that have been up there like ever. You know what I mean? Not a lot of humans have gone in some of the places I've been, which is really, really fun. There is not enough feet that have hit the ground to create a trail, you know what I mean? And it's way harder to climb or it's a lot harder. I got to be more careful. The footing is different, it's more loose. It can be more scary, and so when you're climbing up these mountains and you're doing this stuff, when there is a trail it's so much easier. Think of every episode that you publish like a brick and you lay that brick and you put it down there and just like ... It just popped in my head. Just like Will Smith says, "You lay that brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid." And you put it out there as best as you know how, and you just focus on that one. Not on the whole road, not on the whole trail. I've never actually hiked a mountain where there's a brick trail, but just for the analogy. Okay, then there's another brick. Now you need to lay that brick as perfectly as that ... You know, and that's like another episode or another content piece or you've published something or whatever it is. Another communication piece has gone out there. And you do it as perfectly as you can and you do the next one as perfectly as you can. Pretty soon you have a road. Does that make sense? And it's easier for people to climb your mountain as you, the guru, on the mountain. Does that make sense? It's easier for people to approach you when you have tons of episodes and you have tons of stuff published. That stuff doesn't go away. Do you know the SEO power behind the stuff that I've made with that? That's the reason that I do it. Anyway, that's just part of the reason I just wanted to share that with you that I interview people because of the ridiculous value. I know I'm not an expert in everything or barely even in one, you know? And so I go find people who got great stories and I have them share their experience. Stuff that would take me their lifetime to learn also. I just got my own, so I go interview like crazy, which is super fun. Usually I'll batch interview and I'll get tons of interviews done at once and I'll just kind of drip-release them out. And then there are moments when I'm like, "Hey, you know what? There's a cool thing that I just learned about X, Y, and Z and you know what? It has everything to do with funnel building. Why don't I just share it with you?" You know, right? It's just my episodes of myself. Everyone that you put out there is kind of like a brick and guys, ah, it has helped ... Someone could have a great, new offer. They can have a great, new opportunity. They could have a cause, but if they don't have the charismatic leader, which is heavily dependent on finding your voice. If they don't have that last aspect it is very challenging to create a mass movement. It's very challenging to create a brand. You got someone super boring? I don't care... Guys, stereotypically in College, professors, they know a lot of crap, right? But a lot of times a lot of them are really boring, right? They're bored of their own message. They don't have the attractive character or charismatic leader and the ones that have that are the ones that really make you turn into a new person, right? Or challenge you or whatever it is. Anyways, it helps you find your voice and the last part here is the revenue that a podcast can generate is insane, right? Last year I had a single product generate 50 Grand, a lot of which was kin or a lot of it came from the podcast. There's no ad spend. People found out because of this. Podcast listeners are typically buyers. They're action-takers. They're the kind of people who are doing things when they're out and about, right? They're listening to things when they're out and about. They're proactive people. They're not the kind of people who sit around and watch TV all day. YouTube audiences aren't really like that. Podcasters are, right? Facebook people, they're not usually like that also. They're kind of there for distraction and for entertainment. Podcasters though? If you're listening to this podcast I know already that you're the kind of person who has dreams and goals and aspirations. You're trying to do something with your life and you don't give a crap if someone else is trying to make fun of you about it. Does that make sense? That's the people I want to hang out with, so that's why I chose podcasting, okay? The revenue that comes from it is crazy.
I feel so, so excited and so happy. I've had I think at least four people that I know who've at least told me that because I said, "Hey, go podcast, go podcast, Sir," or whatever it is. "Go publish." Whatever it is that you love doing. They've starter their own show or their own channel or whatever. They've started their own publishing venue and because of it they've made money. Episode two, you know what I mean? Lots of it. Life-changing amounts and not just like one person that I know of. It happens over and over and over again. Publishing brings an insane amount of authority behind it. Anyway, it's getting late. I got to go to bed. I got the fad event, which if you don't know what that is, it is a three-day event where basically we help you write out your entire webinar script. We build the webinar funnel, we help you create a new opportunity, the attractive character. I mean every piece you can imagine. We have had many people ... We actually really only started doing this back in February, but that was kind of just to a closed-group. Publicly we've only been doing it for four months. We've had several people make well over a million dollars from that event alone, so I'm excited. It's always a fun group to go to and it's part of the Two Comma Club coaching program that I'm the head coach for, which is awesome. Super fun. I really enjoy that program. Love hanging out with those people, but I got to go to bed because it starts at few hours and I'm going to be on stage for couple times for like 18 straight hours, so they're long days. Super fun, but anyway, great stuff. Anyways, guys, hope you're doing awesome and if you want to be interviewed on my podcast I want you to go to salesfunnelradio.com. I'll be updating that site soon. I'll be updating all the stuff I've been doing shortly, but I'm a little bit busy. But go to salesfunnelradio.com, scroll down and click on the green button on the right and it will record a voicemail straight off your browser right to me. And, you know, sell yourself. Pitch yourself. Tell me your story.
Alright guys, talk to you later. Bye.
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| 02 Nov 2018 | SFR 188: Branding Comes Second... | 00:19:13 | |
Boom! What's going on everyone? It's Steve Larsen, and this is Sales Funnel Radio.
Today, I'm gonna teach you guys why branding comes second.
I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today, and now I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.
The real question is, how will I do it without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer.
Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels.
My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.
Alright you guys, I know that I'm probably gonna ruffle some feathers with this episode. I totally get that. I totally understand. I'm not trying to, but I feel so strongly about this that if someone gets offended like, “Hmm... Okay! You know, alright... sounds good!”
So it was about six years ago, I had the unique opportunity of going and pitching some actual investors to invest in a business plan that I'd written. Now, this is before I ever had considered the fact that maybe VC funding wasn't always the best route... depending on what you were doing.
Maybe I didn't need to get funding. Maybe I didn't need to give up ownership in a company just to get it going, right?
And what was interesting is.... that was before I learned about any of this stuff.
I've always been very active in this sphere though... And so I was doing what I thought was best.
So what I did is... I remember we went and we wrote, I think it was like a 30-page business plan for the real estate space. It was with a buddy of mine, and he and I (as well as a few others), we came up with this plan.
It was this really cool real estate strategy. His dad was a kind of a real estate mogul, kind of. He was taking us under his wing a little bit, and he was showing us some cool, neat ways to (I think it was storage units) off-set costs with these clever strategies.
And it was cool - it was really cool.
Anyway, so we were excited about it; we're like, "Sweet! What if we just asked for the amount of investment that it would cost for us to go get a down payment on one of these properties? Let's just try it."
And cool enough, the professor we were doing this class with was facilitating the whole process. So the professor went and he actually grabbed these investors, so we did it in front of a live panel of investors.
We had a cool and unique opportunity of going in, and we did the exact process that you see on Shark Tank...without as much drama.
There was no slow motion, and there wasn't any slow-mo 'staring at each other looks' before anyone said anything - like on CNBC. But it was still awesome.
I remember we sat there, and we got to watch as each group would present their business plan; how much they believed their company was worth, give a percentage of the company away in exchange for an investment amount. Then watch them as they would defend why that was an awesome idea, and why they should get the cash, and why they had great numbers. You know, things like that.
It was really, really cool and I learned a lot and understood how all of that works. And it's really helped me even in my funnel building, funny enough. Even though I don't go that route.
So what was interesting is like, as I started doing that stuff they told us, "Hey, if somebody goes in and it truly is amazing - they will actually invest." And I was like, "Sweet, alright!"
Well, we get up there, and we start talking and stuff like that, and I remember that there were these different elements in creating this. It was like a 30-page business plan. It was very, very professional looking. We did everything from a SWOT analysis, (if you guys know what that is). All the standard stuff that you're supposed to do when creating a business plan and analyzing a market. Which is 100% different than I do it now. Anyway, very fascinating...
I don't think any of us got any kind of investment. We did really well all of one of us. It was awesome in front of that board. Anyway, none of us got any kind of investment or anything like that. But we did that actually multiple times because of what I had studied.
I actually really do appreciate the college I went to on all this stuff. They did a great job for what they had, right? No one really teaches direct response marketing. That's kind of something you have to go learn on your own, you know what I mean? There's not like a major for that. No one's teaching that stuff, you know what I'm saying. For what they had it was awesome, I get it...
There were multiple occasions though where we pitched. I wrote a ton of business plans in college. And they were all very, very similar. We would go in and we would - there was a format we were following, and then we would go, and we would present it, whether it was just a professor or kinda like a dummy panel or a real panel. We did that many times, multiple times.
I started getting good at defending ideas back and forth for that. And when we actually started doing it for real... Colton and I, sitting over there, we actually went - we did it with a business that he and I were doing. We ended up winning the business competition in our college, and they sent us off to another college to go do it. We totally didn't win, but it was a good experience. It was a bunch of fun, and we learned a lot.
Now you say, "Stephen, what does that have to do with branding?" Well, there was always a moment in creating these business plans where you're like," Crap, I got this idea. What represents my idea? We need a logo. What's our slogan? What's our mission statement? What's this, what's that?" And we would spend so much time on those things that it actually ended up being a distraction of what actually caused value in that company. I see so much of the same pattern now...
The reason why I have such a war against branding is because it doesn't matter for a long time. It really doesn't.
Most of the time when I go, and I start creating something like a brand, man I go to a site, and I will buy a little logo that I think looks cool. I'll switch the colors around, so it looks somewhat okay, and in 15 minutes I have a logo! I do that all the time.
There's only like three or four logos I've ever had professionally created. But it's not until there's cash raining that I even think about that stuff.
What's interesting about that is that issue of branding comes up very frequently. In fact, you can see this on Shark Tank all the time. There was a lady I was watching, it was on Shark Tank. She came up, and she had the product there in front of her. I love watching Shark Tank. She had the product there in front of her.
She had a beautiful display... an amazing display with her stuff. There was the slogan; "This is what we're gonna do that's different." And cool, that was awesome... But then here comes the dreaded question they always ask, "Now, tell us what your numbers are." They go, "Well, we just started this three months ago." And you always see the faces. You're like, "Oh, crap!" I'm sure they just add those in because of straight drama. They never invest in them. And it's because it's not worth anything.
And you hear the way entrepreneurs who are brand new defend their products. And they always, well not always, but a lot of times their defense comes back to things like branding: "Well we got a great logo. We got a great color scheme. We got a great..."
It's not uncommon to hear that kind of a phrase when somebody's defending their idea. "Well we got the logo done, we got the... " This has happened many times.
I told you guys it took me about 17 tries to really get a business right. Many of those early 17 tries before I knew what I was doing, I would spend literally two or three days looking through different logos trying to figure out which one was the best to represent the company, rather than, "How do we sell the thing?" Totally different question! It's so funny how different it is.
There's so many stories that are running through my head about this topic. Recently, somebody reached out, and they said, "You know what, Stephen? You could do a lot better if your personal branding was better. I'm a personal branding expert." I was like, "Cool. I REALLY don't care!" And they're like, "What are you talking about?" This like a year ago, and I was like, "I REALLY don't care. Personal branding doesn't mean a thing to me for a while." And they're like, "No, the personal branding is what represents you." I was like, "No, my products represent me. My stories represent me. My podcast represents me. My branding does not."
I just barely got this backdrop. We just barely got these sweet intros and outros. Does branding matter? Yes. But not for a long time. Not for a while.
You can go back listen to Russell Brunson's courses. You can go back and see lots of guys courses that are out there, and they all say the same thing.
This is when branding actually matters. If you got hot traffic, warm traffic, cold traffic. Branding tends to matter more to hot traffic. Hot and warm, kind of in that realm. When you get to a warm/ cold - that kind of scenario -where people don't know who you are anyway, it really doesn't matter as much as we wish it did. It's the reason why I build the pages, and just kind of like, "Alright, let's ship it."
We went through, and we grabbed the top 100 funnels that are converting the most in ClickFunnels. For the most part, they're all pretty butt-ugly funnels. I mean like really! And almost all of them. It was like 95 of the 100 - absolutely not design pretty. Absolutely not. Does this make sense what I am saying? Does this make sense what I'm trying to say with this whole thing?
I've been geeking out on an author lately. He's become one of my favorite authors. His name is Christopher Lochhead. I think that's how you say his last name. Anyway, he talks about how, for a small 'e' entrepreneur, branding comes so far down the road. In fact, actually, let me grab the quote right here; it's super awesome. I read this on a plane. I like to either read or write on a plane.
Anyway, he says' "Quite bluntly, branding, in the absence of category creation is bs." He doesn't say "BS...", He says "Quite bluntly though, branding in the absence of category creation is bs." He says, "Categories make brands." Categories make brands.
Branding comes after category creation.
If you are like, "Hey, you know what, I'm gonna go into..." I don't know, think about anything where there's super high competitive. Let's say you're gonna go into the BizOp space. Let's say you're gonna sell wealth. And let's say you're gonna go sell real estate. And let's say in order for you to be successful in real estate, you're like, "I'm gonna become a real estate agent." Does that make sense?
You're gonna be wealthy because you're gonna go into real estate and you're gonna go into real estate by becoming a real estate agent - sweet.
Now, if you are doing literally the exact same thing as everybody else, why on earth are you going to make a brand? That's not going to set you apart very well. What sets you apart is figuring out how to be different than everyone else.
I'm not saying branding different. I'm saying what are you physically doing differently to collect leads than every other agent? What are you physically doing differently to close leads that's different than every other agent? What are you physically doing that's different to follow up, to up-sell... if you do up-sell? Does that make sense?
Then think about branding, right? You don't have a freaking business. Why would you spend money on something like a brand? Do you know what I mean?
There have been multiple times where I'll go in, and I'm not going to name names, but start looking, kay. And you go in, and these people have these beautiful personal brands... And I can't figure out what the heck they sell? Start diving in deeply, and you find out they don't even have a product yet. But man, they have spent five thousand dollars hiring the great people to make them look awesome. And I'm like, "Sweet! That is a lot of smoke and mirrors."
Again, I'm not trying to throw rocks, but I don't really care if you feel it because I'm so forward on this topic. Categories make brands.
It's kind of like in the book, Expert Secrets The idea is not to choose a niche. The idea is to create a niche. Another word for a niche is "market" or "category."
Go create a market that doesn't exist. Go create a category that's never existed before. Do something, come up with a category that truly is unique. And the way you move people into that category is by using what I've called the purple offer.
You use elements from the red - so there's a place of security for them (and you) 'cause it's like it's proven. But then you lace in these other things from this category that's never existed before... from things that have never existed before, and you start moving them this way.
There's a super cool... I think it was another Shark Tank thing. These guys were like mechanical engineers. They were extremely smart. I think they had gotten at their least Masters or Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering or something like that. I think the company's called Pop Cards.
I have one over there. I got one for my wife for her birthday. They're super cool.
What they figured out is that they could use cool machine lasering and stuff like that to create these 3D pop-up cards. And people are like, "Why did you get that much education to create a card company?" That's a good question, right? Why would you ask that? You look at these things and they're gorgeous. It's absolutely, it's breathtaking.
You open these things up, and it's extremely intricate. A lot of math involved in what they've done. Anyway, super, super cool what they've done. They created something that's never been done before. "NOW let's think about branding!" Does that make sense? So it's in that order that I like to do it.
First create the category that's never existed before, now the brand.
Music even, I was just talking about this with Russell yesterday. There is a band I really, really like. I've followed their music for years. I found out that he likes a song from them too. I was like, "What's up, that's really cool.” And I messaged him and said the reason why they're so big and so popular, (their name is Odezsa). The reason they are so popular, and they're such a big deal is because they kind of created a category of music that's never existed before - so they were the obvious owner of it. Then they made branding.
You look at all their branded stuff and it's amazing, it's incredible. But they didn't have any of that branding before they launched. It doesn't matter. What matters is figuring out which category, which niche, which market you can create to be the first in... and then next go to the branding.
So anyways, without saying the same thing over and over again, that's the main point of this podcast. That's the reason why when somebody's like, "What should my logo be?" I'm like, "I don't freakin’ care." I will never have a business card. I don't understand them. Why do I need a business card? Why do I need these little tiny things, unless it is part of a little marketing campaign - that I've done...
Last year at Funnel Hacking Live, I made my dad business cards... but with a QR code that was his bait. They scanned the QR code and got his cool free bait, and it started them into the funnel. That makes sense right? But just a freaking name and email... Man, they could get on my Facebook profile.
Anyway, so that's my whole beef with it. When someone's like, "Oh, man, this page, you could design it better. You could do this over here." I'm like, "You know what? This page gets 65% opt-in rate. I don't really care to touch it." And I know it's NOT because of how it looks that it's converting. Guys, I'm trying to clear the smoke on my opinions on this topic 'cause several people have reached in asking about it. It's not a personal attack or anything, but literally from a sales or marketing standpoint. Marketing is NOT branding. It's not.
Marketing is the act of changing beliefs with the intent for a purchase to happen. That's all marketing is. I'm changing someone's beliefs with the intent for them to make a purchase. That's what marketing is. Branding is NOT marketing, it's not. Facebook ads are not marketing. They can be part of it, just like branding can be part of marketing, but it's NOT marketing.
I'm trying to get clear on these definitions with people. I actually might do a definitions podcast here soon - which I think would be really, really cool. Just so that you see where I operate from and why my stuff is working. I know the three or four terms that I focus on that make the money flow. And when I take my eye away from 'em, and I start looking at things like branding - that's when my money usually starts decreasing.
For all the hot traffic, for all the follow-up sales, for repeat purchases - branding can start to matter more for sure. Absolutely. People will want that kind of professional feel depending on what you are doing. They want to know that it was created with intent - that it's not haphazard. But when it comes down to a lot of my front-end stuff... That's why I didn't upgrade the podcast for a long time. Do you know what I mean? It didn't matter, it didn't matter for a long time.
Recently, I've gone through, and we've done a pretty strong rebranding of a lot of my front end stuff. We've got chatbots in place now. Everything's tied together. A lot of value ladder steps, I'm getting them into place in both businesses, especially in one of them - where it's a lot more automation - I'm going in, and I'm creating systems and processes to remove me.
Now it's time to think about branding.
Now, it's time to think about creating more of that feeling and that experience as well. We're upgrading the package that we ship out to people when they buy products. The actual physical box, we've got logos we put on it rather than just a normal envelope. For a while, a normal envelope was fine.
People will act like branding is like this lock-gate for them to make money. It's not, and it's not the reason someone's not buying from you. It's not.
Go back to the sales message. Go back to the fundamentals. Do I have a sales message that's compelling? Do I have an offer that over-delivers both to the customer and my wallet? Because you don't have to compete on price when you have a good offer.
And then when those are all confirming that they're great and the cash is coming in... when you can go do all the tweaks you want to on the funnel - and it's still working. You got cool sustainable traffic. Then think about a little rebrand and branding itself.
So anyway guys, I hope that's helpful to you. And hopefully, it clarifies a little bit about why I look at things that I do. When I'm building a page, I'll kind of make it, so the layout makes it easy to consume the text - so you can see more of the sales message. But that doesn't have anything to do really with colors. It really doesn't.
Thanks, guys so much. Hopefully, that makes sense to you, guys? Remember categories make brands. Branding in the absence of category creation and in the absence of niche or market creation is bs. It's a waste of time. It's not the reason why things convert.
All right guys thank you so much.
Hopefully, you guys enjoyed the episode and we'll see you in the next one, bye. Woohoo! Hey, thanks for listening.
Hey, many of you don't actually know that I made my first money online as an affiliate marketer. If you want to know how I funded my entire company without using any of my own money EVER, you can learn to do the same for FREE at affiliateoutrage.com.
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| 16 Jun 2018 | SFR 149: Its Usually A Marketing Problem | 00:20:54 | |
Just over two years ago, fresh out of college - having unexpectedly landed my dream job as 'Lead Funnel Builder' at ClickFunnels - I found myself sitting just feet away from my marketing hero, Russell Brunson.
For the first few months, I was practically mute. Looking back, I think I was in shock. Inside, my head was whirring and going crazy: 'Oh, my gosh, I'm sitting next to Russell Brunson. RUSSELL BRUNSON! Look it's Russell Brunson. I'm in the same room as RUSSELL BRUNSON...'
After a few cool moves to start a conversation: 'Hey, Russell, I nearly put a poster of you on my wall.'- *AWKWARD*- I decided that the best approach was to stay quiet and learn everything I could by watching the Master Marketer doing his thing.
It was fascinating to watch Russell's brain work; the incredible way that he’d create offers, recall marketing campaigns, get into the zone to brainstorm and solve problems. Each day I learned far more than I ever had in my whole Marketing Degree.
The main reason I started my Sales Funnel Radio podcast was to record all the nuggets that I was learning and pass them on.
Day after day, I'd sit there mesmerised, listening to Russell coach and talk with his inner circle. I'd listen to him advising all these massive gurus and influential people - as well as entrepreneurs who were just starting out. So much golden advice- I was a like a sponge soaking it all up.
After about three to four months, a funny thing happened - I started to notice patterns in the conversations that Russell was having. So one day, as he finished on a coaching call, I turned around to him and said: 'Hey, Dude, you're kinda saying the same things over and over again.' And, he goes, 'Yeah!'
Now, if you're an expert in your field, you've probably noticed a similar pattern? You like to dive deep into your subject; you're obsessed with it. You have sooo much knowledge to pass on, but the problem is that a lot of the people you're serving don't need to go that deep with you.
They don't want to freak out and geek out the same way that you do - they just want to take the next step- or get to the next level.
So we had this idea to create a way to guide people from the ground up, on a step by step path, to create a million dollar company. From that point, Russell could take them EVEN HIGHER. It was a win/win solution.
The entrepreneur got access to everything they needed to help them on the first part of their journey, and Russell got to spend less time on the basics, and more time in his zone of genius.
I spent six months going through twelve years of Russell's videos, and all of his content. I backward planned and organized the material into the exact steps needed for a million dollar business. We created a 200-hour membership area - it was freaking huge and packed with VALUE... And that's how 'Secrets Masterclass' was born.
On its launch, Secrets Masterclass made a million in three weeks! What was even more fun was that people who joined the program made a million dollars too. A lot of people became hundred-thousandaires, while many others made money on the internet for the first time in their entrepreneurial life.
It was such a success that we decided to take the material from the Secrets Masterclass and condense it into a three-day live event -'The Funnel Hack-A-Thon' (aka, The FHAT Event.) The FHAT event was loads of fun and got excellent results for the participants.
Then right before the 2018 Funnel Hacking Live in Orlando, Florida, Russell asked me if I wanted to go on stage to do a presentation (Hell, Yeah!)... The challenge was to take the material from the three-day FHAT Event and present it in ten minutes. Holy Smoke!
At first, I didn't think I could do it. It was soooo challenging. Luckily, my head is kinda geared towards sorting this stuff out - I love to take a complex subject and simplify it down to the essentials.
So I put on some music and got my brain into gear. I started at 4pm and didn't finish until 5am the following day. That's eleven solid hours spent creating a ten-minute presentation. CRAZY!
Hands up, guys - at the event I ran over time by seven-minutes (sorry, Russell). But you get the picture? Twelve years of teaching - turned into a two hundred hour membership site, then condensed to create a three-day live FHAT event, finally turned into a ten-minute (ok, *cough* seventeen minutes) presentation.
Well, all this condensing got me thinking…
Sometimes you have a fantastic product that you've been selling it face to face, but it's not selling online the way you want it to.
Here’s the problem (and most entrepreneurs have been through this at some time):
You decide that you're going to sell a something - so you go out and find a product that is selling well. That's smart. That makes sense.
However, once you find your product, then you just kind of toss it out there and kind of hope that people start buying it. And that's the extent of your plan. I've definitely done that before… and then been shocked that no one's buying. Duh!
The truth is if you want to take less risk and make your product launches more successful - you need a better way.
A bit more work up front is the best way to ensure a launch that goes well, makes money while serving both you and your customer…
Often when things don’t go well, we think it’s a problem with the funnel. However, it's usually NOT a funnel problem. It's usually a marketing problem! If you can sell your product face to face, but you’re not making online sales, then you're just not doing the necessary ‘marketing’ to qualify your customers in a way that makes the sale easy.
So, I started to wonder what would be the quickest way to help entrepreneurs create an effective Marketing Plan that would take away the guesswork and risk to bring in a constant stream of qualified leads.
I started distilling the material down again...
My goal was to find a way to design a marketing plan without having to go through two hundred hours of content.
Once again, it took me a whole night of obsessing, but by the time the sun came up, I’d created a two-page document that solved the problem. By filling in a two-page sheet, you can design your offer and the marketing that sells it.
It doesn't matter if you're selling face to face, or on the internet; this is the core stuff that anyone would want ever.
About three weeks ago, I taught this method at my own event. It took about six hours. I think that’s the fastest I can teach this while still being effective.
As I was watched people fill out the sheet I could feel the energy in the room change. Suddenly, I’d sense that someone in the front had got it - then another person and another - until the energy of the room was buzzing with people having breakthroughs.
It didn’t matter what kind of funnel they were building - whether it was free plus shipping book funnel, low ticket, high ticket, coaching, agency - it was the same process. It's still the act of selling and putting things together.
‘You need to start creating the marketing and designing the marketing before you freaking launch the product.
I know you might be thinking, ‘Yeah, Steve, that’s obvious!’... But let me ask you, ‘Do you actually do it?’
Before you even go into ClickFunnels and consider building a funnel - you need to take these steps:
Essential Steps Before You Build A Funnel
Once you know that your sales message is good and the fulfillment of the offer is great, then you can freak out over all the bells and whistles of the funnel.
Obviously, you create a rough draft of the funnel to sell your product, but don't obsess over it.
Right now, my funnel is limping on one leg. It’s broken, I know it is. There's lots of stuff that's wrong with it, but I don't want to shift my focus away from what I’m working on yet.
Every time I say that people are shocked, ‘What? Why is your funnel broken, man? You were the lead funnel builder at ClickFunnels. Are you kidding? Why is your one funnel limping along?’
BUT that stuff doesn't matter. The funnel won’t make the sale. What makes the sale is THE SALES MESSAGE.
The success of your product has so much less to do with pages or what color the button is. On a page level that's great, but on a market level you need to figure out:
That's all Funnel Hacking is. If you know those two things, you’ll have pretty much everything you need to create an opportunity. Then you go and design your New Opportunity before your actual funnel.
You need to be able to stand up and deliver the sales message so that people want to give you cash. It has nothing to do with being online or offline and EVERYTHING to do with your sales message.
The act of putting a product on the internet is just a method to market your sales message.
I love how Joe Polish talks about the difference between Sales and Marketing:
‘Marketing systematizes and automates selling. Marketing is selling in advance.’ - Joe Polish
Sales is an activity that happens face to face.
It's a whole bunch of logical closes as to reasons why people should act now:
Marketing is how you get somebody to your face so you can sell to them
Marketing delivers people to your offer who are (to quote Joe Polish again):
The great news is that the better you are at marketing, the less hardcore sales tactics you’ll have to use. Just think about that:
Marketing delivers people who are ready to do business with you. It’s the act of attracting pre-qualified people in an automated way so that you don’t have to knock doors or cold call to find them.
In my opinion, selling is the most prestigious career out there, but marketing will take you to the next level.
When I buiIt my first ever funnel in ClickFunnels, we didn't have the $97 a month. So we put everything together before we even pushed ‘go’ on the two-week trial.
We designed the funnel. We designed the offer. We designed the videos. We wrote the copy. We had to build the funnel and get customers before ClickFunnels started to bill us. And that’s how we did it.
If I think back through on every successful funnel I've ever had, I’ve taken the time to design the marketing before I ever build the freaking funnel - Every Single Time!
If you've got products that are not doing as well as you want, then take a step back and look at your marketing.
You've got to get into the psyche of the person who's leaving the red ocean. You've got to know the psyche of your prospective customers.
Anyways, I'm excited. I want to do an event where you’ll be able to work through this two-page document with me. You’ll design your sales message, your story and your offer in a way that attracts customers easily from the red ocean.
It doesn't matter what funnel you apply it to; this is the first step that you need to take before you even open ClickFunnels...
My wife is due to have our third kid any day now. She keeps having contractions, and I'm going to sleep with an eye open so that I can be ready. I don’t exactly know when the event will be, but I’m thinking sometime in August - so stay tuned, and I’ll let you know. Until next time- Go Crush It!
Want me to speak at your next event or mastermind? Let me know what I can share that would be most valuable by going to stevejlarsen.com and book my time now. | |||
| 05 Jul 2022 | Don't Waste The Recession! | 00:32:34 | |
Every recession has a benefit. Do not waste the next recession! Here's the internet marketing pattern I've seen from the last few recessions and how I'm gonna capitalize HARD during the next one… Just like we normally hear people talking about buying the dip in the stock market, we should also be buying the dip with our content. In a recession, most people pull back on the content and their marketing efforts. They are reacting to the recession rather than responding to it. The recession is a big opportunity for people who choose to look at it like that. In fact, most of the household names you know and talk about exploded during recession years, like Grant Cardone and Robert Kiyosaki. They did so by doubling down on their content, which should be your strategy. The response I'm choosing to do is to easily 10x the amount of content I'm putting out on the internet. Because I know even despite me putting this stuff out, I don't have the world's ear. There's gonna be a land grab, baby. Tune in to hear the 4 WAYS I am doing content to prepare for the recession. Key Takeaways - Stories of rich dead marketers (00:53) - Don't create a boogeyman (03:47) - The recession is an opportunity (05:22) - People who exploded during a recession (13:36) - Why you should DOUBLE down on content (11:34) - Buy the dip (16:03) - The 4 ways I am doing content to prepare for the recession (17:36) Additional Resources Learn more about: --- Download Season 1 episodes here -- Sales Funnels Radio is a podcast for all passionate digital marketing pros looking to up their game and stay ahead. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please follow and share! | |||
| 17 Dec 2019 | SFR 292: To Customize, Or Not To Customize | 00:23:18 | |
The offer is a two-way agreement, not a beg-session to get anyone to buy from you.
Here's when I STOP customizing my offers…
My friends, I'm pumped for this - grab a pen and paper - 'cause this can simplify your business.
A while back, there was an interesting post in my group…
Here's what went down…
Someone purchased a service, product or whatever, and after they bought it - they didn't like the fulfillment.
So they went back to the seller and said, "Hey, Mr. Seller, I don't like this..." and the seller said, "Oh, so sorry about that," and gave their money back.
And this actually made the customer mad.
I was a little bit confused by this response because something similar happened to me...
There was a guy who paid me for a one-hour consultation, (I don't really sell that anymore... ), but he scheduled it during the speeches at Funnel Hacking Live.
And so I was like, "Oh crap, sorry about that."
I reached back out and said, "Hey I'm so sorry,” and I just refunded his money.
I was like, "Hey, here you go."
Here’s the thing, the refund didn’t make him happy - in fact, guy was livid and made tons of nasty posts all over the place.
The dude finally got so loud that I blocked him
Originally, I was confused by his reaction so I reached out and asked...
… that's crazy!
I'm NOT obligated to spend time with you. I can give you your money back and I no longer have an obligation, right?
So, let’s go back to the post…
THE CUSTOMER ISN’T ALWAYS RIGHT! The guy was super frustrated... he was so mad about getting a refund, and I was like, "I guess there's a pattern here."
So let me tell you exactly how I respond…
It was a good enough response that Mr. Russell actually liked it.
Here’s how I started…
After digging into this, I kinda understand the story.
Now you paid somebody...
… and instead of getting more as you wanted, they refunded you.
I said…
Buying is a two-way relationship; I create an offer, set a price and a value, and use the offer as the anchor of the relationship, NOT the money.
The offer is the anchor, NOT the money.
This is a *BIG* mistake a lot of entrepreneurs make.
So let me teach you something really cool here that will help simplify your business...
When a customer uses their money as the anchor of a relationship, it forces the seller to dance at the customer's will.
This violates the very first step of my offer creation formula - The Who. Just because someone has money doesn't mean I should sell them.
That's NOT the only qualifier for you to sell to somebody.
The offer is my agreement with the customer. If I keep changing the offer to each person, it equals a dizzying level of customization. That's WHY I don't change my offers for each person. If so I charge significant levels higher.
In my mind, it sounds like the seller is just doing what they thought was fair, and like myself was unwilling to change their offer, so, they refund you - that's not spitting in your face.
The customer is NOT always right.
Whoever started that whole thing, "The customer is always right," in my opinion, that person has NEVER had a successful business!
Or they worked in an industry that was 100% customization, you know what I mean (and even then the customer is not always right)?
'Cause…
The customer is NOT always right.
I don't want to fight the doctor if I'm about to go in surgery
‘Doctor, cut here and not here."
The customer is ALWAYS right????
That's a stupid phrase… overall, it's just NOT true.
And a lot of your businesses will be simplified by removing that belief and that vernacular…
"The customer's always right..." No, they're not, you are too - that's why you're the seller.
An offer is a two-way agreement, you can't keep customizing the offer per person - that's why we have a value ladder.
HOW TO IMPROVE CUSTOMER SERVICE BY SAYING ‘NO!’
One of the major reasons why you don't customize everything is because of how hard it is on your actual business.
It is hard for me to ALWAY be changing the offer - because it makes it hard for me to create business systems.
You have to understand the major functions of a business - and there are a lot of different theories/ competing beliefs around this…
But I'm just going to draw the major functions of any business.
There's a lot of great books with different views... “There are varying points... there are four points. No, there are five points of any business. No, there's six points of any business.”
However, they're all around the same area for EVERY business.
This is the reason why funnels work for any company. Every company has to be able to…
Again, various places have differing opinions, but it's basically that…
A business is nothing more than a series of systems that generate and fulfills a lead.
*THAT’S IT*
… it's NOT some fishy hokey-pokey thing.
It has nothing to do with some clever slogan... I don't have a mission statement, 'cause “Urrrgh!”
Anyway...
For example: Say I go generate a lead by creating an offer
Let's say that I'm selling some widget…
One of the reasons why some of my webinars have done so well in the past and I've only touched them once, (and it's been over a year and a half since I've touched one of the largest ones)...
The reason why that works is that I'm not sitting here continually changing the offer.
I change it for a while and I'm like, "Okay, this feels like a safe place for it to land!"
… I stop touching the offer.
*DON’T TOUCH THE OFFER*
PRODUCT CUSTOMIZATION - WHEN TO *STOP*
Most businesses have a good enough offer to…
But as marketers, we tend to get so focused on changing the offer that we forget about the next step…
Take it from the guy who's the self-proclaimed offer guy, stop changing your offer so much.
PHASE #2
Find the person who fits the offer - that's way easier than constantly changing your offer.
So back to my Facebook Group…
This guy gets frustrated and says, "Oh my gosh. You're not willing to change the offer for me? And you gave my money back to me?"
Like, “YEAH!” (ALL CAPS)
Any time as any level of real genuine customization, it sucks!
That’s one of the reasons why a lot of entrepreneurs feel like their business wheels are spinning - they don't have a business.
You can't make a business where it's constant 24/7 100% pure true customization for every person that comes in.
Now, if your business is…
… there's still a system you can build around that.
I'm talking about when you're NOT customizing on purpose, and you keep changing all the stuff inside your offer.
After a while...
STOP!
It's extremely hard to create a consistent powerful lead machine when your offer's changing all the time. It's very hard to convert if your offer isn’t consistent...
I’ll change my offer for a while… but after a certain point, it's like…
*STOP*.
The next phase is to become good at finding people who fit the offer, instead of convincing EVERYBODY that they fit your offer.
(I'm hoping this is not too techy)
I want to…
The offer is NOT just a marketing tool - for me, it acts as an anchor.
Think of it this way...
(I hope I'm not talking in circles here with this, but this is such a key thing!)
HOW TO IMPROVE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE BY FINDING THE ‘WHO!
I've had several people who reach out and be like, "You're not willing to do this, extra thing for me?"
I'm like, "No, you knew the agreement. The agreement was I was gonna provide this, this, this and this at this price, at this time frame."
And it's funny…
We call it an offer, but it's also an agreement between the buyer and the seller.
BAM! (Write that down!!!!)
Here’s the equation…
BUYER + SELLLER + OFFER = AGREEMENT
Let me illustrate this another way...
There's a place where my wife and I take our car where we know they're gonna act like our car is gonna fall apart in a second!
... and then, they try to charge us like three extra grand for repairs that don't matter.
You know what I'm saying? 😉
So we don't take our car to those people anymore!
Instead, if we ever need even simple maintenance or an oil change, we take it to another spot… because the guy is ALWAYS fair with us.
A lot of times car places say…
(It's very clever on their part by the way.)
They're like, "Here's my offer. I will fix these things for these prices."
After they start on the work of the car, if I want something else done on I have to pay more money… and it's assumed.
It's the same thing with your offer!
... does NOT mean it's different, right?
I will charge MORE something is outside of the offer - it makes sense.
I have to do MORE.
DO YOU HAVE A BUSINESS? Trey Llewellyn is an absolute animal. I look up to him - he's a beast, and I’ve gotten to know him a little bit more recently.
We're both pretty darn busy but I think we both watched each other a from afar.
#SBB (Steve Before Beard)
Trey is an e-com genius - the guy makes tons of money.
Anyway, Trey found is that every time you add a new SKU, (a new product, a new offer to your business), you increase the complexity of your fulfillment systems by 17X.
Every new SKU increases the complexity of your fulfillment systems by 17X.
So, my friends, the reason I'm going through this is NOT just for the individual who posted in my group kinda having a hard time…
It's to help *you* understand the role of the offer in your business systems, NOT just marketing.
A consistent offer allows you to have consistency across all major functions of a business - which allows you to create systems - which allows you to remain strategic.
Here is the difference, check this out...
ARE YOU CUSTOMIZING YOURSELF TO DEATH?
When I was in college, I started learning how to drive traffic, lots of it.
I got pretty good at driving just tens of thousands of clicks to certain things and it's actually opened a ton of doors for me - it was a lot of fun.
Under that one service, me and my buddy had a waiting list of 15 businesses…
Contrast that to about two years later (after I knew what ClickFunnels was) and I started doing funnels for other people…
I found myself with a 12 business waiting list, but my service was different every time.
It was mind-numbing...
Not the boring kinda ‘mind-numbing’ - it was too much and was crippling to me.
I see A LOT of people being overwhelmed because they don’t know when to STOP customizing a product…
"I'm doing this... and I'm doing this ...and I'm doing this... and I'm doing this… and this!"
Here’s the rub…
You're confusing the number of opportunities that you're running at with success.
That's NOT true at all.
Go look at like some of the people who are making the most money, they have one main offer, that’s it.
Alex Hormozi = GymLaunch
BAM!
They did that one thing till (I think) they crossed $10 million... then they added the next thing.
It’s the same in my business…
HERE’S WHAT I’M NOT DOING
People ask:
Q: "Stephen how come you haven't launched like a mastermind yet?"
A: Don't worry, I will, but...
Q: “Stephen, how comes you haven't written a book yet?"
A: Man, I'm focusing on the one thing on my value ladder, okay?
That's the other reason we have a value ladder, we say…
"Alright, okay, market place, okay community…”
... but also the things that I'm willing to fulfill on.
Here's the offer and here's the exact thing I'm saying yes to…
I've had many people reach out and they're like…
“Stephen what can I buy from you?"
Man, go to capitalistcoaching.com, and you'll see EVERYTHING you can buy from me right now...
That's all the stuff I'm willing to do and fulfill on at that price point…
And it's ALL set up for a specific…
...that I know will 'cause the fastest success story.
At the top of my value ladder, my application funnels at are real application funnels.
It is NOT me just trying to get anyone who has the money - people actually apply - ‘cause I'm legitimately trying to see if they are ‘a good fit’ for me.
A lot of people ask…
A: It's because I know that there are certain things that I should and should not be doing and if I constantly have a changing offer it affects…
And instead of focusing on *ONE* ‘dream who,’ - I get a lot of different ones coming on in from all walks of life.
*I DON’T WANT THAT*
I want one main type of ‘who’ = one main type of dream customer.
It also affects my ability to create or NOT create a value ladder.
TESTING MY OFFER
You have to understand, there’s a timeline for when I launch a new offer…
... but there comes a moment where I stop and say, "I will no longer change, this offer is what it is... and my role progressing forward is NOT to keep changing the offer."
I launch and start changing the offer (which includes the message), and then once I've got it validated, I update to continually find ‘the dream who.’
FINDING ‘MY DREAM WHO!’
Q: How do I find my Dream who?
A: With additional traffic sources.
I have four major awesome traffic sources that I like and use, and I just dump in between them.
Q: How do I get those traffic sources to find it?
A: I have a list of Launch campaigns and Evergreen campaigns to get those traffic sources and those ‘dream who's’ to actually see my offer - bam, bam, bam.
Anyway…
I did not do a lot of storytelling in this one, it was a little bit more of a tactical episode here but it's because…
If you keep changing your offer, past the testing period, by kowtowing and bowing to everyone just to get the sale…
You literally...
Drop your ability to have faster and greater success rates with your customers.
So, set your offer and understand this is NOT about you going, "I will do whatever it takes to get the sale.”
I will NOT do *anything* for a sale - because of ALL the things I've been talking about here.
The offer is an agreement between me and the seller, it is NOT me begging the seller for a purchase.
Alright, hopefully, this has been a helpful episode - this is a very key topic and one that I'm definitely passionate about!
Partly it's because I went through 34 tries (over about 5- years) without a big success.
And looking back, I can see that…
...and it was one of the MOST painful lessons I ever went through!
If you do wanna go see the things that I have available... if you’re like…
...which I get many of you guys reaching out about - go to capitalistcoaching.com, and you'll see all those things right there.
It is literally my value ladder with clickable links to the things that it's referencing.
There are some things on there (just so you know) that are not actually available yet... or where we're just focusing on the current students.
I find that most people have zero clarity on their business - so how can a customer have any clarity on what you're offering?
They can't - it's very hard!!!
It sets this weird precedence (or no precedence at all) for what you actually will or *won't* provide,
Hard to have a life when you keep changing your offer. You will literally be tied to the business if you keep changing your offer.
If you guys got any value from this please tag me on social media and let me know…
"Steve, that was fresh to death, that was awesome!"
Let me know what you liked about it - I'm trying to just provide epic value for you.
#StayTuned
There are some fun surprises coming up in the next few episodes thatI'm very very pumped about!!!
Alright!
*You* reading this right now, you're in one of two scenarios.
Either…
You're currently selling a product and you've got a slick sales funnel and traffic...
There are ads and you have content, bringing in new customers. You have upsells, downsells, and phone sales.
You've almost automated it, making money while doing everyday things.
Either that's all set up and going…
OR…
The second option is you don't have any of that, and you're still trying to make this work and tie all of these pieces together.
If you want my help, just go to capitalistcoaching.com and see where you can get started.
It took me a long time to get the skills for all this to get moving…
... there's A LOT.
And the path to move forward is different for each person.
So I created capitalistcoaching.com for you to check out where *you* need to start.
Whether you're just starting out with…
OR…
If you're like one of our BIG corporate clients who just need to add more revenue and scale your offer, go to capitalistcoaching.com.
I don't really believe in shortcuts, but I do know you can speed up the path on the journey
Figure out the BEST place to start by going to capitalistcoaching.com now | |||
| 21 Jan 2018 | SFR 106: Firing A Customer | 00:21:55 | |
The Customer Is NOT Always Right…
What's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen. I have a little bit of an unfortunate episode. Welcome to “Sales Funnel Radio” where you’ll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today’s best internet sales funnels and now here’s your host, Steve Larsen. Hey guys. I am ... I love podcasting, I love talking with you guys, and it's been fun. I feel like ... especially the last week because I've been traveling, going around all over the place, I've had a chance to meet a lot of you and it's been a whole lot of fun.
Everyone's got that, but unfortunately, there's been a few instances where it's attracted an individual that believes that $100 is a billion dollars, and I owe them my life. No. That's extremely cheap. It should be way more than that. You know what I mean?
I'm very involved with it, but I'm not. Anyway...
Holy smoke. I'm gonna go ahead and read it here. I'm gonna switch some names. I'm gonna switch some things so that there is some ... Anyway. I also wanna tell you the story of why I'm telling you this in just a moment. There's a reason for this. I'm not trying to just throw rocks here. Part of me is though. Okay. I'm human. I'm ticked. All right.
You're saying I gotta bend backwards at all times when I already know my offer does that for them? When I ... No. No. No.
Your happiness, guys ... I have worked with some clients and it has been an amazing experience. It has been and amazing experience. When we were building for guys like Marcus Lemonis and huge guys, huge guys. It's so cool because they are where they are because they also understand this. I've never met someone who is really, really big who also drinks their own Kool-Aid. I've never met someone that does that. I've never met anybody who goes out ... Now they might ... I'm not saying they don't know that they're not good. They're very clear on the fact that they know they're good. They are confident. They have absolutely certainty about their abilities, but they are als' ... There's a difference between that and drinking your own Kool-Aid and throwing it in other people's faces.
Thanks for listening to "Sales Funnel Radio." Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today’s best internet sales funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today. | |||
| 10 May 2022 | Owning "Visionary" (And The Right Kind Of Selfish)! | 00:45:28 | |
Today, I want to REVEAL one of the biggest lessons I have learned in my entrepreneurship journey. This was something that derailed and prevented me from getting to $10 million faster than I should have. And since Season 2 of Sales Funnel Radio is about documenting my journey to $100 million, this is what will get me there. 💹 What I'm talking about in this episode is the ability/skillset to create a vision but then be able to ward off all the other really good distractions that come your way that are totally justifiable. Without a vision, every opportunity looks good, but in reality, they are just distractions. Owning the identity of being a visionary is one of the greatest things you can do. 💯 There's no use in downplaying what and who we are. This is how I "own" my weirdness 😊 This is a value-packed episode where I share my vision and how you can create yours and validate using the Vision Test. 🎧Tune in! Key Takeaways ⏲ - The ability to hold a vision (03:24) - Learn to say NO (08:23) - The Vision Test (13:20) - Where to seek out other visionaries (16:22) - How to describe your vision clearly (23:18) - What do you want (25:32) - Finding clarity in your vision (29:51) Additional Resources Get Your Capitalist Pig Merch here Learn more about Systemizing Lead Flow --- Connect with me here Download Season 1 episodes here -- Sales Funnels Radio is a podcast for all passionate digital marketing pros looking to up their game and stay ahead. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please follow and share! | |||
| 06 Oct 2017 | SFR 78: HOW To Build Fast... | 00:25:50 | |
After 301 funnels, I’m just barely noticing why I’ve been building so fast...
What's going on everyone, this is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels and now here's your host, Steve Larsen. Steve Larsen: All right guys, I apologize first off that I've been a little bit less consistent with this podcast the last little bit here. It's been so busy. It's been so busy. We've been going and building a lot. Russel's been in inner circles. There's a lot of stuff been going on in the sales funnel world in general and it's so fun living in the click funnels area because I feel like I'm in the nucleus of where marketing principles and status quo is created. It's fun, it's cool to sit back and go, "Oh my gosh, I can see how this is going to become a thing in the whole industry," and really fun to get to do that. Anyway, it's been busy, it's been fast. The last four days alone I have built four membership sites and these are not like little tiny membership sites. Anyone would be happy to just have one of them. There's been 500 videos put inside of them. Redesigning them, each one at a time. It's been fast, fast paced and I've really, really enjoyed it. There was something interesting thought that happened as I was building these membership sites and I was putting them all together, and honestly if you don't have a membership site I think you should go create one. Even if you're like, "Hey, Steven, I don't know what the heck to put inside of it." I would go create a membership site for the sole reason of you being able to put cool content in there. When people are like, "Hey," whatever your expertise is. Whatever it is that you do out there. You're like, "Hey, how do I do X, Y, and Z?" If you go make videos on that and put it in there, I mean, that becomes a really cool asset, or at least cool bonus, or something.
I promise you it is. I'm not a coder and that's, I billed it out. Anyway, that was a bit of a rant there but I notice something. I notice something as I was building it. As I was, I mean, I was probably on video number 400. I was placing in, I was building, I was going fast pace. There was resource links. PDF downloads, checklists all over the place. All this stuff that you'd want to have when going through a course to help someone actually understand and learn. What was interesting is I got about half way through the first one and I realized that I was not ... It's freaking but you know how like you can get in a car and you're driving somewhere and then all of a sudden you realize you're there and you don't realize you got there. Your brain's on autopilot. You know what I mean, kind of feeling? I'm not saying I don't pay attention when I drive, but I'm saying your brain can be in other places and it's kind of second nature for you to drive the route you are and you're not really noticing that tree on the side of the road. That happens to me sometimes when I build but not usually... Usually, that happens to me when I do things where it's not so creatively intense, you know where little details matter but I found myself doing that. I realized like, "Holy crap," like dozens and dozens of videos and lesson sections had gone by and I didn't even notice it. I was like, "How interesting. I wonder why that is with this." A lot of it was a lot of copy paste, building stuff. There was some redundancy in the task I was doing which made sense. I don't actually think that, that's the reason why they got done so fast. Why I got them done so quickly. There's four massive sites in three and a half days. I mean, those weren't the only things I did either. I mean, these huge, huge, huge, huge sites and like I thought it was going to take me way longer than that. Like a week or two, or three weeks to build out these just massive things. I know a lot of you guys go through this. You're like, "Okay, I've got these huge sites to build. There are these funnels or whatever it is." You're probably like me. Maybe you're not a coder or programmer so it might feel a little bit more intense for you to get those things done right. Anyway, I realized why I was able to do it. It's because there was a pattern that I started following. I had two monitors up and even in the way I was building there was this system that I was creating without realizing that I was creating it. I was putting this whole system together. I'd look over on the left, see what I was modeling, grab the URL in the center. Copy and paste in the text. Copy, paste, repeat. Open up. Drop inside the link. I can still see the process in my head because I've been doing it for the last three and a half days. Just pumping out these huge sites. These huge membership funnels and sites. I was like, "How interesting is it that it's that way. That I was able to do that. I mean, I've built over 300 funnels in the last year and a half working at click funnels and I usually don't, I can't get into that. I usually have to think consciously about every single decision that needs to be made and it almost freaked me out. I'm not going to lie. It almost kind of scared me a little bit because I was like, "Is there a detail I'm missing?" I actually had to backtrack a little bit but I realized that I was creating these processes and systems to handle things that I was doing over and over and over again. I suddenly had all these experiences I've had in my past just kind of start flooding back to me. I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's like this. That's like this." There was a company that I was working for when I was in college. It was around the time I was trying to prove to the industry that I was worth my salt as a funnel builder. That I honestly had so much more to learn. I obviously still do but I was trying to prove that like, "Hey, I'm a runner. I'm willing to work. I've got the base skills down. Somebody hire me.
I had the most interesting experience when I was working there. I was excited. I was trying to prove myself. I wasn't charging them anything, I just wanted to show that I knew what I was doing in these certain areas. I was like, "Look, I know you have no idea what a funnel is. Let me just go ahead and build it and if it makes money let's talk about me making some kind of cash, or whatever. Only if, so zero risk to you." They're like, "Okay, that's sweet." That's how it happened, and so I start building this funnel. Actually, I ran an ask campaign to their current customer list. I was very strategic on who it was I chose and I ran this ask campaign and I built this funnel based off the data and it was huge win and it made all this money and I was like, "Oh my gosh, it worked." I was like, "What, this is so cool." It was really cool because I learned something super valuable. As I was moving forward and building this funnel, it was a water product. These guys had an amazing product. I mean, it was a fantastic product but I realized and I don't want to offend anybody, I realized that their business had been successful because of the product, not because of their business. Like, "Steven, woah. Wait. What are you talking about? That makes no sense." Of course they were successful because of the business. No, they really didn't have much of a business itself. They were very, very few business elements to it and they had survived for years and years and years on the merits on a freaking amazing product. Okay, now let's compare that to tons of other scenarios that I have build for where it's like we'll go out and we'll build for someone and we realize, "Oh my gosh the same thing." These people over here have successfully been a business for the last number of years strictly because their product is amazing. Not because they have a great business. Okay, now let's think of the difference between the two. Obviously the product is, that's obviously the medium that the cash comes in. However, there's so many times I've built funnels for people where their business was not able to handle the funnel. Does that make sense? This is a very, very important distinction that I learned about three years ago as I started building for all these other people. It was about two and a half years ago and I started looking around realizing like, "Oh my gosh, some of these people have no idea why they're being successful. They understand the product is why they're making money, but they don't actually have a business." One of my favorite books is a book called The E-Myth. E-Myth revisited. Now, I know you guys have all heard this before or you've read the book before. If you haven't read the book E-Myth, you should go read it because it's going to talk very, very clearly about something that I'm trying to ... This one principle that I'm talking about right here has been one of the things repeatedly I've seen over and over and over again between someone who's a so-so funnel builder and someone who is a freaking great funnel builder with a business. Okay. I didn't know my own processes at the time... I didn't understand and honestly I thought that, I was like processing... I don't want to put processes together. James Freal, freaking man. He's got a podcast I believe with Dean Hall. They got a podcast called Just the Tips. It's amazing, it's hilarious. I think I'll be on it soon. James Freal came in and he's a master at processes and he came in a year ago and he sat down with each of the employees at click funnels and he's like, "Hey, what do you do? Describe your processes to me. Let's figure out for your position what these processes are so we can package them up in case we want to add stuff to them and we'll make more of a system out of this." It was so funny because he came to me and we sat down in this side room and we start chatting and he's like, "Hey, what are your processes? How come you're successful. What are the things that you do when you're building a funnel where anyone else could walk up behind and pick it back up?" I almost got offended. Not offended, that's the wrong word, but I certainly was tongue tied. I was not able to actually tell him what my processes were. I didn't have processes. Even as Russel's funnel builder when I was just barely getting in there... I didn't have processes. I barely still do and I was like, "Okay, what's step number one?" I was like, "Oh, gosh. I don't know, it's different ever single time." There's so much art behind what I do. I would not consider myself a designer. I would not consider myself an artist but just the art of the marketing. The art of putting all these things together. I was like, "I have no idea how to actually define my process. What do I do?" This is a super important question you have to ask yourself. Why does Microsoft and why does ... Why does IBM, why does Microsoft, why does Apple buy little tiny incubator startups? These little companies that have gone and they've built this cool app and this app has gone out and they've launched and they've put this app out onto the space. Now, let's think about this. Does Apple have the capacity to build the same software that, that other tiny little startup built? Of course they do. They have ridiculously amazing engineers. Why would Apple care to buy the little startup with the brand new app? It's because of the following, it's because of the business. They've put processes in place, they know that when they do X, Y, and Z, they get this many dollars out. They have a process in place. That's what a funnel is. I mean, essentially you're creating a process for revenue and most people have no idea why they make money. That's what the thing I was realizing when I started doing that work two and a half years ago for this other company. I was like, "Oh my gosh. Every sale for you is different. Every customer service inquiry for you is different." Every time someone needs a refund or there's a part that broke or whatever, it's different. Every time you do this, it's different. It's different, it's different, it's different and you know how much of a headache that causes inside of you? It's ridicules. It was funny because I had to take a big old slice of humble pie, or it was actually the full pie and I was talking to the brilliant James Freal and I was talking with him and he was like, "Yeah, what are your processes?" I'm like, "I don't freaking know. I've never actually thought about what those are." I know what the outcome is but I don't know what the processes are to get me to the outcome and I was like, "I don't know."
I'm not saying I'm the best in the world, I know I'm not, but I know I'm pretty good. Why did it work? Anyway, this is from the book of the E-Myth. I thought I'd grab it. This is one of my books on the shelf. I just dropped like three more thousand dollars on books, built an entire other book shelf so I have ... You know what's funny is that everyone's got these motives for why they want to be successful. I honestly want to read, I want to buy a lot. I buy books. I can't stand audio books. It's not that I can't stand them, I actually love listening to them, but if the book is only an audio book or if the book is only a kindle book, for whatever reason for me it's not worth as much. I'm like, "Oh, well it's not worth its salt. It didn't make it to be a physical book. I'm not going to even listen to it or read it kindle or whatever. You know what I mean? I like to buy the physical thing. Anyway, I looked it up and I was like "Oh, yeah. This just like what I learned about in E-Myth like four or five years ago." Anyway this is on page 83 and towards the bottom there he's talking about the importance of creating the business. Basically turning each position into a franchisable thing. Meaning, not that you go ... What he's teaching is, he's teaching how to create processes and he's teaching you the importance of looking at each position, so you might be a solo-penuer. You might have a nine to five... You listening right now, you might be doing something else that actually pulls on your actual income and you're trying to build a funnel to take you out of that nine to five. You're trying to build a funnel to get you to the next step or whatever you're trying to do or it's the ascension. You know what I mean? What ever process you're in, whether or not you have a team, it's important to start looking at the processes and all the things that are involved in turning the dollar for you. That's how you're going to hire people out. That's how you're going to replace yourself eventually. Anyway, this whole thing's been on my mind a lot lately. Anyway, so this is on the bottom of page 83 and he says, "Because the business format franchise is built on the belief that the true product of a business is not what it sells, but how it sells it." Okay, he basically said, "Look, an actual business, it's not ..." What is a business? He's saying, "It's not the product that it sells. A business is merely how it sells the product. A business is a set of systems. A business is a set of processes that talk with each other that sells the product." That's all he's saying. He says, "The true product of a business is the business itself." The true product of a business is the business itself. I thought, "How fascinating, how interesting." That's why Apple wants to go by the little start up that has the app. It's not that they can't make the technology, it's that they've proven how to sell the technology. They've proven how to sell the app. They've proven that, "Hey, these are the positions you need so if you want to buy us or acquire us or whatever it is, you now know turn key wise you have to have this position, this position, this position." They do this, this, and this. This one is X, Y, Z and this one does one, two, and three. If you can start to do that with everything that you're doing, holy crap it's a lot of work. Tim Ferus actually talks about this in the four hour work week. He talks about every time he'd go launch a product or he'd put his supplement out there from his supplement company. He fielded all of the customer service questions himself for the first month and he did it for the sole reason that he could literally keep track of every question that was coming in and the answer that he started making a format for on the way out. We did the same thing and then he went out and then he went out and he hired a person and they literally just had to read the docs that he created and send the response back out. I mean, he made it dummy proof. That's the whole reason why he was able to blow up ... Four hour work week, that's why that's possible, it's because of all the systems he put in place. He made it turn key. Every position around him and then he just systematized that thing. Found someone, boom. Then they only talk to him when there's contingencies. When there's things that were not in that process. It's the same thing with funnel building. I now know when I funnel build, that first thing I've got to go do is I sit down. Whether it's me or Russel, or us together, whatever it is. Usually I almost always draw it out. I draw it literally on paper. I draw boxes and I put a few details in the box. Okay, this is one page.
I kind of diagram out the entire thing but the step that's even before that is I have to know what the actual offer is inside of the funnel. Every single sales funnel is a mini value ladder. Okay, a business has a value ladder where you're trying to send people up to hire dollar amounts and different value levels and things like that. Each individual step in the value ladder is a mini value ladder. That's what a funnel is. That's why you can have up sales. This is the higher point on an up sale or a down sale. Higher tickets in the back end, things like that. Follow up sequences that push to more and more dollars in the back. All right, that is a value ladder. Anyways, what I do is I sit back and we have to think through. Okay, what's the offer? What's the value ladder of this funnel alone. How does it fit into the bigger picture value ladder? The big macro level one. Then I go and we draw that out and we draw these pieces out and we put it all together and that's how it works. Those are my first few steps and then even before is start building before that, then I start thinking through, "Okay, what's it going to look like? What are the colors like? Is there something proven in the industry I need to start looking at and start putting those elements in? Are there things that I know are little ninja tricks from other unrelated industries that also work? Are there things that you know ..." And I start putting all those pieces together way before I ever, ever start building the new funnel. I think one of the issues that I see over and over again is that people just go straight into click funnels and they just start building crap and they don't know what they're building towards or to and there's nothing that ... They haven't planned any kind of ascension. They haven't planned anything for their bait. How they'll get people in there. They haven't planned anything so much as, "I funnel hacked, meaning I went and I copied and pasted." I looked at someone else's page and I put it all together. That's not how it works. That's not what funnel hacking is. That's like the surface level of funnel hacking. Anyway, that was totally way more of a rant than I ever thought it would be, but basically this is it. This is the whole point of the podcast that I wanted to make on the show today is that there's really two different levels, two different strength levels of a business. The weaker form of your business. How should I say this? The weaker form of revenue is when you have a business that survives strictly because the product is amazing. Now, I don't know about you, but I know several places where that's true. Where the product is amazing but the actual business that sucks. How many times have you said, "Oh, yeah they've got a great thing but the customer service sucks over there." Okay, that's a perfect example of a product that is literally driving all the revenue. There's barely enough business built behind it. I mean, so many times we've built funnels for people and then we get a frantic phone call three days later begging us to turn it off. Turn it off, turn it off, my business can't handle it. I don't have enough inventory. I can't handle the volume you're sending over this way. That's because there's not enough business built underneath the funnel to support the strength of the funnel that we've built. That's the first level, that's the weakest kind is when a business survives strictly because the product is good. That's great and it's a good place to be. It's better than not having the business at all. In fact, that's probably the place to start. I would rather that you start there instead of trying to build up a business and figure out your freaking logo and the stupid crap that doesn't matter. Only worry about revenue first. That doesn't matter.
Nothing else, don't go rent an office. Don't go, none of that. Don't do any. That's how, there are processes and whether or not every single position has been defined and all the processes behind it and here's how we actually put all the funnel together, and here's how we put the things in. Whether or not you've actually put those things together consciously, every person knows what those things are. My challenge to you is to write them down and to start taking note of what those things are. If you get hit by a bus, heaven forbid, what are they going to do to pick it up? What are they going to do? Is everyone else's jobs going to be on the line just because you're the only guy that knew what was going on? That sucks, it should not be that way. First it can be that way for a while, Ferus talks about that and that's how he did it for a while but eventually systematize the whole thing. Anyways, that's the entire purpose of this whole podcast is I just wanted you to know that it can take a while and I am literally just barely starting to figure out why my speed on these things is so quick and it's because literally, subconsciously every single time I have always built the process. There's been several times Russel would say, "Hey dude, how's it going on that one thing?" I was like, "Honestly dude, I'm only on the first page but I just got the process down and so I know the rest of them will go quick." It's true, it's bam, the rest of it goes quick because I got the system down in the beginning. Anyway, I feel like I'm saying the same thing over again now, but hey, so one thing real quick I wanted to point out to you guys is that there is definitely a very forward and definitive process that has been put together on how to build a live webinar funnel. Now, last week, this last Saturday I went and I built a live webinar funnel live in front of a bunch of people. I don't remember how many people were on but they watched me build the whole thing and I honestly just thought I'd be kind of fun to do it. I thought it'd be a lot of fun to put the whole funnel together live, answer any questions and see what other things people are struggling with. There's no replay or anything like that. I'll probably do one again some other time shortly. If you want to follow next time I do something like that go to salesfunnelbroker.com/live. Salesfunnelbroker.com/live is the place where I broadcast and build out things live. Whatever I'm building so you can watch and learn and I like to interact back and forth. Anyway, so I went and I built this live webinar funnel in front of a whole group of people and there's always a map that is true for that funnel style and I know it very well. Anyway, I made it into this really cool PDF document and I'd like to give it to you guys. I'd like to give it to everyone on this call. I'm sorry, I said call because I'm in front of a mic. Everyone who listens to this podcast, I'd like to be able to give to you guys but I do ask for one thing in return. I would like ... I have never collected testimonials and if you guys can just grab your iPhone or whatever it is and shoot a sincere testimonial about me or whatever about me or something like that, or whatever it is. Just shoot a testimonial around myself and if you send it over to me in Facebook messenger, I'll send that PDF of the map of what it takes to make an actual successful live webinar funnel as well as the share funnel link to the funnel, I'll give that to you guys for free. It's going to be something I charge 400 bucks for in the future. Anyway, I just wanted to drop that on out because I see over, and over, and over again ... There's all these people reaching out to me saying, "Hey, Steven, would you look at my webinar funnel?" I would go check out their webinar funnel and it was like ... I was surprised the thing was running it was so bad. Anyways, if you want that go ahead and record a testimonial to me and send it to me on Facebook messenger and immediately I'll just shoot back, or as soon as I can, the PDF as well as the share link to that actual webinar funnel. Anyways, reach out to me. My name is just Steven Larsen. Meaning that's the spelling of it. S-T-E-P-H-E-N L-A-R-S-E-N on Facebook so you can find me. Anyways, that's it Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today. | |||
| 09 Apr 2019 | SFR 232: My New Funnel Building Team... | 00:23:34 | |
I’ve been working on the NEW OfferMind funnel. I have a 7 person funnel building team now, (which is awesome)…
So I thought it'd be neat to walk you through:
WHY I KILLED THE ORIGINAL FUNNEL
The original OfferMind funnel that I built was incredible. It was working extremely well...
A lot of people had already bought tickets, but I took it down because I when Russell agreed to keynote I wanted to make sure that the funnel was the caliber of Russell freakin’ Brunson.
… there’s also another way that I’m gonna use this NEW funnel to create the BEST OfferMind experience EVER… so keep reading ;-)
HOW TO MAKE A FUNNEL AWESOME
The first page is the sales page. Sometimes we put the order form on that page too, but for OfferMind we actually have a separate page.
When people join the One Funnel Away Challenge they get a discount code for OfferMind tickets.
When people use their discount code to buy an offermind ticket it subtracts 150 bucks from their ticket.
Then…
And this is brilliant, (if I do say so myself)...
When you buy a normal OfferMind ticket, we’ve set it up so that you can get a ticket plus a discovery call for the exact same price.
Crazy Cool, eh!
For the exact same price, you can grab a discovery call with your ticket. You add your phone number to the form and it sends that data through a zap over to my phone team who then walk anyone who wants one through a super epic Success Strategy Session.
Next, there's a bump coming up…. I don't want to spoil everything, but it's a freaking cool, and I'm gonna leave it at that… ;-)
WANT MORE?
On the next page, there’s a sweet VIP upgrade...
At a recent event, they had a directory of all the VIPs printed in a booklet that was handed out to EVERYBODY.
I was like, "That's so freakin’ cool. Oh my gosh, that's awesome."
Think about it…
What better way to meet the ‘Who's Who’ that you wanted to connect with when you booked your ticket in the first place!
OfferMind is 1,100 seats, but…
Only the VIPs get:
VIPs get all this crazy cool stuff, but EVERYBODY gets the ‘Who's Who’ booklet, and you ONLY get to be in the directory if you're a VIP.
I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's awesome."
BUT WAIT… THERE’S MORE!
Then one morning, I was thinking about the second OTO ... (I think about this stuff in the shower sometimes)...
Check this out...
This is so *LEGIT*
I've never seen anyone do this. I learned this when I did door-to-door sales.
Here’s what happened:
I was knocking in one area and I met a guy. He told me that he was in a real estate thing….
He said, "...but don't do real estate.”
Instead, he went to local businesses and told them:
...so basically he’d get companies to donate their product plus pay $50 a month to be part of this thing.
They were collecting several hundred thousand dollars, and doing nothing.
I was like, "That's ridiculous. That's crazy."
So check this out:
The first upsell is to VIP, but then the second OTO is the opportunity to buy a one-page ad in my Capitalist Pig Ads Book.
Everyone can place an ad for NOT much money at all.
At the event, I’ll put these booklets on every single person's chair.
So for $500 you can put a full page spread ad in front of a targeted audience of 1,100. That's crazy.
Then as part of the offer, we’ll use that booklet in future OfferMinds and other events...
You can go use Funnel Scripts and all these cool things that we teach you to make sweet ads. Plus, it'll give me even more things to talk about on stage.
I'll give a shout-out to the coolest ones, and immortalize you in the videos.
What a freaking sexy offer, right!
We're calling it The Capitalist Pig Ads Book. It's super cool.
There's MORE exciting stuff too... but I don't want to kill the goose on everything.
TEAMWORK
So now, when I building a funnel, I’m NOT always doing all the building. So…
I draw out the entire funnel for my team, and then I teach them all the things that they need to know…
Then I say, "All right, and now I'm going to start sending you guys your individualized instruction video."
There are seven people on my funnel team, and I use a different color pen to go through the entire funnel and walk through each role.
To my video guys I say:
"Hey, this is what I need from you…”
I record it on camera, then I take that file and send it over to my video people and I say, "That’s your role in this funnel build."
Then I go to the copywriter and say: "Hey, you're going to get the videos from the video guy. Here's what I want you to do…”
I film it on that camera and sent the instructions to them. Then I erase all that color and start over again for the designer.
I say:
“Now you have the videos and the copy, what I need you to do next is make it look pretty."
...and I walk through and draw it out.
There's ALWAYS a framework that applies to the entire team.
MY TWO CHECKLISTS
There are 21 agency/people who do work for me now.
I have:
There's a system that I came up with that helps me understand what each person needs, not just from me, but from the person directly in front of them in the line.
Think about it this way…
I did a lot of backpacking growing up, and if there's a person directly in front of me, they set the pace…
However, the person directly behind them, every once in a while that second person has to walk a little bit faster to catch up.
(Go read The Goal; it’s a very good book.)
So if there’s a third person, every once in a while, that person has to break into a little bit of a jog to keep up with the first person.
But when you get to number twelve in the line, that person needs to freakin’ jog just to keep up at the normal walking pace set by the first person.
*THAT’S HUGE*
On my team, I have the:
...then it goes back to me to test and tweak.
There’s a lot of roles... and that’s just the funnel, (it doesn’t even include product creation).
So if the lead person is moving at a normal pace, then a lot of times, the person at the back is sprinting to keep up because there's space in between each of these roles…
These are a series of dependent events...
So when I'm creating a funnel, there are two checklists that I need to create, NOT just one.
*This changed my life*
For Example:
If you look at the job of the initial funnel builder I need to ask:
My role is just to create all the inputs needed and gather them ahead of time so that everyone can do their job without me needing to be pinged or interfered with…
Does that make sense?
...it's two checklists.
I have the checklist for each individual, but I also have the checklist for each person from the person directly in front of them.
That increased my speed like crazy.
HERE’S HOW IT WORKS So for the OfferMind funnel, (it looks so sexy)…
If you do this, you will make you A LOT of money very quickly.
It costs me about 15 to 20 grand to turn the crank once. Yep, it's a lot of money, but my team’s really freakin’ good.
It costs about 15 - 20 grand... depending on how much video and copy there is. Those are the two expensive pieces…. after that, it's design.
(This is excluding the cost of product creation with the team.)
Anyway, that's where we are with OfferMind...and that's why it's taken a little bit longer.
MY DREAM 100 SPEAKER PLAN!
At the beginning, I told you that part of the reason for this NEW funnel design was because Russell is keynoting….
However, my plan is to attract some more BIG names.
I'm going to try and get:
Anyway, a lot of high-level people.
I want to go to Bill Glazer and all these other influencers with a super awesome funnel...
AND…
Check this out, my friends:
Right now, I’m recording the audiobook for the "30 Days" book. It's one of the bonuses I'm giving away for the OFA Challenge when people buy through my link. It's freakin’ huge. Waaay too BIG….
I did NOT realize how big it was when I said that... but anyway, I'm doing it, because I committed.
BUT…
How cool would it be if I just went to each of the BIG names who wrote a chapter, and gave them the gift of their chapter already recorded for them?
Do you think they're going to know my name after that? Oh yeah, baby!
There are NOT that many people alive who are really into offer creation. Claude Hopkins was the last big guy, and he was alive in the 1800s…
Mark Joyner wrote the book "Irresistible Offer".... but offer creation is NOT exclusively his thing, you know what I mean?
"The Man Who Sold America," is about Albert Lasker who was partners with Claude Hopkins, but that was in the 1800s...
There's just not many people out there anymore who are really big in the offer creation space.
And so I'm using the "30 Days" audiobook as a reason to reach out to BIG people, and tell them:
Watch what I'm doing in the next little bit...
I HAVE A PLAN
Watch the way I'm leveraging Sales Funnel Radio to create relationships with people that ultimately, (hopefully), lead them into speaking at OfferMind.
Did you guys like the podcast episode I did about how I pitched Russell on speaking? A lot of work went into that, right?
These are all direct response marketers, so it’s likely that’ll do the same thing for Bill Glazer and Mark Joyner. It's a lot of freaking work... but it should be worth it.
There will be 1100 people at OfferMind; that’s as many people as my first Funnel Hacking Live. When I think of that, I pinch myself.
To sum up the OfferMind Funnel, we have the:
I’m not even gonna tell you about the T-shirt this year... It's NOT the capitalist pig one. We created a new one. It's freaking cool.
I'm the offer guy, so it's got to be sick. This is going to be a really freaking expensive event, but it's going to be really fun.
If you want to get on the waiting list go to offermind.com.
# Make Money, Do Good | |||
| 11 Jan 2017 | SFR 31: "One Is The Loneliest Number" | 00:20:27 | |
There's currently about 8 people doing tasks for me at all times… There's no way I could do it without them… Click above to listen in iTunes...
What's going on everybody? My name is Steve Larsen and you're listening to another delicious episode of "Sales Funnel Radio". Welcome to "Sales Funnel Radio", where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. All right, all right, all right. I am super excited for today. I actually grew up riding dirt bikes. I never actually owned one. My brother did, I had a friend that did, and I would ride theirs a lot. It was a lot of fun. I had a fun childhood, man. It was awesome. We did our fair share of things that were dangerous, stupid, but we were just really adventuresome kids. A lot of fun. Fast forward a whole ... I'm still pretty young I feel like so I guess don't fast forward that many years, but up until right now. My wife one day was like, "Did you want to get that motorcycle?", and I was like, "What?", and for some reason she gave me the clear so I am super stoked.
Today, I took my motorcycle test and I was, I'm not going to lie, I was nervous. I had been watching Youtube videos. I've been watching videos of people who had hidden helmet cams, because I guess you weren't supposed to see what's on the test, and I was like ... it was kind of funny. I got there and I was like, "Man, some of these maneuvers are really hard." Weaving cones, things like that. That's not that challenging but there was a few parts that were challenging. There was another guy. There was only two of us. We ride up and we got out and we were chatting with him. There was some paper work we had to do. We had to tell him about some stuff. At the end of the paperwork part, he told the first guy, "You're going to go first, and Steve, you've got to wait". I was like, "All right". I stood off to the side and I watched. The guy starts, and he was a little bit cocky when I was chatting with him before the whole thing started. He had the most gorgeous bike and he had done a lot of custom work to it. He had done ... It looked fantastic. His bike was, I'm not going to lie, I had a little jealousy. It was pretty dang sexy. I will probably get a bike like his in the future because it was amazing. I love my bike, and luckily it's over on the other side of the wall right now so it didn't hear me just say that... He had a great bike. He goes and he's weaving the cones and he put his foot down, which is a huge violation. You get a lot of points for that. You don't want points...
I was like, "What the heck, this is ... ". It was kind of crazy because he was talking big game. Beforehand, we were checking out each other's bikes, we're looking at each others what we're riding. He had this awesome cool really awesome throaty sound that you want from motorcycles and stuff. My current bike is a little bit too quiet so I was like, "How do you make it louder?" He was telling me and showing me all this stuff. He's like, "You could do this on your own, man. You could do this on your own. You could just drill out these little screws right here and you could pull this thing out. Your bike could be so much louder, so much faster. It's amazing." I was like, "Wow". My first thought was like, "Crap, I don't want to figure out how to do that on my own." I'm really freaking good at computer stuff and funnels. That's my thing. I would rather pay somebody to make all the adjustments for me. That was my first initial thought... I was like, "Oh man, I just want this bike louder." It was funny, though, because during the test afterwards, he failed the test. He wasn't even allowed to continue. I saw the instructor get close to the other guy. The guy that was going first. He's like, "Look man, you put foot down twice and skipped a cone. You failed. I'm sorry, but you failed... I can't even let you continue with the test." He was a good a sport about it, but you could tell he was pissed, which is totally understandable. He was a good sport about it. He pulled off to the side. I was like, "Crap. That dude didn't do it. How am I?" I get on my bike and I went through and I put my foot down where he put his foot down. I start going through and I'm weaving though and I put my foot down again where he put his foot down but I didn't skip a cone. I stayed on the course... He just gave up but I didn't, which was awesome. I went through and I actually did the rest of the test perfectly. I got my motorcycle license today which is totally awesome but the guy, he didn't wait around to finish to watch. He got on his bike and he left. He was super pissed. Oh man, it's okay. It's all right... It's funny, I've been teaching my little three year old daughter, well she'll be three in December. I've been teaching her ... I walk up to her and I'm like, "Brinley, what do we do when life gets hard?" and she gets in kind of like a fighting squat stance and she just starts growling and gets her face on and I'm like, "That's right!". "Brinley, what do we do when life gets hard?", and she puts her arms down slowly while she's flexing. I'm like, "That's right! We just get mean back, right back in its face", and she's like, "Yes!". It's really funny. It's pretty awesome. She's cool. My daughter is awesome... I wanted to say it to this guy. It was funny to me though. I was laughing at how much he wanted me to go change these pipes on my on and I was like, "No! I want to do that on my own." I was thinking about that today. Obviously, it happened all today. It's actually been on my mind though, the last couple days. I've been looking around at different entrepreneurs...
I like to watch for the patterns that are all around us that no one's looking for. What I noticed is that people who stay solopreneurs never quite make it. You know what I mean? They never get to that spot where they're like, "I have so much money now, I can just sit back on my own."
I had that realization, it was a few weeks ago. It's just been on my mind and I saw it again when this guy was trying to tell me to go do all this stuff on my own, and "You can do this on your own, and you can do this on your own", and I was like, "Holy crap. I don't want to make all the adjustments to my bike because it's not my passion first of all, and second of all, someone else has the unique ability for that. Why not let them do it?" You know what I mean? I've been thinking about that. I've been thinking about that with my own business...
I barely graduated high school... I'm really excited because I have now replicated a part of me. It's the biggest thing I've noticed. A lot of people go out and they're like, "I do this thing on the side." It's like, "Awesome". Until you actually involve other people. Until you build a system that does things while you're not there, you're going to remain a solopreneur and it's going to just basically be a hobby that makes you money every once in a while. That's the rough truth.
You can go and have a business that's actually not that good but because there's multiple people working on it, you actually could make some money with it. Your chances for succeeding are so much worse if you stay by yourself. All I'm trying to say, the thing that's been on my brain ... The thing that's been on my head is hire people. Even if it's not full time, go outsource stuff, use VAs. I use VAs like crazy.
All I'm trying to tell you is that ... Use VAs for parts that are amazing. It's funny. Russel's actually, I shouldn't say yelled at me because he's one of the nicest guys on the planet. He doesn't yell, but he has reprimanded me several times. Here's the scenario... I sit next to him at work. We'll be building a funnel together and he'll be like, "You know what? I wish ..." He'll say something like, "I wish this video had X, Y, and Z in it. I wish this video has a little bit different of an intro." I have video editing skills. A lot of them. I love video. I really like video. I'm not a noob at all in video editing. I was like, "Oh dude, I'll do it." "No, no, no. I'm just going to have this other guy do it." I'm like, "Are you sure? I could do it right now." "Yeah, but you're doing ... You're busy building the other thing for me." "Oh, that's true." Time will go on and time will go on. He'll say, "How cool would it be if I had this huge, big blowout poster board of X, Y, and Z." I'm like, "Oh dude, I could do it because I love Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator." Actually, I don't really like Photoshop that much. Illustrator's amazing. I digress. This went on for a while. After a while, Russel's like, "You know what? I got to tell you, man. Just because you know how to do something, doesn't mean you should be the one that's doing it." I was like, "Oh, that's a really good point." He's like, "Think about it. I could do lots of the stuff that the rest of the ClickFunnel employees can do, but that doesn't mean that I should be the one that's doing it. Someone else has the unique ability. Just because I can doesn't mean I should." It's the same thing with your businesses. They're going to feel pain of disconnect. I dare you to hire somebody full time. I dare you to take somebody on where they're completely dependent on you for their income. I dare you to do it because it will explode your business. It will make you do things you didn't ... You would have continued to plan on doing in the future. "Oh, I'll do that in the future. I'll go try and land that contract in the future. I'll go try and get that sale done in the future." Nope, bull crap. Someone is dependent on you for their income, for their livelihood and their life, their lifestyle, everything. I dare you to go do it... Even if it's an assistant and you're paying by the project, which is how I'm starting with my sister. What it's doing though, and what I've noticed that it's been doing is it's forcing ... I'm already a go-getter and I'm already somebody that wants to go take on the galaxy all the time. Bring it on. I'm a fighter, I am. I'm a nice guy, but internally, the conversation that's going on and what drives me as hard as I go is that I'm a fighter. I dare you to do that. Second of all, you've got to go hire someone. Go get someone out there because what it does is it forces you, like I was saying, to go out and close business. It forces you to focus on revenue generating activities while they take care of the managerial things. That's what needs to happen in a lot of your businesses. I've had a lot of you guys come to me and say, "Hey. What will you do here?" Look, your skills are good enough to get paid for. That's awesome. Your business is good enough... People are paying for it and that's awesome, but you personally are way too swamped so you're not staying in any kind of creative zone. Does that make sense? By you not staying in a creative zone, you're not going to stay in the forefront of your industry. Whatever it is. What if they are selling toilet paper? You can sell anything with a funnel. You can sell anything because it is basically what's going on on the internet.
Find someone like that... Number one, like I said, you go faster. The business will go faster. Number two, you're going to be supporting somebody else's income. That does ridiculous things for your drive. Some of you guys, if you have hesitation on it, which I guarantee 90% of you guys are, and I still do. Keep in mind that what it's going to make you do is it's going to make you clarify what your business actually is. If you've just been dabbling in, "I make some money doing this and I make a little bit of money doing that. Sometimes I'll make money in this way." All that stuff will go away and you'll get clarity because you'll go, "Okay. What will turn a dollar? What is actually going to pull in money? I've got to pay somebody."Even if you feel like you don't have enough money to pay them, find a way to get a little bit of cash and don't get married to that cash. Give it to the other person... Have them do some task for you while you go do some revenue generating activity. Anyway, that's all I've been trying to say, and that's what was going through my mind when the guy was telling me, “Hey, you could do all of this on your own.” I was like, “Yeah I could but it would take me forever, and the amount of time I would spend is worth a lot more money to me than be going and watching a billion YouTube videos. I'd rather just go pay some shop a couple hundred dollars and just have them do it because it's not worth it to me." Is this making sense? Are you guys getting this? Is this sinking in that if you're in the funnel game or any kind of business at all, and you're by yourself, you're the solopreneur, you're already capped. That's all I'm trying to convey here as I say this. It's important enough ... What's funny is, even since hiring my sister a week or two ago, our revenue's already gone up. Almost doubled. It's because I get to go focus on actually generating revenue and not managing what I've already committed to creating, producing, and putting out there. I really want to know, if you could, please go to either Sale Funnel Broker, The Facebook page, or the actual blogpost to this. I want to know what you've noticed as you've taken on someone else. Again, if you want to baby-step it, which is probably the best way to do it, the smart way to do it, I'm not telling you to drop everything and just go hire people.
That's the caveat... Understand what I'm telling you... It needs to be in a balance but push hard... Go as hard and as fast as long as you can. Just go, go, go, go, go, produce, get the grind out of the way, and then when you can, hire somebody else and watch the amazing things that it does for your company. It's not something that a lot of people think about. Even just collaboration and teaching that person all that you know is amazing. It's amazing to watch what comes out of that, even in just a short amount of time. Guys, that's my challenge, understand? Hire somebody. Don't be a solopreneur your whole life. There's a time, there's a season while you're proving your business model and you're proving how you actually make money consistently. Also know that you should not hire until it hurts so you don't hire too fast. There's a strategy with this. Do you see what I'm saying? Nod with me while you're listening. Yes Stevie Wonder. I hear you, I get it. I've been putting Stevie Wonder in all my emails to Russel. It's been kind of funny. That's another story. Anyways. Like I'm saying, I want to know what cool things are happening as you've taken on just one person, just one VA, just one part time individual. Just one person who consistently does the same task and project for your over and over again... Please let me know because it's very, very fascinating to me. You got to be smart with it obviously. Be careful with it, but don't create the mistake of not hiring because you're so scared. It's better to hire and learn from it than try to play it safe in this category. It's that important. It's that huge. Guys, I will talk to you later. I just had Jimmy John's delivered to me and I'm really stoked about it. I used to not like their stuff that much but I'm really pumped. It's starting to get late but I just wanted to record this. I am going to pound this and I'm super excited. All right you guys, I will talk to you later. As always, if you have questions, please let me know at SalesFunnelRadio.com or you can also download free funnels that I've pre-built for you. There's also other awesome funnels in there. Some of them are paid, but if you go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels or just click on "Free Funnels", you'll see it there. You guys are all awesome and you motivate the heck out of me and I appreciate you all. Keep crushing it. Let's go make ... Whatever it is you're doing, go make it happen. Move that timeline up.
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| 05 May 2022 | The Unspoken, Crucial Funnel Skills Of Leading & Closing | 00:28:41 | |
Here's another take on what Sales Funnels are actually meant to do. This episode should simplify everything part of your funnel. This is one of my favorite sales concepts to talk about…. because once you understand it, you'll see a MASSIVE increase in the conversion of your funnels. The biggest mistake I see people making in sales funnels is confusing leads and opt-ins. There's a significant difference between them. Sales funnels are meant to CLOSE leads, not to market to leads. Just because someone signs up for your stuff doesn't make them a lead. A lead is when someone shows intent to know more about your offer. With this in mind, once a lead lands in your sales funnel, you should immediately go for the close. Your sales funnel should be smoke out any objections just like a door-to-door salesperson would do. Tune in 🎧 to this episode to learn how to do this on your sales funnel to increase conversions. Key Takeaways ⏲ - My door-to-door sales stories and lessons (00:50) - The significant difference between LEADS and OPT-INS (07:15) - The BIGGEST mistake people make in sales funneling (08:34) - The GOLDEN question in sales (09:46) - Smoking out objections in your sales funnel (13:06) - How to increase pre-purchase intent pre page one (16:54) - Buying questions are part of the buying process (21:49) - Organic content doesn't have to be slower than paid ads (26:45) Additional Resources Learn more about Systemizing Lead Flow --- Connect with me here Download Season 1 episodes here -- Sales Funnels Radio is a podcast for all passionate digital marketing pros looking to up their game and stay ahead. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please follow and share! | |||
| 07 Jun 2022 | Nightmare Customer Criteria | 00:26:42 | |
For a "dream" customer to exist, there must also be a "nightmare" customer. Defining one is as important as defining the other. Here's how and why… In Tim Ferriss' book, The 4-Hour Workweek, he discusses the Pareto's Principle or the 80/20 Rule. In the context of our episode today, 80% of support issues will be caused by 20% of your customers. We can call them customers from hell, but remember, they are paying customers. To avoid this situation as an entrepreneur, you should have in mind who your dream customer is and work backward on how to sell to them. This is almost the reverse of what we are taught. The main reason we should define our dream customers is to protect the happiness of our teams and ourselves. With a dream customer, you can set the culture and expectations around fulfillment. Tune in to this episode to learn the criteria for defining both a dream and nightmare customer and how to design your business with this in mind! Key Takeaways ⏲ - Criteria for choosing your dream customer (00:50) - Why not every customer is a dream (06:20) - You can design your dream business (08:45) - Dream customers vs. nightmare customers (13:40) - The 80/20 principle of distinguishing customers (16:06) - How to limit nightmare customers from your funnels (17:40) Additional Resources Get your Capitalist Pig Swag Here Learn more about VIP Lead Machine --- Connect with me here Download Season 1 episodes here -- Sales Funnels Radio is a podcast for all passionate digital marketing pros looking to up their game and stay ahead. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please follow and share!
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| 28 Jan 2017 | SFR 33: "Stick To Risk..." | 00:13:43 | |
Click above to listen in iTunes... "About 10 years ago my Dad told me one of the secrets to wealth regardless of your job or business..."
What's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen, and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels, and now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. All right, all right, all right. Hey. I'm in a car by my phone. I am obsessed with music, so I love sound quality, which is why I usually use a $200 mic to record my podcast. Hope you guys will forgive me. I actually just went to Russell's this morning. We are lifting together with the crew, and I'm hurting actually. I'm in a lot of pain. We're doing squats and I didn't warm up, so I'm feeling all those pops in my hamstrings. That was stupid. Anyway, hey, I hope you guys are doing awesome. I have got just a ton of messages lately. I want to thank you, but I also want to apologize. I'm 300 emails behind, real emails from you and 60 Voxes, another 30 Skype messages. People are somehow finding my phone number, calling me. I appreciate it, but I just physically am unable to answer all that stuff right now, but anyway... Russell and I were talking this morning. We didn't talk about this, but something popped into my mind. I remember growing up, I did a whole lot of construction. You guys probably didn't know that. I actually worked at Discount Tire for a little while during the winter months. It was totally freezing.
We would work 12 hours a day, no breaks. They'd give us hamburgers for lunch, and we'd grab ... It was so cold. Oh my gosh. You'd feel it down in your core, the kind of cold ... I grew up in Colorado, and it was the kind of cold where you breathe and it hurt your lungs to breathe just because the air was so freezing. You know what I'm talking about?...
Then after that I went and I did construction doing residential swimming pools. We built a lot of swimming pools for the Denver Bronco players. Pretty cool stuff. I got to meet a lot of their players and stuff like that. We'd go around and we'd build these sweet, just awesome, high end swimming pools. Sometimes I was part of the build crew and sometimes I was part of the cleaning crew. I'd come up later on and we'd do all the pool maintenance on them and stuff like that. A couple times ... Is it Moreno? I can't remember his first name, but on the Broncos player, Moreno. He almost shot me because I walked into his house or I walked into his backyard, which is usually what we did. We didn't knock. We just did it. He's like, "What? Oh, bro, I almost shot you." Anyway, kind of funny. Then I worked other ... All I'm saying is I actually worked at a plastic factory for a while, and we made M16 buttstocks and syringes. It was injection molding. It was really interesting. I did so many construction jobs and it taught me how to work. It taught me how to do hard stuff, stuff that sucked, which is good. You want to know how to do those things. I love what I do, but there are elements of it that are work, stuff that is really, really ... Let's see if I can shift. I'm driving my car. I drive a stick shift. Here we go. If you can't do the crappy part of the business, then you're going to fail because it's the crappy part, so I'm having a crappy part of it. Obviously, a good side and bad side. Anyways, one day, my dad brought me aside. My dad was an executive at IBM. He's a genius, man. He's the man. I'm working on his ... He does extremely well in the financial markets, just personally and so I'm helping him build a webinar right now, but anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. Anyway, he brought me aside. This is several years ago, a long time ago, maybe almost 10 now. That's crazy. I'm 28. What? He brought me aside and he said, "Hey, you know what?" I was doing all these construction jobs and I was learning how to work and it was great stuff and it was good for a teenager. I went on a mission for my church. I came back, and he was like ... Here's one of the biggest lessons he ever taught me besides how to work hard. He brought me aside and he said, "You know what? If you want to make a lot of money, you have to got to stay on the revenue side of business." I didn't understand what he was saying at first. He's like, "Do not reside on the cost side of business." I was like, "Okay, you know, I don't, what are you talking, what are you talking about?" He said, "Think about it. When you go into work, does your position produce revenue or is your position a cost to the business?" I was like, "Interesting." He's like, "Any time that you are standing on the revenue side of business, you're going to make a lot more money." That's why sales guys get paid so much money. That's why people who do HR and people who do support, that's why they don't get paid a lot of money. They are a cost to keeping the business running. He's like, "If you want to ever ... If you want to keep on ..." He's like, "That's why I've done so well in my career is because I have stayed on the revenue generating side of business." His job was to go, to fly to clients all over the world. He's been to I don't even know how many countries, well over 50, tons of ... My dad traveled like crazy growing up.
All I'm saying is he knows what he's talking about on this stuff. Take what he's saying and take what I'm saying to you right now as real. Just think about it. Any time your business, any time your position, which is why it's so great to be the entrepreneur, you are directly in charge of making money for the company. People are like, "It's not fair that that guy comes in and he owns it and he makes all this money." He's like, "Well, he is solely responsible for making your paycheck happen, so, yeah, why wouldn't he be, you know?" There was a great book that I read... I was just thinking about all this again, how interesting that is because that's one of my roles for current job in ClickFunnels. I'm very much on the revenue side of business. Sales funnels and my skill set is very much directly related to the revenue side of all these other people's businesses when they hire me to do their funnels. I'll charge 15, 20 grand for a sales funnel, but I know it'll make them 10 times that in a year. You know what I mean? It's dumb, easy decisions on that. The reason why I can do that is because it's on the revenue side of business. Just think about that as you go through. Are your activities, what you're doing right now in your day, are your activities keeping you in the revenue side of what you need to be doing in your business to grow it or are you standing on the cost side? That stuff started hitting me because I've been doing some extra stuff to just push further and push harder as I work with Russell, and it's brought more money in. It's more brought more value. It's brought more stuff in. It's cool to see what happens when you start to do that. Whether or not you are an entrepreneur who's solely on your own, you can start thinking about this. Are my activities right now revenue producing or are they cost producing? Am I actually pulling in money? It's such an interesting way to look at. There's a great book that I read once. I got to be honest with you. I'm saying this to you, but I cannot remember the name of it. The whole point of the book though was he was saying, "Okay, there's really four different areas of work that you can go in." This isn't Robert Kiyosaki's ESBI thing. It was another guy who had four different quadrants, also, and he was saying that your ... Let's say you want to get a job. Let's say you don't want to be an entrepreneur. I know a lot of ... 99% of the people who listen to this podcast, you guys are all trying to be entrepreneurs. You are entrepreneurs. You're going out. You're changing the world. You're doing great things. Just take this as a grain of salt just with the lesson. He basically said that if you want security, you will not make a lot of money unless you become this high-end entrepreneur. Eventually you get to this place of great security. If you want to make a lot of money, you have to stay in high-risk job opportunities. You have to stay in these positions where you actually go out and you have to ... It ties in exactly what I'm saying. You have to be on the spot where revenue is created. There were four different quadrants and he was saying, "Look, the places ..." Think about a doctor. That's more high risk. You are playing with people's lives. It's no wonder they get paid a lot of money. Society has said, "Okay, let's let this guy get paid a lot so that he is motivated to know his stuff." You know what I mean?
Anyway, funnels are not high risk though for that reason... I was just thinking about all this stuff this morning while we were lifting. I was like, "It's so fascinating how true that lesson is that my dad told me, like, 10 years ago. Stay on the revenue side of business. You know, do things that are going to bring extra income in." If you're working somewhere right now and they're not willing to see the money that you're pulling in, should be worth a raise or whatever, second guess what you're doing. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. That sucks... If you can go in and you can create a butt load of extra value, if you can go in and you just ... Anyway, I think you guys get the idea. What ended up happening is I was doing all, just to come full circle, I was doing all these construction jobs and I was tiling. I was actually steel tying. We'd get these huge things of rebar. We'd take these machines and we'd bend the rebar. We'd build these pools inside of these backyards. It's cool. I helped maintain and do some of the pool for the singer from One Republic, which is cool. The guy's got a sweet pool, man. It's underground, under his house. It's so crazy. I was a pool cleaner and I did that for a long time. I'd go and I'd clean the pools. I had a route that I'd go on. It's the cost side of business. It wasn't directly ... I was a service guy. My position didn't really make money. I was just fulfillment for what they were selling... I remember I was sick of it, that there was this moment of time. I was 22. That was 6 years ago. Wow, almost 7. What? It's my birthday coming up. Woo hoo. I remember walking out of the big warehouse where we had all of our stuff. I was covered in cement powder and all this stuff. I was dirty and it was freezing out. It was a good experience, but I remember it was time for me to go back to college and finish that semester, to pick back up. I was almost done with school at that time. I remember there was this little piece of tile on the ground. This might sound cheesy, but I remember I picked up this piece of tile and I realized, I was like, "I'm going to take this and I'm going to keep it with me because I want to remind me to never do a job like this again. Not that it's below me, but just because I want to never have to be in a position where I have to do this again, and there were times in the future during college where I hadn't quite figured out how to make enough money yet. I went and I ... We're about to start Funnel Fridays. I got to run, and it's in three minutes...
Anyway, all I'm saying is decide what position you're going to stay in and then stick to it. I know a lot of you guys have already done that, but anyway, I just hope that stays motivating to you guys. Stay on the revenue side of business and stay doing only the tasks that are going to bring revenue to what you're doing. Outsource the rest of them. Anyways, guys, I got to run. If you guys want to, check out Funnel Fridays or Funnel Feast. That's where I do kind of what we do on Funnel Fridays, but more in depth usually on Saturdays. Check out FunnelFeast.com if you want. All right, guys. Talk to you later. Bye.
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| 08 Jun 2017 | SFR 57: I'd Start With THIS Funnel... | 00:28:43 | |
People always ask, "WHERE SHOULD I START"? Well... here you go :)
What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Now, I don't know about you guys, but I would love to hear maybe a new podcast intro. Now, I've not made one. However, I do want to know if you want to have a new podcast intro. If you wouldn't mind, reach out to me and let me know. We're almost to Episode 60, which is crazy, but I honestly, I wouldn't be ... There's been many times I fall asleep and the podcast intro that I currently have right now just keeps running through my head so anyway, super excited for this episode. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now here's your host, Steve Larsen. All right, all right, all right. Hey, and I'm so excited for today and for what I'm going to share with you because I got some really huge news. Hope you guys had a great weekend. It was Memorial Day Weekend recently and my family was all out. We were having fun. We got up early. We went on a run. We went to the park. We hiked just a little, small little ... It was really steep for my little girls. I have a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old so whatever they can handle, but it was really fun. It was awesome. After we went on this hike, right, a park was nearby and what we did is we went down to this park. We're playing and having fun and my little girl's 3 years old, she's running around and there's tons of people there, right. As a parent, you're on red alert. You're looking around like crazy all over the place, making sure everything's fine, making sure there's no creepers around. You know what I mean? Now, I am all for my kids getting their own scrapes and bumps in life. You know what I mean? I'm not going to let them get hurt on purpose, but it's going to happen anyway so, I might as well not be helicopter parent and rather actually go and just prepare them for those experiences. You know what I mean? There's a point to this story, I promise. I wasn't too surprised when there was some kid politics that started and these kids started getting in my little girl's face and just screaming at her. At first, I sit forward, I'm sitting on the side and it was crazy hot out so I was sitting in the shade, but I was watching her. I was watching closely, seeing what's happening, and this little kid starts getting off on my little's girl's face. She's 3, right. She's 3 years old. What are you going to do? She's a little girl. She barely understands what's going around her still. You know what I mean? She's barely becoming self-aware kind of. You know what I mean? My resting state is nice guy personally. Steve Larsen, I'm a nice guy. That's my resting state. That's how I currently am. However, there was this ... Man, there's few things that will set me off and make Papa Bear come out and I have no ... I actually like when Papa Bear comes out. I invite Papa Bear to come out whenever it can. It's kind of fun.
It's literally just that sometimes there's nothing you can do about it so you just laugh like whatever and it makes really serious things calm down. That just egged on this kid, right. My little girl starts laughing. It just egged him on and I was ... Anyway, he starts getting too aggressive though with her. I'm watching from across the playground. I stood up real fast and I walked over there because he was trying to push her and shove her really hard and there wasn't anything behind her. She would've fallen off the playground pretty far into the ground. Papa Bear comes out, right, and I come out and I start getting out and I'm hoosh, I'm trying to be cool, but at the same time, I want to throw this kid through a window. You know what I mean? I get really pissed off about that kind of stuff. There's no reason to be a jerk in life. Anyway, I go over and I walk up to this kid and I was like, "Hey, chump, why don't you stop throwing my girl around, huh?" The kid started bawling and it shocked him so much that I was standing there and I guess you would say I was calling him names. I called him a chump, all right, whatever. There's worse things I could probably say to him, but the kid starts bawling loudly. I was like, "Uh, whatever," and I just walked around, I was like, "Come on, Brinley," and I took my little girls and we went into another part of the playground. It was a big playground. Two seconds later and I'm like, "Crap," and I can feel parents eyes on me and I'm like, "Uh, whatever," like I don't ... Anyway, whatever. We're playing around over this other part of the playground and pretty soon, this really heated mom comes walking up to me and she goes, "Excuse me. Did you just call my kid a chump?" I turned around and I was like, "Yes, I did." She's like, "Why?" It's like, "Because he's pushing my little girl around. He can't do that. You understand?" She just stood there for a little while and then, she just turned around and walked away. Look, there's no room to be a chump in this life, all right... If you're going to be a chump and if you're a chump and you're on my podcast, you can get out of my community. You know what I mean? That's my attitude about it. Life's too dang short to be a chump. Don't be a chump. Don't be a chump in business. Don't try and be all sneaky. I got people who steal from me. I can't stand people like that. If I ever find people who's stealing from me, I just block them out immediately and I ... I was talking to Russell about this, you guys. My mentality is to give and give and give and give and give as much as I possibly can, overdeliver every freaking time I launch anything, every time I put anything out, any time I do anything so that when somebody turns around and they come back to me and they say, "Hey, you know what, I think that you should've done this or you're not doing enough here or you're not doing this or you're not ... " I'm like holy crap, I am bleeding, bending over backwards, giving way more than I should, that sets me off. You know what I mean? I know that probably a lot of you guys are probably the exact same way if you're in this community with me, right, the Sales Funnel Broker, Sales Funnel Radio, stevejlarsen.com community. You know what I mean? If you're in this, we're very similar people is what I've noticed. Birds of a feather flock together. I actually truly believe that and it's one of the major reasons that I wanted to start a podcast thing was because I was tired of the people I was hanging around and I wanted other people who thought like I did in my community. You know what I mean? Anyways, the types of people out there who are going to steal from me and stuff like that, I do believe in an element of karma. It's going to come around. It's going to nip you in the butt. You know what I mean? The other part is that man, if that parent and the same is true for you as an entrepreneur, if you're not bridled enough to function in society or let's say parent ... Anyways, I'm not trying to get into parenting stuff, but what I feel like is that if my little girl goes out and she's doing something that's stupid, it's my job to correct it or else society is going to correct it for me later on down the line and they're going to be way less nice about it. You know what I mean? I feel like those kinds of thing ... Anyways, I'm not trying to get into a big ranting thing about that, but my gosh, I was laughing so hard. Finally, I was like man ... I was talking to my wife, like, "Alyssa, we should probably get out of here because these parents are going to rage at the fact that I just called this kid a chump and made him bawl." I don't really freaking care. Anyway, I think it's funny. It's the same attitude when people come to me like, "What? You gave all this stuff to me and it's super, super cheap, but you're not bending over backwards to make sure that I'm successful with it." I'm like, "Dude, it is not my fault if you can't figure it out. I have overdelivered. I've given tons of walkthrough guides. I have given so much stuff like crazy. If you can't figure it out, I'm sorry. You can hire me as a coach, but I'm not going to keep giving stuff away to you for free. My time is more valuable than your feelings." You know what I mean? It was weird for me to cross that threshold as an entrepreneur and as a business guy just because in the past, I was all about just giving and giving and giving and I still am, but eventually, I was like, "My gosh, I got to self-preserve here. I've got to create a way for me to still live, still have a family life." You know what I mean? Still do the things I want to in life or I will literally spend all day every day ... I had 100 notifications in Facebook just two days ago. It was in a single day. My email was at 200 a week ago. It's at 900 now in a week. You guys know what I mean? You all are going to be there. I know especially, you all are going to be there for sure if you're not already. Anyway, don't be a chump. Hey, I got some good news though. That wasn't the good news. I told you I had good news at the beginning of this episode. I got great news. I've been working ... Over Christmas, my dad and I, we got together and I flew over there a few days early and I did it for the explicit reason of sitting down with him and beginning to build out his webinar. He's got this cool software that lets him trade the futures market, E-mini specifically, and he's been doing it for about six years. He learned that basically for him to be successful, he's got to create this thing that didn't exist before and he's a software engineer so he could create it. He created this cool software that sits on top of a trading platform and it tells him whenever to get in and out of a trade and he wins like crazy on the thing. I can't tell you legally because I can't make any kind of income claims, but he wins a lot. He's like, "Do you think anyone would ever buy this?" I was like, "Oh, my gosh, Dad, yes." He showed it to me and my jaw dropped. I did some stocks and options trading for a while and I definitely understand what he was showing. When he showed it, I was like, "Oh, my gosh, that's amazing." Anyways, fast-forward, so over Christmas, we were building out a webinar, putting all stuff together. He ended coming to what Russell and I are calling the FHAT event, the Funnel Hack-A-Thon, FHAT event. It's F-H-A-T. He came to this for a three-day intensive and he figured all this stuff out and then he's like, "Okay, Stephen, at the very last Saturday in May, I want to launch this thing." I said, "Cool. Let me help you." I slept probably three, maybe four, sometimes five hours every single night for the last week and we got this thing put together. It was really cool. If you want to check it out, you can. I'm not promoting it. It's just so you can check it out if you want to and actually, I know there's quite a few of you guys that are stock traders or financial markets traders in my community as well, which I think is really cool, super, super awesome industry there. Anyways, you can go to financialinvestingsecrets.com. It was a good webinar and I was so proud of him. We got out there and he went and he just launched it and made money and it was his first webinar ever. You know what? He did half of it wrong. You know what I mean? He just did it though. He just did it. He got out. He executed. He just did it. I was so proud of him. It was so cool. He wasn't expecting to make any money. I was wondering. It was his first time ever doing anything like this. He's just barely launching his own podcast, barely getting these things up and running. Super smart. You know what I mean? He's not a salesman, he's not ... but he's, oh, my gosh, such a smart engineer. He's created a lot of industry standards in the software world, anything from watches to NASA rockets. He's very smart. Much of how things are coded and as far as on a code sense architected is because of the way he has put stuff together. He's very, very smart... Anyway, he ... I'm just really pumped for him. He went out. We had 55 people register and about 13 showed up, which actually for the metrics that Russell always teaches is the exact same metrics that always will happen, about a fourth show up and we had ... I haven't looked at the final numbers yet, but then we had people buy. It was really exciting. His first webinar ever, it's so cool. A lot of people will sit at this point and go, "Okay, now what do we do next?" You know what I mean? It was from you guys, I asked you guys if you wanted to come and 50 of you guys signed up and 12 of you showed up or 13 of you showed up, which is what I was expecting. We were expecting.
At the last Funnel Hack-A-Thon event, it was the third day. I was on stage the whole day. I was speaking. It was really, really exciting and I really, really loved it, but one of the whole things we teach you guys about is this concept called the Dream 100 and we hope you guys go through it. What I'm having my dad do right now is he's got his webinar and we're continuing to make tweaks. We're continuing to make little adjustments here and there, but honestly, the thing that I'm having him do now is writing out a list of all the people who are podcasting in the financial market world, all the people who have blogs in the financial market world, all the people who have YouTube channels, who have live trading rooms, anybody who has an audience, anybody who has any kind of list or a following where my dad would want to sell to them. While we're getting Facebook ads up and running, we are starting to "date" or "court" these people on this Dream 100 list. We're starting to reach out to them. We'll probably send a package out to them soon. We got to smoosh them up just a little bit. You know what I mean? This is a relationship business. Internet marketing is still a relationship business especially, especially for the way you do sales funnels and the way we teach because what we're going to go do is we're going to go ... we want them to promote his webinar. He's got a great software that he personally wrote that helps him trade the E-minis with great success. You know what I mean? Anyway, that's what we're doing right now though. When you think about this ... I'm trying to think where to start on this because when you think about where we came from and this whole journey that he's currently on right now, a lot of times what people will start doing is they're like, "Okay, I've got this webinar, and I'm going to go build this webinar." Let's say they're just starting out, brand spanking new. They haven't done anything yet. They've never even put anything together. They've never even sold anything. They've never ... You know what I mean? Brand new. What a lot of people do we've noticed is they'll create what we call the value letter, right. They'll go, "Okay, first, we'll have low ticket items and it'll be in this whole funnel. Then I'm going to send them to this mid-range funnel and there's a whole funnel for that. Then I'm going to send them to this really high ticket thing and then the whole funnel for that as well." The tendency for people is to turn around and build a tripwire funnel or a low ticket funnel first, and I will tell you that is not the way we do it. That is not the way we do it whenever Russell and I build for a client. That's not the way I personally do it whenever I build for a client. There's very few circumstances where we actually start with a low ticket front end funnel, very, very, very few scenarios. The reason is because it's so much harder to make the numbers work. If I'm selling a $50 knickknack versus a $1,000 product, I can spend so much more money to acquire a customer, right. Now that my dad needs some sales, he can spend a good chunk of money to get one person to buy and I doubt it's going to cost us $1,000 to sell a $1,000 product, right. Now it's just the big rinse and repeat game... How much can we tweak it? How much can we get more traffic into it? How can we fill it up? Does that make sense? That's the reason ... I don't know if you guys have heard of the Two Comma Club Coaching Program that Russell and I are doing. It's so, so fun. My gosh, just oh, I absolutely love what I do on that thing. Anyways, we teach people though how to make $1 million funnel and we help them hit what we call the Two Comma Club, right, $1 million. We don't actually start with a tripwire funnel and I've had a few people reach out and ask that like "Cool, I got this sweet webinar. You guys help me plan. When do I start the tripwire funnel?" Like you know what? Probably not 'til like six months of it being successful are you even going to start thinking about that. People are like, "What? That's so crazy. Oh, my gosh. That's nuts. How is it that you can do that? How is that you ... You know what I mean? People will start to do that and they'll start to think that. I understand why that would be a temptation because as you read a book like DotCom Secrets or you read other books where it talks about increasing value or monetizing your audience, things like that, the tendency is to think I must start with this low ticket item and then I will go to this mid range item and then I'll go to this really high ticket item. I will tell you that the majority of the time when we actually build funnels, it's actually the opposite. We start at the top and we work down. Here's the reason why. It's funny. We had this four-hour Q&A last Friday with the Two Comma Club Coaching Program and a lot of these guys are out there and they're asking this very same question. They're like, "Why would you do it that way?" Let me take you through it. Here's why. Here's why. Number one, I already told you that the numbers are going to work better, right. You're just going to do better just simply by starting at the top because if you start with a high ticket item, how many people does it take to really start turning some revenue? One? Two? You know what I mean? You probably know where to find those kinds of people. You know where those communities are. If people aren't willing to give you that money yet, it means you haven't proven yourself yet. Go do it for free for a few people, all right. I'm talking about high ticket application style funnels where it's 10,000 to 15,000 to 25,000 to 50,000. You know what I mean? Higher than 10,000 is usually what I'm talking about when I say high ticket application funnels. People are applying to work with you, right. You got to go get crazy results, lots of great results, right. Either you're starting at that spot or you're starting one step down, which is what we teach at the Two Comma Club Coaching level, which is the webinar funnel, right. At the webinar funnel, what you can do is you start to get all these people in, right, tons of people, and you start tweaking the offering, you start tweaking the message and you start tweaking your traffic sources and you start finding out which ads convert the best. You know what I mean? You start figuring this whole thing out. What happens after a while, right? What happens after a while? What happens after a while is you're going to start getting a ton of questions, lots of questions. Man, you know what, I wish that the products from your webinar, I wish it did this. Or you know what, I wish it was this? What if it had this capability? Or how come this isn't here? You know what I mean? You're going to start to get questions. You'll start to get support questions. As those come in, document them because what's going to happen is very, very slowly, sometimes slowly or suddenly, whatever it is, but clearly, there will be this area that starts to rise up and you'll be like, "Oh, my gosh. You know what, I wish that I was selling something like that," right, and you'll go over ... What's happening is the market is showing you which product to create next. Does that make sense? If you are able to go through and massage out a $1,000 to $2,000 product offer and actually get it converting, get it selling, you've already laid so much groundwork for a smaller low ticket front end product funnels in the future. It's just the way it works. Because all of a sudden, what's going to happen is you're going to turn around and people are going to say, "Oh, my gosh, I wish I had X, Y and Z." What are they doing? They're telling you what they want and then all you do is you go create it. Why did Russell go make something like Funnel Scripts? Because people asked for it. He didn't start with Funnel Scripts, right. He made Click Funnels. He figured out his $1,000 webinar. He figured out how to sell something for $1,000 that sold Click Funnels, that got continuity going, right. That was the hard part. Once he got this hard part down, then he can turn around and he starts going, "What are all these [funnel 00:19:47] things? You know what? Let's build this thing called Funnel Immersion, Funnel Scripts. You know what? How about Funnel Graffiti." It's all these things related to the core offer, right, that eventually ascend somebody up into the Click Funnels level. It's the exact same thing that I'm trying to tell you to do. It's the exact same thing I was trying to tell my dad to do. Don't worry about small ticket stuff at first. That would be my advice. Now, other people would tell you different, that's totally fine, but my advice, do not start with something small. Start with something at least $1,000. There was a lot of people on the call who were like, "A thousand dollars? You really think people are going to give me $1,000?" I can hear your questions right now as I'm saying that. The answer is it depends on if you charge $1,000. What's easier to do is simply just put down the price point, 997 and then figure out how you can justify that price point. What is an offer that is so ridiculously cool that someone would give you $1,000 for it? Does that make sense? Instead of thinking, "Oh, no one will ever do that," and killing yourself the other way around. Start with $1,000 product. What's funny is at one of the last events ... Actually, I'm sorry, not one of the last, the last Funnel Hacking Live Event, beforehand ... I think it's okay if I tell you this. Beforehand, Russell was trying to figure out something he could sell at the Funnel Hacking Live Event. What's fun for me is to sit back and watch ... You know when you're so good at something, you don't realize you're that good at it? I think that happens a lot for Russell and it's understandable why it would because he's been doing it for so long. It's fun with my fresh eyes to sit back on the side and be like, "Oh, my gosh, what a cool process you're going through." You know what I mean?
It's okay to start with the dollar amount. I know it must feel like I'm all over the place right now, but the only reason I'm hitting this really hard is because there's been several people who reach out saying, "Where do is start, Stephen, where do I start," right? I've had tons of people come ... I don't know why, but definitely in the last month, there's been a lot of people that ask that, "Where do I start?" What I would tell you to do is to start by figuring out how you can charge $1,000 for something, turn it into a webinar or an invisible funnel or black box funnel. Then what I would do is I would move to high, high ticket, right, because there's going to be a percentage of the people that buy my dad's $1,000 product who want more one-on-one coaching, right. I would not put yourself in the fulfillment or inside of the offer of the $1,000 product. Rather make them pay you more to work with you more. Does that make sense? I would start with this $1,000 product in the middle and then I would go put you into this implementation and coaching area where it's done-for-you services, but it's more high ticket, like 5, maybe 10% of the people who buy your $1,000 product are going to be interested in that kind of thing. That's great. You're only going to sell one or two of them to really make a huge difference. You know what I mean? A really easy way to do that. You guys see what I'm saying? Should I trial close you? Are you guys getting this? Are you guys seeing this could work for your business? What would your spouse say when this actually works for you? Can you imagine what it's going to be like when you walk out and you've made that kind of money? You imagine when it's automated? Should I keep trial closing you guys? That's true though. Does that make sense? Then what happens is then we go out and we start going on tripwire funnels and we start going for breakeven funnels and we start to ... When you do it the other way around, you're totally guessing. It's so much harder to make a tripwire funnel breakeven if you do it the other way around. Instead, do it the other way where you start at the top or in the middle, right, and make the tripwire funnel last or last-ish. People will tell you what they want so then just go make that and the chance of success is so much greater. It is so much less risky to do it that way. It's pretty funny when I sat back and realized what was going on with that and that's the way we do it that it just blew me away because I remember the first funnel that I built, it was low ticket continuity. That's the hardest category I can even think of to sell ever. Continuity stuff in the front, that's wicked hard. That was crazy. It's more challenging as a category usually to sell continuity, especially low ticket, anyway, upfront. Anyway, so it just reminded me of all these different funnels that I put together and I think part of the reason why they would fail and stuff like that. What's funny is I have really low ticket free plus shipping funnels right now. I have also ... You know what's funny? It is just as much work for me to sell the mid-range stuff than it is for me to sell the low ticket stuff. The support tickets that come in are almost the exact same. It's so funny. When I actually go out and start selling $1,000 stuff, it's easier for me to do that than it is the lower ticket thing. For whatever reason, it brings in a higher level customer. It brings in somebody who's in a different position in their life, someone who I want to work with. Anyways, I don't know how to sell you on this. When I was thinking about my dad's webinar, when I was thinking about all the stuff going on, and those of you who are trying to make this business succeed, I'm not trying to tell you to abandon everything if you already have a funnel, a tripwire funnel on the front end. What I am trying to tell you to do is charge more money, just charge more money. Then what you do is have some person in the back end after someone buys your mid range product, your $1,000, $2,000 product, have somebody calling them up in the back end saying, "Hey, you want to work with Grant Larsen for 15,000 or whatever? He'll give you one-on-one coaching for six months," or something like that. You know what I mean? You only close two of those a month, that is seriously massive revenue boosters right there. Anyway, guys, I hope that what I'm trying to say is coming across clearly because the type of question that I've been getting recently, which by the way, I've been loving the questions. I hope you like the mass Q&A sessions I just did, the last two podcast episodes. Those were a lot of fun. As a by product of that, people have been asking more and more questions. It's been a whole lot of fun. Really, really enjoy that. Usually, the type of question is like, "Hey, where do I start?" I'm trying to tell you please for the love, from a guy who did it for years at the low ticket price thinking that he was serving better or thinking that he was making it more affordable, but in reality causing a harder headache and I actually had to sell it harder sometimes. It's not fun. I'm telling you, please start with something that's at least $1,000... I'm saying that over and over and over again because it doesn't take many of them to really change your life. It does not take many of them to have seed cash for your next ad campaign. It doesn't take many of them to really start figuring out also what people want in the next tripwire funnel. Start with something high ticket. It's so funny. There was a few people I was coaching this last week and they're like ... I kept telling them $1,000 price point, they're like, "Awesome. I'm selling for 497." I said, "Why? I keep telling you," and it came down to it ... Now if you have a legitimate reason like sometimes there's a legitimate reason and that's fine, but most of the time, there isn't one. You literally are just afraid to charge more money and I'm begging you not to do that... I'm begging you to get out and actually say, "You know what, I'm going to charge $1,000. I'm going to figure out how I can charge $1,000. I'm going to figure out how to sell at that price point," and when that becomes your focus, oh, man, it's so rewarding when $1,000 comes in. It's like, "Whoa."
Anyways, guys, hopefully that helps. Super excited for this week and what's going on here and I appreciate you all like crazy. Just gosh, I just love our community. It's so, so, so fun. I remember I was posting different pictures, what we were doing and things like that and just the engagement, I just really, really enjoyed it and I really appreciate Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free, go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today. | |||
| 12 Jan 2018 | SFR 103: How I Tested Before Entering... | 00:18:38 | |
Got a great question from a listener about how to test that a product could do well before you enter the market…
What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to a special episode of "Sales Funnel Radio." Welcome to "Sales Funnel Radio" where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now, here's your host Steve Larsen. All right, guys. Hey, I am stoked about today, so, periodically ... wasn't as frequently as of late but recently I actually have been going through and I listen to a lot of the questions people are submitting on salesfunnelradio.com. If you don't know what I'm talking about, if you go to salesfunnelradio.com and scroll down kind of at the bottom right there, there's a green button, and if you click that you can record a question to me straight off of your browser, an actual audio file. It emails that over to me and I go and I kind of vet through them to see which ones would apply most kind of the group. Then, I can toss them out here. So, anyways, we've got one of those today though. This is to a guy named Matt who has a special skill at the Rubik's Cube. So, anyways, I'm gonna play the question here because there's a lot of elements to this and I wanna make sure that everybody understands clearly how awesome of a position Matt is actually in this. But, I don't think he knows that.
Is it silly to think like that? Also, how do I know if it's a product that people actually want before I finally pull the trigger and get something out there? It's yours, dude. Hey, Matt, thanks so much for the question. When I heard that, I think my eyes rolled back in my head and I was like, oh, yeah, this is the question. I love this question. Great, great question. First off, just know that you guys can make a course off of anything. No joke. And it doesn't need to be ... if you got a special skill, whatever it is ... it's funny, because reading the book, like Expert Secrets, I think sometimes people might think that you've gotta be some highfalutin suit and tie-wearing briefcase-carrying expert and that's actually not true at all. I don't know if you've seen funnelhackinglive.com. Yeah, "Funnel Hacking Live 2016" there was a guy, I cannot remember his name, but he's known as the Jump Guy, and he literally teaches people how to jump, no joke. They travel the world. He and his wife, his kids, at the time had not had a home in like five years or something like that, huge amount. Because they liked to go travel around and they live like kings and he literally teaches people how to jump. That's what he does. And he's taken that on, he's like yeah, he's the Jump Guy. So, basketball players, athletes, whoever, if they want to learn how to jump higher he teaches them how to do that. There's a little course that he sells on it. I'm trying to tease as many names, hopefully they're okay with me sharing these stories ... there's a lady at one of the first FAT events we ever did, the "Funnel Hackathon Event," and she was there. She was sitting kind of in the back left. I remember where she was sitting, as we were teaching, and I was on stage there and we're sharing those different strategies and stuff, she goes off and she makes like $1.3 million on like a $27 product. It hasn't even been a year. It's been like eight months, six months, something like that. I'm not good with months. I always, always have to say the months in order by name to figure out what they are. Anyway, so that's the whole point, though. It doesn't necessarily need to be expensive, although you certainly will ... how many $27 products do you need to sell to make a dent in your wallet? Quite a few, which is why I usually tell people to start with a thousand-dollar product. But, it doesn't need to be something ... if you see a spot where you're like, hey, I've got an expertise here. Don't feel like it's discredited because it's the Rubik's Cube guy, right? I will tell you I still cannot solve mine. I'm holding it right now. In fact, when he first sent that first message to me I was walking home in the snow. I like that's where I was. So, I was walking home in the snow, and I was like, "Man, I would pay for your course right now. I don't know how to finish solving this thing. I can get like three-fourths of the way through and I cannot get the last, like, layer." I don't know, my head doesn't naturally work like that. I've always wanted to learn how to do it. So, I was laughing when he said that, like, "Do you think people would pay for that? Do you think X, Y, and Z, whatever?" And Matt had reached out to me previously, so everyone knows, so I said, "Hey, would you ask that for the podcast because I think people would benefit from it?" The answer is 100%. You asked several questions there, you said I don't wanna be known as the Cube guy, Rubik's Cube guy or the puzzle guy. I get that. That's fine. In order to create a mass movement you certainly would probably need to take on that persona just a little bit, but if you're just trying to toss something out there for some extra cash flow coming in that's totally fine, that's 100% fine. I don't know that you necessarily need to take on, hey I'm the Cube guy, I'm the Rubik's Cube guy, the puzzle guy, but it certainly will help you the more you're wiling to do that. There are tons of YouTube videos of people trying to figure out how to do it. It's honestly one of the easiest ways to figure out if it's gonna sell really well, right. People are on YouTube for like, two reasons. One, to be entertained and distracted and the second is like for how-to stuff, how to do this, how to fix that, it's like tutorial-based things. When I actually first started launching the product that allowed me to quit my job, that's actually one of the ways that I knew that it was actually gonna sell so well, is because there's tons of YouTube tutorials. And, since it's such a hot, hot, hot, hot market that YouTube basically told me it was, I knew it was a safe place for me to go launch my thing in, as long as it was a new opportunity and I was following the Expert Secrets model, I would actually be able to be successful with it. So, that's one of the easiest, fastest ways for you to actually make sure that you could actually sell with it. It's probably big enough, though. You can check out semrush.com and type in "Other Rubik's Cube people who are seeling that," I mean, there's gotta be people making several grand a month at least selling Rubik's Cube education courses. I'm sure that there are. So, I actually don't think the question is, "Is it big enough," I think the biggest question you should ask yourself is, How will I defer myself from everybody else? How will I be different? How can I create a new opportunity out of somebody else who's teaching how to do Rubik's Cube stuff?/ somebody else who's teaching how to do something that's similar? How can I make myself different and differentiate enough so that it feels like a brand new opportunity? And part of that is you can just have a cooler offer than everybody else. It's not necessarily one of the strongest forms of creating a new opportunity, but by just changing up the delivery of stuff that already exists, you actually can get yourself into a new opportunity enough that you actually can create good cash flow from it.
So, it can be an info product, right? Let's say you've adapted this course for beginners and kind of intermediary and advanced people. So, they can get in, they can do their own, wherever they are. If they know how to and they want it faster, or if they have no idea what they're doing like me, they want to get in, just kind of learn, you have a place for each one of them. So, that's kind of the first thing, is the main product. Then, it's like a tool. What tool could you hand out to them to accelerate how they use your main masterclass? The first thing on the info product? Man, I would ship out Rubik's Cubes. Ship out a Trainer's Cube, and then also like a Speed Cube or something like that, so that people can go through and do your whole thing with them. Then, think through, like, hey, well, what are the other beliefs someone's gonna have about this that they think that are real but that aren't? What are those things? It's pretty awesome when you start thinking through that way. First, let's think through a vehicle, okay? So, what are all the other gurus who teach Rubik's Cube stuff missing that you could go out and throw rocks at? That's like the first question for bonus number one on the Stack Slide. You're throwing it at the vehicle that currently exists in the marketplace. What's the current vehicle? If everyone else is trying to get better at the Rubik's Cube, if everyone was trying to get out there and say, "Hey, yeah, this is the thing," what is it that you can throw rocks at to help people realize, wait a second, all these other gurus out there ... I'm shaking the cube like you can see it ... all these other gurus out there are missing this one step, these things right here. That lets you throw a rock at the current vehicles inside the market, right? And create some product, whether it's info product or whatever, something you ship out to, maybe a workbook, or something, I don't know that lets you differentiate yourself from everything else that's available out there. It's part of the first way that you create a new opportunity. Then he has to say, okay, internal beliefs. What are some of the internal beliefs someone has? "Oh, it's gonna take forever, oh, this is for someone who's mechanically minded, I'm not mechanically minded." You start thinking through, and if you don't know what those things are, you can either ask the market, which I certainly invite you to do, but you also probably have an idea of what the internal false beliefs are of people who want to get faster at the Rubik's Cube. The third thing though are the external beliefs. So, external beliefs, what are the things that others would blame for reasons for not being successful? It usually has something to do with time, money, and resources. They're pointing away from themselves, "I can't do this because of that, because of that, because of that." It's no longer about themselves as much, it's I don't have the time, I don't have the money, I don't have the resources. Usually somewhere around those three. Start thinking through what those are and that's how you put together an offer that makes you different from everybody else that's inside the marketplace and then one of the easiest ways to start testing it? Man, I would record some super cool tutorials and I would just put them on YouTube for free, and I would see what the response is, and in the description on YouTube ... this is literally how I launched my course, by the way ... in the description I would say, "Hey, if you want more of this kind of thing, or if you want to figure out phase two," you could show them here's the fastest way to solve the first row of a Rubik's Cube, heard from a Rubik's Cube master himself, or something like that. You go through and say, hey, look, if you want more of this go to, I don't know, solvemyrubikscube.com or I don't know, whatever your URL is, and in there, now you've captured their email address, you've qualified someone who's interested, you've qualified an opt-in, now it's time to qualify a buyer. So, you go through and you teach them this stuff and you're teaching them for free on YouTube, then you teach them a little bit more at the beginning of a funnel, and then you say, hey, do you want this thing for, I don't know, 10 bucks, 15 bucks, and it's the full course, or whatever. But then there's an upsell, and there's a bump, and there's a downsell, and you could have this really cool tripwire funnel on the front, and quite literally be able to ... anyway. The answer is absolutely. Absolutely. That's what I would do is I would go through and I would create it that way, and I would somehow figure how to split between ... maybe you don't have a thousand-dollar course on Rubik's Cubes but maybe it is $99. Maybe it's even $500. I'm known to say no on price points, or to say that it won't work, or whatever, but figure out how much you do want to get paid per course, and maybe it's something like, as part of the value added, whatever, they get on with you once a week and it's a live Q&A section, group Q&A, not one-on-one, charge higher price for one-on-one, but if there's a group Q&A for like a mid-tier, mid-value ladder area that would be awesome. That would be super cool. Because, I would love to have asked the three questions for how I was trying to solve this thing at the beginning. I kind of gave up after, like, a week. It was awesome, though. When I saw your thing, like, totally man, I would have paid for that. And you could target ads at people who are buying things at like Toys-R-Us or whatever. That certainly in my opinion, in my opinion, could totally be a viable source of cash flow, and I think could be awesome. That's the whole point for everyone else who is listening in this. Please understand that it doesn't matter what you're an expert at. Okay? What matter is how well you market it. I know I've brought this up before but it's a quote from Joe Polish, and Joe Polish says, "There is no relationship between being good and getting paid." There's no relationship between being good and getting paid. How many of you out there think and believe and know that you are better than most of your market at what you do? If you're listening to this podcast I fight that probably all of you guys are better than most of the market at what you do. So, why are you or aren't you getting paid how much you think you are worth? Because of Joe Polish, he said, "There is no relationship between being good and getting paid." You can be the best coder, the best programmer, the best whatever, but that does not mean you're gonna get paid at all. So, I love the second part of the quote. The second part of the quote is, "There is, however, a huge relationship between being good at marketing and getting paid." Go learn how to package and sell and market the thing you're good at. It doesn't matter what it is. There is most likely a market for it. What's funny is, I'm sure you guys heard the term, "The riches are in the niches." Funny enough, like, it's true. Like, what? Rubik's Cube training? Are you serious? Yeah, I'm telling you, you could make a ton of money with this stuff. It's funny to see some of the things people come through and make a whole bunch of money on using click funnels, that come through those doors, and it's like, man, are you serious? I'm overthinking this. That guy made that kind of money with this kind of thing? That's awesome, fascinating!
Anyway, that's what I would do, though. So, gosh, 100%. Anyone else who's listening to this figure out whatever your thing is, if you're like, I still haven't started, or whatever, if you're having a hard time pinning down what that thing is, start asking people what it is that they think that you're good at. I did that for a while, literally. I was like, what am I good at? What am I good at? I did that, like, three or four years ago, and then when I finally dropped anchor, it was like, I'm gonna try to be the best funnel builder in the world. Am I? Probably not. Of course not. But, I know I'm probably one of them, and I've worked super, super, super hard to get to that spot and develop that expertise, and there's times when I look around, I'm like, crap, I could go sell Rubik's Cube training. Did I overthink that? You can make ample money. Oh, darn it, it didn't quite put you in to a club but you made 700 grand, darn! You know what I mean? So, don't be afraid to marry your thing. Don't be afraid of exposing what it is, and understand that there's probably people out there who are already looking for your expertise. There's probably people out there who are wanting what you do. Then figure out how to market it. It's not good enough to be good at it. You'll never get paid that way. Funny enough, it's the reason why you can buy something on Amazon, or somewhere else and it shows up and it's pure crap. It's because they got good at marketing rather than the actual thing, which is a sad reality. That's the sad flip side of it, but that's also where the power of it lies in, what I'm trying to put across. Figure out how to market the thing. How do you package it up? How do you sell in a way that's different than everyone else in the market that makes you unique? Blue ocean, new opportunity, something that is not ever seen that's out there before, and it's one of the easiest ways to make a lot of money quickly, marketing a new opportunity from a submarket that you're taking one step out of. Such small risk. Just that little tiny step out, it's huge. The reason I knew I could be fine with my stuff, I did the exact same things I'm telling you to do.
Thanks for listening to "Sales Funnel Radio." Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your prebuild sales funnel today. | |||
| 26 Oct 2023 | How Chas Wilson Uses Community in Response to the Loneliness Epidemic | 00:26:21 | |
Most marketers want continuity in their business. Who doesn't? We all do. It brings you peace of mind, thinking you have recurring revenue every month. So, most of us would then rush into launching membership programs. Little did we know that building a networking group is more than just luring people in to sign up for memberships. That's what you'll be learning from today's podcast guest, Chas Wilson. Chas is one of our featured speakers at OfferLaunch 2023 event. (If you haven’t gotten your ticket yet, grab them HERE.) But for now, he's here to share how he went on to build his network empire–Master Networks–and use community to combat today's Loneliness Epidemic. Here's how he did it…
Key Takeaways: Introduction (00:00) Meet Chas Wilson (02:01) What is Master Networks? (04:17) The power of building a community (08:22) 3 key concepts in building a community (11:06) How to get your first paying member (12:47) How to help people realize they need networking (16:15) People want to be connected (18:45) Episode wrap-up (25:13)
Additional Resources - Reserve Your Seat at the OfferLaunch 2023 event here - Connect with me here --- Download Season 1 episodes here -- Sales Funnels Radio is a podcast for all passionate digital marketing pros looking to up their game and stay ahead. Follow us on your favorite podcasting platform so you never miss an episode!
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| 25 Oct 2017 | SFR 82: The "Russell Brunson Powerhouse"... | 00:19:37 | |
"What made Russell... RUSSELL??" After 18 months of sitting in the same room every day, I'm beginning to understand WHY Russell Brunson is Russell Brunson... maybe?
What’s going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you’re listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you’ll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today’s best internet sales funnels and now here’s your host, Steve Larsen. Hey, hope you're good. Hey, so was it this last week? We were putting on this webinar. It went fantastic. I got to watch Russell in full bore offer creation mode, and it's been fun. I mean I love watching him in that mode as well, and I try and learn like crazy. I'm trying to be a sponge. The things that I learn, I'm trying to pass 'em on to you guys. I'm trying to soak in those things. I'm like, "Oh, my gosh, this guy's like a 14 years of experience of obsessive, obsessive perfectionism and being the absolute best inside the marketing world." Like holy crap, and I'm trying to soak things in. Well, it's been fun to watch. We put this webinar on, and it was cool to see why, and it was fun to watch why. He went back, and we were looking at the same old offers we had. We were like, "We need to fix some stuff. We could just fix it and re-put it out there," but honestly, it's completely a brand new offer. It's a totally different product. We went out, and we launched it and it killed it. It went amazing and yet, again, I had another experience where I went back home to my wife, and I said, "Babe, I just watched him make $1,000,000 again." Like holy crap. Russell and I were sitting back the other day, and it was fun to ... I love getting him in those moments where he starts to reminisce, and he's telling me about ... If you guys never been inside the ClickFunnels office, all across the ceiling, all across the walls towards the ceiling, there are these 2 Comma Club plaques. They're all across the walls. They're all over the place, all over the walls, all over ... in the hallway near where the bathrooms are. Literally, ceiling-to-floor totally covered in 2 Comma Club plaques of people, of the ClickFunnels users who've made a million bucks, and they're constantly coming in another five every week. It's crazy. I mean it's really, really exciting. It's fun to see. I didn't think I had any kind of aversion towards making money beforehand. I really didn't, but the scope of what I feel like I'm able to accomplish has just been sky-rocketing. I was sitting back and Russell started reminiscing. He goes, and he was honestly asking me ... "Hey." He's like, "Steven, dude, how many 2 Comma Club plaques do I have out there again?" I was like, "You have like 18." He's like, "Dude, I've been put in the 2 Comma Club 18 times on my own and three of those awards are in the 8-Figure Club." This is besides ClickFunnels, altogether, which makes a lot of money. Besides, ClickFunnels, altogether, right? Russell knows how to make offers. It's fun to go back and watch him create offers.
I hope you don't mind if I share some lessons that I learned from him personally. This is one that's really stuck out to me, and I wanna tell you what I'm doing about it, but anyway, about three years ago, I was listening to one of Russell's earlier podcasts when it was still "Marketing In Your Car." He said in there, and I believe I've brought this up before, but he said in there ... "One of the easiest ways to become successful in something is to get a coach, number one and number two, to be a coach." Right? The moment you get a coach, you're not held accountable. Number two, the moment you become a coach you start to learn your own tactics better because people are asking you how you do what you do. You may not I honestly know how you're doing what you're doing, so you get a coach, and you be a coach. Honestly, weekly that that is the theme. He is constantly looking for the next coach, for the next person, the person that he can go hook into and not only be held accountable from, but who's the next powerhouse he can take his plug and plug into and learn more, whatever it is and supercharge. I love books. I am surrounded in them right now as I'm recording this podcast. There are books all over the place; stacks of them literally. Not just in bookshelves. There are stacks of books. Books a great, but sometimes when it comes to applicable knowledge that you need in the moment, man, coaches are great. Get a coach. Get a coach. Get a coach. Get a coach. That's been the thing that I've been watching him doing. I mean I'm starting to do myself as well. I'm sitting there, and I was already starry eyed. I'm pretty sure I was mute for the first two months 'cause I couldn't believe I was sitting three feet away from Russell Brunson. I was like, "Holy crap, dude. I almost put a poster of you on my wall?" He was like, "Ah, ha-ha." I was like, "I'm not kidding." It's like oh, awkward. There's a guy though who messaged out to me. He goes, "Dude, do you realize that to be near Russell that often is to become more like him in every way." Trey Lewellen calls me "little Brunson" now. I'm not patting my own back, but what I've started to notice, I've been there a year and a half now, and I'm like, "Oh, my gosh. That's starting to become true." The ism's; my mannerisms. Even the way I speak, the way I teach, all those pieces are starting to sink deeply into my own behaviors. Behavior is not an easy thing to change in human beings, right? It's not. That takes a long time. There is a huge amount of conscious effort that goes into shifting how you behave, right? Tons. Oh, especially over the last two or three weeks. I've begun to ask myself why has Russell become Russell? It's been a very interesting question, and it's kind of been a little bit subconscious; also conscious question, though. I was like, "Why? Why do I really feel Russell has become Russell?" There's a lot of reasons. There's a ton of 'em. The work ethic is through the roof, right? I mean he ... The dude knows how to work, right? He understands how to be a creator, right? Rather than someone just creating a me-too product. He knows how to create offers. It's so funny. A lot of times we'll go create something. ClickFunnels will go put something out there and within a little while, people will be trying to knock it off with their own versions of it. Russell has not created his expertise by learning how to do that well. He has created his expertise on learning how to create brand new amazing offers, right? That's huge, but why? One of the major points I'm trying to get here: why has Russell become Russell? Because I have never seen him where he's not had a coach. I have never seen him where there's not a sense of urgency, which is in part to the fact that someone else is holding him accountable as well, who he has paid money to. That's amazing. Recently, I would do coaching. I love it. It's a lot of fun. It was actually a buddy. I don't know if you guys know Akbar Sheik. I actually had him on the podcast recently. I hope he doesn't mind me telling this. I respect him like crazy. He is not just an acquaintance. He's a true friend to the core and I really, really appreciate him, but if you think about that. He came, and he's like, "Hey, do you wanna look over something of mine? I'll take one of your coaching spots." I was like, "Sure, that'd be great." I was tempted to not charge him, and I was tempted to not charge him because we're close. We're very, very close. You know what I mean? I've done that a lot to family, and I've done a lot of close friends and you know what I've noticed? Every single time is they never do anything afterwards. Ever. It's the saddest. It's heart-wrenching for both; the one being coached and the coach. Because the coach is really trying to help and so even by the way of self-preservation. Not that I'm emotionally weak or anything, but it sucks to watch that. I was like, "Dude, I hope you don't mind, but there is a law; some kind of weird unspoken law that if I don't charge somebody they don't do anything. They don't do anything. It's a sad thing to watch happen. It's not fun."
"DotCom Secrets" was the freaking way, man. I mean I was so obsessed already that I plugged the powerhouse that I was already learning to become with the powerhouse of "DotCom Secrets," and it exploded me and made me qualifiable to actually work at a place like ClickFunnels next to Russell. You know what I mean? He was like, "Hey, dude, I actually understand that. You charge me full price." I was like, "Okay." It's amazing what happens when there is a transfer of value back and forth. That's why it's free plus shipping. Does that make sense? Because if it was just free, no one would ever do anything afterwards. There has to be, even though it's usually $7 for the shipping. There has to be some kind of transfer value both ways. It's a give and give relationship, not a give and take one. Does that makes sense? All of business is, all of customers ... Any business I've ever seen that's worthwhile. It's sustainable for a lot of reasons. It is a give and take. There has to be some kind of transfer of value back and forth between the two, but I'm starting to notice ... Akbar paid me. My buddy paid me. I went and I watched Russell go out and get a new coach again for something different. He is constantly learning. I started thinking through ... Okay. Just bear with me for a second. I'm trying to figure how to share this. A lot of people have been telling like, "Steven, oh, my gosh, you work in the freaking marketing nucleus of the planet." I was like, "Yeah. I know." Freaking amazing. I mean it's the most cutting-edge stuff, right? Status quo is created in ClickFunnels. That's amazing. Marketing status quo is created in ClickFunnels all the time. How? He is bathing himself in it and loving it and is so passionate about it and if you can't be passionate about the thing you are to that degree, change the thing. Find the thing. You may not be in the right thing. He's going around, and he's constantly pushing himself, pushing himself, and I had the thought like how freaky would it be? Would Steve Larsen be Steve Larsen if I had not hooked into that? Interesting. I believe I would, but not with the speed that has happened. If you're frustrated with how slow things might be moving. Maybe they're not going fast enough. I dare you to go get a coach, and I dare you to pay them full price. I dare you to pay a full price. You know what? Overpay 'em a little bit. There is something weird that happens. Every single time I do any kind of coaching at all, I charge for their benefit. Does that make sense? It's not that I need the money. I'm not dying. You know what I mean? We're doing great, but if I don't charge, the other person doesn't take it serious, and they don't go freaking get off their butt and do what I said, or you know what I mean? The best people I've ever seen coaching wise - oh, my gosh - they come willingly. They pay beforehand and then they go do the thing immediately. Then they report back to me within like a day. They've already done the thing that I said. Like, "Oh, my gosh, that's way cool." Then they'll come back, and they'll do another session, back and forth and back and forth. That's how it happens. "Oh, yeah, this person over here was my mentor for a while over here doing this." "Oh, you know what? This guy over here? He was a mentor of mine." He was like, "Holy crap, dude. How many mentors have you had?" I know you've been at if for 14 years, but really in hindsight, 14 years is not that long. You know what I mean? Compared to all the greats that have been out there and all the guys who have done this. I mean 14 years that's not that long. In 2003, 14 years ago, that's really not that crazy. That's not that crazy. How has a guy who's not even, he's barely past mid-thirties, the way he is? It's 'cause of his coaching. That's my opinion, all right? He's just hooking into people all the time. He doesn't freak out when someone says, "Yeah, you gotta pay in order to be a part of this." He gets it. He knows it, right? That's why there's hundred thousand dollar groups in Masterminds. Those people get it, but sometimes it takes a mentality break. It takes a shift for people to understand that. Of course, there's an element of status to it, as well, being part of those kinds of groups, but that's not it.
That one principle. Russell asked me once. He's like, "Dude, what was the thing that got it? What was the thing that clicked in your head?" I was like, "Two things. Number one, I learned how to create offers when I was in college." Not products, offers. Not services, offers. The point is to graduate products and service into an offer, right? You don't sell products. You don't sell services. You don't sell products or ser ... That's not at all what you sell. You sell offers... It's very different. It's very different. When I learned how to do that in college. Boom. Massive, massive stride and progress for me. Luckily, I learned that before going to ClickFunnels. 'Cause I was trying to be a coach. I was Periscoping and I was Periscoping, I was scared to death. I really don't know all the things I was talking about. I was just trying to talk about different lessons that I was learning in marketing. That was it. I didn't have enough experience so I was just choosing little things here and there. That's what got me publishing and out the door. Then I was trying to get a coach as well. I was just consuming like a beast with the intent to reteach it. That's very, very key of learning for two. I've talked about that as well on here. Anyway. I'm blabbering now, but I want you to know that's really been the major thing in my mind why Russell Brunson has become Russell Brunson. For the last 18 months, I have spent every day, work day, in the same room with him. The thing that I watch over and over and over again ... You know what? I bet you listening to this podcast right now, you probably know how to work hard. You probably do. I'm a hard working guy. I do believe in an element of law of attraction. There's certainly the attractive character. You've probably been attached to this podcast for some reason. Mono e mono. We're seeing each other eye to eye or at least ear to ear. Voice to ear, anyway, right? Okay, so then what's the difference? His speed of execution is insane. The dude knows how to make offers. He knows how to work. You probably know how to do the same thing, but man, the dude has coaches for everything. He'll have a coach for ... Yeah. Maybe I shouldn't rattle 'em all off, but there's a lot. It's all over the place. There's coaches for everything. Then I get frustrated when someone's like, "You have a coaching fee to help me with my funnel, Steven?" Freak. Yes. I do. Because you won't do a dang thing unless You pay. You understand? You know what I mean? Clearly, I get animated about it 'cause I'm like, "Gosh, you don't get it yet. You don't get it yet." Anyway, lot of fun. It was fun. I look up the Akbar like crazy. He's fun to do that with him. All the other people that have done coaching sessions with me, you guys are all awesome, too. I really appreciate it. If you are looking for one ... You know what that's an announcement for later on, but anyway, guys, I hope that's sinking deep. Hope you're getting what I'm trying to say here. That if you choose to get a coach, it increases your speed in a way that's very hard for me to describe. Especially when you pay, always pay. Otherwise, I have a hard time saying that it's an actual coach. I see a lot of people sometimes on Facebook go like, "Hey, who wants to get together and do a Mastermind?" It's like, "Oh, that's cool. That's great." But if it's a free Mastermind, I feel like sometimes people have the facade of movement, and they start confusing motion with achievement. It's just moving. They're not really achieving stuff. You know what I mean? I'm not saying they're not good. I'm not saying you don't learn stuff. You learn great things. It's awesome. It's resources. It's fun stuff. I totally get it. I'm not backing on that at all. I feel like sometimes people try and take the place of a coach with things like free Masterminds on the internet, and I don't think that that takes its place at all. I think it robs it if you're thinking that way. Anyway, I'm continuing to ramble here, and I'm trying to get faster on my podcast. Sometimes I go a little bit too long, and I know that, but anyway, you guys are awesome. Appreciate it. Go get a coach and be a coach. I'll talk to y'all Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today’s best internet sales funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today. | |||
| 10 Aug 2023 | How to Become Entrepreneurially Self-Reliant | 00:28:15 | |
It was probably two years ago while I was at a Funnel Hacking Live… That I had one of the most meaningful epiphanies of my life as an entrepreneur. I was woken up in the middle of the night and was inspired to create a Medical Underground Railroad. Honestly, I don’t know what it is. All I know is that I want to be one of those entrepreneurs who helped create solutions even for something they do not have specialties in. This project allows me to give back and make an impact. And so I talked to my coach (yes, I have business and personal coaches, too), and that’s where I came to know these powerful immortal words from Aristotle: "Nature abhors a void.” It means that nature will always fill any empty spaces. So if you’re frustrated that you don’t have the clarity yet to some of your biggest business ideas, don’t fret. There’s beauty in asking questions even without immediate answers. Lemme tell you how you can apply this principle in real life and in marketing.
Key Takeaways: Intro (00:00) My trip to Africa (00:52) The pros and cons of capitalism (02:07) The “nature-abhors-a-void” concept (04:54) An example of “nature-abhors-a-void” (09:55) Comparing different business models (13:21) How to be an idea pioneer (18:32) What is it to be entrepreneurially self-reliant? (20:52) The power of asking questions (25:44)
Additional Resources - Connect with me here - Join the OfferLaunch 2023 event here --- Download Season 1 episodes here -- Sales Funnels Radio is a podcast for all passionate digital marketing pros looking to up their game and stay ahead. Follow us on your favorite podcasting platform so you never miss an episode!
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| 16 Mar 2023 | When To Sell Your Own Social Media Channels | 00:35:49 | |
Funnel builders and internet marketers know the power of creating content. We're wired to build, build, and build. And most of the time, marketers develop more sellable assets than the offer they're pushing. But most content creators don't know how to really use what they've built. That's what I realized after my friend and business partner, Raleigh Williams, and I bought MediaAcquire. MediaAcquire is an online marketplace to buy and sell media assets. In this episode, Raleigh and I talk about how marketers can monetize all the media sawdust they've created along the way and when to actually sell their social media channels.
Key Takeaways: The power of creating content (00:29) What is MediaAcquire? (05:13) Most content creators don't know how to monetize their platforms (05:59) On building products vs. building distributions (10:53) A message to new entrepreneurs (14:38) What to look for in something sellable or valuable? (21:40) Can you sell a media asset even if it's on a downtrend? (29:55) On monetizing your media sawdust (33:08)
Additional Resources - Connect with me here - Connect with Raleigh Williams here - Looking to sell your media assets? Check MediaAcquire here --- Download Season 1 episodes here -- Sales Funnels Radio is a podcast for all passionate digital marketing pros looking to up their game and stay ahead.
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| 28 Dec 2017 | SFR 96: My New Talent Directory... | 00:23:36 | |
Click above to listen in iTunes... WHO Is The Best At XYZ?...
What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen, and I've got a bit of a treat for you guys today. I think you're gonna like it a lot, here on Sales Funnel Radio. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business, using today's best internet sales funnels. Now, here's your host Steve Larsen. All right, you guys. Hey, so as I have been moving along the entrepreneurial path, as I've been putting things today. One of the things that I've noticed that I need more, and more, and more is people; like just straight up talent.
And I was like, "yeah, but like I ... It might be faster if I go learn." You sitting there listening might be like, "Well, yeah, it does Stephen." But, to me from where I sit, most people are like, "I got to learn this next thing in order to be successful. I can learn this next piece, I can learn this next piece." Over the last 18 months working there ... Guess it's been 20 now, but he ... There's been repeated times ... It's funny how it's been like a topic, and it finally ... It sunk in now enough that it's not just something I know, it's something I'm applying that you don't ... You don't just go learn crap for the sake of learning it, you learn it because you need it in the exact moment. It's kind of what I call that Learning Cycle. The Learning Cycle for me is very heavy as soon as I'm about to enter an industry, 'cause I go learn as much as I can then I stop. Actually, I put the books down, I stop learning on purpose. He's like, "Dude, no, we got a guy for that." I was like, "[Cabe 00:02:38], it'd be fun to go learn that." He's like, "No, go ... Dude, we have a guy for that too." He's like, "Dude, just because you can learn something doesn't mean you should." I was like, "Aah man, that's massive, that's a huge ... Wow, okay. Yeah, that's right. That's right." Conceptually I understood that, I understood it before but I hadn't been applying that at the time. So, I've got a bit of a gift for you guys, I was looking at some people's websites, and I was looking at some of their funnels and things like that. I came across a persons' site and ... I know a lot of people do this, but it was a directory of all the valuable internet marketing apps. All the valuable internet marketing software, and I was thinking like, "This is kinda cool. It's kinda cool." I mean, I visited the page once, maybe twice but that's about it. The problem I had with it is that most of those apps, most of those pieces of software, I'm like, "Hey, I got to find an email platform." Or like, "Hey ..." Honestly, YouTube see what the best reviews are, maybe a blog or two see what the best reviews are there. Those are kind of easy to find, so I was like ... I was thinking through I was like, "Okay, I wanna ... How do I combine this concept that Russell just talked to me about versus ... And combine it with this whole directory kind of model?" I want you to know what's going on inside my head. So, let me take a step back from the episode and where we're currently are right now. I am in a place right now where I am realizing ... Not realizing, but I'm applying all the stuff that I have been learning from the man himself. Honestly, I've been ... I started honestly doing that at least two years ago, and I was hiring out tons of people, and I was ... I'm a huge fan of freelancer.com, I'm all about getting things done through other people who would rather do them. Most of the time when I see a Solopreneur usually they don't go very far, because you can't do it on your own for very long. Or you can't do very long and you actually go that far. It requires other people, it requires a team. So, I was think like, "Where do I find like the best of the best of everything. Where do I find the best of this topic over here? The best of this topic over here? The best of these different skill sets around? I was thinking, "How cool ..." I don't actually remember where I got the idea, I think it was a couple mon ... Maybe two months ago-ish almost, and I was sitting there I was like, "What if I made a Talent Directory." A Talent Directory, so, it's not so much about like ... It's not so much about like, "Hey, here's the best softwares if you're trying to this. Or here's the best companies if you're trying to do that." People, who is the best individual that does JavaScript? Who's the best individual to get for this? Who's the best individual for this? So, what I was thinking was like, "How can I ..." 'cause I believe I'm a huge proponent you guys of pumping as much value into the marketplace as I possibly can, so that when it comes time, anytime I come ... Excuse me, anytime I come back and I'm like, "Hey, market please pay me for said product." There's so much reciprocity that I've created, and there's such a relationship that I've gone through and actually put together. That the market is like, "Sure, here you go." You know what I mean? It's easy for me to sell that way, obviously it takes a little time. I've had this entire podcast, and I've been doing this stuff for ... I've be doing this podcast now for 18 months and then the ... I've been doing funnel building for 5 years 'cause I was doing a word press before, which is ... Was terrible and I didn't know honestly it was a funnel, but that's what I was doing. So, anyway, guys I've created a Talent Directory and anyone can apply to put their name on it. Anyone can ... And their talent, so, I'm gonna ... On stevejlarsen.com, stevejlarsen.com, I'm gonna go rebuild the whole thing I don't really like what it is right now. But stevejlarsen.com, I'm gonna go rebuild it and if on the tab on the top I'm gonna put something in there that says Talent Directory; top or bottom okay. There's a part ... Anyway, it's in the top and I wanna make sure I probably add it to the bottom too for the footer.
I want ... All those things I want to have, I want a big bank of those kinds of talents. I want to know who those people are, I want to know ... So, again, let's take a step back and I want you to know why I'm doing this, because I want a huge list of that. I know if I ... As a marketer if I increase the status of the individual who's willing to put their name on that list, I can in turn put it out there into the market and use it of my own benefit at the same time. Does that make sense? That's why I'm doing it. So, I'm putting ... It's a living document, it's a Talent Directory but it's a living document. Meaning if you get on the list, for the people that are on the list or whatever, I want to be able to showcase each person. I want to be able to showcase each individual and show like, "Hey, look this person is awesome at this and here's their contact information." It's all gonna be free. I will probably require an opt-in of you to see it, why? Because I'm a marketer you guys of course I'm gonna ask you to opt-in; Duh, that's what I'm gonna do. But, how cool to be able to show and showcase tons and tons of people for free. All the individuals, and all the Talent Directory like, "Who's the best of this? Who's the best of that." Guys, I have sat in an amazing place for the last two years, I know who a lot of the best people are, and I know exactly the people to hook others up with. I can't by name actually suggest certain things to you. So, if I can't ... If I can't tell you, "Hey this is the one to do this. Hey, this is the one to do this." I can at least make it user generated. Does that make sense? In some things my hands are tied simply because it's a need-to-know basis, and that's a trade secrets' kinda thing. Anyway ... You know what I mean, but ... So, if you wanna know who like the best ... So, it's gonna be by application basis where someone comes in and they're like, "Hey, I wanna get on the directory." Well, if you go to ... If you click on the Talent; I'm gonna call it The Talent. It's Talent Directory currently but I think that's too long, so it'll be like The Talent, or Finding Talent, or Find Talent. Maybe that's what ... Find Talent. So, it's Find Talent, I'll change it to that. Find Talent, you click on that up in the top and it'll ask you to opt-in. But, it's gonna push you over to the list that I've got where it's like, "Hey, here's the best writer, here's the best this, here's the best that, here's the best sales guy, here's the best ..." I don't wanna say The Best, but I'll give a list, I'll give several different option. Why? It'll showcase like crazy all these amazing people, but it also let me get a relationship with those individuals so that when I want to go higher the best fulfillment guy, or the best this, or the best that. I also have places to go to, okay. Some went here shortly, and I wanna showcase each one of them also on https://stevejlarsen.com/download However, I don't feel like it's time yet for that, I think in the next two or three months it will be for a few specific reasons, which I'm not ready to put out yet. But, I wanna showcase each one of them, which would be really cool 'cause I'm fully aware that this is not just ... I know I'm not a one band stand, I do not drink my own Kool-Aid, and hopefully ... Why? Because usually ... Number one, I think that it's kind of wrong. Not wrong but, I mean, come on it's not really that ethical sometimes and whatever. I'm sure I offended some people but whatever. But, B) It's bad juju like, "Holy crap, anytime I ever seen any marketer started to drink their own Kool-Aid, and think they're all that they literally separate themselves from their own market, which is stupid. Why would you ever do that?" Anyway, I don't drink my own Kool-Aid and I know that it's more than just me. So, I'm constantly looking for the coolest, awesome, most kick butt people to be able to hire. So, the Talent Directory that I'm gonna go put up or that is there ... I got to edit it, I got to change stuff, it's in ... By the time this episode is up it will be done, just so you know that's how I launch stuff. Just like I talked about in the last episode. So, by the time this episode is up it will be ready to rock. But, you can go in and if you want to get on the directory, there will be a button there too you can click, and it'll have you go through and tell me why you should get on it. Believe me you are selling me, you are trying to tell me why you're a kick butt and should be able to be on there. What I want it to be though is for the rest of the community, so they can jump on and be like, "Holy crap, this is freaking awesome." This would be a huge Lead Gen for tons of people that I want to think that ... I want them to think that I'm cool, that's why. As a marketer I'm trying to figure that out, I'm trying to make sure that I'm staying in the forefront of what is awesome, of what's good, of what's ... Does that make sense? So, I want you ... Start thinking like that when you're like, "aah gosh, I wish I knew who the best person for this was. I wish I knew who the best person ... Or I've got this problem in my business." Instead of ... don't let it ... I'm not saying it does bring you down but don't ... Instead of letting it be too big of a barrier, think through how you could answer that and put value into the market. If you treat every single problem in your business that way what's gonna end up happening is, you will put tons of value into the market in a way that lets you create a relationship with everybody. People will know who you are because you scratch their back without you asking anything in return. Does that make sense?
Or here's three options for that problem or three option for this skillset. Does that make sense? So, that's why I'm doing it. So, if you want to; number one, see who that is. Go to stevejlarsen.com, click on Find Talent up in the top header; Find Talent. It'll ask you to opt-in, duh, just know that. I was getting nervous if somebody's gonna be like, "Well, you ask me to opt-in." Like, "Yeah, I'm putting the list together, it's the value that I'm giving. But, of course I'm gonna ask you to opt-in. Why would I not Lead Gen from it, right?" So, you think through like, "How would you do it?" Find out maybe there's some other kind of directory that would work well for your industry. It doesn't need to be a Talent Directory, or a directory of all the software, or a directory of this, or that, or whatever. But, this is a huge opportunity. You guys, you know this episode ... I'm sorry, you this podcast like I'm only pumping out usually two, sometimes three a week of these things usually. They get three to 500 downloads a day, which I know isn't massive, massive but it felt completely organic you guys. I think you'll spend ads on it maybe one time a year ago and that's it. I understand that and I get it, but we just screened pass 80,000 downloads and it's doing awesome guys really, really exciting. There's a lot of you out there that are listening to this just so you know, the community is big, and it's growing, and it's actually growing really quickly. Anyway, so, number one; if you wanna know who those people are go to stevejlarsen.com, click on Find Talent up at the top [inaudible 00:14:53] 'cause the guy that wanted Stevelarsen.com, the guy wanted 40 grand, I talked him down to 20, and I was like "It's not worth it, come on. I'm not gonna do it." Anyways, it's Steve J. Larsen, my full name is Stephen Joseph Larsen. So, stevejlarsen.com.... Then, number two though, if you want to get on the directory please do not PM me on Facebook. I get way too many messages it will get lost. I know notice a lot of people sometimes they get frustrating with me like, "You haven't answered yet." I was like, "You got to get in my shoes and understand that logistically I will spend the entire day answering messages, if I go answer every single message." It's not to be rude it's to protect, and sustain my own momentum. You know what I mean? So, number two, if you want to get on the directory go to, again, stevejlarsen.com, click on Find Talent. Then there's gonna be a button there that says ... probably like the top right or something like that, probably make a subheader menu bar where it's like, "Get on the directory, or apply to get on it." It is an application funnel. On the backend I'll put an application funnel; a watered down version of one. But, you are definitely selling me on why you should get on it, because I wanna make sure that it's awesome people. I don't mind to have several people in a certain topic that's totally fine with me. I just want to make sure that you're awesome because you are on my ... Literally my page. I mean, I'm gonna manage the thing, if I find out someones being shady, or dumb, or whatever I'm gonna delete you. It's not worth it to me and everything I've worked hard to build. Anyway, so just know that it is being watched like a hawk and because those are the people that I wanna go to, I wanna hire, I wanna get relationships with. So, I don't care what it is that you do as long as you're good. I don't care if it's fulfillment, I don't care if you are good at like back office style management, a phone sales guy. I don't care if it has to do with sales, or if its more about management, or if you're like HR, I don't care what it is. Whatever you are if you're great at it I wanna know, I would love to be able to meet you, and say hi to you, and start pulling together rock stars like that. In some cases, I can't tell you because my hands are tied because I work at ClickFunnels and it's a conflict of interest, and we got to protect ourselves too. And I was like, "Ugh ..." But, if it's user generated, if it's user created that's totally different. You know what I mean? So, I was getting the question all the time like, "Dude, who'd you hire for this? Who'd ..." And it's like I can't tell you that. Literally, that's me showing favoritism and I work ClickFunnels not for too much longer obviously but ... Anyway, so, if there's not a ton of people on there right now when you go to it, just know that it's a living, breathing thing and you should be able to get on their quickly.
Well, one of the last steps of the first page will say, "Hey, let me know why you should be on here?" If you have a one sentence bio of what you've done, and a one sentence credentials thing of what you are good at, or something like that; what are those things? Write them down. This is almost like a resume, I feel like resumes are crap but the traditional sense resume. This is a way better form to have a resume though, you know what I mean. But, anyway, so you'll be able to go through and you actually toss in stuff that I'll put directly on the page; probably not a picture I'm just thinking space wise. 'cause it's gonna be like a phone book, the text is gonna be slightly tiny eventually maybe not first. 'cause I wanna keep adding to it or removing from it if something happens, you know what I mean? Then, the next page it's gonna say, "Awesome, thanks so much ... Appreciate the application we'll reach out if we put you on there." Then, what I want each person to go do ... Okay, think about this. Think about what I'm doing, what I want you to go do if you wanna get on the directory and get all these sweet leads is, we got the make sure that there's eyeballs that get to it. Please share this link and post about it to your profile. Some people are gonna be like, Stephen, I can't believe you just publish that that's what you're asking people to do. That's really what you're going on. Oh my gosh, what ..." I don't care if you're not involved directly at Sales Funnels, it's all part of the sales process and management in the back end in order to get the sale. Does that make sense? This is like ... So, I'm to farm out the best, of the best, of the best, of the best, and of course I'm gonna interview them I wanna be ... If I can, I probably can't get anybody but like The A player, The Rock Star for each thing. I wanna interview them on the podcast. Then, I'd love to be able to go and have them drop the link for that same directory to their own people. This is how a marketer thinks through this kind of stuff. How can I solve the problem but leverage it? In a positive way that scratches everyone's back, that solves legitimate problems, this is solving a legitimate issue. There's a lot of people that ask me who to hire for X, Y, and Z and I can't answer them. But, if it's user generated, if I know you're awesome, if you're a rock star holy crap, why wouldn't I do that? Why would I not create a directory?
I mean, it's not ... But, it's harder to find good people, it's harder to find individuals. I have wasted thousands and thousands of dollars on really bad VA's, really, really bad freelancers. Really, really bad people who said that they can do the did, and technically they did it but it was so crappy. You know what I mean? I wanna know who the actual A players, and rock stars are out there so that's why I'm making this. Again, if you want to; A) see it. Go to stevejlarsen.com, click on Find Talent. If you wanna be on the list, same thing, go there click on Find Talent and I wanna showcase rock stars. You can apply to be on there and yeah that's pretty much it guys. I'm super excited for this. I've actually been planning this for a long time because it's just a serious issue that's out there. Anyways, if you ... I invite you to apply regard ... How should I say this? If you're like, "I'm pretty good a what I do but I don't know." Just do it anyway, you know what I mean. Gives us a chance to say hi and pull on in. So, anyway, there's a funnel for this and that's the funnel ... If you wanna see the funnel, if you wanna go through the process anything like that, that's how you do that. Anyway, so, I gotta do some tricky stuff on stevejlarsen.com, the homepage in order to pull this off because there's gonna be multiple exits. It's not actually a funnel, that first page is more like a website. By definition if there was more than one exit then it's no longer a squeeze page, so, there's gonna be multiple exits and multiple things all over the place. Anyway, it will be fun, I'm excited. I got to think through some stuff for the ... Okay. Yeah, that'll be cool though I got to go map it out and draw it out. I got another white board I'm super pumped about it, so I'm gonna go draw out the whole thing and I'll go build it. By the time this thing is launched you guys it will be ready. So, anyways, you're all awesome and this is a chance to show others that you are too. There's a cool quote I saw it said, "You're already a rock star, we're just here Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels, to download your prebuilt sales funnel today. | |||
| 29 Dec 2022 | AI in Sales Funnels (Not the Boogie Man) | 00:20:13 | |
Seems like most think of Terminator when they think "AI." It's not. The first time I put AI into the back of one of my funnels was 3 years ago. Here's what I learned… AI is an incredibly powerful tool, but it's not the boogie man. It can't take over everything in your business; you've got to get all the basics dialed in first. Otherwise, it will be a distraction. Think of AI as an accelerant for your sales process. Under certain contexts and with very specific questions, coupled with clean data, there's nothing as powerful as AI. Companies using AI in this atmosphere are getting more sales with fewer resources. It can show strong patterns that the naked eye or brain could never compute. That's the power of AI, and that's why I'm personally excited about it. Take time to learn about it and what it can do, but remember, it's not the boogie man! Key Takeaways - The incredible power of AI in sales (03:27) - Taking time to learn new tech (05:05) - Using AI as a sales accelerant (06:50) - Getting more sales with fewer resources (09:25) - AI is good with specific questions (12:21) - Clean up your data (13:53) - No tech/tool will replace core business skills (17:36) Additional Resources - Connect with me here --- Download Season 1 episodes here -- Sales Funnels Radio is a podcast for all passionate digital marketing pros looking to up their game and stay ahead.
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| 14 Aug 2024 | He Closed $100m On The Phone | 01:15:02 | |
Robbie Summers is a beast and remains the top Closer I've ever met in my life. Here's his top lessons for others who want to use phones to sell. We're doing a Hiring and Leads Masterclass at https://thesaleslever.com | |||
| 04 Jul 2017 | SFR 64: Interview - Alison Prince's $1,000,000 Selling PILLOWCASE'S | 00:54:53 | |
The Story Behind Alison's Ecommerce Empire...
Stephen Larsen: Hey everybody, this is Steve Larsen, and welcome to a very special episode of Sales Funnel Radio. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business, using today's best internet sales funnel. Now, here's your host, Steve Larson. Stephen Larsen: All right you guys. Hey, this is exciting. You know, for me I'm just selfishly wanting to talk to, in my opinion, one of the coolest people that is out there. One of the most inspiring stories. Doing exactly what they love. I'm just excited that I hit the record button and you guys get to listen in. There's a lot that I feel like I could learn from this person. I haven't done an interview in a very long time, and I'm excited to bring on just a complete rock star.
Alison Prince: Good. I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Stephen Larsen: Yeah. You've been running the, let's see, Pick a Plum and Because I Can Clan for a while now, right? Alison Prince: I have. I actually own seven businesses, Stephen. Stephen Larsen: Oh really? Don't tell Russell. Alison Prince: I know. I'm a little bit of a serial entrepreneur. Stephen Larsen: We get that. That's cool. What's your most favorite one right now that you're doing? Alison Prince: Do you know, it's actually the Because I Can Clan. Stephen Larsen: Oh really? That's your most recent one, isn't it? Alison Prince: It is. I launched that right after I joined the Inner Circle. Launched it in about March, officially in March. Stephen Larsen: That's awesome. Just for everyone listening, the first time I ever met Alison is actually, actually do you want to tell everyone how you got into the Inner Circle? I think it's hilarious. Alison Prince: Yeah. I hope I don't get in trouble for it, though. Stephen Larsen: No. It'll be awesome. Alison Prince: I own a blog called How Doe She? I've been running that for almost eight years, which is crazy. We're always trying to learn, always trying to figure out new ways to do affiliate type promotions on the blog. I went to an affiliate conference, it was actually down in Las Vegas. When I got there, it was not the conference that I signed up for. I went to the classes. The classes, I swear, every single speaker was drunk, or it was totally a click bait class. The title was one thing and then what they spoke on was totally different. I'm like, where am I? I saw Click Funnel and I'm like, oh I wonder if this will really help my business? I went and I listened to Russell, and his title was exactly what he spoke about. He wasn't drunk. I really appreciated the honesty from the title. His pitch, the way he presented himself, I was just super impressed with it. Then what, two weeks later I had joined the Inner Circle. From just figuring out who Russell Brunson was, two weeks later, joined the Inner Circle because I knew he was good. I knew his message was good. I knew he was honest, and so I just jumped in with both feet. Stephen Larsen: That's awesome. I mean, it was literally, what, two weeks later you were at the Funnel Hackathon event, the FHAT event. Alison Prince: Yes, which was a wild ride. Stephen Larsen: Yeah, and you stood up and you were talking and stuff. It's funny because you introduced yourself and your story. I remember, I mean it's an intense three days. In the back office though, like back in Russell's office, he and I were both like, "Have you met that Alison lady? Oh my gosh, she's so cool. Where does she come from? Where are more people like that?"
We talked all about ... Don't think, yeah, we were talking all about you. It's really easy. Alison Prince: Go for it. Lots of people do. I don't care. Stephen Larsen: Yeah. It's really easy to see just that you absolutely love what you do. It's super unique, it's extremely inspiring. You've got the family side down and the business side down, it seems like. You're traveling. Anyways. Alison Prince: Yeah. Well there is. Okay, so I've been over to Thailand for the last three weeks. I have severe jet lag right now. I took my whole family over there. We were out there for three weeks doing service projects. Why? Because we can... I decided, I've been able to do this and I have lived my dream life. Now it's time to help others live their dream life too. This is, we have so many opportunities here in America. The education, like on YouTube University, everything that Russell gives. Stephen, your podcast is absolutely amazing. We have so much information to change our lives. I decided to start the Because I Can Clan, because we can. We can change our lives. We can do the things of the dreams that we want to, and be in the moment. Have the family. I mean, I have four kids and we're over Thailand. Like real severe poverty, helping those kids, trying to help them change their lives. We were able to do some job training over there too. It was just, I don't know, there's just so much opportunity, so much excitement out there, to be able to live how you want to. Because it's just, it's there. There's so much out there right now. Stephen Larsen: It's so true. Before I hit the record button everyone, we were talking and you were saying, "It seems lik you and Russell don't sleep." That's so true. It's the exact same reason. It's funny, all these things that we learn and we go do, it's fun, but there's also a bit of a mantle that comes with it, it sometimes feels like. You have a responsibility, in my opinion, to go out and help other people know that you know how to do. Anyway, I'm just completely in agreeance of what you're saying. It's so real and tangible. When you start getting to these levels of various success, that you've got to turn around. I believe and it sounds like you do too, that there's a little bit of a responsibility to turn around and kind of just help humanity, help the other guy who's still struggling. Alison Prince: Yeah. Then I think it's ... Okay, so let's go back. I think it might be a little bit of selfishness too, because when you serve, you feel so good. If you can create a business around serving, it just fulfills you. In the mornings when you get up, it's not hard to get up at five, six in the morning, and you're so excited to get to work. You don't feel like you're working. It's just this beautiful thing that goes together, where you're actually having fun every single day, doing what you love. Then going to bed at night knowing that you did ... I don't know, you're just happy. It just fulfills, it fulfills me... Stephen Larsen: That's so fun. That's so cool. Yeah. I love what I do for people. My wife always makes fun of me. She's like, "How come you get kind of awkward every time someone asks you what you do?" I'm like, well because I don't know what to say sometimes. How much time do they have? Alison Prince: So true. Stephen Larsen: I want to just tell them everything, and they'll run away from me from that. I am extremely interested, my sister, my brother, lots of my close family and friends actually follow you very closely, and what you do. They're incredibly inspired by it. I just wanted to ask, did you always want to have your own business? Is this something you stumbled into? Is it something you created out of a side necessity? You know what I mean? What really put you into that? Alison Prince: Okay. I went to college and I was a junior high teacher, if you can believe that. Stephen Larsen: Wow. I had no idea. Alison Prince: I loved those kids. We laughed, or I laughed at them, every single day. Imagine, I don't know, 300 eighth graders that you got to see every single day. They were just a ball of energy. I know some people it's like their worst nightmare, but I love, we had so much fun together. We would do pumpkin chucking contests. Then we would sit in shopping carts for the mass equals acceleration times whatever. I forgot. It's all physics stuff. We'd put a kid in a shopping cart, push them down the hallway to see if they would go faster if someone was in the shopping cart, out of the shopping cart. We had so much fun learning. Stephen Larsen: That's awesome. Alison Prince: Then I got my first paycheck. Stephen, it was like a slap in the face. Because they handed me my paycheck and they said, "Oh, by the way, you qualify for food stamps." I was like, "Wait, what? No, I studied math and science for four years in college. What do you mean I get food stamps?" They're like, "Yup, welcome to being a teacher." You know, I should have done the research beforehand, but when you're young you don't really think about money until you start having children and your husband's going to school full time and you have real bills. I started a little tutoring business on the side. I could tutor one to two kids a night, but I had a baby at home. My husband was going to school full time and I just couldn't get enough tutoring hours in. Then I started hiring people. Hired them for $15 an hour but charged $20 an hour, so I made an additional $5. Then I ended up hiring about four teachers, and so I was making as much money, not actually having to go and work those two hours. I'm like, oh my gosh, what is this? That's when the entrepreneur bug bit, as I figured out how I could free up my time by hiring other people to be able to grow a business, or to be able to work on the things that made me happy. I haven't stopped since. Stephen Larsen: That's amazing. What eventually made you leave that? I really wanted to be a tenth grade history teacher for a long time. That was actually my dream for a long time. That's the first time all you guys on this podcast have heard that. I really love history. I love war stories. I love all that stuff. It was the exact same thing you just said, it was the paycheck that kept me from doing any of that. What eventually made you leave that altogether? Alison Prince: Well, we moved to Oklahoma. My husband got accepted to school out there. The pay was $10,000 less than the pay in Utah, if you can even imagine that. Then I was pregnant with my second child. We were on food stamps, state support, and I was working a ton as a teacher. I'm like, this is just, this isn't right. This isn't right... I don't want to be on state assistance. I've gone to college. My husband's going to college. I became a realtor at that point. I had to stop the tutoring business because, this is going to tell you how old I am, but the internet really wasn't up and going at that point. It was hard to do a business out of state, so I became a realtor during the boom. I made $60,000 working part-time. Was able to get off all the assistance, be able to support, help pay for my husband's college. Through that, real estate, I was helping new buyers and so I was still educating. I was still getting that fulfillment of educating people, but it was just in a different area. I was helping new home buyers find their first home, and it was awesome. Then that just led to the next business and then the next business. Then eventually it rolled around into How Does She, which is the blog. I call it my playground, where I get to learn how the internet works, how to grow Facebook. We actually grew our Facebook page to two million followers organically. Stephen Larsen: That's huge. Alison Prince: I know. We just hit two million like two weeks ago. We did it in about two years, so we're pretty excited about that. I get to learn and play. Now I started the Because I Can Clan, helping others be able to do the entrepreneur side of things, to be able to change their lives. To be able to, if they are teachers and they need extra money, there's a way to do it where it doesn't eat all your time. There's a way to do it to be able to bring in that extra income. Stephen Larsen: Yeah. I know everyone's situations are different, especially the guys that are listening out there. Everyone's coming from different backgrounds, so obviously take what I'll say with a grain of salt here. I remember the exact same thing, when we were in college and all this stuff. When we were first starting out, we had to take loans. We had to get all the assistance and stuff. I could not help but fight this incredibly huge feeling that I was just cheating, and I needed to go create a business. That's one of the major reasons I started doing that also. You're heavily involved though, right now in eCommerce, right? Alison Prince: Yes. Stephen Larsen: Big, big, big. Alison Prince: Yeah, when I started the blog, with How Does She, we would do posts. They were creative posts, like how to make this or how to make that. Then people would say, "Where do you get your products from?" I was sending them to Home Depot. I was sending them to Michael's Crafts. Then one day I was like, "Why am I not sending them to me? Why am I sending them to these other stores? Why don't I set up like an eCommerce store?" I started a business called Pick Your Plum, and sold out the very first day. What it was is, it was a daily deal site and I would have one product up every single day. The very first day, put up my product, sold out. Second day, sold out. Third day, didn't sell any. I'm like, dang it, is this the right thing? Then grew it into a huge business within two years, just by sending people over. It was just one product a day. Now it's about 70, 80 products a day. In the beginning it was just one product a day. I had never done eCommerce before. Then we would sell out so fast, and a lot of our American distributors, they would run out of the product for us. I got on an airplane, went over to China, and started finding manufacturers. I don't know any Chinese.
Stephen Larsen: They're overrated. Off the record, they're totally overrated. I learn more from books. It's all good. Alison Prince: Yup. I learned more from doing and getting on that plane to China, than I ever could have in a classroom. It was scary. I had four kids at the time. My sweet husband was here and I'm like, "I'm going to China." He's like, "Okay." It's not just like going to the mall and getting products. Stephen Larsen: No. Alison Prince: It's crazy across the world. Yeah, got on a plane, went and found manufacturers. Then started to learn how to import. Did I make mistakes? Oh yes I did. Did I learn from it and created a successful business from it? Absolutely. It was well worth that. Stephen Larsen: Yeah, I remember, okay one of the most recent things that I've heard of that you've done is, you sold pillowcases. Alison Prince: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Stephen Larsen: First of all, how did you choose pillowcases out of every product that was out there? Alison Prince: Okay, so let me back up a little bit and tell you a little bit more about the story. Stephen Larsen: I would love that, yeah. Alison Prince: My daughters, they were sleeping in and just, they were 10 and 13 at the time. This is when I'm running How Does She, when I'm running Pick Your Plum. The girls, they were just being teenagers, and they were tired and sleeping in till 10. My husband and I were like, we don't want to raise children that are lazy. They were just trying to figure out what they wanted. What we did is we said, "You guys have three options. You can move out of the house." Which of course, we didn't want them to move out of the house. "You can do more chores, which we're going to start at seven o'clock in the morning on a Saturday morning. Or you can start a business. Which of those three choices would you want to do?" Of course, they were like, "We want to start a business." Stephen Larsen: Cool. Alison Prince: What they did is they started this business. I gave them some resources, but I really wanted them to try and to test it, because I didn't want to be holding their hand the whole time. They needed to learn this journey. Then you're not going to believe this, but in nine months, just nine months, they sold over $100,000. Stephen Larsen: That's crazy. Alison Prince: $100,000. Makayla, she was in junior high at the time, she would come home crying because she couldn't get her locker open. I'm like, "Don't worry honey, you just sold $5000 today. You can pay someone to open up your locker for you." Stephen Larsen: A 10 and a 13 year old, $100,000 a year. Alison Prince: 10 and a 13 year old, yeah. Yes, they sold over $100,000 in nine months. I was like, okay, if these girls can do it, other people can do it. Then I of course went to my sister. You got to test it, right? Done it with my girls, so I went to my sister and I'm like, "Hey, let's try something." She needed something at the time because she needed a new roof. There was just a lot going on in her life. She was budgeting and going to garage sales and just didn't have a ton of money to buy this roof that she needed. She went through this whole thing and she sold $129,000 in nine months. Apparently she wanted to outdo the girls. Stephen Larsen: New roof. Alison Prince: Got her new roof, yeah, it was pretty exciting. People have said, "Alison, well that's cool you've done it, and it's probably because you have these platforms." I'm not going to lie, How Does She has a great following of two million people. When the girls started, it wasn't that big of a number. People have said, "Alison, of course you can do it. You have these huge social media platforms." This goes to the pillowcases. I build a business to prove that you don't need to have this huge social media following to be successful. I went out and I found that pillowcases, yeah, like the lamest, boring product, were trending. That's the rule, secret number one, the rule to success is just sell what other people are buying. If people are buying it, just put it in front of them. You don't have to go out and have this huge, crazy shark tank idea. We went and we built this little pillowcase business. In 24 months we sold over a million dollars in pillowcases. Stephen Larsen: That is insane. Alison Prince: Yeah, and it was to prove that you don't have to have this big, huge social media following. On that pillowcase business, there's only like 55 Facebook followers. It's my sister and my brother, and I guarantee you they did not buy $1.1 million in pillowcases. Promise. Stephen Larsen: Now my brother and my sister, they've all gone through your course. They love your course. They talk about you all the time. Alison Prince: Yay, good. Stephen Larsen: Yeah, they just really, really love it, all the value you put out there too, and showing people how you do it. Their biggest question afterward though, and I was wondering if I could ask you here. Alison Prince: Put me on the spot. Stephen Larsen: Was, what are some of the methods you use to go find what people are buying? Alison Prince: I've actually built, and I go through it step by step in the course, so maybe I just need to point them to that again. You go and you, like there are specific sites that I look at to see what's trending. I check it almost every single day, except of course when I was in Thailand, because you couldn't get the internet half the time. The internet is so amazing and so beautiful, and it just, it literally spoon feeds you the information. You just have to know where to find it, and be receptive to it. Stephen Larsen: Oh that's so true. Yeah. Alison Prince: Once you know how to find the #trending on specific sites, then you just see what's selling. Then you go, and you don't copy their idea, I want to put that out there. You don't copy, like if they've got a specific branded product, you don't copy it, but there's so many commodity products out there.
Stephen Larsen: No, I don't think so. Alison Prince: They sold scarves, Stephen. Scarves. Stephen Larsen: $100,000 with scarves. I told Russell the other day, if there's another like 12 year old that makes a million bucks, so help me, because it's ridiculous. The formulas are all out there everybody, for you to actually just make money. Alison Prince: It is. Stephen Larsen: You really just have to look around. The market will always tell you what you need to sell. I always tell people, the creativity that you need in order to make a lot of money is actually not inside of you. You don't have it or you don't possess it. All you do is you look around at everything that's around you, and you look at the market through some of the ways Alison's talking about. There's these ways you can test and see before you jump in, and before it's scary and you might lose your shirt. The market will always tell you what to sell, it's not inside of you to know. Alison Prince: You don't invest a lot of money, I love that you said that. The girls, they didn't put in like $16,000. No. They bought some from California, and then they just tested it. We probably, I don't know, put in maybe like $100 to $200 to see if they would even sell, and they sold out very fast so we knew we had something. Then we invested more, and then we invested more. Don't risk your whole life savings, you don't need to. That's crazy Stephen. I have sold so many products, and to this day I still won't invest huge money into stuff until I tested it. You don't need to. Test it first. Stephen Larsen: Yeah, 100%. I'm in the middle of doing that with my own thing. Just this small, little $100 thing, and it's been running for a long time. Finally, I feel like, all right, that's been tested to death, I think that I can actually jump full in on this other thing. It's been a lot of fun to do that. The testing is so key. Everybody dreams, I feel like. We get caught in this, it's totally the shark tank mentality. I need to sell something that's big and unique and crazy. I call it product big bang theory, where it's just boom, this big massive idea that no one's ever heard of before. The problem is that no one ever wants that stuff. They think they do. It's really product evolution. You're just finding other things that are selling and you add little tweaks to them, and go blow it up. Alison Prince: Yup. Stephen Larsen: This is Sales Funnel Radio. Which funnel do you use to sell that stuff? Alison Prince: Okay, so you have to remember that I just started ClickFunnels in March. Stephen Larson: You're a pro. Alison Prince: From February until June, I have been out of the country for two of the months. It has been insane and crazy, crazy stuff. I did a freemium funnel, and honestly the freemium funnel didn't convert as much as the 4.99 funnel did. Stephen Larsen: Wow. Alison Prince: I know, it's kind of crazy, right? The scarves, this was done before I knew about Click Funnels, the scarves, so we just did it on a basic shopping cart website. We did a freemium offer then, did amazing. We did three free scarves with the shipping, and then shipping and handling, and they did amazing. We did a lot of those. It did really well. I've noticed that in the community that I am in, I work with a lot of bloggers. I work with a lot of marketplaces. The freemium offer isn't converting as well. I think people are a little scared of it. They've been burnt by it. It's too good to be true. If we can just give them a really good deal, let's say we do the pillowcases for like two for 24, that goes like wildfire, with free shipping. Because it's an offer, and what you and Russell both talk about is give them an option, give them an offer they cannot turn down. Two for 24 with free shipping on these pillowcases, people eat it up. What we've been doing is we've been putting a lot of funnels in place that just really focus on one item, and one really good offer, which you guys of course talk about nonstop. That's it. Stephen, all we have to do is just listen to you guys and do it, and it works. Stephen Larsen: I'm paying her to say that everybody. Alison Prince: No, but it is so true. We over complicate things. We just need to keep things simple, and listen. It works. It's just super, we overthink things, we over complicate things as human beings. I know when I built my course out, I was over complicating things like crazy. Stephen, like I asked you some questions and you're like, "Simple Alison. Keep it simple." It converted so much better than when it was complicated... Stephen Larsen: That's awesome. Alison Prince: Props to you. Stephen Larsen: Thank you very much. You know, it's funny, most people, they tend to think, "Well That's completely different so I must need to disregard all of the things that she's saying." Or, "I'm doing this over here." Guys, it's all the same. It's human psychology. These sales processes, the way you create offers and you put it all together, it's the same thing across the board. It doesn't matter if you're selling physical, digital, any kind of info product business, a service based professional service, like you're a dentist or something. It's all the same. Alison Prince: It really is. Stephen Larsen: You just have to think what part your business fits in that model, and then go fill the gaps and it starts to come together. That being said, how did you think up an offer that they can't turn down? That's interesting. Alison Prince: I just asked them. Stephen Larsen: It can't be that simple. Alison Prince: It is that simple. You put it out there, and if nobody buys, no one pulls out their wallet, you know your offer stinks. You don't take it personally. You just say, okay, let me come up with another offer. I was on Facebook the other day, of course, and I wish I can remember the quote. Someone was saying, the reason why he's successful is because he just puts out offers. The more offers he puts out, the better he does. You take your product and you put out an offer. If it doesn't do well, okay, not a big deal, redo it and then test it again, and test it again and test it again. We need to be testing things constantly, until we can nail it. Then once we nail it, then of course we scale it, we grow it as big as we can. To put out a Facebook offer, that doesn't cost a lot of money. If you've got a good following, it doesn't really cost anything to just test it. You put out an offer, you put $5 in. If someone bites, oh take it. Tweak it just a little bit... See if you can get two people to buy off of it. I think that's what people think, they put out an offer and if nobody buys they're like, "Oh, my product stinks." Or, "Oh, I'm not good enough." When that's not the case at all. It's they just need to tweak it and try it again. I mean you're an entrepreneur, you know this. The only way you fail as an entrepreneur is when you stop. That's when you fail right there, is when you stop. Stephen Larsen: You know it's funny, two or three days ago Russell and I were at the office still, it was 1:30 in the morning, as men do. Alison Prince: Are you sleeping at the office too? I know Russell is. On a cot or something. Stephen Larsen: Not always by choice. Sometimes I just fall asleep there. We got this big cot there and a tent right now. It's funny. Alison Prince: You know, okay a little, another pitch. Seriously, I am so grateful for you guys. All of the information that you give makes my life so much easier, so thank you for not ever sleeping, just for Alison Prince. Stephen Larsen: Oh thank you very much. We have a lot of fun doing it. It's very, very fun. Alison Prince:
Stephen Larsen: That's much appreciated, very much. We were talking a few days ago. He and I, for some reason, we both got on this big rant. We had been working super hard on these things, trying to relaunch and tweak and fix. Exactly what you're saying, what's the problem with this one? All right, let's go fix it. Just relaunch, relaunch. We both got on this topic, how did we both get started? He started going through his journey with me, and luckily we flipped the camera on, so it's going to be an episode here soon. It's really cool. He was walking through all the different products and all the sites and all the things that he had put out there. The ones that worked and the ones that didn't. I started doing the same thing, and it was really fun. He asked me, he was like, "When did it finally click for you?" I said, "It finally clicked for me when I realized that products and offers are not the same thing." For years, I had been selling products, and that's why I was failing, because I was the exact same as the other guy. When I created an offer out of it and I made it this awesome thing, and you get this and this, or you get this and an info product, or whatever it is. I started bundling and creating offers. That's honestly when it blew up for me. He said, "Yeah, for me what I've noticed is that it's the people who are obsessed with the marketing who always make the money. But the people who are obsessed with the money never make the money." It's totally about the marketing part of it and creating the offers. Anyway, I thought that was interesting you just said that. Alison Prince: It is. It is like, I call it the vision. How do you put together a product that's going to inspire people? On Pick Your Plum, it's a lot of like commodity, it's a product based site. I've never sold a product on Pick Your Plum. I sell the vision. One of my examples is, this is crazy, but when we first got started there wasn't a lot of money. I went out to my backyard. I found these blocks of wood. What I did is I decorated them with some stuff and made them cute, made them into ornaments for Christmas trees. Made them into block kits for kids, stuff like that. I sold the vision of what you could do with these blocks. Stephen, we ended up selling over $9000 in trash. Stephen Larsen: That's so cool. Alison Prince: Because we never sold the product, we sold the vision of what you could do with it. That's what you sell, right? You don't sell something. Stephen Larsen: You sell the hole, not the drill. Alison Prince: Yes, yes, that's exactly it. What can they do with it, that's what you sell, that's what converts. That's what people want. Stephen Larsen: That's awesome. How many times do you buy something and you never end up using it? Russell, it was kind of fun, he came over for dinner last night over here. We were geeking out over my books and the bookshelves. That's what we do, it's geeky and it's fun. We're going through all these books and my wife walks up and she goes, "Are you ever actually going to read those?" I was like, "Yeah, of course I am." Yeah, whatever. Russell was like, "Yeah, we read the titles and get the gist." It's funny that so many of us are like that though. We look at these, we'll go buy stuff, whatever it is. Exercise equipment is a classic example. Treadmills are just another kind of coat hanger for most people. It's because they got sold on the vision and not the actual thing. It's powerful. Alison Prince: It is. Stephen Larsen: Now I wanted to ask another part here. You've talked about how you just ask them and you create the offer. How do you get a lot of your traffic? How have you figured out that aspect of it? I know that's a big challenge for some of the listeners. Alison Prince: Okay. Remember what we learned in like kindergarten, about how to share? Stephen Larsen: Barely. I kind of skipped that one. Just kidding. Alison Prince: It really goes back to like elementary school, you share. You reach out to a blogger. You reach out to another shop, and you figure out how you can collaborate. Because that shop's trying to grow too, and you find out how you can work together. It really, it's so simple and everybody makes it very, very complicated, but it doesn't need to be. Like in blog land, we always are sharing each other's posts. In the eCommerce world, we're going out there and we're saying, "Hey, let's do a giveaway together. You've got a product that compliments my product, let's do a giveaway together. We'll get your readers and my readers excited, pumped up about it, and we can throw traffic to each other." Then we go to, now I'm working with my course, my digital product, so now I'm going out there and I'm working with other people who have a complimentary product. Then we interview each other or we post each other's stuff. I'm helping them grow. They're helping me grow. Now when I do this, you have to do it with people with similar numbers. If I came up to like Russell and I'm like, "Hey Russell, post me on your Instagram page." Something like that, and I only have like 200 followers or something like that and he's got a gajillion, it's not going to work. It's got to be something where, if I've got 200 followers, I'm working with someone with around 200 to 500 followers. You do it in a way, it's more organic, or it's more like a friendship instead of go follow, I don't know, Cookies With Lacy or something like that. That just looks too spammy. If you can post a picture that says, "Hey look at these cookies that Lacy made. They are so great." Vice versa. It really is networking and getting to know each other in the social world. It really does work. That is the big secret to how we grew our Facebook page to two million, is we just worked together. We came up with, "Hey, let's share each other's posts." Then I've got some bloggers right now that are excited about sharing this course. There's a few things that I've been working on, tweaking on. Stephen, I'm still working on that. I launched it in March, this course, and I've been tweaking it, testing it and perfecting it. Then I'm excited, I just got back from Thailand, to be able to start pushing it harder and harder and harder. I've actually got a webinar this morning and I'm really excited about it. Stephen Larsen: Oh cool. Alison Prince: I guess it's not a webinar anymore, we call them master classes, because nobody wants to go on a webinar. Stephen Larsen: Marketers. Alison Prince: Yeah. I've got a secret master class coming up today. I'm constantly tweaking that offer. How can I serve my people more? How can I get them more information? How can I help them become more successful? They see it. Then other people see it and then people start talking about it. It really goes back to what you learned in elementary, and it's to share. It really is so simple. Stephen Larsen: That's so interesting too, that you say it that way. Because I know one of the pieces of advice Russell and I give is, some people will be like, "Okay, I've got this sweet offer but I have no money for ads." A situation that we've probably all been in before. "I've got no money for ads. I've got no following. I'm literally brand new, there's still green on my ears." We always tell them to do something that sound ludicrous but is very strategic, which is just to go find somebody who has a following who would want the product, and just give it to them. Don't even try and get any profit from it. What you end up getting out of it though is a list, because you just send them out there and you end up getting all these people who opt in. Now you have another asset, there's a piece of value there. You go to the next guy and you say, "Hey, I got this list, you got this list, you want to do a little cross promotion?" Just like you just said. Now your list grows and you've got a little money. You go to the next person and do it again. By the time you've done it and flipped it six or seven times, you're rich. It's exactly like you're talking. Alison Prince: Yeah. You are going to get told no, and I think a lot of people are scared by the word no. Who cares if you get told no, just go find another person. You don't want to work with them anyways, if they're ... Stephen Larsen: It's going to happen. Alison Prince: It is. If you're prepared to get one yes out of ten, then you're a rock star and you will feel good when you get that yes. Don't think that everybody's going to say yes. You're going to get told no, it's not a big deal, just move on to the next one. Move on to the next one. I mean if it was easy, if we were just to flip on a light switch and become a millionaire, everybody would be and then money wouldn't have any value.
Stephen Larsen: I loved yours, by the way. Thank you. Alison Prince: Good. I'm glad you got it. That's the same thing. People want to be loved and want to be spoiled. Just treat them how you want to be treated. It's back to kindergarten. Stephen Larsen: That's awesome. I have one other area I just wanted to ask you about real quick. That is, okay you've got a guy over here who's saying drop shipping is the thing. Another person over here saying, "Do all fulfillment but only high ticket." This person says ... There's a lot of areas and a lot of facets of the eCommerce world, and you're obviously an expert in it. I just wanted to ask why you picked self-fulfillment, and low ticket, high volume? That's mostly where you've been, right? Alison Prince: Yeah. The In-N-out Burger approach. Where we can sell thousands and thousands of a product at a low price and make good money. The reason why, a couple things. When I first started, I didn't have money to get a huge warehouse. I didn't have money to have someone fulfill my products. It's expensive to have someone fulfill. The margins weren't there, and I knew a lot of people that needed jobs. I started, the very first one was in the garage, and I had people come over to the garage and help me fulfill out of the garage, because you do what you need to, to start growing your business. Then we got a little tiny warehouse, I think it was about 1200 square feet. Which I'll tell you what, scared the hejeebies out of me to sign that contract. Stephen Larsen: I bet. Alison Prince: When you're uncomfortable, I don't know, if we stay comfortable ... Stephen Larsen: Stuff happens. Alison Prince: Yeah. Don't stay comfortable... You've got to get uncomfortable to be able to have results. Then I just found joy in writing people checks that I knew, that I grew to love, that I grew to find. Then there was more margins in it. We got to do a lot more fun things as a company. In my course I do teach self-fulfilling has higher margins, and there are great ways to do it, but I do give options about having other people fulfill for you. The reason why I give both options is because I've been gone a lot, and I've been traveling. I want to be with my family. I don't want to stay up till two o'clock in the morning shipping products. That just, to me, is not fun. There's other options that I give to help you, because the entrepreneur should not be shipping. They should not ever ship one product. Well maybe one, to see how the process goes, but they should not be shipping the product. I do give options. I do talk about ways to be able to get that off your plate, and how to hire it out. How to hire another company to do it when you're ready. Things like that, just so you can truly focus on what you're good at. Finding the product, marketing, getting sales, getting out there, branding your product, growing your business. Not necessarily shipping, because that's, I don't know. Some people love shipping. I'm not a fan of shipping. Stephen Larsen: No, and it's funny to hear you say that, with the amount of stuff that you ship. Alison Prince: Yeah, no. I had my fair share of shipping. Oh man. Find help. Do not do it yourself. Find help. I teach that a lot in my course, you do what you're good at. You have, tell me which one it is, you have a podcast that talks exactly about that. When you guys are at ... See I stalk you Stephen, I really like what you have to say. When you're at IHOP and you were asking Russell like how he can get so much stuff done. He just hires it out because he's like, "I don't know how to do it." Which podcast is that, do you remember? Stephen Larsen: I don't remember. You know, it's funny, I usually, I just know that there's something cool that I want to share and then I come up with a title later. Alison Prince: Oh. It was probably about a month ago, because I listened to it. It was probably about a month, month and a half ago, but it was really, really good on focusing on what you're good at. Everything else, hire it out, get it off our plate. Stephen Larsen: Yeah, he told me once, he's like, "Stephen, I realized that I am a starter, and you are a finisher, that's why you're here." It's so true. That's how it happens, he starts and I finish. We're a cool team like that. It's very true, you've got to know which one you are though, hire out the other. Alison Prince: Agreed. Absolutely. Stephen Larsen: That's so cool. Alison, I know we've been going for a little bit... I just want to thank you for, I mean for anyone who's listening to this, I'm going to put so much stinking ad money behind this because I want everyone to hear your story and your voice and everything that you do. I am such a huge fan of Alison Prince and all the things that you do. It sounds like we stalk each other. You're just one of those people out there who's living and loving living. You set up what you do in a way so that you can love it. There's a lot of trial and error that comes with that in order to have it be that way. Anyway, it's just a massive example. Where can people find out more about you? Alison Prince: Facebook page, I just started the Because I Can Clan about three months ago. You can find me on Facebook over there. I do have a personal Instagram account AlisonJPrince, which I will start converting over into more of the business side soon. I really like about the journey, talking about the journey, how we're doing it. You're going to see how I start doing that, and I'm sharing my story. Like right now, on the Because I Can Clan, I've been doing a Facebook Live. I did a Facebook Live every single day except for two days in Cambodia when I didn't have internet. Stephen Larsen: Wow, what's your excuse? Just kidding. Alison Prince: Oh Verizon and Cambodia do not get along. Stephen Larson: That's funny. Alison Prince: I even called them and they're like, "Yeah, no. We just don't work with Cambodia." I'm like, "Wait, what? You realize what year it is." They said, "Yeah, there's just a lot of stuff." I'm like, okay, I don't wan to get into it. There was a couple days that we couldn't do it in Cambodia. I did, I related our experiences of scorpions and elephants and crazy stuff that we ran into and how that related to business. I did a Facebook Live. We're on day 19 today. I did it and I'm jotting down how fast that page is growing. In 17 days it had grown over 1000 followers, which I was pretty excited about. Then the next half the month I'm going to be doing that and then adding more. I'm documenting my journey. I'll do it on the Facebook page, and then I've got a closed group, Because I Can Clan group. Then I'm sharing with people over there what I'm doing, so they can watch what I'm doing. What you guys do, watch the master's hands. We go out there, we test it. We tell people what we're doing and what works and what doesn't work. Then they go out there and then they replicate it. Anyways, long story short, Because I Can Clan on Facebook, or my Instagram page. Then if they want to sign up for the course, that's 0-100k.com. You can find out all the information on the course. How people can make this a reality, if they want to get their kids going on it. Like my girls, they have their college education ready to go. They've got their savings accounts set up. They actually set up Roth IRAs this year. My eight and nine year old little boy, they have Roth IRAs right now. Stephen Larsen: I don't even have that. That's awesome. Alison Prince: It's a gift that we can give them as parents to be able to set them up financially when they hit certain ages. You've got to think through the process of, no, they're not going to be able to get all that money when they're 18 and go crazy with it. We've set up milestones so they can get it when they're this age or this age or this age. They have something, and they're eight and nine years old right now. Imagine what it's going to be like when they retire. Anyways, I talk about that kind of stuff because it's life changing. Stephen Larsen: It is. Alison Prince: I want others to be able to do it too, because it's not hard. You just have to listen to people. I think that's the biggest thing. Listen and do. You have to be a doer. You have to make things happen. Stephen Larsen: Yeah, and you can't be so afraid of appearing imperfect. I think that's the biggest killer. Alison Prince: Yeah. Stephen Larsen: I know it's one of the biggest killers, in my opinion, of entrepreneurs. Actually being vulnerable with your marketing, and getting out and sharing stories. Sharing the successes, but even more importantly the failures, if you are afraid of appearing imperfect. I always bring this up and people are always sick of me saying it. Again, when you start down the entrepreneurial path, like your imperfections explode in your face and you can't move on till you fix them. Anyway, it's awesome to have a person like you who's walked down the path. You know what it's like and you've been very successful. It's really cool to see. You're not afraid of messing up or being imperfect, or hey that test didn't work, and being public about it. That's a huge key. Alison Prince: You want to hear something funny? Stephen Larsen: Yes I do. Alison Prince:
When I did, oh my gosh, talk about a hot mess. When I did the course, I did the master class, it went well. I had people buying the course after. I had linked them to Liz Benny's course. People would buy the course and then they'd say, "Alison, how come I see a lady that's like talking about monkeys?" Which is her course, Social Media Monkey. I'm like, "Oh my gosh I forgot to change her link out." Then it gets even better. Then the payment plan, I didn't know that Stripe, when you do a payment plan it automatically sets it to a free 30 day trial, so I had given everybody my course for free that signed up for the payment plan. I'm like, oh my gosh. Then it gets even better, because why not, right? I put a huge type, like ginormously huge typo in the guarantee. I said, "100% money back guarantee if you are happy with the course." Stephen Larsen: Usually we don't care about typos that much, that's kind of a big one though. Alison Prince: That's a huge, huge typo. I am the perfect example of just do it. I ended up selling over, I think it was 26 courses my very first launch, and it was a complete hot mess. Stephen Larsen: I remember that. You did it, you crushed it. You just did it. Alison Prince: I just did it. You go out there knowing you're going to make mistakes. You tell people, say, "You guys, the tech's probably going to be screwed up because this is my first time, but the information that I have is valuable." It was. I was confident in what the offer was. I was not confident on the technology. They were patient with me and they were like, "It's okay. It's okay." I was able to get Liz Benny's course off there and direct them to my course. Get the payments fixed. Change the guarantee. I didn't have one person ask for their money back, because of what I was giving them. Because they were so excited about the offer, that they were fine with the mistakes. I think that we don't give ourselves enough credit, and we're too scared. Don't be scared. People are there to help you because they want to be helped too. Stephen Larsen: Yeah, they're all making it up. Alison Prince: Just do it. Yup. Mistakes and all Stephen. Everybody listening, who cares, just go do it. People need you. They need your information. They need your product, so just get out there and do it with mistakes and all. Stephen Larson: Yeah. I can't remember, I think it was Dan Kennedy, or I can't remember who it was, but he says, "You have an obligation to sell." If you've got something, it's actually an obligation. Alison Prince: Agreed. Stephen Larsen: Get out there and just do it. You owe it to your message. Alison Prince: Yup. You owe it to, I don't know, we were given talents, so let's go out there and share our talents. Let's do the best that we can, and live that Because I Can Clan life. Live how we want, because we can. Stephen Larsen: That's so true. Guys, go check out AlisonJPrince.com. 0-100k.com, I love that course, so good. The Because I Can Clan, the Facebook page. Alison Prince is the real deal. Super authentic. Very, very genuine, and is willing to be vulnerable whenever she makes mistakes like the rest of us. No reason to hide behind your own, because we all make them. Alison Prince: That's right. Stephen Larsen: Anyways, thank you so much Alison for being on the show, really appreciate it and all the value you gave. Alison Prince: Yeah. Thank you, it's been fun.
Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to SalesFunnelBroker.com/freefunnels, to download your pre-built sales funnel today.
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| 12 Jun 2018 | SFR 148: The Purple Ocean... | 00:10:57 | |
The Purple Ocean A few days ago I was in San Diego preparing to go on stage. If you’d seen me, (and I’m kinda glad you didn’t), you might have thought I was a bit strange. There I was with my headphones on, eyes closed, intently focused on getting into the zone. Pacing around the room to music like a crazy person. I love speaking because there's a sort pressure cooker effect that happens before I talk on stage. Somehow my neurons start firing extra fast, and all these ideas begin to percolate in my head. I become obsessed with how to get my message across clearly and in the most beneficial way for my audience. If you’d been a fly on the wall... (shhh) you might even have seen me dancing. I do whatever it takes to get those connections firing in my brain. I’m fixated with making hard to chew concepts as SIMPLE and exciting as possible... ‘Cause ‘ain't nobody loves a yawn fest.’ So, picture me, shaking my moves and freaking out about the Red Ocean versus Blue Ocean idea that Russell talks about in Expert Secrets. It’s such a great concept! The Red Ocean is a PROVEN Market. The Red Ocean is safe because you already know that people want the product. However, it's risky because tough competition means that you'll have to compete on price. So the chances of you making a whole lot of money are slim - #urrrgh! The Blue Ocean is a NEW OPPORTUNITY for your market! The Blue Ocean is where you'll find yourself if you create an offer that's prolific - Something different to what’s already out there. Sure, there's a lot less competition... BUT, you’re still taking a RISK - because your offer isn't proven. How do you know if anyone actually wants it... or what they’re willing to pay you for it??? *Fatal Flaw Alert* Then, it hit me: Here’s the Equation: Red Ocean = Product Security + Intense Competition = RISK Versus Blue Ocean = No Competition + Less Market Security = RISK ‘Holy Batman... It’s Catch 22!’ So, what do you do… How do you combine the Security of the Red Ocean with the Opportunity of the Blue Ocean? Can you minimise risk, serve more people and MAKE MORE MONEY? Is it even possible? Relax! This is where my pacing, dancing, and obsession pays off ;-) ‘Welcome to the Purple Ocean of Opportunity’ The Purple Ocean is a mixture of the Red & Blue Ocean… Think about it... You mix the best aspects of the Red and the Blue Ocean together, and you create the Purple Ocean! ‘The Purple Ocean provides the Security of the Red Ocean with the Opportunity of the Blue’ So, you might be thinking, ‘Yeah, this sounds great Stephen, but how does it work? Let me explain: Recently, when I’ve been putting together my offers, I’ve been using the Purple Ocean Concept to great effect. My students have been feeling it’s impact too. It’s sooo incredibly powerful! How to Create a Purple Ocean Offer When you create an offer, make sure that you take elements from the Red Ocean and combine them with elements from the Blue Ocean that you want to guide your customers towards. The mixture of the elements from the Red and Blue Ocean creates a Purple Ocean Offer. This provides the SECURITY and SAFETY of the Red Ocean while gently guiding your customer over to the prolific NEW OPPORTUNITY of the Blue Ocean - where you have more control and less competition. Your customers will often guide you and let you know which elements from the Red Ocean are needed to help make them feel safe and secure. Entrepreneur’s Dilemma ‘If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.’ - Henry Ford It’s fascinating to look at the significant industry shifting products, like the iPhone, because they often follow the same Purple Ocean method. Steve Jobs had a vision of what was possible. He produced an entirely revolutionary product. However, he made sure that his product fulfilled the needs of Red Ocean customers as well as the those of the more innovative early adopters. ‘You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.’ -Steve Jobs Jobs, recognised the same issue as Ford. As an entrepreneur, you need to do the same. It’s your job to hold a vision of what’s possible for your customers - while adding the safety and familiarity of Red Ocean elements to your offer. That way you help your customers to transition to your New Offer in a stress-free way. For Example: If your customers are convinced that the only way to make phone calls is with a mobile service provider, then you have to make sure that your offer includes the SECURITY of that service. You can then throw wifi calls and facetime into the mix - and gradually win them over to the NEW and the prolific. Freaked out, scared customers who are unsure of your product are the least likely to part with their cash. They’ll refuse to buy into your vision - however amazing it is. They’ll keep their money in their wallets until they find a solution that fits their preconceived ideas. Think about how many people resisted getting an iPhone (or even a Smart Phone) when they first came out! It was just too much for them to take on board: ‘Why would I want to facetime anyone- my phone is enough for me.’ Looking back on my MLM product, this is exactly the approach I took: A customer would reach out and say, ‘Steve, this looks great… but does it do ‘this’?’ Very quickly I began to notice the elements I needed to add to convince my customers to buy. It was always elements from the Red Ocean, so I’d pull them in and add them to my stack … And without knowing it, I created a Purple Ocean where they could feel both safe and excited. BOOM! Even with a small ad budget, my product made $100,000 in its first month, and $25,000 - $50,000 each subsequent month. It’s doing really well... Even with a ‘broken funnel’ (more about that in my next post)... One of the main reasons for this success is the Purple Ocean that my product is swimming in! So before you create an offer stack… Ask yourself these questions: Are your customers looking at your offer in a suspicious way because it is too prolific/ new/ revolutionary? What is the ‘current’ Red Ocean norm and is your offer too far away from it? What elements from the Red Ocean can you add to your stack to help your customers feel safe - to help them make the transition to your Blue Ocean more easily? Honestly, try it - I think you’ll be amazed at the structure and clarity it will give your offer creation. And, most importantly, the effect that creating a Purple Ocean of Opportunity will have on your wallet! I know this is going to help you CRUSH IT with your offer creation. Until next time… Go Kill It! If you want me to speak at your next event or mastermind? Let me know what I can share that would be most valuable by going to SteveJLarsen.com and book my time now.
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| 08 Nov 2022 | How Long Can It Take For The Pieces To Fit Together? | 00:31:42 | |
I know when I'm going through some breakthroughs. Most of the time, it is waking up in the wee hours and mulling over things. So, about a year ago, Russell and I talked about the kind of continuity he sees me doing. He pitched in about starting a newsletter where I could be teaching stuff. Surprisingly, it tied up with a course I made about three years ago. It wasn't selling big, but that's basically the framework that built my businesses. All of these good pieces have been sitting on my feet, but it was not until last night that it all clicked. I was finally able to fit the puzzle pieces all together. But revelations or breakthroughs like this are not like walking up to a light switch and turning it on. You often discover a detailed piece of your future offer on a random day. So, here are my thoughts about how to move through it.
Key Takeaways - Solve the problems that are in front of you (03:09) - Going through big breakthroughs (5:02) - My conversation with Russell (06:01) - The biggest stumbling blocks for entrepreneurs (10:11) - How I figured out my funnel framework? (14:56) - How do the pieces fit together? (17:18) - Figuring it out is one of the best things you can do (21:03) - Thinking on the long-term play (23:40) - Enduring more dips than the rest (25:44) Additional Resources - Get your Capitalist Pig Swag Here - Capitalist Pig Facebook Group - Connect with me here -- Download Season 1 episodes here -- Sales Funnels Radio is a podcast for all passionate digital marketing pros looking to up their game and stay ahead. | |||
| 10 Jun 2017 | SFR 58: The Dominant Thought... | 00:26:38 | |
You're not alone, but it'll sure feel like it sometimes. Here's how to deal with it...
What's going on guys? You guys ready for the greatest episode of Sales Funnel Radio ever, until the next one comes out? Me too, let's get started. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business, using today's best internet sales funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. Hey guys, I'm super excited for today, this is going to be awesome. A lot of you guys know we just got a house recently, we just got a house, and my wife and I were getting used to the new chores that come with home ownership, you know what I mean? There's yard work, there's all sorts of stuff that you would not think about until you actually own your actual house, which is awesome, and it's been a whole lot of fun to do so. Funnels certainly have played a role in our ability to do this and be this. We know that realistically, we'll probably pay the house off in just a couple years here, and we're super excited about that. It's not a mansion, but it's much larger than we actually need, but it's very fun. I'm not bragging, but I just want you guys to know what's possible out there if you guys are just barely getting started, which I know a lot of you guys who listen to this are. So anyways, I was outside the backyard, and I was doing yard work. Actually, I really enjoy yard work, it's therapeutic for me, mostly because I'll toss on some podcasts, and I'll just lose myself a little bit while I'm doing stuff. I was in the backyard, and I was doing a few things, and I always like to find new podcasts, I don't know why, I just really like podcasts. I've personally gained a lot from them. Anyway, I like podcasts a lot, and so I'll go download tons of them. I have a huge list of them, and sometimes I'll just go open up my phone, and just start looking at random ones, and I always binge listen to someone's podcast, I'll listen to like 15 episodes at once, and decide if I want to keep going on it, you know what I mean? Well, there was this new podcast, and it will remain nameless, but it was so funny. I don't know if it was just episode number one, or what, it sounded like it was a podcast that was just barely starting, but it was this guy who was getting up ... And again, I'm not badmouthing him, but I am blatantly disagreeing with him, okay? If anyone's offended by that, whatever. Anyway, so this guy gets on and he's like, "Hey, thanks so much ... Thanks for joining my podcast." And he starts going into a few little pieces and tips, things like that, and he was extremely ... It always bothers me when people just get up, and they just try and prove how awesome they are. It's like, "Okay, let your content prove that," you know what I mean? Anyway, so he gets up, and he starts naming all these stats, and it's very professional, and I can tell he probably starches his shirts, you know what I mean, you know what I mean? I was like, "Okay, you know, this doesn't ... Already I don't really want to keep listening to this." But he said one line that about made me hit the floor. I couldn't believe that he made this statement that he did, and when he said it, I actually rewound the podcast, because I was listening to him at two times speed, and you know, because you can listen faster than you can talk and read and all that stuff, or you know, out loud anyway. I re-listened to it, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, he actually said it." He just listed all these stats out about himself. Is he just full of it, or is this a real thing, you know? It's not my podcast nature to typically go badmouth somebody else, so I'm so sorry if this is ... It's not the normal culture, but it's just, ah, what he said really threw me off. What he said was, "Entrepreneurs are not marketers." And I was like, "What the heck did you just say? Wait, what?" I went and I rewound it, and he said, "Entrepreneurs aren't marketers." I would like everyone on this podcast to know that yes, yes they are marketers by nature, because an entrepreneur is somebody who's proving an idea, therefore that means they're selling. What is selling? It's an arm of marketing, right? It's marketing, it's all marketing.
We've gone over the difference before, between what sales and marketing is, right? Sales is what happens when it's face-to-face, what you're actually saying to the person, right? What are you saying on the webinar, what are you saying when they're inside the funnel, what's on your sales video? That's why it's called a sales video. However, marketing is the act of getting people to your face, so it's all the other pieces that go into actually getting them to walk up to you, right? What actually gets them to your funnel, what actually gets them to your webinar, or whatever it is. That's the act of marketing, and it doesn't stop when sales start. Marketing continues to go all the way through the fulfillment of the product, as well as teaching them to consume the product, right? I think it was Dan Kennedy that said, "Marketing only has two ..." No, no, "A business only has really two responsibilities. The first is to innovate, and the second is to market." That's it, those are the only two things that you really have to do, those are the only actual two responsibilities that the entrepreneur has, to innovate and to market, and all marketing is, is education, right? It's a form of education that actually gets people to cause belief in your product, you know? That's basically what it is. And so this guy's coming out, and he's like, "Yeah, entrepreneurs are not marketers, and that's why my stuff's so good, and that's why I'm so amazing." I was like, "Holy crap, this is episode one for you, you're a brand new podcast, but I cannot listen to you anymore, that's pure crap, pure crap." You know what's funny? I've got this rule now, I never work with a business when the CEO, or entrepreneur, or person in charge of the business in general, whoever it is, president, whatever you want to call it. If the person who's in charge of the business is also not ... if he's not also the person who's in charge of marketing, I 100% already just do not ever work with them, ever. That comes from a lot of experience, that comes from a lot of places of me going, "Oh my gosh," it is so frustrating for me to go out and go, "Hey, person who's not in charge of the business, but who does marketing, but that makes no sense. How about we build a funnel?" Well, then they got to go clear it with this guy, and then they got to go over to this guy, and they got to go over to this guy, and then finally the guy comes back, "No." And you're like, "What? Are you kidding me? Hey, you know what would be cool, what if we added an order bump?" "All right, well let me clear that through legal, let me clear that through this person, let me go through here." I'm like, "Are you kidding me? It's an order bump, like what else is there to think about? Are you running through the benefits? Why are we not doing an order bump?" You know what I mean? It actually came to such a point that for a phase there, for Funnel Hacker TV, I was building a lot of funnels with Russell for all these people, and it was a lot of fun, lots and lots of fun. The challenge was that most the time, the person who was in charge of the business was not also the person in charge of marketing. Oh my gosh, it was so hard. It was like eating sand, I mean, it was so, so tough to get anything done. I think I told you guys before, I think I told you this here ... I can't remember. He said, "Is one of my ..." I'm pretty sure I did. I told you about a professor that I had, who was a CMO of Denny's, right? He was in charge of all the marketing for Denny's, he was in charge of all the marketing for Pizza Hut, so maybe in gigantic corporate businesses that are Fortune 500 companies, maybe sometimes that guy's not also in charge of marketing, but I mean, okay, can you not argue with the fact that, okay, Steve Jobs was very much in charge of marketing, but also in charge of Apple, does that make sense? Russell Brunson, very much in charge of marketing, in charge of ClickFunnels, all right? Most of the time when a business is doing prolific things, it's because there is an entrepreneur who is in charge of marketing also at the same time, does that make sense? I'm sorry I always reference Russell so much in this podcast, it's just that I literally spend more time around him per day than in my family, you know what I mean? So that's where I work. Anyways, it's so funny, he always makes fun of people, he's like, "Why would you outsource your marketing, that's like outsourcing your sex life," okay? If you're going and you're outsourcing your marketing, you're literally outsourcing your sex life. Selling is the sex of business, and the fulfillment is the remainder of what comes with the relationship, that's what he always says. Anyway, it's true though. I had this teacher, right? This CMO of Denny's, and I spent a lot of time with him, a lot of one-on-one time, and he taught me a lot of stuff, and it was great. I truly learned probably the most from him in college than anybody else. What he told me was like, "Look, think of business as a car, and you're driving down the road, and you got the guy who's in charge of supply chain. He's the guy who's got the oil dipstick, and he's saying, 'Oh yeah, we could go this far, because our resources are this far.' You know, he's the guy in the supply chain. 'Oh yeah, we can go this far, let me order as much as we can.' That's the supply chain guy. Well, the finance guy, he's looking at the rest of the gauges at the dashboard, he's sitting next to the marketer who is the driver. Right? The finance guy is sitting to the side, and he's like, 'Yeah, we could do this, we could go this far at this space, at this speed, I advise you to turn this way, advise you ...' But who's actually in the driver's seat? Right? Whoever is in charge of sales." Nothing happens until somebody sells something, right? The person who's actually in the driver's seat is the marketer, and he's the one who's driving the car, pointing out the directions, "You know what? Let's go this way. You know what? Let's go this way. You know what? I think that we've got ... there's probably a gas station this way, let's go refuel up supply chain guy, right? Finance guy, you take note of that, I'm going to go over this way." You know what I mean? The marketer is the one who drives the company. Not always. I guess in that area, that other podcaster was right, but he said, "Entrepreneurs aren't marketers." It's just so freaking false, I can't even believe it. Every time and entrepreneur goes out, and is entrepreneuring, what is he entrepreneuring? Something that is either brand new, or his own version of it, or something. Well, what does that entail? How does he know that the business is actually working? By selling. What does that mean? It means you're a freaking marketer, you know what I mean? A lot of times people are like, "Oh, what is marketing, marketing seems so elusive, the term of it." Just think of it as educating, all right? You're educating, and you're pulling people in with a form of education. That doesn't mean teaching, but you're teaching people how cool your product is, you're breaking and rebuilding belief patterns, you're getting people out, you're getting out there and you're saying, "Hey, check out this product, right? Change your current pattern of behavior, and go check out my product or my service. Change your view on the world, and go check out what I have." Anyways, I could not believe ... Anyway. I don't know how much we want to beat this dead horse, I just want you guys to know that entrepreneurs are definitely marketers, and if you think you're not a marketer, I don't know what to tell you. Hard reality, you got to learn some sales, you know what I mean? That doesn't mean ... you know what, let me rephrase that. I don't like to do sales face-to-face.
They've got to be out there, they've got to be showing their thing. People have got to gain belief in the product, therefore yes, you are a marketer, and feel excited about that. What's funny, is that way back in the day, I used to think ... I remember going through just tons of angst over what I should do, like, "What's my major, what's my ..." And you know, what's funny is now realizing how little that actually matters, unless you're going to be a doctor or a lawyer, or something like that. Oh gosh, anyway. It's funny, this same professor who's the charge of marketing for Denny's and all this stuff, he would sit me down, and we'd have these big long discussions, and I'd be like, "I don't know what I want to do, I feel like I could be good at that, I feel like I could be good a supply chain, I feel like I could be good at finance." For a while, my major was CIT, I was learning programming, and all this stuff, you know? Then I went to finance, and I jumped around all over the place. I was going to go to financial economics, I really liked that stuff, I think it's fascinating, but the problem was I didn't know what I would actually have at the end of financial economics classes. Oddly enough, economists typically don't make that much money, and that's something to take into account of. What's funny, is I used to sit down with this teacher, and I'd be like, "Hey, I really don't know what I want to do." And he goes, "You know what? Bar none, marketers are problem solvers." And I was like, "Yeah, but come on, marketers are like the guys ... That's like the major that people do when they're just trying to skip out, and not have it be an actual challenge or learn anything." I mean, that's what I thought, it's such a false belief, and he called it out on me. He's like, "No, that's not how that works at all." He's like, "The reason is because marketers are problem solvers, it's not that anyone else isn't, but marketers are problem solvers. What's an entrepreneur? They solve problems, okay? Marketers are problem solvers." They go through and they said, "Okay, you know what? Look at my second OTO, my second upsale, it looks like it's not working very well. I wonder what's wrong with it? You know what? Why don't I take it out, I'm going to switch it in with this new offer, let's plug it in, let's see if we get a higher conversion rate from it, right?" Or, "Let's tweak this," or, "Let's tweak that, and let's see if we get a better result from it." They're problem solvers, they're a scientist of sorts. They go and they say, "It's like adult legos, they pick out pieces and say, 'What works here? What works here?' And they experiment, and they go put things out there." I mean, that's what a marketer is, that's what an entrepreneur is.
That's why I stopped taking ... It's just miles of red tape whenever somebody goes ... You know how I can tell when the marketer is also not the CEO? When something needs to be changed, and it runs through so many legal people that it ends up not happening, you know? Or people start freaking out over a certain word, like, "Well, maybe we shouldn't say that exact phrase, because it could mean X, Y, and Z." Now, obviously be legal, be ethical, but there are some tall tale signs to see whether or not the entrepreneur is also the person in charge of marketing, and you hope that's the case, otherwise ... I'm not saying that they're not an entrepreneur, but you know, sorts. Marketing helps sales, you know? Entrepreneurs, that's their only job, is to get sales and to prove their concepts. Anyway, beating the dead horse now. Guys, go out there, take charge of it, and Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your pre-built sales funnel today. | |||
| 29 Oct 2019 | SFR 285: My Own Life Makes The Best Hook... | 00:26:20 | |
New environments are some of the easiest ways to create a new hook. Unless you physically never move, ever, this will work for you…
I said yes to more things than I realized I did ...and that's okay.
But life’s been a little busier than normal and I've been speaking in interesting places like crazy…
So, I thought it would an awesome idea to show you how to promote your business, create a hook, add curiosity, and leverage your time in a NEW and novel way…
What I’m about to show you, has doubled my income in just 3 days.
… it’s also lead me on some crazy adventures 😉
HOW TO PROMOTE YOUR BUSINESS & LEVERAGE YOUR TIME!
I don't remember the first time I first saw Russell do this, but I remember thinking, "Oh that's really clever and cool!"
Russell would be speaking in different places and instead of just traveling solo, he’d bring a film guy to film the whole journey - so he could capitalize and leverage what he was doing over and over again.
#Genius
But until recently, I wasn’t doing that…
I’d just go speak at different places, sell, and that would be it…
Sometimes I tell you about it, and sometimes I wouldn't.
I speak a lot of places, but I'm pickier than I used to be.
In the past, I’d just get on anything, and it was the same with podcasts...
However, I probably won't do as many interviews for people's podcasts as I have in the past because…
I'm gonna start designing my lifestyle a little bit more, which is very exciting, and a natural step after a certain spot.
So in order to capitalize MORE on my time, there are a few things I've been doing...
I was on an interview today and the guy asked me “How do you stay so effective?”
Well...
One of the things is, I only work from 9:00 to 6:00.
… and that might shock some of you, but that's what I do.
I work from 9:00 to 6:00, and once that's over, I don't do anymore!
Sometimes, I’ll work in the evenings...
but that’s the exception, NOT the rule.
The Rule is…
I work 9:00 - 5:00, and that's it, and whatever I don't get done, I'm okay with that.
I've had to be strict with myself and then be okay with that.
I've been doing that now for a little over a year... Crap, it's October! so it's actually been a little over a year-and-a-half 😂
I'm really enjoyed where things are moving to.
MY FILM GUY
One of the things I've been doing to stay more effective (just like Russell) is to have a film guy follow me on my trips.
It’s kinda funny how I found him…
I was at my sister's wedding (which was awesome) - it's cool to see your little sister get married, and while I was there, I saw this film guy, and I was like:
"Oh, he's really into it. I like his style, he seems to be getting some neat shots."
And then, when I saw the video he produced, I was like, "Dude, that was good." So I reached out to him on Facebook and asked:
"Hey, I'm speaking at Carnegie Hall, do you wanna come film me on the journey, while I'm there, in the streets, and then on the way back?"
He's like, "Sure."
So I paid for his ticket, paid for everything, (paid him, obviously), and then he filmed the whole journey and we did some cool stuff.
Here’s what happened…
Now, I have a little bit of an advantage ‘cause I've already read Traffic Secrets, but I can share this with you as I’ve heard Russell talk about this on his podcast…
One day he and I were sitting in his office, and he had just come back from hanging out with Dean Graziosi for a day.
And, at the time of this story, Dean filmed an ad a day which helped him to sell 4x as many books - it was ridiculous!
Rather than spend a ton of time writing a single ad, Dean literally competes by making a massive amount of new ads.
I was like, "That's really interesting."
ENVIRONMENT & THE HOOK
So there I am with my *FULL* speaking diary and a ton of traveling to interesting places to do, so I was like:
"You know what? Every time we land somewhere, let's find the cool tourist attractions, and when I'm not speaking let’s go to those attractions and film ads.”
...and that's what we've been doing.
In the last two or three weeks, we've easily filmed 50 ads, no joke.
We just wrote this MASSIVE list of all the things that we promote (and maybe you don't even know I have that many things that you could buy?)...
… and we filmed ads for each one of those things with a brand new hook that tied into the environment I was in.
Let me explain…
Today, I’m here in a baseball park so, I might say:
"Boom, what's going on? It's Steve Larsen! Hey, I'm so excited, I'm in a baseball park and I want you to hit out to the park this year. So go ahead, post your goal down below, go buy this thing and just pay for shipping."
I tie the hook into the environment that I'm in.
Even if it's cheesy, it doesn't matter. SECURITY THREW US OUT!
I wanted to film some ads at the Empire State Building, but we got caught and security threw us out.
Everyone has a camera, but my film guy had a *CAMERA*
...you know what I mean?
He had a Shotgun mic and this BIG Rode thing.
… and we got caught and we couldn't film anything.
However, #PlotTwist...
The next day, we broke the camera apart and put it in our backpacks, and snuck it through security…
We got to the top of the Empire State Building.
And yeah, It felt a little bit scary for a little while, but...
We filmed a bunch of ads at the top of the Empire State Building!
(Shhhh, don’t tell anyone 😉)
… it was super fun, and the ads look amazing! Next, we went to Times Square and filmed me walking through the crowd, the camera guy walking backward and Colton walking forward, parting the sea of people.
It looks super sick!
I'm talking as I walk through the crowd with all these billboards and banners everywhere.
I’m tying in the environment to a very brief hook.
Guess where we went next????
Yep! We took the camera to the Statue of Liberty…
But we got kicked out again (Security does not like BIG cameras), so we had to go subterfuge mode again to sneak the camera in.
I'm really bad at hearing "no."
THE PERFECT SALES SCRIPT
Then, we went to a theme park in Chicago that has the world's fastest zero to super-fast roller coaster - it had the most aggressive backward inversion…
...it was crazy.
So we filmed a whole bunch of small ads tying the hook into the environment.
Then I was like, "Let's film a longer form ad with multiple scenes."
So I took out my notepad ( which is always with me), and basically did the same thing I‘d done with several other ads…
I used the webinar script - it's the perfect sales script - that's really what we should call it. The theme park that was insanely over-packed and they had a Halloween theme going on, so I grabbed a pumpkin that was next to one of the props and did a cool pattern interrupt.
I walked through rides while following the webinar script.
It was very eye-catching, but at the same time, I'm following general, good direct response marketing principles.
I'm telling you this because it doesn’t matter where you are...
Take the opportunity of whatever you're already doing, and just document it.
If you're like, "Steven, I can't hire a camera guy," then don't use one.
Today, I balanced my phone on a chain-link fence in the park.
...that's all it takes.
Russell still uses his phone with the Voice Memo App while he's driving and that's his podcast.
"What camera equipment do you use?" My phone 😂 That's it.
YOU DON’T NEED TO BE CREATIVE
I know I've said that multiple times, but it’s true. You don’t need to be creative, you just need to document what you’re already doing…
Don't create, document.
It's much harder to sit down to create this brand new amazing thing - instead, just use the environments that you're already in and tie them into a hook.
The environment is one of the easiest hooks.
One of the reasons ads works is because of pattern interrupts… Well, the pattern interrupt could literally just be where you're standing.
The Statue of Liberty; that's an awesome pattern interrupt. 😉
When you have a cool environment it literally means you can be less good at scriptwriting, and it would still be a captivating ad.
Case in point…
There's A LOT of crappy movies out there, but because of all the CGI and the graphics, you still get the explosions, so we still think, "Hey, it's an okay movie!" ….even if the script sucked.
Ler’s face it, that happens all the time!
People want variety - it's actually one of the six needs that Tony Robbins teaches about.
...and for some of us, that need is greater than others - so provide that variety and spontaneity with your environment. I've been using that principle more and more lately...
I DON’T make the same content all the time anymore. Instead, I use whatever’s going on around me to create a cool environment.
If you’re thinking, "Steven, but I'm not that creative." And you may be right, maybe you're not that creative, but guess who is?
You don't need to be creative to have creative things!
We're using environment to cause MORE emotion than (sometimes) my video may be able to convey…
MY ‘NEXT’ BIG PLAN!
I just got off the phone with my realtor, (who's amazing), and he's been helping us get an office space where I can actually set up an event space.
I'm looking at shows like Impact Theory, and Baydros…
And I think video is gonna go even further than it already has and so...
I'm going to create a show where I can control the environment and make a very appealing environment for face-to-face chats with big people.
My lease is gonna be a lot of money; we're probably gonna spend a solid 200 grand to outfit this studio that can be used for multiple things.
I'm having them gut ALL the walls to build an event center that holds 50 people. It’s gonna be the full works with…
...all the things to make it feel like a brand new environment.
Creating that transformational atmosphere is the BIGGEST costs for me when I do my events…
When I walk into an event, it needs to transport me to a new place.
And here’s the interesting thing...
A lot of times, the same thing is true with ads or creating any kinda content.
The reason I'm telling you this is that I'm in the process of setting up a space that I can use for a face-to-face interview-style show. I’m gonna pay for my office by using the space I create for…
I just want you to start thinking of the different ways you can use your environment.
So anywhere you go, start thinking about ways you can sit back and start creating these ads.
TALKING TO A PUMPKIN
We’ve cranked out about 50 short ads, and then more of a long-form one to promote One Funnel Away.
I'm literally creating paid advertising for my bridge page promoting One Funnel Away - 'cause…
There's enough commission that I can actually go spend money to acquire customers and still keep just a little bit over, which is nice.
I'm don’t say "One Funnel Away" in the ads, I doubt that would be allowed…
But in the ad, I'm sitting on a bench with a pumpkin... 🎃 (Yes, you know I'm a goofball at heart, and I'm totally cool with that)…
I'm looking at him like:
"I know, right! Have you ever wondered if you could build a sales funnel for your business?"
...it's super cheesy, but in the first two seconds, it’s like, "What? What? What?" #PatternInterrupt
I don't care if it's goofy; there's a hook, and it pulls you and then I walk through the super cool script.
BREAKING BELIEFS
I’m tired of people saying stuff like, "Well, does it work for this industry? Does it work for this? Does it work for this?"
So we went to the Better Business Bureau and we grabbed ALL the industries that you can find, and I just run through them...
*ALL* of them.
I'm trying to go through several hundred of these categories - because I'm sick of people asking the SAME question!
After I hit a certain point in the script, it's just me dropping industry after industry, I’m…
(you getting the idea? 😉)
… it's all just categories.
*All the things* I know people ask about when they do One Funnel Away or my other products.
It's pretty hilarious, it slowly starts to fade out with a call to action as I keep adding the next category, on and on…
STORYTIME WITH PAPPA LARSEN
I wanna leave you with a cool little story about how you can use the environment to create a hook …
#StorytimeWithSteve
Back in the 1900s, there was a guy named Harry Reichenbach, (I believe he was the guy that dumped diplomas over enemy lines in World War I) …
Reichenbach was known for helping people get some really cool things.
There was an actor called Francis X. Bushman who wanted to be a famous movie star, and so he says to Harry, "Hey, I wanna be a star, would you please help me?"
So Harry arranged to introduce Bushman to a producer.
(This next bit is brilliant!)
Harry goes to the bank and he gets 2,000 pennies...
(I love this story.)
...and he starts walking Bushman, through the city, to the producer's office
As they're walking, Harry starts dropping pennies...
(Back then, a penny was made of something that was actually worth something.)
So as he’s walking with Bushman, Harry is dropping all these pennies.
At first, it's just kids picking them up, but as time goes on, adults start following him too…
Eventually, there’s a MASSIVE crowd of people behind him picking up the 2,000 pennies.
By the time he gets to the producer's office, there’s this sea of people.
The crowd gave the studio executives the impression that Bushman was very popular and they signed him up for a big contract with Metro Pictures.
The crowd had no idea who Bushman was, they just were behind him because Reichenbach kept dropping all these pennies.
Say what you will about that, it’s *BRILLIANT*
USE YOUR ENVIRONMENT Most marketers are nervous to do random stuff like that, and that's the reason why I started using ‘environment’...
I don't care if it's an unanswered loop. You don't have to close all loops. I'm gonna open ten loops…
That's why I'm looking at a freaking pumpkin…
(Meet my pumpkin friend 🎃… what do you mean, you can’t see him!?!)
I know it's a weird ad, but gotta be weird enough to catch attention.
You don't have to be that ‘creepy weird’.
You don’t have to be out there strange - that's NOT what I'm saying at all... just be ‘out of the norm…’
Focus on ‘out of the norm’ things in your ads…
...even if you're not doing video ads, that's fine.
We’ve found these types of ads to be significantly more effective than text ads… for me, anyway.
So we're filming a lot more ads like that.
In the last few days, we've almost doubled our revenue with the new creative we've been tossing out there.
It’s the exact same stuff with just a little bit more ads, and sales have pretty much doubled in the last three days, which is NUTS!
(It’s NOT enough of a litmus test to make a rule out of it, but it’s exciting!)
So here’s what I want you to do...
Start thinking about unusual ways to...
If you're already going somewhere, take an extra five seconds to think about how you can use that environment for an ad.
And if it's not awesome, who cares? Make a bunch of them!
Compensate with ad volume rather than one perfect ad.
… that's what we're doing and it's been awesome.
PATTERN INTERUPT LARSEN STYLE
Sales Funnel Radio is ending.
Oh, you didn't know that??? … or a lot of you didn't.
Sales Funnel Radio is coming up on 300 episodes and at that stage, iTunes starts to get weird, and so we're gonna end the show.
Sales Funnel Radio currently has about 3,500 organic downloads a day - which is awesome, right?
The message has just continued to grow, and I thank you for that because I know your sharing it has been a big piece of this journey.
I gonna end the show, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna stop publishing though…
I'm launching a show called Pursuit of Profit.
“Oh, what's that?"
Well, let me tell you…
I'm gonna bring in a whole bunch of really cool rich people and ask them…
… it’s a different kinda show. It's gonna be awesome.
(I had to pay a lot of money for that domain 😂)
It's also the reason why Sales Funnel Radio output has slowed down as we work on this transition.
If you wanna go get on the waiting list, go to pursuitofprofit.com - I'm very excited about it.
It’s gonna be about 50% interview with someone big and rich and 50% me teaching you what I'm doing - I still wanna keep documenting the journey 'cause I think that's important.
We'll fly in a whole bunch of people, and I’ll probably sell live seat tickets.
The room's only gonna hold 20 to 30 people.
I'll literally do back to back interviews with these AMAZING and rich people.
I wanna dive deeper with a little bit more of a broader market.
So if you wanna go get on the notification list, go to pursuitofprofit.com.
Someday I'll teach you…
We're gonna redo salesfunnelradio.com and put all of the episodes on a single MP3 player.
But (stay with me) there’s even MORE!
STORYTELLING IN MARKETING
We're launching another show called One Funnel Away Stories, and here’s the story behind it...
About two-three years ago, I was walking through the Vegas Strip with Russell ….
(We were at an event to learn some things)
Anyway, I was walking next to Russell, and I was like:
"You know what's funny? All the tools are here now - they're largely all here. So why is it that some people still don't believe that this will work for them?"
#1: I believe that it's just story. That's it. We just need more story.
This has become a game….
It's no longer like, "Does it work for me?" Yeah, it does, alright!
#2: I need to be techy…
ClickFunnels means that you don’t need to be a coder anymore, right?
#3: “I just don't believe."
There it is, that's the kicker.
Q: How do we break that belief?
A: *STORY*
So I was talking to Dave and Russell, I was like:
"Why don't you guys buy One Funnel Away Stories?"
(It's their domain, they're just letting me run the show)
So I'm gonna pull in tons of people to share their story for 20 minutes hearing their story on how they used ClickFunnels, and funnels in general, to blow up.
I think it'd be a really interesting show, it’s gonna be more story-based and less tactical.
Each week you’ll get a chance to go hear success stories from people in crazy industries.
I'm gonna choose ALL kinds of industries, they won’t be the standard ones you hear about all the time, tho there’s nothing wrong with those either.
So those are the NEW shows coming up.
As soon as Sales Funnel Radio hits 300, we'll be done. Sales Funnel Radio will stop, but we're gonna start two others shows.
I do have some special tricks up my sleeve for the end of the SFR that have been ready for quite a while - which we're very pumped about!
I'm psyched, it’s gonna be awesome.
Thanks so much for being here. If you like this episode, please screenshot it, post on social media, and tag me - tell me what you liked about it.
If you hated it, and you think my eyes are too large (as I do), go ahead and let me know that as well.
Anyways, thanks so much for being a part of the show. I can't even believe we're nearing 300 episodes.
I’m telling you... Start publishing, and in one year, tell me if your life's not dramatically different!
... it was for me.
Thanks so much for all this, you are One Funnel Away.
I encourage you to all get rich, give back, and be a Capitalist Pig. You’ll do more good in the world with more money than if you're poor. I strongly believe that.
I don't believe the government should take care of me.
I believe I should get as rich as possible, but first, I need to take care of myself, then I can go do good things with my money.
#GetRichGiveBack
AH, YEAH!
Hey, wish you could geek out with other Real Funnel Builders and even ask questions while I build Funnels Live?
Ah-oh…
*Wish Granted*
Watch and learn funnel building as I document my process in my funnel strategy group.
It's FREE!
Just go to the scienceofselling.online and join NOW.
| |||
| 16 Oct 2018 | SFR 183: Study Money, Not Food Stamps... | 00:31:48 | |
Boom, what's going on everyone? It is Steve Larsen, and today I'm gonna talk to you guys about food stamps.
I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.
The real question is how will I do it without VC funding or debt - completely from scratch. This podcast is here to give you the answer.
Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business, using only today's best internet sales funnels.
My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.
What's up, guys?
Hey. Alright. Right off the get go, okay, just gotta tell you I'm probably gonna offend some people, and I'm gonna speak a lot of opinions on this thing, but I wanna share with you guys really how I was able to get through like the first year or two of failing entrepreneurship.
There's nothing wrong with being in that failure zone, by the way, right. I think that's one of the things that people get self-conscious about. They're like, "I'm not a successful entrepreneur yet, or I've been going in the game for a while now, and I haven't really made anything." I totally get it, first of all.
In college, my wife and I, we were freaking poor. I mean, we just, we were literally living paycheck to paycheck, but really it was loan to loan. Because like I was just getting student loans.
I was supposed to get paid by the Army, and through some stupid crap, I ended up getting paid half of what I was supposed to the entire time I was in it. And so I was like crap, "I at least wanted some security with that vehicle, with that job, right, of being in the Army." And it wasn't that way.
And I will tell you, looking back, that was one of the biggest blessings I've ever had in my entire life. The fact that we did not have enough, okay, the fact that we did not have any money.
What happened was when we first got married, a lot of you guys know the story, right. I found out that my lady was eating one meal a day behind my back just because we didn't have enough cash - and I didn't realize that she was doing that. That really cut me to the core.
I kept coming home every day, I was like, "Why, she's still in bed?" I was like, you know, "What's up, you okay?" and she's like, "Yeah. Oh, it's nothing."
She's already been graduated - I wasn't graduated yet. And I'd come back the next day, and she'd still be in bed. We had just barely gotten married like a few weeks ahead of time, and I was like, "Is it me? What's up, you okay? Are you alright?" And she's like, "No, no, it's totally fine. It's totally fine. We're good."
And I'd come back the next day, the same thing. Next day, same thing. Next day, same thing. It was like, "What is going on?" She told me that she'd only been eating one meal a day and as a man, that wrecks you. Right? That'll destroy anybody, but especially most men tend to get their identity based on what they do.
Many women tend to get their identity based on their environment. That's a huge stereotype.
So for me, it wrecked me, okay. I was super, super sad about everything that was going on. Not just sad, but like, my self-esteem dropped. I was having a hard time functioning in classes knowing that my wife was so weak at home, and I was in classes. I mean, really think about that.
The scenario was really, really intense.
So about two years prior, I was living in North Carolina. I was on one of those missions - I was one of those missionaries riding a bike around. We talked to a bunch of people - I was one of those guys in a suit, tie, little badge. I mean, I'm sure you guys have seen them around, right? I loved it, great time of my life...
Well, I was put in a lot of spots and a lot of areas where it was people's sole plan to live on food stamps. It was their plan, and they literally would not show up to work so they couldn't make enough money so that they could get on food stamps.
That, in my opinion, is extremely wrong.
I know this is where I'm gonna ruffle feathers. But if you don't like it, this is my channel, you can leave. I'm gonna tell you what I think. Capitalist pig baby, alright, here we come. Okay, here we go...
I'm gonna be sensitive to this 'cause there are tons of people who need it, and that's great. But when it's your freakin' plan to suck on other people's hard work, I do not agree with that. The door is right over there, actually! And I'm serious about that.
With that mindset, of seeing tens of thousands of people where that was their plan, okay, I was like what? Like, you're going to go on welfare, that is your career path?
I'm just letting you guys know, that's my backstory, that was where I was coming in from to the scenario with my wife from. The scenario of, "I will never do that." If I get hurt, if something happens to me, sure. If I need it, legitimately, but after I've done everything that I can. That's my personal opinion on it.
I think it is wrong to have a plan that way. You're getting something for nothing, I don't agree with it.
So again, if I've offended you, I'm sorry, but I'm not sorry. I really believe that.
So I came into our new marriage, our relationship, with that mindset. And I'm like holy crap. I need to do something now. I just didn't know, I had no idea that's what was going on.
And so the moment I found out, first of all, it crushed me, and then I had several choices...
And I am so thankful for how I chose. I try not to get emotional on this one, okay. It was one of the hardest things I've ever gone through in my life. I called my dad, and he taught me... I worked multiple jobs my entire childhood, okay. I started mowing lawns when I was eight years old. I know how to work, and I know how to work hard.
I know how to do crap that I don't want to do. Which is a huge lesson of itself. That's totally thanks to my dad, he's the man, he's totally taught me everything on that, okay.
When I got into college, I called my dad, and I was like "Hey," (super not with the culture of how I was raised), I was like, "Hey, could you give me money?" And he said "No."
A lot of you guys have heard this story here, but I'm just giving a little more detail behind it because of where I'm trying to take us. Just follow me here for a second...
He said "No." He said, "If I give you this money, you will not exhaust the resources you didn't know you had." That's huge. That's huge. That's when he told me that.
I was like, "Oh, crap!" So my back's against the wall, and I was like, you know what, I'm gonna make this. I can go get on welfare stamps... we certainly qualify for that. I could go get loans. I could get a job, but then I'm probably gonna do bad in my classes.
What's hard is in a college town, people were working for $3 an hour just because there's so much labor available. Everyone's trying to get jobs. And that's totally accurate.
My wife got a job finally, after trying super hard trying to find something, for $3.50 an hour. $3.50 an hour! Dude, guys, crap was hitting the fan. You understand?
When people are like, "We don't have any money," like, I get it, okay, I have been there. Or like, "I don't have any time," - I was in college, I eventually joined the Army, we had kids - freaking I had no time either. And I get it, and I get it...
And the answer is to not, don't turn on freaking Netflix. You gotta look at your discretionary time and where you're spending it and squeeze every ounce of it out that you can.
And the choices that I had, I could get food stamps, I could get loans, I could get a job... but that probably wouldn't even pay for our bills anyway. So I was like, "Crap. We can't even get a freaking job for more than $3 an hour." That was legit. Which means I couldn't do anything in class anymore. I was like I gotta do something...
My wife, she went and she started looking into this WIC program which is like food stamps. And she looked into it. She and I had a conversation, and it was very, very challenging. We were like, "What if we don't get on the food stamps?"
I'm not saying that people don't need it. But what I'm saying is the willingness to go through it and figure it out without taking the out. Man, that will turn you into something you're not...
And so, we decided we wouldn't take them - which was very challenging. It meant additional suffering, you understand? It meant additional, being willing to go through crap.
When people tell me things like, "I don't have time." Bull crap, I don't believe you. "I don't have money," - then you've not become resourceful yet.
I actually feel so thankful when people are like, "I don't have enough money," - like "Oh good, you have a trial. Good. Lean into it." I'm so thankful for the scenario that you're in. That's how I feel about it.
They're like, "Oh, I don't know how to do this?" Perfect, YouTube it. "I don't know how to do this, I don't know how to do that, I don't have enough money." I'm like, "Oh my gosh." Like, you gotta call your own BS out. Because I have like "this much" sympathy.
It's one thing to be in active pursuit and fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, right... Then I want to swoop in and be like, "Alright, structure this way and do it this way." It is only because I've done it 100 times, right. Out of desperation. You know how much crap you figure out when you got a few minutes for.
Case in point, right. I remember when I was in basic training, which certainly, there are far more intense programs than basic training, I understand that. But we were in a special scenario. We were in the last spot on the base where there had not been renovated yet.
It was really far away from any kind of mess hall, any chow hall. And so they had to drive the food into us.
Well, a lot of the time they wouldn't end up actually driving any food into us. We couldn't actually go to any chow hall. So we ended up getting about half of the calories of everybody else who was in basic. It was crazy.
There'd be like a pancake, little tiny sausage, and there'd be like half an egg because that's all the truck could fit in to feed any entire 200 person platoon.
Man, I lost 15 pounds I did not have at that time. I got wicked skinny. And oh man, it was so, so challenging, right. Going through that kind of garbage, super, super helpful. Really, really helpful when you start going through those things.
What I'm trying to say is, I have learned to be thankful for the trial - not that I always remember to be thankful in the middle of it - that's very, very different.
What I'm trying to help you guys understand and see is that whatever the trial is, whatever the challenge is...
And that's one of the reasons why I went into the Army. It was part of my, it was part of what I, "I'm gonna be a tough guy," right. I wanna go do that. Yell at me, I want that. Let me throw some grenades. Let me like shoot some machine guns and stuff. I wanted that kind of thing. And I did for a long time and most of my childhood...
But it also became the way to get paid.
But then we get in, and we find out that we're only gonna get half of what we're actually promised. I was like, "We're still in the freaking same situation. What is going on?"
But now I've lost half of my time again because if I'm not doing full-time school, like 14 credits, I am doing Army crap. "How do we eat?" It was years of that. Years of it.
I decided that I would lean in. There were some things that happened to me and some mentalities that were taught to me by being in the Army, by being in uncomfortable scenarios that taught me to lean in.
We say, "Embrace the suck!" all the time. "Embrace the suck." Embrace the suck, right. And that's totally what I started learning how to do.
So while we were just barely surviving, the loans luckily came in. I mean we were down to... like sometimes it was super tight. And then the next semester worth of loans would come in, and I'd be like, "Oh gosh, oh thank you."
It was a huge deal for me to go and get a $97 subscription to ClickFunnels every month. It was a huge deal for me to try and find a way to get to Funnel Hacking Live. It was a huge deal for me. Does that make sense?
It was a very stressful scenario... And it was prolonged! It's not like it was short. We leaned into it. It was three years before my funnels started working - before all the things started...
I remember I got that first $1500 check. It was not a lot, but like, on a monthly basis- 'cause I built these funnels for companies, and they were working, and I was like "Oh my gosh. Babe, let's like, take a drive somewhere. We can afford the gas." You know what I mean.
I was so elated. That changed everything. Just a thousand bucks a month. It's like, "Oh my gosh, this is so crazy." It was so nuts.
I'm a very introspective pattern driven individual- so now, looking back... Obviously, hindsight's 20/20 - but I want to encourage you to not study food stamps. I wanna encourage you to study money.
Don't study food stamps, study money.
And funny enough, I had to do that outside of college, even though I was in a marketing degree. I was in getting a business degree in marketing. And I was like, "I'm not learning how to make money here." And what's funny, the training is not, it's typically not vocational training. It's not any kind of training that's out there or any courses or any classes or anything like that.
Colleges don't teach you how to make money - they don't know how to make money. Most of the time, teachers, you know what I mean, they're not making much either. They can't teach you that. Don't learn from poor people how to make money. That's stupid.
You gotta look outside of your network most of the time to start learning how to make money.
The scariest moments come when you don't know what to do next. I have been there on a yearly basis. I did that for a while. There are two quotes that I like a lot. One of them is by Julian Barnes, which I think is like the same Barnes as Barnes and Noble Barnes, which is awesome.
It says, "The more you learn, the less you fear. The more you learn, the less you fear."
It's actually written on my wall over there. "The more you learn, the less you fear." And so what I decided to do was to get obsessed over the study of money.
I decided to do that shortly after joining the Army and realizing that I was only gonna make half of what I was told I was supposed to. It was very frustrating. Very frustrating.
But I decided to make, I decided to study money. Which meant I had to look in places that were not obvious in front of me.
And that's when I started actively seeking money making guys out, and that's when I first ran into a guy named Russell... and I was like "He looks like he's 12 years old, should I even believe what he's saying? Does he know?"
And that's when I started getting in the habit of learning from rich people. "How do I make money?" I'm not gonna ask poor people that. That's like going to the gym and asking someone overweight how to lose weight. I hate that.
Anyway, so what I'm trying to say is "the more you learn, the less you fear."
Most of the time, people just don't know how a dollar's actually made. We know how to do that very traditionally from our parents with a "time for dollar model," but when you learn how to do a "value for dollar model," - that's the model to go study.
The other one I really like is; "Competence leads to confidence."
Competence leads to confidence. And that's the whole purpose of this episode, and the only reason why I'm saying this is because we just launched the Affiliate Outrage program. It's completely free.
The reason I did it is because affiliate marketing is great training wheels for the business game in general. You don't have to worry about making the product. You just worry about what actually sells stuff.
Most of the time I see people, and they're like, "Yeah, I'm gonna go learn how to do this game, what product can I sell?" Wrong question!
Ask, "What's the sales message that sells? What's the sales message that sells?" And then worry about the product.
That's why I like affiliate marketing because the product side's taken care of for you. You can just focus on the sales message. You can just focus on marketing - just sell.
Just because somebody made the product does not mean you get to skip creating the marketing.
That's why I like affiliate marketing. It's like training wheels for this game.
So that's why I launched Affiliate Outrage. Affiliate Outrage is free. Affliliateoutrage.com. There's no upsells, nothing else in there. It'll get you off the ground and doing this kind of stuff.
I also launched the OfferMind. Almost 400 tickets already are out for that - which is crazy cool. I'm excited to see you guys here in Boise soon.
I gave away free tickets when you guys bought Russell's new book through my affiliate link, just as a thank you - which is awesome. I'm trying to do a few free things.
My customer who I really serve, I charge 30 grand a day to go in, set up, and design the actual sales message, design the offer, design the actual funnel, right.
I don't build the funnel, but I create all the assets ahead of time. I charge 150 grand to do it for actual.
My customer who I actually serve and exchange with - they're expensive because I'm good, and my crap works - I know it does... And you have hopefully seen that.
...But I don't want to neglect the fact that I have an affinity for, I have empathy... because I've been there in the trenches. You're still in the mud, and you're like, "That extra $1000 would change my life." I know, I have been there. And so that's the reason why I've been doing these different things.
So if there's anything I can... It's out of passion - this episode.
I want you to obsess over the study of money.
It's not normal - it's not taught. You don't stumble on the study of money. The fastest ways for you to learn how to make cash - study marketing. That's why I sink my teeth into it. Marketing is the activity where money gets exchanged.
Money is the by-product of marketing. That's why I study marketing. That's why I'm a marketer. That's why I'll always be a marketer. I'm a marketer first before any product I'm actually selling. Always, marketer. I am a marketer. I am excited about that.
That does not mean logos. Does not mean color schemes, slogans, business cards. That's not marketing.
It doesn't even mean Facebook Ads. Facebook Ads, that's not marketing.
And if you're like what are you talking about? That's exactly why I'm saying you need to study it... That's not marketing.
Anyway, so, what I'm trying to say is: if you're in that phase, first of all, I feel ya. I've been there. I was there for years. I totally get it. I want you to lean into the challenge. I want you to lean in to and let it sculpt you.
Many of you would not follow me if I did not have the background that I do. That's super key to understand. Be willing to live the very hook that you are going through. You are the future hook.
The fact that I went through 17 businesses before one went off - that's so bonding. That lets me be followable.
Understand that even if something's not working, you are still crafting the foundation and framework for you to get massively paid in the future. Lean in is what I'm telling you. Lean in.
I got that coin on my desk, many of you've seen it now. It's: "the obstacle is the way." The coin says: "The obstacle is the way - The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way." That's what the coins says. It's one of my favorite quotes. It stays on my desk for that reason.
Whatever I know I need to be doing, but it looks the most sucky - that's what I make sure I lean into.
So I'm begging you not to study how to game this food stamp way. Don't study food stamps. Study money. Study how money gets made.
Funny enough, I have the biggest time getting over the internal hurdles about studying money for the longest time. I felt like I was being greedy.
It's really weird when I look back to when I read the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, which I'm sure many of you have... Rich Dad, Poor Dad, is like the gateway drug for most entrepreneurs - it totally was for me. That and like Four Hour Work Week and a few others.
But anyways, Rich Dad, Poor Dad talked about three asset classes. There's business, there's paper assets, and real estate, or real assets in general. Those are the three.
This was my thought: "I'm not gonna go do business because I don't want to be greedy, I'm not greedy." That was literally my belief pattern, guys. You understand like only five years ago. Seven. I remember when I read that. Seven years ago. That was my belief pattern:
"I'm not going into business because I don't want to be greedy."
How stupid of a belief is that? Right? Plus, "I'm not really a professional guy. I don't even own a briefcase." I don't really like to put suits on too often. I'm not wearing shoes right now. I don't like to in general. That was my belief. How stupid, how stupid? That's a dumb belief.
Learn to call out the BS that you're telling yourself.
So I was like man, I'm gonna go into the financial markets area, and I borrowed 15 grand to go through these courses. I found out down the road that they knew they were outdated strategies... and I was like, "Oh, that's exciting."
Then I went into real estate. Not business 'cause I don't want to be greedy. That was my thought. That was the reason, you guys. That was literally the reason.
Then I was like, "Fine we'll do the business game, but I'll just go do sales 'cause I don't wanna make a product. I don't wanna be the entrepreneur 'cause entrepreneurship..."
I actually had my wife tell me about three months into marriage, she said: "How come every time someone starts to ask you what you want to do and it's entrepreneurship, you're like really weird about it?"
It'd be fun actually to bring her in. I can hear her vacuuming right now, if you can pick it up on the mic, you probably can.
She's with our kids, she's awesome. Total rockstar. She's incredible. Sacrificed like crazy for all of us. And inadvertently for the rest of you as well. She's amazing. She'll be at funnel hacking live, I'm really excited. She's gonna come this year.
I am super stoked about all this game. I'm excited for all this stuff. I want you to understand this game.
When I started coaching, especially when I started coaching a lot of two comma club coaching, stuff like that, if you guys are in those programs. I went in with the anticipation and with the belief that I would be coaching people on marketing. I spent maybe 40% of the time actually coaching on marketing.
I had no idea that I would be spending the majority of my coaching time on just people's mentalities and their beliefs and their attitudes towards money. That's been the big massive hurdle.
I'm like "You can do this.” They're like "I'm not good enough." "You can do it." "Okay, maybe I'm a little bit good enough." I'm like, "You can do this." "Alright, fine, I'll go do it."
I do that kind of crap more. I shouldn't call it crap. I'm not saying it's crap. Stuff. I do that kind of stuff way more than talking about marketing strategies.
I had no idea that I had done those things to myself along the way to even pull off the marketing strategies that I teach and do.
So I'm trying to help you understand. If there's anything that you can study to really make you move forward, you gotta study money. Don't study the way out.
There's an amazing quote by Will Smith, he says, “There's no reason for plan B because it distracts from plan A." Totally agree with that. I don't have a plan B, "I'm all in on A, baby." I just want a plan A, that's it. I don't want a plan B. I don't even want to think about a plan B.
Too many times people are like, "What's plan A? What's plan B? What's plan C?" Like, that's freaking distracting: "Well, I'll go try this entrepreneurship game. If it doesn't work out, we can always do food stamps."
If you think about it, it is very hard to fail in this country. It's extremely challenging to fail in America. I could get government housing, I could get food stamps.
You are not going to die. It's hard to die. You have to try. There are so many freaking safeties in our society now. Mediocrity is celebrated:
"You're good enough, you're trying, you're doing everything. Just be happy with where you are." Bull crap! No, I don't want the mediocre life. And I don't want you to get seduced by that mindset.
Mediocrity is celebrated and it's very hard to fail truly in our society. There are so many lock aids, you could do bankruptcy, you could do government housing, you could do the food stamps, there's a lot of things you can do before you really truly actually hit rock bottom in America.
But because of that, people get soft in their heads -they got no discipline in their head. Man, I'm totally on a soap box now. Reeling it in, baby. Here it comes:
It is very, very, very, very easy to win in this game now. It's so easy for me to dominate. It's shocking!
I was voxxing Dave Woodward the other day. It was like two nights ago. I just won the affiliate contest for 30 Days -which is exciting. How cool is that? ...Using the exact same principles, I teach you guys. And I won that contest by a lot, which is fun and very, very exciting.
And I was voxxing him, and he goes, "Hey, congrats man. That was really cool. You could do a whole course just based off of what you did here because that was brilliant." And I was like "Hey, thanks man, I really appreciate that." I said, “You know what's fascinating…” and I told him exactly what I just told you guys:
"I thought I'd be teaching all this marketing stuff. I can't even get people to that part because it's so in their heads."
There's such a lack of discipline. It is so easy to dominate in this space because of the lack of discipline.
If you have the smallest inkling of being able to go through things that are just a little uncomfortable you're gonna be fine, you're gonna be fine.
I encourage all of you guys to start orchestrating challenging things in your life to callous the mind.
I invite you to lean in to your obstacles. I invite you to say, "You know what, I'm totally cool with a little bit of discomfort in my life. I'm willing to experience voluntary pain." Not like a freaking masochist...
I'm saying, "What things which are not comfortable can you orchestrate in your life to get going and moving off the ground?"
This was as much about studying money rather than food stamps as anything else. Right, just being willing to just run forth and be uncomfortable along the whole way.
Okay, I feel like I'm opening a different can. I just opened one can and that was a good can. Just drink that down, I'm ready to come over here to another can, but I'm not gonna keep going here.
I just want you to know, like I want you to feel me on this, "Do not study the out. Do not study plan B." Who cares? "Don't study food stamps. Study money."
Be willing to go through stuff that's a little challenging. If you're going through it, I applaud you. I'm excited for you because of what it will let you do in the future.
If you let it, it can sculpt you into something you could not have become on your own.
Anyway, this is a bit of a firey episode, but I'm totally against people planning for plan B. I don't agree with it at all. I think it's stupid.
It's like, "Man, well, maybe, you know, I'll go get in the Olympics but, you know, instead I could just go be blah..."
You're literally trying to plan "the out." I don't give my customers the out because I know my products are good. I don't give myself the out.
I know I've talked a lot about Darren Hardy. You know he's got a good book, Willpower Doesn't Work. Really, it's environment. So I orchestrate events, things in my life, things that are uncomfortable with the purposeful intention of getting uncomfortable.
Willpower doesn't work. If your like, "Hey, I'm gonna go will myself into becoming this person Steve was talking about." Uh-uh!
That's why we invite you to buy other coaching and products and things like that because you need an environment. Environment is where things really switch, not willpower.
Willpower's like a muscle. It will literally actually fail after a while.
Anyway, hey guys, I appreciate you guys taking the time, and I appreciate you guys being here.
Thanks for letting me have a little bit of real talk with this. This has been a fun episode. This is one I've been wanting to say for quite a while. Do not study food stamps, study money.
Those kinds of things are what actively increase you as an individual.
The personal development you experience through entrepreneurship is ridiculous, better than any personal development course I've ever taken in my entire life. Entrepreneurship.
Anyway, guys, thank so much. Appreciate ya, love ya all, and very much think about where you guys are because I've been there and I have a lot of empathy for it.
A lot of you guys are extremely successful too, which is great. You've probably have resonated with a few things I've ranted about here.
Anyway, guys, thanks so much. I'll see you guys at the OfferMind - those of you who are coming.
And go through Affiliate Outrage program if you wanna learn more about kinda the training wheels of marketing itself. Things to get paid for, but not get distracted over product creation.
And I will see you guys next episode. Please, please, please, share and review the episode. It helps me a lot, and I actually do go read the reviews. They keep me motivated.
Hey, thanks for listening. Many don't know that I actually made my first money online as an affiliate marketer. If you wanna know how I funded my entire company without using any of my own money EVER, you can learn to do the same for free at AffiliateOutrage.com
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| 10 Dec 2019 | SFR 291: Shocking Customer Support Tickets (Use Caution) | 00:33:59 | |
We have a whiteboard of the funniest support tickets over the years…
This is a collection of the rude, hilarious, and shocking things that have come through support…
And today, I thought it would be kinda funny today to share some of the MOST entertaining support tickets with you.
So with my 2 amigos, Coulton and Austin, I’m gonna walk through the customer service requests that have…
… and left us downright flabberghasted!
Our goal is NOT to offend…
However, FAIR WARNING - this blog does contain the *TRUMP* word 😉 - so if you’re easily offended…
LOOK AWAY NOW!
We're NOT making fun of anybody but there are some things that people…
… that are SURPRISING!
It's almost like a contest to see what the funniest one is.
Again, we’re not trying to be offensive, but we thought it'd be kinda funny to share some of these comments with you.
You’ll also find out WHAT HAPPENS when I answer customer support tickets myself 😉
(... and before you write in, there’s a deliberate mistake in this blog - can you spot it??? 😂)
Let's get to it.
HOW TO DO CUSTOMER SUPPORT (KINDA)
Just so you know…
When I first started doing this (about two years ago), it was just me… and Russell was like:
"Hey, for your first hire, make sure you find somebody who can help you with…
A: Support
B: Revenue Generation Activities.
I was like, "Oh," and I hired Coulton.
And we've gone through several customer service software systems.
Coulton: Yeah.
Steve: Anyway, it's been fun. It's been an interesting drive. How many support tickets do you think we get in a month?
Coulton: Hundreds. 😂 There's A LOT nowadays.
Steve: Really?
Coulton: There's quite a few, yeah. It's definitely gone up.
Steve: How many hundreds?
Coulton: What do you think, a couple hundred?
Austin: Yeah, I'd say 150 - 250.
Steve: A month?
Coulton: Yeah.
Steve: Wow! You guys have a lot of questions. That's great, I'm glad that you guys write on in, that's good - we're not discouraging that at all…
BUT…
Every once in awhile, there's that 1% (not the good kind who everyone talks about) who are having a bad day...
You know people get a little tough behind their computer screens and they wouldn't say what they would normally say in front of you online.
It's usually Austin or Coulton (especially Coulton), that kinda usually hits that and gets the flack for it.
Coulton: It's probably 'cause I'm a patient dude and, yeah. I'm not easily pissed off, so maybe that's why.
Steve: Yeah, yeah, this would be awesome to hear.
Austin: We're gonna ease into things here.
CUSTOMER SUPPORT FUNNY #1
First one on the list…
Now, I totally get this one, but at the same time, this is a better question for Steve, like seven, eight, nine years ago.
Steve: Yeah.
Austin: You know what I'm saying?
Where Steve's at now…
Steve’s time is the most precious gem in the business right now.
So, yeah, it's just NOT doable.
Steve: No, it's not.
Yeah, it's funny how many people kinda get kind of frustrated and they're like:
"Why don't you just look at my funnel?"
People get really mad about that.
It's like, "I would, but there's a line of 100, yesterday."
Coulton: You honestly got to give them a little bit of credit, they don't know everything that's going on. But then I'm also like, "Do you not see…”
...all the crap that's going on there? You should probably have a pretty good idea that he's got A LOT going on.
Austin: Busy man. 😂
Steve: And I totally get that if you don't ask the question, you're definitely not gonna get it.
So it's like, "Okay, you should ask."
… but it is shocking how frequent that one comes in.
Coulton: Yeah.
Steve: Is that among the top ones?
Coulton: I think it's just 'cause it's so shocking.
Austin: It's one of those ones that stick out.
Coulton: Yeah, yeah.
Steve: Like over and over?
Coulton: Yeah.
Steve: What was the most recent one?
Coulton: You know, honestly, a couple of weeks ago, I think…
We got one that was just like, "Hey, can you just look over my funnel real quick? It's only gonna take five minutes."
I get that it can be quick, but it's also not gonna take five minutes.
Austin:
Also, his knowledge is worth thousands.
Coulton: Yeah. 😂
Steve: For *FREE* Yeah. No man!
What's this next one you guys put on? You wanna go for it?
Coulton: Oh, this one's awesome.
CUSTOMER SUPPORT FUNNY #2
People think that Steve is answering the support tickets himself.
My favorite part about that is, (I don't know if you've seen this, Austin???)...
But literally, I'll respond back to something and my name is under there...
But they'll respond and be like, "Thank you so much, Steve. That was so awesome." Or "Thanks for the help, Steve" or "Thanks for looking at it, Steve."
And I'm like…
"I don't know where you're getting Steve from."
Austin: Sometimes I just act like Steve.
So…
If Steve's answering your support tickets, know that it's me.
Steve: Yeah. There are many times when I'll act like I'm my assistant, even though I don't have one yet.
I'm not trying to be rude, but if I answer one thing, there's ALWAYS three things that come back.
It's like the comments have babies, they multiply.
“This is Steve's assistant - thank you so much for reaching out. If you have a question, reach to goanswerme.com.
That's pretty fun.
Coulton: You know what's funny, I've had people that say that they're someone's assistant and because of you, I now ‘double-question’ that.
Guaranteed it's NOT their assistant, it's probably actually them.
Steve: It usually isn't.
I learned this from Russell…
I was in on a Saturday answering a bunch of tickets (before I left ClickFunnels) and Russell walked in and he goes, "What are you doing man?"
I was like, "Oh, well, I'm working on my own business right now. Hopefully, that's not weird.
I've been answering social media questions coming in for six hours."
And Russell goes, "Dude, I totally get it and I've got the best cure for it…
And you're NOT honestly gonna like it, but are you willing to do it?"
I said, "Yeah, what is it?"
Russell laughed and said, "You don't have to answer."
And I was like, "What?"
And he goes, "I know, right? The giver in you wants to go in... just don't answer anyway.”
Coulton: There's just NOT enough time.
Steve:
You just gotta be a Time Nazi a little bit.
Austin: Next on the list…
CUSTOMER SUPPORT FUNNY #3
Steve: Yeah... Starting time? Locations?
Austin: This is a good lesson that I learned from you…
You're REALLY good at qualifying your customer, the type of buyer you want, and you let the funnel do the selling.
If the funnel doesn't sell them, they're not a good customer.
And so, when dates are…
...and someone asks, "When is the date?" - the simplest question!!!
NOT A GOOD FIT!
“What's the name of this event?”
And they're responding to something that says, "OfferMind"... (that happens a bit).
Austin: Yup.
Steve: Yeah, that one's funny 'cause we're not the funnel - the funnel's the funnel, and that's how we look at it.
Anyway, yeah.
Coulton: I'm pretty sure I actually got that question the day before, too. How do you not have stuff set up and ready for that?
Steve: It's in every footer of every page…
That one's kind of funny coming in.
Austin: You gotta take this next one.
Coulton: Yeah, this next one, I was gonna say.
CUSTOMER SUPPORT FUNNY #3
Steve: I've had this one several times, several times.
Just so you guys know…
The internet is mean and you gotta have a little bit of a thick skin - you've gotta grow one.
And this is one of the first major support tickets I got, like ever, so it crushed my little soul at the time.
This guy reached out…
He goes…
And I was like, "Oh".
Anyway, I’ve had that one several times.
It's very interesting if you have any level of success, some people immediately think that you're a scammer.
It's like, “oh, I guess Apple's a scam, Google's a scam.”
I don't know, anyway, so weird. That happens, but whatever...
Coulton: That's sad.
Austin: Bring it on, baby.
Steve: Bring it on!
It'll happen as you guys get bigger...
Actually, talking about this one is one of the reasons...
So, Russell had this podcast episode a few weeks ago - it's almost like the negativity comes in waves.
He's like, "Oh that sucked a little bit," and then it's like boom, the internet comes back again, then it goes away.
It's the naysayers have a convention
... I don't know what it is.
It's like a drum circle convention and they go like, "Let's go attack this guy today," and it's crazy.
There was this week that the internet was really mean and Russell - and I were chatting about it.
He's like, "It's just the internet testing to see if you really believe what you say you do."
You treat it that way 'cause it's A LOT easier.
Coulton: That's good.
Steve: Yeah.
Coulton: That's a cool way to think about it.
Steve: Dude, do you wanna do the next one?
Coulton: Next one?
Steve: This one's good.
Coulton: Oh man, this is actually probably one of my favorites…
CUSTOMER SUPPORT FUNNY #4
It’s like three consecutive emails - so it's like the first response is, "Where the heck is the product?"
...and then ‘cause we don't respond within an hour... (Honestly, who responds within an hour? I don't know, but…”
Steve: We can't. Who knows?
Coulton: We don't.
Austin: Yeah, we don't do that.
Steve: ClickFunnels just added live support, just now, you know?
Coulton: Yeah.
Austin: Two hours later, they're like, "I'm gonna a refund if you don't give me the access to product..."
...and then by the time I look at it the next day or whatever, they're like, "Oh sorry... "
Steve: Oh here it is.
Coulton: “I responded to the email that actually had access to the product, so my bad.”
Austin: And when we're building the funnels, we're very diligent.
I even noticed today, you always spot check when it's done.
Little things like the fulfillment email, to make sure links are in there, to make sure account credentials and so on, and so forth.
Yeah. We're super good with our fulfillment emails.
Steve: We're really good at it.
Yeah. It's funny because the part that kills me is when people go on the social media pages and groups and say:
"Steve Larsen, I've messaged your support two times now and I can't find this thing."
And then in the comment right underneath it, they go:
"Never mind, I found it. Everyone, please disregard."
But in that time, they've gone and given one-star reviews on the freakin' pages, and you're like:
"What is wrong with you?"
Oh my gosh, it's an autoresponder - it goes out immediately, so funny.
Coulton: Yeah. I get it if you didn't get the fulfillment email.
Steve: Sure.
Coulton: It totally makes sense - that happens, I understand.
Sometimes you gotta check your spam, see if it's in there.
But when they actually respond to the fulfillment email itself, which happens more often than not...
Steve: The auto email goes out, and *then* they respond to the auto email saying:
"Where is the link to the member's area?"
...and it's in the email they're responding to!!!
That one's funny.
Austin: The lesson there is to read every email that we send.
Steve: Yeah, I won't waste your time.
Coulton: Don't skip a word.
Steve: We're time Nazis.
Coulton: Go for the next one?
Austin: Next up…
CUSTOMER SUPPORT FUNNY #5
Coulton: I love that one.
Austin: Simple answer, "No!"
Steve: “We're trying to build the ClickFunnels killer. Can you review the software in the funnel to sell it?”
Coulton: Every time I see that I lean over to Steve, and I'm like, "Bro, somebody wants you to review their next ClickFunnel software killer."
Steve: Oh my gosh, yeah.
Austin: Big marketing tip is to understand your audience, understand who you're trying to sell it to.
I don't think you're gonna sell a ClickFunnels killer to this guy.
Steve: Very, very funny. Yeah, that one's funny. Can you review my software? I forgot about those.
Coulton: I mean, Russell did make a shirt that has gears in the heart, red and blue, after what Stephen said about ClickFunnels.
I don't think you're gonna get any reviews from Steve...
Yeah, it's not gonna happen.
Steve: Actually, I will get on and help you create that…
Anyone know any good viruses? Viruses, anyone?
Oh, man.
Austin: I feel like the next two kinda go hand in hand.
Coulton: Yeah, I can read those.
Steve: Go for it. Yeah. Yeah.
Coulton: This is my next favorite…
CUSTOMER SUPPORT FUNNY #6
Austin: It's just a thought.
Steve: Yeah, and it’ll be two paragraphs, usually. They're long and you don't know hat they're asking.
Coulton: Yeah. I'm like... You know how many times I've responded, I'm like, "So, what exactly do you need from us?"
Steve: Is that how you say... You actually say...
Coulton: Sometimes I do. Steve: "How does this involve us?"
Coulton: I'm like, "I'm not sure what you're asking, can you help reframe that, please?"
And that goes along with the next one, which is…
CUSTOMER SUPPORT FUNNY #7
Coulton: They're like, "Hey, I need this thing."
Austin: “The link isn't in there!” and it's like, “Where is there?”
Steve: What link? Yeah, what did you buy?
Coulton: “I can't log in…” and I'm like, "Oh that's cool, what can you not long into?"
Like, I have no idea what you're talking about, you know.
Steve: They'll respond and be like, "Stephen, send me my bonuses you promised."
What bonuses?
We launch A LOT of stuff - there's no context there
Austin: Yeah, the clearer the questions, the faster we get back on support tickets.
Coulton: I've even seen somewhere it's just literally the subject line, there's no body-text at all.
There's nothing in it! Literally just the subject line - “Where's the link?” And I'm like...
Steve: Just go to Google… and there's a link! Here you go.
CUSTOMER SUPPORT FUNNY #8
Steve: Oh, I gotta go for this next one 'cause this one is so funny to me.
This one is hilarious- people will ask me questions. In fact, this happened last night, and I won't say who it is 'cause he's very famous.
Someone reached out and they wanted to know about a thing in their ClickFunnels account.
They'd be like, "How do I fix my billing in my account?”
Talk to ClickFunnels - we're NOT ClickFunnels.
Austin: And piggybacking off that...
Steve: That happened yesterday. Yeah. I was wondering what those were…???
Austin: They get really confused as well.
Steve: Yeah, they CC us and ClickFunnels at the same time so then we see these threads, as ClickFunnels support agents chat back and forth, and we're just seeing it, and we're like, “Yeah....”
I forgot about that.
I thought you were asking something, that was somebody else.
CUSTOMER SUPPORT FUNNY #9
Coulton: That kinda leads into the OFA Challenge.
We get a lot of people that are like…
Steve: ...and they didn't actually buy through our link!
Coulton: That's probably a good thing to go over now…
Just open up an incognito window, whatever it may be, and clear your cache.
Austin: Yeah.
Coulton: Those different things that help make it so you actually go through Steve's link instead of the last person's link that you may have been on.
Austin: Yeah. If you want the goods, opt-in to the affiliate pages in an incognito browser.
Coulton: Yeah, there you go, that's the trick.
Steve: Or, one I will personally get is...
I literally have thousands, no joke, of unread Facebook Messenger messages.
I don't even open Facebook Messenger anymore.
I'm not saying I'm proud of that or that's the right way to go, but it's just the reality of where we are right now growing the business.
We're staying lean and mean, but people will reach out and be like,
I'm like, ‘I'm not even an admin on the page. Why are you reaching out to me? I don't have that.’
I'm just a coach that's contracted in, talk to ClickFunnels.
Austin: It's funny.
Coulton: I feel like the next one, we've already...
Austin: You can field it.
CUSTOMER SUPPORT FUNNY #9
That one's funny - especially when it's like a...
Coulton: a $57 dollar product.
Steve: Yeah, when it's like a $57 dollar product.
They'll be like, "You're not building my whole funnel for me?"
I don't have any done for you services, 'cause I don't really believe in it.
Austin: Read what you're getting.
Steve: Yeah. Exactly what's in the offer is what we deliver.
Steve: Yeah. That's funny.
Coulton: Oh, man.
Austin: I feel like you gotta take the next one, as well.
Steve: OH, Yeah!!!
CUSTOMER SUPPORT FUNNY #10
As a marketer, one of the roles that you have is to generate noise.
And one of the easiest ways to generate noise is to realize that, there are two ways to do it...
So if somebody like Trump, (who, I don't care what you think about him, and I don’t have any political agenda here)...
But…
Q: Would you say Trump has a lot of noise right now?
A: He's got tons of noise, right?
That's why we created this thing called MakeAffiliatesGreatAgain.com.
MakeAffiliatesGreatAgain.com was meant to be a spoof and ride off of the noise of "Make America Great Again."
And…
Why not make it even more controversial and noise bound by putting a Trump toupee in the logo?
Just me doing that alone, I mean, it is so funny how many people got offended, which is very shocking also.
We sent out the announcement email about that and I can't tell you how many people have reached back out and were like:
"You said the word, TRUMP. I now know what kind of person you are, goodbye."
And that was it - “Bye!”
And I was like, "Okay see you."
I like to respond to that like, "Alright, bye".
You don't see what I'm doing here?
I didn't give any political agenda, nor will I ever...
Anyway, so funny, just the fact of ...
"Oh, he's the spawn of Satan, and because you said his name, you clearly are, too. I know who you are."
And then gone.
That happens frequently, which is funny…
So we decided to make ads about it.
Coulton: I don't know if you guys caught that???
It works great.
Steve: So good.
Coulton: You guys gotta watch him on that - see what he's doing, you can take a ton from it.
Steve: You just kinda align with it, yeah.
Austin: Also piggybacking off that, I've got plenty of offers from people who I don't necessarily agree with something that they do...
Steve: No.
Austin: But I get value from what I buy. That's all I care about. So yeah, no need to get buttered on stuff if you don't agree with it.
Steve: Yeah, did you say butter?
Austin: Yeah, I don't know - sorry iTunes
I'm of the mindset that if something can provide you value, that's all that should matter.
Steve: Totally. I've bought a lot of products, where frankly, I don't go through much of the actual product - it's merely so that I can see how they're selling it, and that's been worth the price I've paid alone.
You understand one of the reasons we don't do a lot of $7 and $57,(we don't do a lot of price ranges around that strategically), is because typically, (and I don't wanna offend anyone when I say this)...
But you'll find that the MORE expensive prices you charge, the better the person is, (like the situation in their life) to act.
So if you go for something that's like a dollar, a lot of times you'll find that it's people who don't have a lot of money, understandably, and I'm not making fun of that.
But there's a lot more of the starving mentality.
And they look at you as an enemy if the bonus, for some reason, (the zeros and ones threw up that day and got sick) and a bonus didn't show up in 15 seconds…
And they reach back out and are like, "Burn in hell, you're crazy, oh my gosh!" Right?
And you're like "What…??? Holy crap, your spam filter caught it, it sent."
Anyway, it happens.
Austin: This next one, this was a personal favorite of mine - this is recent.
CUSTOMER SUPPORT FUNNY #11
We had someone recently that reached out...
It was just a hard pitch…
...EVERYTHING!
… and wanted to help Steve launch an info product, and teach him how to launch an info product.
Like, he's never done it before.😂
Steve: It's like the people who reach out asking if they can build a website - #NO!
Austin: Yeah, I thought that was a good one. You put a lot of effort into it, but... Coulton: It's a lot of effort, but it's kind of like the Dream 100 thing that you get to that are like obviously they don't know you at all.
Like, yeah, like you even said, Russell gets wine bottles all the time… and he talks about how he doesn't drink, ALL THE TIME.
Yeah, he still gets them.
Austin: Know your audience.
Coulton: Do a little research, you'll find out, yeah.
Steve: Listen to an episode.... which you all are obviously are. [chuckle]
Would you wanna take the next one? This happens to you A LOT.
Austin: This is Coulton's favorite.
CUSTOMER SUPPORT FUNNY #12
Coulton: So we literally get... I don't know, I feel like it's like three affiliates a day.
It is a crazy amount of people signing up for the affiliate program to sell our products.
And so they send in their W8 or W9, whatever it may be, and it just blows my mind that they fill everything out, and then there's one blank spot…
That one blank spot is the most important blank spot…
.... and that’s the signature.
It says "Sign here."
And I think it's even on the page multiple times, "We cannot accept it if it's not signed."
Steve: There's a place where you sign...
Coulton: If we needed to show that somewhere for some purpose - how are we gonna prove that it's even you at all, you know what I mean?
Steve: So they don't sign it and they just send it right in or something?
Coulton: Yeah, so they don't...
And I get it - it's kind of hard, 'cause you gotta print it out, you gotta sign it.
But we do have tech nowadays and you can digitally sign it.
It makes it a lot easier.
Austin: Here's a little hack, write your signature on a piece of paper, scan it and save it as a picture on your computer, and you can just put it on any PDF.
Nice and easy - DONE!
Coulton: And even if you have a Mac, Preview lets you sign...
You can sign the trackpad, and then it saves it as your signature.
You can put it on any document you want.
Steve: It comes with Macs.
Austin: And what's nice is when you sign your forms, we can get you paid quicker. So that's the incentive there.
Steve: Can't pay unless you do it.
Austin: Yep.
CUSTOMER SUPPORT FUNNY #13
Aka… why I don’t do customer service!
Steve: This guy reached out to me, (this happened like two or three weeks ago)...
And it was one of these situations where the bonus hadn't been sent immediately.
And so he reached out and his first message was, "You're clearly a scam".
So I'm just tired of like, I'm not gonna defend... I'm not gonna play small...
Anyway, I got feisty back.
I suck at support because I yell at back at people - I just do.
(... it's one of the things that makes me a good coach for ClickFunnels 'cause I don't put up with people's junk.)
Which is why Coulton is such a godsend.
I would yell at people in a support ticket.
Q: "How do I add a funnel?"
A: "CLICK ‘ADD FUNNEL! HAVE YOU GOOGLED IT???? It's literally ORANGE and BIG… it has "ADD FUNNEL" right there at the top of the page!!!"
So I would get kind of flustered and frustrated with some people, (it's just my personality and that's okay)… we all come together as a team on this.
But this guy came out swinging…
"You're clearly a scam, and your company sucks," or something like that.
So I reached back out and I said:
"Well, you're NOT exactly the dream client either."
(I don't think I told you guys about this one...)
And he goes, "Wow, you're know how to reel 'em in."
I was like, "Actually, I know how to keep him away too."
Anyway, I should stop there…
It went on for a while, and finally, I was like, "Look, I'm not here begging for clients. And it's part of the reason why we built a company that we love working for our people."
...it didn't end well!
When you come out swinging, saying that we’re scammers, (especially with like a $7 thing), we are totally fine refunding and just saying: "Stay out of our world."
You know what I mean?
Coulton: 100%.
Steve: And we're not saying to you guys here on the show, 'cause you guys all know this show, you love it - you've been following the journey.
But there's A LOT of people who reach out and they're just predestined to have this predisposition for ridiculous negativity.
And we did not start this to become life coaches, you know what I mean?
We started this to offer what our offer is.
So you gotta be careful with that. That's actually very key to this whole thing.
Coulton: Mm-hmm. What's that gonna do for you?
Steve: I don't know.
Coulton: Looking at it that way, it's not gonna help you get any farther.
Steve: It's crazy, yeah. The next one?
Austin: The last one! Coulton, I feel like you should tackle this one.
Coulton: Oh, I think this was actually my conversation. Let's see, oh yeah, this was a while ago. I totally forgot about this one.
Steve: This has happened frequently though.
Coulton: It has.
Steve: Happened on the Trump one.
Coulton: The first time it happened, I was kind of surprised. I was like, "Really? Alright."
CUSTOMER SUPPORT FUNNY #14
So I literally got an email from somebody asking to unsubscribe them from the email list and I'm like "Okay, that's weird,” but I have to ask…
Steve: Which, legally, we have to have in there by the way.
Coulton: Right? It works. Yeah. I mean I unsubscribe from emails I don't want all the time.
So she wrote back and it was awesome.
She's like, "Why would I ever click on anything in an email that has 'hacks' in the subject line?"
Austin: Which, to her credit, to her credit... Right?
Steve: But to a hacker, if you put the word 'hacks' in and everyone knows what you're doing...
Coulton: I know, right? Like, "I'm a hacker, I'm gonna put 'hacks' in my headline."
Steve: They don't do that.
Coulton: Then my next thought is, is how did she get on the email list in the first place? Where did you go to put your email in???
It was probably a page that said Secret MLM Hacks - I'm just saying.
Steve: We use the word "HACK" and "SECRET" - EVERYWHERE!
Coulton: Yeah. I don't know, it blew my mind.
Steve: And she got mad and wouldn't unsubscribe...
So then you said, "Well, I guess you'll just keep getting the emails then."
Coulton: I'm like, "Well, I'm sorry. You have to unsubscribe. So I guess you'll just keep getting emails. That's cool with me, but... "
Yeah. If you don't like it, unsubscribe.
Austin: Man, I don't know...
Steve: Any others? Any other all-stars that have come across in the past little bit?
CUSTOMER SUPPORT FUNNY #15
Austin: We get pitch after pitch after pitch after pitch. They're always unique in their own way.
Steve: They're kind of surprising though, some of them.
Some people will say, "Well, I'll teach you how to make an offer."
It's like, “You don't even know what we do!!!!”
The Instagram ones are hilarious - I get a lot of those.
Coulton: "Let me help you build it," or "You're not getting enough engagement."
Austin: Also…
If you're trying to get Steve's attention, spell his name right, please. Please spell his name right.
Steve: Yeah, S-T-E-V-E-N? Oh, man.
Coulton: That's awesome.
Steve: Yeah, there's been a few really funny parts about that.
And finally...
WE LOVE YOU!
Just all in all, guys, we want you to know, we wanted to walk through this, but what we're not trying to create here is a feeling that someone has...
We're not downplaying any questions anybody has.
Questions are a good thing, but I also do believe that there's such thing as a stupid question.
That whole thing they tell you in school is dumb…
"There's no such thing as a dumb question."
Yes, there is!
A dumb question is one that you took no thought to try to answer on your own.
It's not meant to be rude, it's just that's just how entrepreneurs think.
You can search this massive vault.
Never in the history of the world has ever been so much information present, but such a lack of learning how to access it or how to actually get after it.
...and we're just going through these 'cause it's honestly... this is kind of the watered-down version.
We get a lot of garbage from people who clearly hate our guts.
...so some of this might be a little bit of a steam-blowing-off episode as well, but yeah.
Coulton: But it's a very small portion of it. You guys do an awesome job overall, it's just there's those ones that come in that really stick out.
Steve: We'll always try to over-deliver, too.
That's really what I've tried to build the name that we've developed here is by over-delivering.
... and I always encourage you to do that to anybody that you go serve.
We do that in fun, little surprising ways as well…
Doing this show costs us a lot of money, frankly - and it’s one of the ways that we try to over-deliver.
One final thing...
BUSTING THE CUSTOMER SUPPORT MYTH
Somebody mentioned once, "If you had amazing fulfillment, you'd never need support!"
That is so false.
That person has never actually sold anything EVER - that is a theorist talking.
That person got straight As in school.
Because it's NOT true.
Every once in a while, something does happen with email and it doesn't show up and something doesn't work...
And it's not that we're trying to scam anybody, something in a system jacked up somewhere and we wanna fix it as much as the other person wants to receive it.
Anyway, we're very, very thankful for you guys.
Thanks for following the journey.
THE END OF SALES FUNNEL RADIO
We thought it'd be kind of fun as Sales Funnel Radio will be ending at episode 300, as far as our involvement here with it…
And I wanted to make kind of a fun episode...
I mean how many support tickets we've gotten total? I mean in the last two years.
Coulton: I have no clue.
Steve: 'Cause we were on that other system for a while, which was terrible - I like the new one.
Coulton: Are we on 20,000-something? 20-something-thousand?
Austin: I feel like that's pretty fair, yeah.
Steve: Yeah, and it has nothing to do with fulfillment.
Some people are just wondering a genuine question, and they're like, "Oh I'll go reach out like this..."
...and NOT realizing that it's probably the least effective way to try to get my attention.
So anyway. Yeah, anyway.
Coulton: Sometimes it just takes less time to actually just look into the problem and figure it out.
Steve: The FAQs at the bottom of the page that we always put there.
You entrepreneurs watching this right now, make sure that you make it easy for people to reach out to you.
WHEN IS THE PURCHASE OVER?
My wife and I bought this water machine about two months ago, it is still not installed.
The installation process with this company has been so horrendous that I love the product, but I'm looking at it and I'm trying to not hate the product simply 'cause I can't use it.
Make sure that the fulfillment you’re delivering is as smooth and seamless as it possibly could be.
It always could be better.
The purchase is never over at the checkout, at the card swipe.
Your customers have gotta...
That's the best thing you can do post-purchase to ensure the success of your company.
So make it easy for your customers... and people who aren't...
Anything else?
Austin: That's all I have.
Coulton: Cool.
Steve: Awesome, guys. Get rich, get back. We'll see you guys in the next episode.
Alright!
*You* reading this right now, you're in one of two scenarios.
Either…
You're currently selling a product and you've got a slick sales funnel and traffic...
There are ads and you have content, bringing in new customers. You have upsells, downsells, and phone sales.
You've almost automated it, making money while doing everyday things.
Either that's all set up and going…
OR…
The second option is you don't have any of that, and you're still trying to make this work and tie all of these pieces together.
If you want my help, just go to capitalistcoaching.com and see where you can get started.
It took me a long time to get the skills for all this to get moving…
... there's A LOT.
And the path to move forward is different for each person.
So I created capitalistcoaching.com for you to check out where *you* need to start.
Whether you're just starting out with…
OR…
If you're like one of our BIG corporate clients who just need to add more revenue and scale your offer, go to capitalistcoaching.com.
I don't really believe in shortcuts, but I do know you can speed up the path on the journey
Figure out the BEST place to start by going to capitalistcoaching.com now.
| |||
| 19 Jul 2017 | SFR 66: 3 Phases Of Selling In My Funnels... | 00:21:56 | |
Here's a look at some of my favorite selling methods AND how I'm using them in my funnels.
What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you are listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. Hey, hope you guys are doing good. The last little bit here's been a little bit busy, we've had 4th of July, we had a bunch of family over. We went and bought a ton of fireworks. We blew a whole bunch of stuff up, and it reminded me a lot of my childhood. We used to take them all apart and make our own fireworks. It was not safe, but it was a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun with family over, and it's just been busy. There was a lot of people here just enjoying the house, enjoying the place we just moved into, and it's just been great. It's been a good experience the last little bit. I just literally have not had the time to podcast. It's 11:30 at night right now, and I just decided I should probably push one back out there. I wanted to show you guys something really cool that has been on my mind the last little bit. This will probably be a quick episode, but I just wanted to share with you this really cool epiphany that I've been having about "The Perfect Webinar Script." Now if you don't know what I'm talking about, "The Perfect Webinar Script" is the script that Russell Brunson has put together to help basically sell anything. Now it's perfect webinar script, but we've often mentioned how much we wish that it wasn't called "The Perfect Webinar Script" because it can be used for any kind of sales; whether you're doing stage presentation, whether you're doing any kind of obviously webinar, of course, video. Honestly guys, I use "The Perfect Webinar Script" on you guys, on this podcast, almost every single episode. You probably just don't know that's what I'm doing... I always come up with a story, and the story is structured similar or the same way. Usually there's a wall, my back is up against a wall, there's inner and external desires, there's conflict along the way. As I go toward the main thing I think I want, there's this side transformation that happens. You know what I mean? We go through the hero's journey, and I don't always hit them all perfectly every single time. If I was crafting an actual sales message I would, but I use that as a guideline for anything. You can use "The Perfect Webinar Script" for any kind of communication with any of your people at any time. What's really been fun is a lot of you guys know that I'm the coach for the "2 Comma Club Coaching Program" of Russell's, and it's been a lot of fun. Every Friday I'll get on and typically there's anywhere from 30 to 70 people on the phone calls, a big range back and forth, but 30 to 70 people. I'm there for about four hours, four solid hours and I've done that for probably four months now. Each week on Fridays for about four months now and it's been way, way past 40 hours of me and our little sound recording booth right next to where Russell's office is, and it's really awesome. I go sit over there and it's funny, there's always an air conditioning vent right above my head, it doesn't stop, and it's way too powerful for the little tiny room, so I'm always numb by the end of the four hours, but it's a lot of fun, I really enjoy it. There's a bunch of people that get on and what happens is they'll come submit all their questions, "Hey, how does this work here? Should I use this script? Is my funnel set up correctly here? Is it this, this, this, this?" There's tons of questions that I get. Hundreds that we've gone back and indexed... Over the last, especially the last about six weeks, through this last group that's just gone through it, there's been this realization that I've been having more and more and more. You might look at this and might go, "Okay, Stephen duh, like, I get it. That make sense. How come you didn't see that, Steve, okay?" But for me, I just barely saw this... It takes me back to when I was doing door to door sales. I know I reference that a lot, but it really was a massive boot camp, so to speak, on how to sell, how to approach people and how to handle objections. Obviously you've got to do that in a sales funnel, this is Sales Funnel Radio. I remember there was a guy that brought me to the side once, and he said, "Stephen, look," and he was actually the guy that recruited me into the company to go sell for them for that summer. He brought me to the side, and he goes, "Look, Stephen, here's the big secret. People already know whether or not they want the thing, whatever you're selling. They already have made the decision. You don't need to convince them to have the product, yes, or no. What you're trying to do is you're trying to help them come to a logical conclusion, so they can close themselves.
You are not there to create desire. You can amplify desire... You can take someone's desire and you can blow it up, or you can poke at it a little bit and say, 'Remember, here's desire. Remember you do want this, remember, see,' then you start logically closing them, 'Hey, you should get it now because the price is going to go up,' or, 'You should get it now because you know what,' well, some pest control, 'We're spraying the neighbors so since we're here,' and you start logically showing them how that fits. How the decision to actually buy your product works." He's like, "That's the big secret, man." When I was speaking at Dan Henry's event at AdCON in Florida, he actually had a whole speech about that very thing. That very, very same thing. I still remember the story, it was really, really cool. It was all about the same time. This whole thing started forming in my mind, like, "Oh, my gosh. Here's a connection, here's a connection, here's a connection. Wow! That works!" Looks like we've been doing that all along, and I didn't even know it. What was cool was Dan Henry stood up, and he starts telling a story about when he was, I hope he's okay to tell me this, I'm sure he is ... Had a great interview with him, by the way, on this podcast go back and listen to it if you want to. He told a story about when, I think he was selling Dish or TV services or something like that, and he was the top salesman in Dish; they'd sell two, three, four services a day and he would do 17, insane amounts. These are sales funnels. Please try and think how you can use this inside of sales funnels. It's been really helpful, it's actually simplified the sales process for me a lot. Just work with me for just a second here. Stick with me. What he would do is he would stand up and go to these big conventions, and he would basically, as people would walk up to him, and they'd walk by the booth that they had set up there, people would walk by the booth and all he would do is he would stand up and go, "Hey, did you forget to sign up for Dish?" and they'd go, "What?" and he'd go, "Get out of here," and he'd wait for the next person, "Hey, did you forget to sign up for Dish?" They'd be like, "What? No, no." He'd be like, "Okay, okay, nevermind, get out of here." He just kept saying that over and over again, "Hey, did you forget to sign up for Dish?" "You know what, I did and ..." and he would go, "Oh, hey, it's fine. We got a form right here. You'll have it done in two minutes. While you're here it's super easy, and we got some cool thing. Just do it right now," and he'd hand them a piece of paper. He'd hand them the form with the pen right there. Did he try and convince them? No. But he would do that literally every single day for every single person and go, "Hey, did you forget to sign up for Dish?" "Did you forget to sign up for Dish" He just kept asking that over and over and over again. He said, "Guys, it's the reason I don't split test my ads, I split test my audiences. I keep my ad so targeted that the right person who hears that will be the easiest lay down sale." He's going and he's grabbing the low hanging fruit that a lot of times we'll go and overthink. That was one of the first things. You take what he was saying about keeping the message in such a way that you're just tapping into desire that already exists. People already want to buy. They already want to buy. They always are ready to want to buy. Buying is such an emotional thing. We get this dopamine release, we love to buy stuff. We actually physically get somewhat of a high from when we buy stuff. We all want to feel that. We don't want to feel sold because we feel taken, we feel cheated, we feel cheap, but we do want to go buy. We want to make that decision on our own and come to that conclusion on our own. The way we do that is we start to logically close people and hopefully the message resonates with people who've already decided whether or not to buy it. Think about that. Then you think about what the other guy was saying with door-to-door sales. "Look, man, they already have made the decision. They already know. All you're doing is you're trying to help them see why it's a good decision to do it now. Do it right now. Take action now. There's no time line. Nobody's ever going to do anything." Then you mix that with what Dan Henry was saying at his event, and it just amplifies that. Taking the same message and just pounding it over and over and over and that's how he would get ... I think he got to go meet the VP of Dish and all this stuff because he blew away so many records with that kind of thing. Coming back to the "2 Comma Club Coaching," the last little bit, we've been focusing heavily on webinars. How to create a million dollar webinar. That's part of what my job is I go and help them tweak the message, tweak the funnel, put all the stuff together, launch the thing. What happened? How do we fix it? Sitting where I am, it's a cool experience to go back and forth with them and do that. That's what the "2 Comma Club Coaching" is. There's a ton of other stuff but that's what the Q&A section is. One of the reoccurring things that I've noticed over and over again with the way people write their pitches, or the way the people will write scripts. This is true for webinars, it's true for trip wire funnels, it's true for back end funnels where the really high ticket things versus low ticket, anything at all. Someone sent a funnel to me that said, "Hey, Stephen, check this out." I went and I checked it out and on the copy, the actual sales copy itself, was a whole lot of logical reasons. There was nothing else on there but a whole bunch of logical reasons why I should buy the thing. A lot of people write copy that way. A lot of newbs... A lot of people who don't know how to write copy or people who don't know how to write any kind of sales messaging or have never done sales at all before. A lot of them will handle sales that way. They'll get straight into the logic of it. The problem when you do that is that you haven't tapped into the emotional side. This is where Russell helps and bridges the gap like crazy. Especially with "The Perfect Webinar Script." He says, "Guys, look. Buying is an emotional experience. First, we've got to appeal to the emotions. Let's load up the front end of this pitch with a ton of stories." That's what "The Perfect Webinar Script" is. What Russell teaches and what "The Perfect Webinar Script" ... It's so funny, when I spoke at Dan Henry's event, I used "The Perfect Webinar Script." There wasn't a pitch at the end. When I spoke at LCT, there wasn't a pitch at the end, but it was "The Perfect Webinar Script." Teaching and breaking and rebuilding belief patterns in general works for anything. Any kind of content and communication that you put out there. The huge realization that I had recently about it is that when you ... There's a great book I'd recommend out there called "Pitch Anything." I don't remember the author but the book, "Pitch Anything" also illustrates a huge part of what I'm trying to say right here. When you think about the sales process, and I walk up to someone at their door, and I knock on the door and what's the first thing they're thinking inside their house? "Wait a second. Who the heck is at my door? Should I be worried? Should I be nervous? Is there someone out there? Is there a killer? Is there a robber? Is someone going to come in and take from me? Is it the tax guy? Should I run?" You know what I mean. There's tons of question and red flags that get raised in someone's head when they're not expecting someone to come to the door. They come to the door and what's the first thing? If I stand up and go, "What's up, man? I got this thing and this, this, this," and logical close, logical close, logical close. The very first thing that person's going to do is they're going to start backing up. They're going to go, "Let me put as many walls up. How can I get rid of this guy? There's something on the stove. My wife's calling me. Not interested at this time." They'll just shut the door, shut the door, shut the door. That sucks but it happens in any kind of sale, even if they wanted it. What the book, "Pitch Anything" goes through is it talks about and says, "Hey look, literally every single one of us has got these instincts on survival that have to be met before any kind of buying decision can be made." These are things that have been part of all humanity in our brains for millions of years, they make up the brain.
You know what I mean? It's all the primal instincts that are just meant to keep me alive and there's all this subconscious decisions that are starting to fly through my head. I don't even know that I'm making those, but I do that every single time. Really fast, quick judgements on whether or not I should fight, flee, eat. You know what I mean? Anytime I meet anyone, any new situation in general, we're constantly accessing through what the book, "Pitch Anything" calls the croc brain. We got to get through the croc brain. As soon as we help someone come down with all those different red flags, and we help them pull down the walls and pull down the barriers, they have to do that. I can't do that... If I try and do that it will feel like an infringement, and they will back up. But if I can help them convince themselves that everything's safe, everything's fine, this is new, it's exciting, there's novelty here. If it's boring, that's another wall. It can't be boring, that's another wall, run away. But if it's new, it's novelty, but it's not so new that it's scary, it's out on the fringes then, "Hey, who's this guy at my door?" What Russell then teaches is that, a bridge from the book, "Pitch Anything" to "The Perfect Webinar Script" is why don't we tell some stories? The person I'm talking to might have some false beliefs. They may want the product but have a few questions. I'm going to figure out what these people actually need, and I'm going to go answer that actual question. I'm sorry, I'm diving deep a little bit into a few different concepts here, and I hope that this is making sense. I've talked for 14 minutes. I said this is going to be a fast episode. I hope this is making sense. I hope really this is helpful because a lot of the sales funnels that are being sent to me, honestly, an overwhelming amount of them I just can't look at them, but a lot of them what's actually happening I've noticed is that everybody ... You cannot make a sale by only going logical. Even when people think, "Hey, I'm an engineer. Hey, I'm a software guy. Hey, I'm an architect. Hey, I'm a ..." Like the brainiacs of the world when they're self-proclaimed brainiacs of the world, even it they think that they need to be closed logically, they still have got to be closed emotionally. Everybody makes the decision emotionally to buy first. Well, guess what? That happens before what Russell calls "The Stack." Before you actually get into the price, before you actually get into what the offer is, before you actually start asking for somebody's money, they have already decided if they want the product. The price is almost irrelevant... The price is almost always irrelevant. It's almost always a matter of whether or not you broke and rebuilt that person's belief patterns to accept your message. To accept the fact that the product does fit their life. If you have rebuilt their belief patterns that strongly, by the time you get to what Russell calls "The Stack," and if you don't know what I'm talking about go to perfectwebinarsecrets.com or join twocommaclubcoaching.com and you'll run through that and you'll see. Hey, look first we're going to focus on false beliefs then, then ... Just so you know, Russell, when he does his perfect webinars, he doesn't start the actual logical closing phase until about an hour into the actual webinar. An hour. A whole hour. Crazy, ridiculous, that's amazing. A whole hour... The first hour is spent on breaking and rebuilding belief patterns. The first hour. Then only 20, 30 minutes is spent on the logical part of it. But that's not how most of us sell. Most of us think we got to get out there, and we got to start logically closing people. It's completely 180, it's totally the opposite. We'll start logically closing, "Well, it's on sale. Well, you know what, since you're here. Well, you know what, why don't we have you come over and just try it on?" You know what I mean? It's all these logical closes, "Well, it has these features. Well, it's better than that other competitor. It's better than that other competitor. We have this, this and this." He's like "Oh, well I didn't even know that was an option so thank you for telling me about your competition." Hopefully, this is starting to make sense, what I'm saying. There's really three major phases of the sale. Three major phases. Now this is what I found, this is what I've used. There's three major phases. Number one, you've got to get past their immediate knee-jerk reaction subconscious croc brain. Number one, you've got to get past the croc brain. You got to get past all of the ancient parts of the brain that just keep us alive. You got to get past that. Part of that, I said, is meaning you can't just be boring. That's another wall. It's still got to be new... It's still got to be novelty. It's still got to be things that are interesting. Number one, you got to get past the knee-jerk gatekeeper of our brains. Number two, break and rebuild belief patterns using story. The belief patterns, the false beliefs that they most likely have, you're making stories that directly go against what their false beliefs are, so you can break and rebuild the belief patterns. Number three, that's when you start doing the logical closes, and it's typically the shortest phase. I hope that helped. I hope that made sense to you. That was probably the most technobabble I've ever said on a podcast ever, and I'm so sorry. I hope that it made sense what I was trying to say.
I got really good at getting past all those, the knee-jerk reactions, keep us safe, croc brain. But I was not at all, at all, spending any effort at all in breaking and rebuilding belief patterns. When they would ask me, I would barf fact all over them, all over them. I would barf so much fact all over them they would end up closing the door just to get me to shut up. Man, it sucked so bad because I was selling like hotcakes until I started learning about our product. I think it's such a key lesson with that. That's all I wanted to share with you guys. These are the three phases of the sale and it's, honestly, one of the major reasons why we have sales funnels. Number one, what are you going to do, we got to break ... This guy's actually here to help me. We give them a free thing at the very first part. We're starting to bring down those walls. Number two, let's go with star story solution scripts. Let's bring in a character. Let's bring in a cool story. Let's go talk about a problem and a cool solution. That kind of script works really well as usually an up sale after they've already made the first commitment. Then we start logically closing them. You know what I mean? It doesn't work out perfectly that way, but all I'm saying is when we go out, and we start to logically close people, it is the easiest way to just lose the sale off the bat. Of all three of those phases, in my opinion, number two is the most important. Number two is the most important.
Guys hopefully that is helpful, and I'll see you guys in the next one. I'm excited for you guys to go implement stuff. Please, honestly, let me know if that helps. Usually I don't do this form of podcast. I usually go into a little bit more, this is a different kind of style. I should say it that way. I would love to know whether or not this actually was awesome and this helped. That's how I look at the sales, that's how I look at the phases. It's not always perfect but that guideline right there, knowing that those are the steps that the individual needs to go through, super helpful. Totally changed the way I sell and definitely has helped me online a lot.
Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today. | |||
| 18 Dec 2018 | SFR 201: How I Made My First Event, OfferMind... | 00:30:20 | |
Boom! What's goin' on everyone? It's Steve Larsen from Sales Funnel Radio.
Today I'm gonna teach you guys how I was able to pull off OfferMind so grandly as my very first event.
I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.
The real question is, how will I do it without VC funding or debt? Completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer.
Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels.
My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. What's up?
Hey, I'm excited for this episode. I'm excited for today, I'll be honest. So, just know that what I wanted to do, is I had OfferMind happen just very recently. OfferMind was my event that signified me moving into the offer creation category.
No one has become the category king of offer creation. I am trying to make my stand there as being the best and the first in that area as the solution provider for that area. You know what I'm talking about?
So anyways, I'm really really excited about it and all of it. OfferMind has signified a lot.
What this episode right here is not about is the content about OfferMind. What I wanted to do is take a kind of an objective look at how I pulled off OfferMind so grandly as my very first event. Anyways, it'll be fun. It'll be really really cool.
I love events. Events are very special. If you guys think about it, there are seven phases of a funnel - we learned that from the book, Dot Com Secrets. The seventh phase of a funnel is to change somebody's environment. That's why events are so powerful.
If somebody is agreeing to come to an event - they've gone through the first six phases of a funnel. I'm not gonna go through all those right now, but you can look them up in Dot Com Secrets. The seventh phase of a funnel, the last phase of the funnel, is to change somebody's actual physical environment, and that's why it's so awesome when they show up... but it's also why it's so hard to get them to the event.
So if you're about to throw an event, and you're like, "It is super hard to get people to an event." Yeah, I totally get it. I completely understand.
I was at this Inner Circle meeting a little while ago. It was probably like six month ago, I think... I dunno, my timetable is totally messed up now...
It was a while ago, and I was at this inner circle meeting, and I learned from some people, that what they've been doing is in some of their products, is giving away a free ticket to their event.
So when you buy the book or the program or whatever, included in that is a ticket to the event. That's clever. Now let me ask you a question though...
Do you think the person who shows up with a free ticket has the same mentality as the person who shows up with a paid ticket? No! Totally different.
In fact, if you give away a thousand free tickets, I would guess maybe 200 would actually show up. That much of a drop-off, okay? Huge drop-off. And a very different mentality; you will attract a broke room, a poor room if you're going to be selling something. Not to offend anybody, just being honest okay.
If you pay to get to an event, what do you think the attendance rate is gonna be? A lot higher.
It's pretty standard inside of events that have a 10% drop-off rate. A 10% no-show rate. They just don't show up. Baffles me. Blows my mind. I have no idea why it's that way, but it is. Even with the high ticket events, paid ticket events, whatever.
When I was running a lot of FHAT events, or Funnel-Hack-Athon Events... Guys, that was a 15000 to 25000 dollar event for people to show up. That is how much they paid, and still, we'd have people who would not show up after paying that much money. Yes, I'm serious. It's like, "Holy crap are you serious?" Yeah, I am. And that's what's interesting about this.
There's always a no-show rate.
There is gonna be a different mentality of person that shows up when you gave away free tickets versus the mentality of a person who showed up with paid tickets.
So I was like, "Well, I need validation to even move forward on this idea. How can I validate throwing my own event?"
I mean I've always wanted to throw my own event. And so what happened was, about four months ago when I knew that Russell was gonna be doing the, (wait, it's November isn't it? November/December by the time you see this episode it will be December? Okay, but right now, recording this, 'cause I match my content, practice what I preach here, right.)
...It was back in February when Russell first started talking about doing this book. The 30 Day book. When he first started talking about that, and he started reaching out to all the people for it, I was like, "Sweet, this is gonna be so cool." And I went in, and I got to write my chapter - it was really exciting and awesome.
What was cool, is when he wrote this book, when the idea came out for this book, I thought to myself, "That's it. That is how I can fill a room. That's the vehicle that I can give a free ticket away with when I sell it." So that was super exciting.
I knew that OfferMind was gonna be comin' up some time in the future. I didn't know when, but I knew it was there. Most people will stop because they don't see all the details yet. Don't stop... if you've got a sweet idea, just know that clarity will happen as you move, not before you move. Little nugget there, just threw it out.
...So when I saw Russell go out and say, "You know what, we're gonna give away, for everyone who promotes the book, we're gonna give 100% commissions." He's like, "I'm not gonna take any commissions on that book." I was like, "You're kidding. Oh my gosh, this is actually really really big. Okay, okay, dude, can I interview you on my podcast?"(Russell was on the podcast a little while ago.) "Dude, can I get this, can I do that." Alright?
And I started structuring a campaign around this book. Knowing that when I drop out a free ticket with the book, I'm gonna get more sales because the perceived value of my offer is gonna go through the roof.
I also knew that people were gonna be like, "Oh my gosh," and it was gonna be more talkable.
I sold 375 books, and I was like, "I bet a third of those people will actually show up." And that's about what happened. About 120 RSVP'd, but I think about 100 showed up - which is pretty standard for a free ticket. You know what I mean? There's not as much fear of loss if you don't show up for a free event that you didn't pay for, right?
So what I did, was I piggy-backed the event on Russell's event for the 30 Day book launch. That's how I filled it up so much. I purposefully did it that way.
Now, I also knew that a lot of people were not gonna be able to, or didn't hear about, or just were like, "Hey, I already bought the book through somebody else," I didn't wanna leave out all those other people. So what I did was I built an event funnel.
It was a very fast funnel to go in and sell people who wanted to actually dive on in and join the event. So that's what I did. And it worked really really well. I started selling different areas around it.
I sold a VIP upgrade. A one-on-one session with me afterwards on the third day.
But the biggest mistake that people make with throwing events is, they try to make money on the event tickets. I don't take any profit on people just getting to the event.
There's not as much story in this episode, I just want to hit several things right here. I ran a little ask campaign inside the group, The Science of Selling Online, and I asked: "Hey, what question to do you guys have about how I ran OfferMind?" And so I'm answering a lot of your questions here so you guys can see how I did it:
>The event room in the hotel was $7500 I believe. And I was like, "I don't wanna pay for that." I was like, "Holy crap, are you serious?" I was like, "Well, what if I just did a really long one-on-one session with somebody on the third day."
So the event was two days, but there was actually a third day where I left it open for people if they wanted to do one-on-one sessions with me. That's exactly what happened. Somebody came in, and they paid, and I charged almost the exact amount as the room was. "Sweet, alright, somebody else paid for the room."
Please, no one get offended by this. I'm just telling you guys what's going through my head.
I knew it was going to be around $20000 for the AV team to come in. It was significantly more though. It was $35000 for the AV team to come on in. It's why it looked so pro and so amazing.
I was like, "Man, I don't wanna pay for that." And so I was like, "Okay, what if I just push a little bit harder on this book?” And I did, and we sold 375 books, that's the equivalent of $37500. "Well, sweet, okay, that paid for the AV." We have some sessions that paid for the room.
Now, how I pay for swag and to make it awesome, get a photographer there and get someone just filming B roll? All of those things together was probably another 10,000. Alright? So what I did. Uh, it was more than that...
. Anyway, what I did, was I sold a VIP upgrade. Through that VIP upgrade, I think there was like 14,000 dollars that came in through the VIP upgrade. I was like, "Sweet."
You guys get how I did this?
...I mean, out of pocket, there was a few other expenses, things around that I'm just not remembering off the top of my head, but you have to understand and get resourceful. It doesn't matter what level you're at.
I've watched Russell do this when he's been planning Funnel Hacking live; there will be these big people like Tony Robbins... or "Let's get in this person or that person." He's like, "Crap, seriously, that's how much money they want?" Or, "It costs that much money to do that?" Or, "The event room is this amount of money?" Or, "The swag, holy crap!"
Rather than go, "Well maybe we won't," he says, "How can do that?"
Multiple times I've watched him go through and structure a way to liquidate his cost on that. That's exactly 100% how I pulled off OfferMind. Structurally I'm talking about, how I actually pulled it all together and pulled all those pieces together.
So in total, I think it was around $65000 to pull it off? Is that about how much it was? $65000 for OfferMind?
- Yeah.
- I was just checking with Colton, my alter ego now.
$65000 to pull off OfferMind. I think, out of my pocket, to actually pull off the event, (about 37000 dollars for selling the book, another $7000 for plus the 15 ish plus the 20), I think I shelled out maybe personally about, maybe like six or seven grand, which guys, in hindsight, really awesome. I wanted sweet swag. I wanted an amazing visually impressive experience.
If step seven of a funnel is a new environment, I cannot just have you walk into a normal room, I must put you in an environment. Does that make sense? You have got to enter a different sphere, a different place. I'm willing to go into the hole over that. You understand? And so I did. Sort of like, structurally, that's how I pulled off the event.
Three days before OfferMind happened, I asked one of the AV guys, which they're freaking amazing by the way...
Valiant was the name of the AV team. They're the same ones that do Funnel Hacking Live. They're the same AV team that does all the Two Comma Club X events - they do everything for Russell. They set up the stage, it's a brilliant, brilliant room, all that stuff. That's why it looked so great.
... they came to me, and they had this cool pitch. They were like, "We love your light bulb logo. We're thinking, what if we dangle light bulbs upside down from the ceiling in this cool way with your logo floating in the back?" I was like, "That's amazing, yes! Sounds good."
So as far as structurally pulling off the event logistically, that's how it happened. I'm looking for ways to liquidate costs on the cool things rather than sacrifice experience, I ask "How I can afford, how can I create an experience?" So the event was pretty much completely liquidated. Almost. Almost, I did go into the hole a little bit with it. But that was, you know, whatever.
I mean, you guys that came. I mean, if you didn't come, there's no way you did not see someone posting about OfferMind, right? Social proof was all over the place.
I know the psychology of sharing a post on social media. The reason we share is because we think it's funny, or it evokes a lot of emotion, it makes somebody laugh, or it makes somebody feel important.
When I share something funny, I'm doing it because I'm saying I'm funny. When I share something that makes me angry, I'm sharing it because I'm saying it makes me angry. Does that make sense?
We share stuff to say who we are. It actually is a reflection of the essence of the individual sharing. It has less to do with what you're sharing and more about how the share-er feels.
And so knowing that those are the motivations; knowing and understanding that piece of it... What I was trying to do is give people content to share. That's why the room needed to be amazing. That's why all the stuff in there needed to be visually so impressive. You understand?
It was not just about me teaching. It was not just about me practicing stuff about my book that is coming out about it, right? Your Core Offer is gonna be the book and the content itself from the event, was on a higher level, the stuff that is coming out of the book and I needed to test it in one final phase. I've been testing it for months and months, eight, nine months. And I needed to go in and do that.
But you have to understand, that was what the event was for content-wise. But I needed it to be so visually impressive. It needed to be an experience. When you walked in, I needed those doors to close. You're not allowed inside the event. No one is allowed in there. No one is leaking pictures. (I know a few people did, and I wish they hadn't.) Because what I'm doing is I'm creating anticipation.
Event throwing is what a marketer does, whether online or offline. Part of the event is anticipation for the event. Can you imagine, wow? And I needed to invoke that emotion:
Imagine what it would be like, imagine what the feeling is gonna be, what is gonna be like when I sit there, and I have this major epiphany on why I've not made it work yet. What's it gonna be like. And that game in the person's head is what I'm trying to cause. So that when they're behind closed doors, and the registration table is on the outside of the event, and the doors are closed, but they hear the music...
They hear the music and the feel the ground rumble, and they're seeing some streaming lights coming through, but they can't quite see what's going on. And for the first time, those doors open. There's literally new doors in their life opening. You understand? It's a symbol, okay? It is a symbol.
Event throwing is an art. There is a science behind it, but there is an art piece to it as well.
I am not just having people show up in a room and have me speak at them. In my mind, no matter the content, what I would say, huge, huge, huge opportunity, failure if that was the case. That is not why I threw the event. I threw the event, yes, for the content pieces, I'm gonna be using that in other places in as well; book, other cool stuff that's comin'. But I needed, it's more about the experience of the individual showing up. Is it a symbol of new opportunity in the individual's life.
I am breaking and rebuilding so many beliefs inside the person's head that they are literally doing things that they never thought they could do? They have new capacities for own life that they never thought were possible. That's what I'm trying to do. That's why the event is such a big deal.
All the stuff laid out in perfect matching order on the tables, the swag, the way they walk up, why the doors are closed, the way they open up, the music that's playing; music you guys hear me play on my live funnel builds. There is so much freaking psychology behind it.
It's important that I'm not in the room when you actually open the door. I should not be in the room. I should have somebody else introduce me. And their whole role is to raise the energy level of the room: "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" And then, "Welcome, Mister Stephen Larsen." I need that. It elevates. As I walk up to the stage and the person who is MCing, (which is James Freel, who I'm very thankful for), he got them riled up.
There were some cool videos played. Marley, my amazing video person, made this incredible walk-up video. Lots of credibility stuff. Stuff that I'm a little bit uncomfortable with. You know what I mean? I don't want ever to be like, “Me, Me, Me,” but that's important for the psychology of the event.
When I walk up, I need to make contact with the MC physically - that's the transfer of authority and power on stage; it's visual in front of the people.
This is important, and I'm not making this up you guys. Go watched 10X Secrets training, he's gonna talk about this. That psychology is massive.
So when I walk up, my role is not to raise the energy of the room. My role is to come in with an already high-level energy room and then I can do my thing - otherwise, I gotta raise the energy of the room. I don't wanna do that role.
There's a lot to throwing the event. There's a lot of psychology behind it. You think I'm joking? Go watch people who actually do this professionally all the time. I've been exposed to a lot of that. That's why I know a lot of this, and I've been doing it - that's why we pulled it off well.
There's orchestration behind your actual event; how it runs, the way it happens.
I know that as the event goes up, I need to build pressure and excitement, and then release it. And then build pressure and excitement higher than last time and then release it. And then build pressure and excitement higher than the other two times and then release it. And then build pressure, and then sail. That's exactly what I did.
So I'm like "Boom, cool nugget drop," release it, let's take a break.
I can tell when people were exhausted mentally or physically. I put caffeine on the tables - Pruvit, that's the emblem I'm in, and you guys all know that -, and a lot of you guys ask me about it. I drink Pruvit every single day, and a lot of you guys know that. You know that about the orange bottle, right? This is the orange bottle. There's always orange juice in there. A lot of you guys comment about that.
What did I do? I need you mentally checked in, I'm gonna drop some stuff that no one ever taught before. So because of that, we made sure to get literally $2000 worth of Pruvit it on the tables, and keep it on the tables. It wasn't so much about me. I'm not trying to sell it; I need their brains checked: “Boosh, are they with me?”
Because I'm gonna go long and I'm gonna go hard and I'm gonna go late into the evening. I'm gonna over-deliver day one. Over-deliver to the hilt. Blow people's brains. Boosh, brains on the wall, right!
The reason is that I'm doing everything that I can, everything that I can, to orchestrate an experience, not just drop cool content:
>They got caffeine. >I'm givin' them notebooks so they can take notes.
I'm not gonna expect them to come with a pen and a notepad, but I need them to take notes. Mentally, they're checking in when they do that. When they open up that notebook and they start taking notes, they are with me.
When they take a little bit of caffeine, (still one of the best nootropics that's out there), they are with me. They can go further and longer than they normally can physically on their own. More discipline, more focus, more attention than they would ever do on at their own homes. Very fascinating by the way.
Then they go to sleep, or they're spending time with each other in the evening, they're like, "Holy crap, that was freakin' nuts, jeez."
Then the next day, what did you learn, what did you learn, what did you learn? And part of what I'm doing is, as I'm taking breaks, there were those catch box mics, and I'm like, "If you have questions throughout, ask me. I need us to be interactive." It's not just for questions, it's to keep you engaged.
Me throwing around the catch box all over the place, (the microphone that you can throw), it's so that I know what the coolest piece was, and I'm hearing where people's "Wow!" is. I'm like, "Oh, for me the 'Wow’ was over here. You thought the 'Wow' was over there... okay, cool." And you guys were guiding me more than you realize when I was on stage.
I was extremely prepared, but I'm making sure that I'm spot checking based on your feedback. And when breaks are over, keep that energy high by throwing around the catch box: "What did you learn?"
If I'm just standing on stage in the one spot? Bad. Dumb. Failure. You guys know the photographer that was there, she's like, "You move more than anybody that I've ever seen on stage," and I'm like, "Yeah, it's because I am trying to keep you with me." You should be freakin' exhausted after one 90 minute presentation.
Russell taught me once, he said, one 90 minute presentation is the equivalent of an eight hour work day in energy expenditure. 90 minutes - I don't even know how long I went? I went from 9AM to 9PM. I think I went 12 hours.
There was a one and a half hour lunch break. We took a hour at dinner, I think? Did we take an hour at dinner? Something like that? So I went for eight hours? I was freakin' exhausted you guys. Don't plan on sleeping when you do this kind of stuff. And you should be exhausted. I'm running around the room. I am responsible for the energy tone that is set in the room. I am responsible, not the audience.
When people stand up, and they beg for comments, it's the presenter that's losing, not the audience. I know that. And when I was doing these super high-level FHAT events, stuff like that, they're deep, complex concepts sometimes right? It's not up to them. It's up to me. So I run around like an animal. My feet were freakin' on fire after day one.
A lot of people say, “Stephen how do you do what do?” It hurts! That's the answer man. It hurts.
I was laying down in the hotel room even though I live here - way easier to just stay in the mind-prep zone and stay in state while I'm staying in a room at the hotel that it's happening at - so I can just go right to the room, right back up.
Lunches, go detox, drop the pressure and noise, as Alex Charfen talks about:
Relax for a second, listen to some meditation music, chill the freak out and then go back into state. Whew, bam, right. The break is for me is just as much as it is for the people. Boom. Boom.
There were multiple times when someone would walk up and be like "Can I ask you a question?" and I'd be like, "Sorry, no, because I need to make sure I protect my break. I need to make sure I protect my time.”
So, guys, I wanna walk through how I actually structured my first six-figure day, 'cause that's what happened there, but not on this episode though. I wanna do that on the next one. I just want you know how I threw the event and what was all involved with it.
And we're gettin' swag, and we're getting net 30 terms so I can make sure I can get the actual affiliate cash coming in so it pays for that: "Let's get it over here, so it pays for that. Let's get it over here, so it pays for that." And guys, that's how you throw a sweet amazing event.
You don't have all those things in places. Not usually, most of us, not usually. You don't have all of that stuff in place. Instead it's all about building the pressure just like you would a product. Build the pressure. "Tickets, go, go, go, go, go. We're gonna close, we're gonna close, we're gonna close. Who can pay for what? Who is gonna do what? Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam..." It has a lot to do with anticipation, energy output, expectations, and experience, and environment. That's how you throw a good event.
I could of stood up and said things that were not actually that prolific, and it would still have been a great event because of the experience that we provided. Does that make sense? It's that big of a deal.
Now, I understand that the content was epic and it'd never been taught anywhere - I've never had a platform to teach all that. It was really really cool.
I've talked about the content that came from the event, and how I write the book slowly, and why the event was thrown and stuff like that... But I'm not talking about the content, I'm talking about the event itself and throwing it.
What I'd like to do in a few episodes from now as well is walk through how I was able to structure a six-figure day. My first one ever. It was almost multi-six, which is really cool. I want to teach you guys how I was able to go do that, and pull that apart as well.
These episodes are a little more in depth, a little more intense than I normally would make them, but a lot of you guys ask, so I thought it would be a cool place to do that.
Somebody asked, "What was the biggest takeaway you had from your first live event?"Thank you, Pat Phelps, appreciate it. What's the first biggest take-away? They are challenging, but Colton and I were even talking, and they're not as challenging as people said that it would be - and I know it's because we had great help. there was a full out team.
There's no way you can do that on your own, by the way. You need people. People were all over the place helping. I so appreciate that. I clearly understand and realize that it's not me, me, me land.
Biggest take-away? Yeah, definitely it was in liquidating costs through other things.
How much did all the AV stuff cost using all the other crew? $35000 for the crew. They are completely worth it. Hire them, they're amazing.
For the total event, 65 grand.
And as far as roles and positions, it was actually Dave Woodward who taught me that one person on your team should be dedicated to you solely for the entire event.
There's a lot of pressure going into your head, so you need to have somebody with you all the time: "I need this. I need water, do you have a protein bar or something like that?" Back and forth.
And understand guys, it was just Colton and me pulling this stuff off - it was so crazy.
A lot of people helped, swooped on in, and I'm just so appreciative. It really really means a lot. As far as setting it up, getting stuff on the table, really, I mean, it was just so so helpful. Colton's wife came in for a bit, Tara, she came in and did a lot. Ryan Jones, Scott, Taylor, you came in. Anyways, I'm trying to give kudos and thanks to where it's deserved. A lot of people involved in the pieces to set-up, stuff like that.
As far as roles though? Anyway.
The biggest thing I learned? You know what, I'm not gonna answer that one now. The biggest thing I learned, I want to talk about it on the way I structured the six-figure day, which will be really really cool.
Anyways, appreciate it guys. Thank you so much. Very excited about this. Hopefully you guys learned more about throwing events. I'm not saying it's gotta be that massive scale all the time.
You're like, "Crap Stephen, I don't have 65 grand to go throw an event." Okay, whatever, fine, but just know, it's more about providing an experience and changing the environment. It is the final phase in the funnel. And because of that, you're gonna lose a lot of people, the six steps on the way to the seventh.
Think about it. Russell's got a freakin' giant list. A lot of people that show up to Funnel Hacking Live are not using ClickFunnels yet. They want to, but still, his event is only 4000 people when there's 70000 active monthly users.
There's 4000 people coming to this next event, 4500, alright. Think about the numbers of that. He has such a huge list. Some people are like, "Stephen, I'm gonna go throw a massive event it'll be real easy." Events are like the hardest things to fill ever. Way harder than a webinar. Way harder than anything else because they gotta go set-up:
>Who's the babysitter? >What are my flights? >What are my hotels? >Can I get off time for work? >Can I get off time for this?
...blah blah blah... there is so much stuff.
Events like that appeal to hot audiences - when you have a very hot audience who are in the seventh phase of the funnel, so it's a small group. A very small group.
I'm excited for the next OfferMind - there certainly will be one. Probably, it's gonna be a yearly event.
Next year I'm actually already bringing in some really cool speakers as well. I can't tell you who, but... So anyways, If you guys want a ticket though, we do have discounted tickets for a little while. The price is definitely going up because it's a sick event. I got some cool people coming to you guys as well.
For this first event, I needed the content to be more about the content. The next event though, I'm actually gonna bring in some more people about, "Here's how you create offers around that industry, that industry, that industry, that industry, and here's the expert on the person that did it, that did it, that did it, that did it." So really cool people comin' on in about specifically offer creation - it'll be really really cool.
So you guys can go to OfferMind.com and go get your ticket. It's exciting. I'm really really pumped for you - really excited for all this stuff, it'll be really cool. So go to OfferMind.com to grab tickets.
If it's off, just put your name on the waiting list. If it's up, then the tickets are there and you can actually dive on in and grab a ticket at the price that it was at now. We're gonna have to raise it a little bit, but anyway, excited. Screaming success, a lot of people involved, and definitely, a Hail Mary. Just tons of fun... but it took Colton and me, I think, a solid three days just to recover physically. Probably a solid week to recover mentally. I was wrecked. You were wrecked, Couton? We were wrecked, man!
I've thrown a lot of events, but there was only one other time in my life I've been that tired, and it was during basic training. Seriously. That was insane man.
But anyways, cool stuff guys. Appreciate it. You're all awesome. I appreciate you guys comin'. I know a lot of you guys wanted to come and there will definitely be others. We'd love to have you at the future ones. See you guys later. Bye.
If you're just starting out, you're probably studying a lot. That's good. You're probably geeking out on all the strategies also. That's also good. But the hardest part is figuring out what the market wants to buy and how you should sell it to them. Right?
That's also what I struggled with for a while until I learned the formula.
So I created a special mastermind called an OfferMind to keep you on track with the right offer and more importantly, the right sales script to get it off the ground and sell it.
Want to come? There's small groups on purpose so I can answer your direct questions in person for two straight days. You can hold your spot by going to OfferMind.com. Again, that's OfferMind.com.
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| 06 Jul 2023 | How to Get Yourself Interviewed by Others | 00:26:03 | |
I remember my first few interviews. Man, those weren't the best of me. But if it weren't for those interviews and my consistency in putting myself out there, I wouldn't be considered an expert in what I do now. It cemented me in this industry which eventually led to bigger opportunities. Yet, most people often overlook this marketing strategy. Getting yourself interviewed is actually one of the most powerful and SIMPLEST forms of marketing. Why? 'Coz it never leaves the internet. And if you know how to tie your answers into whatever you're promoting, you'll have leads for LIFE! Being interviewed is one of the key pieces of the publishing game, and it comes with some prerequisites. So here's how I started getting myself interviewed...
Key Takeaways: Intro (00:00) My I’m-not-gonna-publish backstory (01:28) Why publishing is so important (05:24) How to get interviewed by others (10:05) Interview request sample (13:54) #1 rule when interviewing me (14:30) Two ways to pitch yourself for interviews (15:59) The danger with a purely interview-based show (16:57) Handy interview tips (20:29) Closing thoughts (24:14)
Additional Resources - Connect with me here --- Download Season 1 episodes here -- Sales Funnels Radio is a podcast for all passionate digital marketing pros looking to up their game and stay ahead. Follow us on your favorite podcasting platform so you never miss an episode!
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| 09 Jul 2019 | SFR 258: Part 1 - Designing Your Value Ladder | 00:25:48 | |
Follow along and create your own Value Ladder as I show you how I designed my personal one.
It’ll probably come as no surprise to learn that I love the book DotCom Secrets ;-)
DOTCOM SECRETS - MY FIRST TIME
I first read DotCom Secrets when I was in the army…
I was on a security line training - it was ten days lying prone in the dirt.
It might NOT surprise you to find out I have a very active brain, and I can only study bugs for so long…
Army uniforms have these cargo spots where you can store things
I kept DotCom Secrets in a plastic bag in my pocket to keep it from all the dirt and the crazy intense rain.
With my M16 in my right hand, I’d pull out DotCom Secrets…
I’d take out my pen from these pen slots on the side of my uniform, lay my weapon down and take notes.
I don’t have my original copy, which kinda stinks, but it was marked to death 'cause I really go deep.
Before I read DotCom Secrets, I was probably on business try number 10/ 11/ 12, or somewhere around that…
But it wasn't long after reading DotCom Secrets that things started really working for me, and part of this was because of the topic I want to talk about today, which is value ladders. HACKING THE VALUE LADDER
So what is a value ladder?
Right at the bottom of page 23 of DotCom Secrets, it says:
A value ladder is where you want to take your client.
*THAT’S IT*
… that's all a value ladder is.
It's where you want to take your client.
Funnels are NOT the only thing that Russell's popularized in the Internet marketing space- he's kinda credited for being the one that popularized value ladders too.
And now, I wanna teach you…
After reading DotCom Secrets, all my college notebooks were crammed with drawings of funnels and value ladders …
They were HUGE value ladders with tons of steps - they were MASSIVE value ladders.
However, one of the things that I got stuck on was thinking that I needed the entire value ladder planned and designed before I could even start building a funnel.
I want you to know, that's actually NOT true.
That's NOT the way ClickFunnels builds their funnels, that's NOT the way I built mine, but most people think that’s what they have to do.
When I ask "What's the model you're following?" A lot of times what that means is what’s the value ladder?
Do you know the value ladder/ the model that your industry uses most and has all the success with? '
… ‘cause it's the template.
When I started realizing that there where models, I’d be sat in classes thinking, "Man, all I gotta do is follow the model! What’s the info product model?"
YOUR CORE IDEA
Now, if you don't know, we have OfferMind coming up, and OfferMind’s purpose is to to help you find your core idea.
The reason I’m bringing this up is that…
If you guys aren't watching on YouTube, this might be one of those episodes that’s powerful for you to watch, and actually see how I draw this out.
So if we take the DotCom Secrets definition of a value ladder, remember that...
A value ladder is where you want to take your client.
This is a cool framework that you can use to develop your entire company.
But there are a few specific things about this model that I want to share with you that’ll help you get the MOST from it…
HOW TO NAVIGATE THE VALUE LADDER The goal of the the value ladder is to ascend your customer to very tip-top, (I'm gonna put a star there) - that's where you want to take your people.
The top of your value ladder is where you want your dream customers and your dream product to be.
It's also the MOST expensive step on the ladder.
It's the one where you give the most value, and the most amount of your time, (if you want to design it that way).
And at the bottom, it’s the exact opposite.
It's NOT that you don't want to sell people at the bottom, but the whole point/ the whole idea is that you want to start qualifying people.
I can't draw very well, but let's say this is a phone…
(There we go, there's a little phone right there)
This phone, (a.k.a, value ladder step), is what's calling out to your dream customer.
You bring people in on the cheap step and then you start to ascend them to the top.
So the value ladder is somewhere that you wanted to actually take people to…
So that next post, you’ll see the application of these principles as I actually teach you what my value ladder is.
HOW TO INCREASE CUSTOMER VALUE
Recently, I’ve been really geeking out lately on this idea of campaigns, and one of the issues I've found is that most of the time...
People don’t buy from you because your offers NOT good enough, ...it's usually 'cause they don't know *WHAT* they can buy from you. So my role is to create:
… but it's also my role to educate my customers on what they can buy from me.
Sharing your value ladder with your customer base is one of the easiest ways that you can educate your customers on what they can buy from you.
(That's something we're probably gonna take away, but I’ve been doing it for a while though.)
...there's all these cool things that people just don't know about.
And so I've realized, "Man, my role is to educate the value ladder, NOT just the product."
I think it was Peter Drucker who talked about the only two obligations an entrepreneur has are marketing and innovation.
“Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation - P Drucker One of his definitions of marketing is education for a sale.
Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institution. Training and development must be built into it on all levels - P Drucker
Drucker believed the marketers needed to educated people, so that they’d actually go buy.
My definition of marketing is:
Marketing is changing beliefs for the intent of a sale - S Larsen
(I can feel I’m not telling enough stories, so hopefully, you guys can follow me with this.)
But anyway, I started to realize was that:
I need to create mechanisms inside of my funnels that don’t just sell the product itself - I have to educate people on the other things that they can buy from me as well …
...and that I actually can automate huge parts of that process.
(If you come to my events, I teach much deeper on this)
VALUE LADDER EDUCATION
Now, let me walk through a few mechanisms with you guys.
So I'm a One Funnel Away coach for ClickFunnels, I coach daily, and usually live (unless I'm traveling, sick, or something like that)…
There are like 6,000 people on this last challenge - it's a big one, we're having tons of fun with it.
One of the things we teach is that typically, (even if you're bad), you can make a dollar per person per month on your list.
Typically, you can expect a dollar per person on your list per month.
Now, what I've learned is that the $1 per person per month can easily become $2 with what I'm gonna share with you.
Add a few other things, and you can make that $3 … then as you get better you can turn that into $4/ $5 per person.
With the list that I have right now, we do $3 - $5 per person per month on the list.
What I'm gonna teach you right now is one of the easiest ways to manipulate this formula and increase customer value.
Value ladder education, (a.k.a, teaching your customers what it is they can buy from you), is one of the easiest ways to increase customer value.
There's a lot of automated ways so you're NOT having to be the one putting in more sweat equity.
You just do it once, and it's all automated.
SIX STEPS TO YOUR CORE OFFER
There are six steps that I use to create a core offer.
… they have to go in a certain order as well.
The first thing I do when I'm designing a new value ladder is...
Now once I know what my market is, I wanna know…
I'm not trying to sell the whole market. People mess that up all the time. Now once I know the who, that I'm trying to sell, I need to know…
Then ‘Who’ leads to ‘What’...
This is where ‘The Dream’ comes in…
Because NOW, from the ‘What,’ I can identify what I call ‘The Core Problem.’
"Stephen, what does that have to do with designing a value ladder?"
It has EVERYTHING to do with it!
And *this* is the reason why you may NOT know what's on my value ladder yet because I'm testing out my core offer...
I've had people offer me $1 million.
It's NOT a joke...
They're like, "I'm dead serious, Stephen. I will give you $1 million for a funnel." I've said “NO!” - which it's baffling to them…
And, the why, is because of what I'm sharing with you right here.
I don't want to be in a scenario where I'm like, "You know what, I could do that…”
But the REAL question is, “Is it what I'm designing?
The value ladder is the roadmap for my business and my activities.
So if it's NOT time for me to be offering those kinds of deals, “A million bucks??? No thanks!” ;-)
I'm NOT saying I won't take 'em in the future, but, at that time, when the first BIG offer came, the answer was “NO!”
I don't want to be in a scenario where I’m like, "Crap, I'm getting out of line with my value ladder."
When I got hired by ClickFunnels there were only 14,000 monthly users - now there's 92,000.
There were only 40 ClickFunnels employees - now there are 340. It's crazy! It has exploded!
I joined ClickFunnels right before this major, explosive growth, and part of the reason why I know I can teach so much about this is because I was there:
… I watched this HUGE, ridiculous growth happen.
And so, these questions that I'm walking through are the kinds of things that were being tackled when I was at ClickFunnels.
When it comes to value ladder design, people are like,
… that's all great, but *that* comes waaay down the road.
What you need to know first is:
Now, you’re finally at a spot where you can create an offer.
You create a core solution, and from there you create a core offer - that's why I call it Your Core Offer.
I place the core offer in the middle of the value ladder.
And I start at that spot.
WHY HAVE A CORE OFFER?
I help people find out what their core offer is because the numbers work easier with ads.
If I'm selling something that's mid-tier priced, I only need to sell one of 'em, and Facebook ads are covered for a while.
Rather than me go straight to the top… and there are people who argue with me and say, "Go straight to the top..."
I get it, and I've done that as well…
I'll be honest, the one I don't do first is the very bottom, and it's 'cause it's a little bit riskier.
There’s a quote in my head, but I'm not very good at remembering the names of who said what…
Anyway, the quote is something like:
People spend more money for the same thing repackaged in a different way.
It's a powerful quote, and it's a quote that floats around in this space a lot.
You have to understand that each value ladder is represented by an idea - it's actually a full idea.
I need to prove the idea almost more than the product itself. I’m proving out the idea, NOT just the offer!
So once I know that…
Man, now I can build a whole value ladder.
But too many times, people are all like,
"I'm gonna build this funnel, then this funnel, then this funnel, then I'm gonna publish this, and then I'm gonna make this continuity program..." and it's so fast…
...they build too quickly.
All their focus is on getting that next funnel out... which is great after you've proven out the main idea and after you've proven the core offer.
I hope this is making sense to you?
(It's funny, I wanted to trial close you guys, even though I can't see you right now)
... but hopefully, this is helping ;-)
So, I focus on the middle of the value ladder to prove out the main idea.
SAME IDEA DIFFERENT VALUE
Now that the idea is actually proven for the entire value ladder, my whole goal is to go in, and develop varying levels of value on the same ladder.
I can go do something more high-touch with my time up here. I can go develop a cool mastermind up at the top up here - that's lots of value.
I have the same ideas at the bottom of the value ladder, but now I'm gonna have:
...I'm gonna have all this stuff.
And it works because I've proven out the main core offer and the main core idea.
And with the cash flow from the middle of the value ladder, I get to:
HOW TO PAY FOR EXPENSIVE THINGS IN YOUR BUSINESS
As a business, we're running lean on purpose.
I don't want a ton of people inside of my company as far as employees and stuff like that, I just don't.
But the reason I get to do it that way, and the reason we're cash flowing so hard right now is that I follow my six-step model that helps to clarify the way the value ladder is used...
… but all in good time.
One of my favorite book, Ready, Fire, Aim, teaches that your goal, as a beginner entrepreneur, is just to get enough customers
You're just trying to get a big ole list.
Once you have a BIG list of customers, anything you sell to them afterward is MORE likely to be successful “because so many of your existing customers will buy it.”
… that's exactly how the book it says.
Now, when I need to get more people in a funnel/ business), then I go build something at the bottom of the value ladder.
The reason I don't have a book right now is that I don’t need leads.
It's the reason why I don't have a lot of cheap stuff right now,
I don't need leads.
Do you see what I'm saying?
(I’m gonna make this a two-part series...
I want you to know the principles behind my value ladder so that you’ll have the context when I teach you my value ladder… and it’ll make more sense to you.)
HOW TO KNOW WHAT TO BUILD NEXT?
One of my favorite individuals is Alex Charfen, in fact, I just interviewed him… Alex Charfen is a BEAST.
I've learned A LOT from Alex, the book Clockwork (great book btw,) and James Friel about building a business…
Now, there are five criteria that I analyze my business on, and this is how I determine what to build next in my value ladder...
Ohh! What's up?
The first thing, I go and I figure out what I'm gonna go build on.
I want to see:
(This is how I personally do it - I know there are different formats here and there)
And so, I break those categories out separately and I rank myself…
For example:
If I start getting low on leads, I’m ranking myself, “Oh, dude, your leads are kinda low right now, darn it..."
I start asking:
ANSWER = BOTTOM OF THE VALUE LADDER STUFF
I don't need more leads right now! That's why I don't have bottom of the value ladder products. I've had a few people reach out, (and if a few people have reached out, it tells me a lot are thinking it), and ask, “Stephen, why don't you have a book yet?"
The answer is…
Man, I got more leads than I can handle, so that's NOT what my personal business scenario needs right now.
Now you might be like, "Stephen, I need leads." That's great, but don't compare yourself to me.
I just follow the formats and formulas that cause success.
In order to decide what to build next, I answer the questions:
A: You know what, I convert pretty high. So I don't need to focus on the actual sales message or the offer.
A: I deliver really high! I know I do.
A: Well.
A: *NOT WELL*
… so the next thing I'm building is an upsell.
Meaning, there's NOT a lot at the top of my value ladder…
So the next thing I'm focusing on is on top of the value ladder…
... because that’s the thing that I'm suckin' at the most at right now.
I just look at it the value ladder objectively and think, "Oh man, I gotta do this.”
I was listening to the book Clockwork while mowing the lawn, and that's where I learned this... I've had so many epiphanies mowing the lawn, it's crazy. I'm always nervous to get somebody to go do it for me because I have so many epiphanies.
I need to look objectively at my company, and ask:
Okay, so that's not the issue, so where's the weak spot?
So…
PLAYING TO MY STRENGTHS & WEAKNESSES
As an individual, and a solutions provider, I sell my strengths, but as a business builder, I solve my weaknesses.
That's a big statement, (that has a lot to do with the value ladder)...
As a business owner, I fix my weaknesses, and I only focus on the weak part, to fix these five formula pieces.
However, as a solutions provider, I sell my strengths, which makes total sense, right?
But too many people get it switched.
INSTEAD... I let the model tell me what to go build on my value ladder.
I know what purpose each phase of the value ladder is for:
And if I am not in a spot where I've tested out and proven the main idea of the whole value ladder, I shouldn't even be looking anything else.
All I'm doing is testing ideas.
Now, I know I've spit a lot at you in this blog- so if you need to re-read a few times, go for it (or check it out on YouTube).
This is how I think about my value ladder, and this is the premise I design under.
I know that I'm tossing A LOT at you with this - it was kinda heavy, but if you like this kind of stuff, we cover a ton MORE in this depth at OfferMind.
Guys, go get a ticket at offermind.com.
We’re, we're pushing pretty hard on tickets right now - so it's super-exciting…
There's a chance this baby will sell out.
So anyway, go get a ticket at offermind.com, so I can teach you how to do this for your own business.
You’ll create a roadmap of what you actually need to do - not just from a business structure standpoint, (which is kinda what I'm showing here), but also from a marketing standpoint of how to actually get your offer out the door.
Thanks for leaving reviews - I just can't even tell you how much that means to me. It's very exciting to see those. Gets me pumped.
We spent a lot of money and a lot of time putting this content out, so your reviews are super fun, and I really love 'em. Thankful You.
Get Rich - Do Good
BOOM!
If you're just starting out you're probably studying a lot. That's good. You're probably geeking out on all the strategies, right? That's also good.
But the hardest part is figuring out what the market wants to buy and how you should sell it to them, right?
That's what I struggled with for a while until I learned the formula.
So I created a special Mastermind called an OfferMind to get you on track with the right offer, and more importantly the right sales script to get it off the ground and sell it.
Wanna come?
There are small groups on purpose, so I can answer your direct questions in person for two straight days.
You can hold your spot by going to OfferMind.com.
Again, that's OfferMind.com.
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| 20 Nov 2016 | SFR 23: The 4 Essentials To Get Fast At ClickFunnels… | 00:23:11 | |
Click above to listen in iTunes... People Always Ask How I Got So Fast At ClickFunnels… Here's How…
What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yesterday, I was getting my haircut. I'm in the military. I'm in the Reserves. I'm in the Army. They like your hair cut a certain way. It's funny because when my hair feels long, everyone else, it's barely noticeable now but it's thinning out or whatever. It's funny though because I go get my haircut at the same spot every three weeks. The same girl has been cutting my hair. It's funny. I'm such a ClickFunnels evangelist... It fully changed my life. I just always wanted to be able to change others, too, so I tell everyone about it. I imagine a lot of you guys are the same way. You guys have messaged me personally, some of you and talked about that a little bit. I'll tell people at the grocery store. I'll tell people all over the place. I've been telling the lady that cuts my hair, she's actually young. She's quite a bit younger than I am. I'd say probably 21 and she wasn't that much younger. You guys are really going to laugh that I just said that but anyway, she doesn't really know what she wants to do with her life. I kept on telling her... It's been two times in a row now. I'm like, "Hey. Seriously, if you want to shortcut all the things that I had to go through to learn what I do, it took like five years, read the book, Dotcom Secrets and then go to ClickFunnels and watch the Funnel Hacks web class. If you do those three things," that's what I tell everyone to do. "If you're just getting started inside the ClickFunnels, those are the kinds of things you need to be doing." I spent so much time, so many hours. I can't tell you. I don't know why but I actually listen to a lot of podcasts and audio books while I'm at the gym. I have been doing that for a very, very long time. Staying up super late reading like crazy on our couch for years, and years and years, just studying my guts out. I remember, I think I told you guys a story also that there came this point where I'm just like, "Okay. I just found ClickFunnels. I've been working my guts out doing stuff with Word Press and it was not that good. It's super rough, very, very hard." I'm not a coder or a programmer. I'm self-taught on some things now but especially back in the day, I had no idea how to code or program or anything. I remember looking at myself in the mirror and I was just telling a friend this story actually. I remember looking myself in the mirror and thinking, realizing, "Oh, my gosh. ClickFunnels is literally going to change the world. It's going to change the way everything is done, especially online."
It's been doing that... We've been growing like crazy. I think there's 24,000 members now. Two weeks ago, there's 21,000. It's exploding. It's been going nuts. It's very, very exciting. Very exciting time for all of you guys as well. If you're not using it, please go get the trial. There's a free trial link that I have. It's at salesfunnelbroker.com/resources. Go to the resources page. Anyway, I remember looking myself in the mirror though and slamming down on the counter being like, "I am going to get freaking good at building funnels. I'm going to get good. I'm going to be the best in the world. I want to go out and be the best." I remember making that decision and looking myself right in the eyes and realizing that I was going to do whatever it took to get good and to get amazing and then get to a place where I've got enough assets out online that I wouldn't need to work for anyone else. That's totally what happened... I work for Russell Brunson because it's fun. I don't know. It's just cool to be here. It's fun to be on the cusp of everything that's going on. I'm certainly a ClickFunnels evangelist obviously. I want you guys to be doing the same thing. To be slamming down the fist, go seriously do this. I don't know if it's cheesy or whatever but for me, when I get ticked off or pissed off about something, when I get intense about stuff, that's when stuff in my life starts to change. That's when stuff starts to go well the way I want it to... If I'm like, "Oh, yeah. No. I'm going to do that. Yeah. I'm going to do that," and it's this future plan thing, it doesn't ever really happen. If I start to look at myself in the mirror though and I have to get a little bit pissed off and sometimes, what's nice about that is that the first few times I tried something, I fail. I fail like crazy. I fail a lot. I fail often and fail hard... It pisses me off more so I just push harder and ask more people and research more and learn and learn and try and launch, and launch and launch and launch. Finally, I don't know what really shifted but it's about a year and a half ago, things started changing and suddenly, all this stuff started making money. I was like, "I think I figured it out." Anyway, it came down to this point of me trying to get good at it. One of the reasons I wanted to talk about this is that I've had a shocking number of you come to me especially in the last two weeks and say, "Steve, please teach me how to be a funnel builder. Please teach me." I got some cool that I'm working out in the background for all you guys who've been asking that. You guys have been able to come funnel hack with me for a little while now. I'm not ready to announce that yet... That's a little sneak peek of what I'm thinking. It'd be cool but enough of you guys have asked that that I just wanted to point that out that there came this point where you got to get pissed off about it. Don't be bashful trying to be the best in the world about it. Meaning, that's not going to happen on accident... You have to do that stuff on purpose. Just build. I told you these are really the four things I tell everybody to do who is going to get into ClickFunnels. Number one. Read Dotcom Secrets. If you don't like reading, listen to the audio book but look at all the pictures and the graphs. No joke. That book will shortcut so many things that I had to go through to learn what I have. Okay. I'm talking years of stuff. All right. It is the most influential business book and personal development book that I have ever read. It's very, very, very tactile, very, very how-to. I don't know how else to give a great promo for it. In the blog post with this podcast, the blog at salesfunnelbroker.com, I will include links to all these products. You guys want to go search them out, okay. Yes. They're affiliate links. Get over it. I'm just saying. Anyway, copy me though on that. Okay. That's the reason I do this stuff. Yes, I put you through affiliate links. Yes, I send you guys email promos. Yes, I do it but look at what I'm doing because it works. Okay. Anyway, back to the list. Number one, you've got to read Dotcom Secrets. Number two. Please go watch the Funnel Hacks web class. Obviously, I'll put those links in there as well. Anyway, go watch the Funnel Hacks web class. It will show you what it means to be a funnel hacker. That's why you have to watch that. Number three. Go get the ClickFunnels trial. Number four. Once you have the trial, go find the industry and the business that you would love to have the most and go funnel hack them. If you watch the web class, you'll know what that means. Copy them. Okay. This is what I tell everyone else. Don't model right at first. First, you just got to learn how to use ClickFunnels. All right. Go find a funnel of the funnel that you wish you had and I want you to copy it. Literally, everything pixel by pixel, try and recreate everything you can inside of ClickFunnels. That's cool. I told you guys the story once. I definitely did that on a date once with my wife. I cloned out the home page of the email company, GetResponse. Anyway, I was just seeing how it worked. Pixel per pixel, no joke, I cloned out that entire home page. I was like, "Oh, my gosh." That's about the same time I hit the counter and I was like, "I'm going to get the best in the world at this." Anyway, those are the four things. Go do that. Now, how this ties back in the haircut, I've been teaching these things to the person that cuts my hair. I was like, "So, go do this. Go do this." She's got divorced with her husband and she's like, "Everything sucks, you know." She's in a dark place or whatever. She's like, "I wish I had more money. I could do some more things." I was like, "Here's how you do it. Here's how you do it." Okay. That was two or three times ago. She cut my hair.
If you suck at ClickFunnels, usually it's because you have never read the book. Anyway, she was just like, "No. I haven't read it." I came back again. She's like, "Oh, I got the book. I just haven't read it." This last time, she's like, "I've got the book. I'd actually downloaded it this time. I just haven't read it. I don't know. I just like to go home. I don't want to have to learn anything." She seriously said this. I was like, "Oh, you are not my target. I'm going to give up on you." She's like, "Yeah. I just don't want to learn anything. I come home after work. I just want to honestly, I want to party and I want to just not do anything when I go home." I was like, "Oh, okay. Really? Oh, my gosh." Please don't be any people like that. Gosh... There's something almost sanctifying to this entrepreneurial struggle that you and I are involved in. You know what I mean? It's very cleansing. It shows you. I remember Robert Kiyosaki said once. He said, "One of the reasons why business is so amazing is that," especially entrepreneurship, "Is that if you go and you decide to be an entrepreneur and you're pushing really hard," he's written those books. Obviously, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, The Cashflow Quadrant, those two are my favorite from him. Some of the others were really a little fluffy for me. I like the tactile stuff. He wrote in there that as you start to get down and you start on this entrepreneurial journey, it's exciting at first. Very exciting. "Oh, I'm going to be an entrepreneur." You beat your chest a little and go, "Yes. I'm going to go do this. I'll rule the world." Then you go like, "Wait. What really does that mean?" One of the first hurdles you're going to hit when you start moving as an entrepreneur, this is what he teaches is that you're going to experience some serious personal character flaws. Business will do this thing that it gets you. It takes you and it gets you. It shows you. "Hey, Steve. Here's what you suck at. Oh, did you know that you are a night owl?" "Oh, actually, I didn't know that." Business and the pressure, the good pressure but the pressure of entrepreneurship, "Wow. You showed that to me. I have a hard time sleeping sometimes if I'm trying to get something to work and it's not working yet." You know what I mean? "Oh, wow. I get a little bit edgy when I got X, Y and Z on my plate. Wow. Character flaw exposed, right?" You all see what I'm saying? For this lady, for this girl who is cutting my hair, she's having the exact same things happening to her and I'm watching it. It's like, "Wow. That's the first hurdle she has to overcome. Yes. I have to learn stuff to actually be successful." You know what I mean? You can think back and go, "Wow. What are the character flaws that have been exposed to me while I'm trying to build sales funnels?" What are these character flaws? What are the things right now? I'll tell you right now, like I said, I get so excited about the things that I want to go build and put out there. I'm building 20 funnels right now. It's almost 20 funnels and I got to get them done in the next two weeks. This here on the side just personally, okay. It's a crap ton of funnels. Anyway, here's one of my character flaws. I'm going to be vulnerable here for a second. I love to lift weights but when I get excited about stuff, the thought of spending an entire hour to an hour and a half in a gym, not being able to build cripples me. I don't go. There's times where, maybe three or four weeks and I don't go to the gym. I've actually told my wife, I think this last Sunday. I leaned over and I was like, "Hey, look." Sure. I'm out of shape because I was 6% body fat when I was in college and jacked and ripped and competing and winning in sprint triathlons and things like that. It was awesome but I was like, "Man, I feel heavy. I don't feel good. I'm loving what I'm doing professionally but I've got to have my life balanced. I need to go start lifting more." I've been lifting in the mornings. It's been great. For you, you guys are going to have the same things that happened to you. You're going to have your character flaws exposed... "Wow. I didn't know I was shy in those situations. Wow." Just watch your responses as you try to push forward and get things done and you'll start to notice and start to see the character flaws will pop up. Now there's going to be two things that happen when that happens to you. Number one, you're going to feel some stress and pressure. Number one... Your inclination is to shy away and go, "Oh," and this is one of the reasons why a lot of people don't get into entrepreneurship or try to make extra money on the side or even this little lifestyle so they can do things like take a cruise or whatever. They'll say, "Oh, I'm not X. I'm not smart enough. I don't have enough energy. I'm not good on camera. I can't do a podcast like Steve." It's like, "I was scared to death to launch this podcast. I barely did it because I was so scared that you guys weren't going to like it." You know what I mean? There's been overwhelming response. You guys have liked it, which has been great and it fuels it. I'm realizing and you guys need to know this also, you are better than you think you are. You are already. If you're already pursuing down this path, you're already owning and having and possessing knowledge of something that's going to make you better than the next guy. Okay. I mean, professionally, competition wise., free market capitalism wise. Anyway, that's the whole thing. These are all the thoughts that started just sprinting through my head as this girl's cutting my hair. I was like, "Gosh. Her character flaws are being exposed there. She's not doing the four things that I told her to do." Until she faces that character flaw, some character flaws we feel are roadblocks. These was the two things I was going to go into a second ago. Some of them are roadblocks meaning you will not progress unless you get over it. Some of them are just hindrances. They're annoyances. "Oh, yeah. I'm tired pretty much all the time because I'm a night owl. Oh, yeah. I'm not going to the gym like I want to." You know what I mean?
Don't do that... If you start to go through, "Well, I'm really, really bad at getting up early so I'm probably not going to do this business." Like, "No, no, no, no. What are you actually selling? What's the offer? What's the product?" Remember, that's separate... Think of the business as a separate entity than your own character flaws and body. You're trying to grow this thing up like it's a child. You're trying to raise it. Does that make sense? Anyway, those are the four things that I wanted to go over that if you want to get good at funnel hacking and funnel building, you got to go through. Read the book... Watch the web class... Get ClickFunnels trial and then go clone one of your competitors... Number two. Understand that as you go down this, you have character flaws that are being exposed to you right now. They're blowing up in your face. They're saying things like, "Hey. You can't do this." Sometimes, they come in the form of others. Friends and family can come out. I certainly had a lot of friends, they've said some things like that, like, "Wow. It's so cute. He's Steve trying to be entrepreneur." I'm like, "Okay. Stop looking at me like I don't have a job. I have a job and I have secondary income as more than my job makes. So that's great and I'm just having fun with it." Anyway, I want you guys to know that this is all attainable to you. It's all very, very real, very real. The more real you can make it in your head and see it and catch vision of it, close your eyes. See that you are where you want to be. Work your freaking guts out... You are going to be able to get to a spot where you've got like, "Wow. I'm moving through the four things. The character flaws, I'm starting to overcome them. I'm personally growing because of business. Go figure. Oh, my gosh." You guys start to get to the spot where you got all your assets out and you go do cool stuff like take a cruise. My wife and I are going do here next week. It is our fifth year anniversary. I guess these are my little post goodie announcements. It's our five-year anniversary. We got two kids. Totally awesome and we're going to go down to Cozumel & Yucatan. We're super stoked. It's going to be a party. Anyway, what's cool about it is I know that when I come back, we will have made more money without me doing anything than we spent on the cruise, which is totally true. That's the goal and that's the reality is that I got a few more funnels to finish in the next few days. I'm launching and pushing them over to somebody else for them to do the final polish. We got a huge traffic source that we're dumping into. I know, I just know. I've done this enough times now to know that it's going to sell a crap ton and we're going to make more money on this being away than being here. Anyway, that's the beauty, guys. That's what I want you guys to go for. Please tell me when you go take that first victory vacation, when you go take that first victory, whatever that is for you guys. My wife and I have not just gone on a vacation in five years so this is going to be great. The other cool thing that I wanted to tell you guys that I'm doing and please don't think I'm being self-centered on this. I'm just excited about it... I barely graduated high school. I was an idiot. I seriously got straight D's every semester for Algebra, for Spanish, for Science. No joke. I know what it was. I just wasn't turned on yet. I remember this point where the lights turned on. It was post high school. Anyway, I barely graduated high school and what's funny is that I was highly involved in extra curricular activities. I was in choir. I was in a lot of theater. I was head editor for a yearbook. I got three state awards for my layout designs, which is great. I was really involved in that kind of crap but the scholastic stuff, I really wasn't good at. What's cracking me up right now is that you guys ever heard of DECA, the DECA program? DECA has invited me to go speak at their regional conference with 3,000 kids tomorrow. I'm flying out in, I didn't even pack yet. I'm literally leaving for the airport in 30 minutes. I'm at the office. I got to finish something then I got to go throw some clothes together quick and then I got to go. Anyway, that's exciting and I'm literally going to teach 3,000 kids how to funnel hack. The competition that they've got going on is that whoever can raise the most money gets a scholarship to college. They're going to use funnels to raise that money. I'm going teach them how to do that. It's very, very exciting. I'm going to finish writing a speech on the airplane. I got to finish sending out. There's a few promos I want you guys to see that I am sending. Just note that they're promos. Yeah, whatever, for some tools that I use that really speed up a lot of stuff. I'll let you guys, you're welcome. Anyway, pay attention to your email... You guys, I just want you to know that I think you're all awesome. If you need a pre-built funnel, definitely go to salesfunnelbroker.com. You can check out the free funnel section there. A lot of you guys have been asking me personal questions on Facebook and things like that. That's great. It's just really hard for me to get back to that many people. If it's a question about funnels, my funnel strategy and stuff like that, go to salesfunnelradio.com. Scroll down to the bottom right. There's going to be a green button there. You can click a button there and it will record a question straight off of your browser to me. I like to include them in the show. You might have just seen that the "HeySteve!" Show with Becky just came out. She's asking about how I order pages for almost everything that we can in ClickFunnels. Some of it's a little bit more tactile but just understand it's pretty awesome there. Anyway, if you got a question there, go and ask it. I vet the questions. If it gets on the show, I send you a "HeySteve!" t-shirt for free. Start with saying, "Hey, Steve. My name is," and then ask your question. No more than 30 seconds if you don't mind and I'd put it straight in the show. Anyway, you guys are all awesome and appreciate it. It's been such a blast to meet so many of you guys recently. A lot of you guys reached out. Anyway, go crush it. Remember the four things. Remember character flaws. Expect them but go and tackle them and go crush it, guys. I will talk to you after DECA and after our cruise.
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| 30 Nov 2016 | "HeySteve!" Show 3 : Becky De Acetis Asks Why I ONLY Use Order Pages In Full Sites… | 00:10:06 | |
Click above to listen in iTunes... I don't just build funnels in ClickFunnels. Full out websites are not only possible, they're CRAZY fast... Here's some tricks fo' ya!!
Steve Larsen: What's going on everybody? This is Steve Larsen and this is an "HeySteve!" segment of the Sales Funnel Radio Podcast. Announcer: Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales Funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. Steve Larsen: Alrighty Alrighty, Hey! So today's question actually comes from Becky, and actually I have interviewed Becky before in the past, so if you want to, go back and listen to her interview. It's absolutely, totally amazing. Absolutely amazing interview. But anyways, I'm going to play her question. Becky: Hey Steve, I was wondering on your template for the website, why you made every page an order page? I think I know, but just wanted to be sure. Thanks so much! Steve Larsen: Okay so I actually get asked that question pretty frequently.
Literally put up my website on one page or on the right side of your screen and then the version that you download from me on the left side, and then you can go through and just add or change whatever and just make sure you model after what I've done. It works, almost everyone it works quite well... I want you to know, I had somebody come out and they were on YouTube and they were calling me out saying, "How is it that," I can't remember what they said. They were like, "How come you didn't give this to me for free? Are you serious, you're not," They said something like that, I can't remember exactly what it was, but I was crazy fired up, like, "Are you kidding me? I gave so much stuff away for you guys. I just finished building another person's Funnel, and I charge ten grand for them, and I'm giving you the entire website for free. That's like giving ten grand away." I got to be honest, I still get a little gut check every time I do that because I worked two or three hundred hours on that thing. I worked a long time on that, but I just wanted you guys to know that I do care about you and I'm obsessed with Funnel building. So anyways, back to the question... Becky asked, "Why is every single page," when you guys download it you'll see it, "Why is every page set up as an order page?" If you don't know what Becky is talking about, when you're inside of ClickFunnels, before you get in the editor but you're in the actual Funnel, you'll notice on this left side that it all says "Order Page." So the first page will be a home page but underneath it says "Order Page," right? Then there's an about page. Underneath it says "Order Page," and I've had people ask me, "Why do you do that?" So think about it this way. ClickFunnels is absolutely fantastic, not just for building things like Funnels of course, right? I use them to build websites, full websites, and I've done it for many people. You can check out echoh2water.com, that's a full one I built out. I guess I won't list them all out here, but I've built a ton of different websites inside of ClickFunnels and the way that I do it is first, right off the bat, I make every page an order page. Here's the reason... A lot of times what happens is I say I'm building a site, I'll say I'm building a full website inside of ClickFunnels and in the future, I'm like, "You know what? I would love it if I just sold something straight off of this page." Let's say I'm in the about page section of my website. If you went to salesfunnelbroker.com/about, you'd see me and you'd see about me and I'm telling you guys who I am and what kind of person I am and trying to get a relationship with you guys, right? Let's say I wanted to sell something off of that page right there. You actually can do it straight off that page because it's an order page. There's been many times in the past where I have, someone's come and I only made this mistake one or two times and realized I should build out every single page as an order page. This is off of a website, understand what I'm telling you... This is not a traditional Funnel that I built out.... The reason I do it is because there's been many times in the past where I built for somebody and I go out and I'm like, "Cool, hey, the project's done," and then they're like, "Hey, can I sell something just straight off of this page?" And I'm like, "That was different than you and I agreed on. Sure. But I'm going to have to rebuild that as an order page type or there's some really ninja code things you can do to switch it," and I was like, "Oh I don't want to anyway." So I just rebuild it real quick with one on one page, one on the other. But anyways, that's the reason why I do it though. So that to future assume any kind of purchase that might happen on that page in the future. Now that's kind of a quick answer to your question, so I wanted to go through a little bit more about how I build a whole site inside of ClickFunnels, because I have been asked that so many times. So, that's why I was like, okay this is totally going on the show. Becky I'll send you your T-shirt right after this... Here's how I do it though. Like I was saying I build out, first I select, I delete everything out of the Funnel. I start out a Funnel, it doesn't matter what kind and click Funnels. I delete every single page. Then I just create an order page one and choose any template. When I open it up though, I delete everything. Then I'll go out and I Funnel hack, essentially. Who are the other guru's out there? Who are the other people out there who are crushing it who I might want to model after? And I'll get four or five different websites that I like the look and feel of them. I don't want it to be too corporate-y... So then I go out and I build the whole thing and here's the key part. Make sure that all of headers with all the links are in there. Make sure all of the footers with all the links are in there. Make sure you get that page, as far as a template goes as 100% complete as you possibly can. Because then what I do afterwards is I'll go in and I'll just save it as a template. I save that whole page as a template and then I just literally paste it out like five or six times and name one of them the about page. Name the next one the services page, name the next one the podcasting page. Just like you guy see on the top of salesfunnelbroker.com. What's cool about that though, is the front page becomes, and any of the other pages become the entry point for other Funnels that I'm building out. So here, go check this out, for example this is how I do it. If you want me to build the Funnel for you, I did not think about all the people that wanted that when I built salesfunnelbroker.com, I was just planning on being a broker, which I do that also, by the way. But I was thinking, "Man, people want me to build their funnels for them, this is awesome, I'm really excited to do this!" If you look, the salesfunnelbroker.com site is not in the same category in ClickFunnels as the services, /services Funnel is. It's a different Funnel. But anyway, I don't want to keep rambling on. It's now turned into a long answer, but that's the reason why so that I can assume that they'll be future sales, which is awesome, which is what I've done. That free Funnel section, guys that's making like a grand a week and I'm not doing anything on it. You guys can go do the same... I want you to know though, you can download the entire site that I built for free, like I said, right in your ClickFunnels account. If you don't have one, just get the free trial, it will go right in still. But what I also did, if you go to the free Funnels section in there, scroll down to the bottom, I created a custom WordPress theme, so that I could still put up blog posts, and there's a whole other episodes that I've got on how to do that.
I've made the whole thing available for you guys though. It cost me a good chunk of money to create, a lot of time, a lot of time with another coder that I ended up hiring and she's awesome. Well we ended up packaging up the entire blog theme and we made it available to all you guys. And so if you look, if you click across the top, salesfunnelbroker.com the blog at the top, there's a whole bunch of different places. Well the blog is not on the same URL, it's actually WordPress. All I did is I went and I paid someone to custom create a WordPress theme that made WordPress look like the site salesfunnelbroker.com. So they looked like they were together on purpose. That's what that is. So if you want to, you can also get that as a companion to the entire salesfunnelbroker.com website. Anyways guys, I'm sorry, this is kind of more of a nitty gritty, that was like hard core style more of an episode and I promise I won't do these too often and these "HeySteve!" segments is a little bit more forward, not as many stories I should say. Anyway, guys, thanks so much and Becky thanks so much. I will get your address from you and then I'll send you off that T-shirt. Anyone else who has a question though, please go to salesfunnelradio.com and you can see, if you scroll down on the right, there's a little green button you can click it and ask any question you want. It will forward off to my email. I kind of vet the questions to see which ones will be great on the podcast and then I send you out a free "HeySteve!" T-shirt kind of as a thank you. Anyways guys, hey thank you so much, and I will chat with you all later. Announcer:
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| 12 Mar 2019 | SFR 224: An Unlikely Success... | 00:27:16 | |
Everything you see in me now is PRACTICED…
I want to tell you a little bit about my mindset... and how I installed some of the habits of successful people that I WASN’T born with myself…
I’m gonna tell you why I really am the most UNLIKELY SUCCESS… and how YOU can literally change YOUR brain and rewire yourself for success!
ANNIE GRACE
I recently went on yacht trip to a little island called Bimini...
I've never seen water so clear and still. There were no waves and the ocean was like glass.
One of the things that I wanted to share with you today is something that I learned during that trip from an amazing lady called Annie Grace.
If you don't know who Annie Grace is, she has an entire business teaching people how to break the habits of being an alcoholic.
The level and depth that she’s studied the way the brain works to truly be effective in helping people is incredible.
She has a MASSIVE following. Annie Grace is truly impressive.
I want to walk you through some of the things that she taught while we were on the island because there are a lot of ties with how I've tried to behave…
It’s fascinating to know WHY thing worked as well as they have, and how you can build a new brain that supports your success.
I'm gonna to go over what I learned from Annie, and then tell you why I want to share this with you… THOUGHTS ARE LIGHT.
#1: Thoughts are things.
The source of thought and thoughts are things.
#2: Thoughts are literally electricity with protein.
The thought itself is like a blast of electricity in the brain that travels really, really fast. Thoughts are literally light (which is fascinating in itself).
#3: Proteins build structures around your brain to guide the light.
So when you have thoughts... and when you’re experiencing a new “A-ha,” or whatever... there are little lightning bolts shooting around in your head.
#4: The reason we keep having the same thought is that proteins build pathways in our brain that channel the light.
#5: 80% of what we thought about yesterday will be what we think about today.
#6: Repeated thoughts build protein on protein on protein… and this is literally what establishes habit.
So if you have a habit or reoccurring thought… if you're thinking the same way over and over again, the reason is that you have a build up of protein that’s occurred over time which guides the light (meaning your thoughts) in your head.
#7: These proteins actually guide your thoughts inside of your head.
Obviously, there are pros and cons to this…
For Example:
If you’ve grown up in a family or culture were those you're hanging around continually spur the same negative thought.. or continually tell you, “No, you're never going to do this,” then you’ll have a negative reoccurring thought pattern to deal with.
*THIS* is the reason why you really are the average of the top five people that you hang around with.
If I want different thoughts, I need a different environment to help you build protein on protein to help you channel the new thoughts in your head.
#8: The MORE protein that’s have built up in certain areas the easier those thoughts are to have and keep.
(Seriously, how interesting is this! This is really fascinating.)
#9: Habits are literally lots of proteins paths that make it easy for the light to travel.
So if you want different habits of thought… you need to build up different parts of your brain to make it easy for the light to easily travel.
Here’s an example Annie used (this made me laugh), she said:
“If you keep having the same thoughts, or you develop a skill set... the amount of time the light has spent spinning around in your head means that you’ll have MORE proteins built on top of each other.
You physically have a larger part of the brain for those thoughts…
For example, The part of Stephen Larsen's brain on offer creation is huge... it’s massive!
He has a huge bulging area where offer creation exists in his brain.”
I was like, "Oh!"
I thought it was funny.
#10: What part of your brain is biggest indicate your biggest habits.
(How cool is that?!)
#11: Whatever you think about MOST will grow.
This was one of the major things that Annie taught about... You can physically change your brain.
Your brain is like a stamp of what you actually thinking about.
Her argument was being happy, being unhappy... different things in our life are a result of patterned thinking.
#12: You can completely rewire the brain starting in four days, and be completely rewired in as fast as 21 days.
The first step to break and rebuild the thoughts inside of our head is to gain awareness of the fact that we have a thought that we don't want.
#13: To start rewiring your brain you need to get clarity on why that thought may be wrong and then flip it. Annie calls this THE A.C.T:
STEPHEN, HOW DO YOU…?
Anytime somebody asks me what I do I just say, "Oh, I sell stuff on the internet," because I don't want to explain. (I should probably come up with another way to say that.)
But when I'm hanging around people who know what I do and geek out with me, a recurring theme I'm beginning to be asked is:
"Stephen you seem to move with such ease. You set a goal, you see where you want to go, and then you just do it. You just go for it." This has been commented on multiple times, especially in the last little bit. And I'm like, "Well, yeah."
That's my answer.
Why, if I know what I want, would I sit back and NOT move towards it?
But that question is becoming a recurring theme, so I want to peel back the curtain a little bit to help you understand why I’m able to move that way.
EVERYTHING IS PRACTICED
I've been in this game now for almost eight years. I didn't start publishing until about four years ago...
And when I started, I sucked at it super bad. I was absolutely terrible at it (like, seriously).
On the Sales Funnel Radio YouTube channel you can go back and watch some of the earlier videos. I haven’t deleted them, but I want to. They're that bad.
I’d try to go live on Periscope…
I’d wait for people to show up, but I felt I had to fill the time, so I would just start talking. I didn't even know what the hell I was talking about.
I’m 100% the least likely success story.
I am the exact opposite person today than I was back then. And I didn't start changing without a lot of just freakin' grit.
What I'm trying to help you understand is that EVERYTHING that you see and EVERYTHING that I've done has been a result of will.
It has not been an accident.
There are little hacks and little tiny, I don't want to say tricks, but there are ways to speed up the process...
BUT… there are very few real shortcuts.
Publishing consistently is a shortcut for making up for funnel building skills or lack thereof... but there are NOT many other real shortcuts to development.
BUSINESS GROWTH & PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
While we were driving back from the yacht trip, (we came back into the port of Miami) … I was in the same Uber with Brent Coppieters and Natalie Hodson.
Natalie and I were talking, (and it was really nice of her), she said, “Stephen, it's crazy how much you've just blown up in the last year and a half.”
I can't remember exactly what she asked, but I told her that I’d realized that:
My business does not grow beyond my personal level.
I've danced between marketing and systems, marketing and systems.
I have these spurts where just tons of a lot of cash comes in, but then it’ll out-do my systems, and I'm like, “Crap! I've got to pull back and go build more systems.”
This has been true for my business overall and my own personality/ capacity.
There’s NOT a chance I could actually be performing the way I am even four years ago.
*I DIDN’T QUALIFY* My mindset wasn’t up to the challenge.
One of the things that I've really been careful to do in this last little bit is to become conscious of how I'm thinking…
So I just want to give you a few little tips, or pieces of advice (hope that's okay)... on the things that I've done that have made a lot of difference to how I think.
...Because (going back to Annie Grace), if your brain’s literally getting fatter in the areas you think about most... that's something to be conscious about!
That’s great news! but there’s also some bad news...
BREAKING PATTERNS
# The bad news might be that you have some really fat parts of your brain filled with unhelpful patterns that you'll have to break:
(We've all done that stuff, right!)
So we need to become cognizant of the beliefs inside of our head.
The negative could be that we have learned things in our lives that are NOT actually true.
We believe them because we’ve got a crap ton of proteins built up that make it easy for the thought to spin that story inside your head over and over again.
# The Positive of all of this (and Annie taught this), is that you can have a complete rewiring in 21 days. That's insane!
REGENERATE YOUR BRAIN
The body regenerates every cell every three months, (or something like that…)
You physically can become an entirely new human being every three months.
So if you're like, “Oh, my gosh, I'm so tired of this in my life,” or being broke... or having scarcity mentality... or being freakishly negative all the time.
(That is draining to me. I hate being around people like that.)
BUT…
if you're tired of being, whatever it is…. You can change it!
That's the point of this episode.
So my answer to all these people keep walking up saying, "Stephen, how do you move so freely?"
*IT’S PRACTICED*
There's the answer…
There's plenty of times, I wake up and I'm like:
“I don't freakin’ want to do what I'm supposed to do today.”
That happens a lot. A lot. A lot. But I get up.
I use my environment as a place to get me in state. There's no person out there who wants to be doing what they are 24/7.
A CALLOUSED MIND
One of my favorite guys I'm listening to a lot is David Goggins. If you’re offended by swearing don't listen to him. He swears a ton, but I'm a huge fan of his mentality.
He runs these crazy ultra marathons.
I was listening to an interview when someone said to him, "Why do you run if you hate it so much?" And he's said something like:
"What are you talking about? I run because I'm preparing for life. I'm not running to run. I'm running because it's hard and I hate it. I'm running because I'm developing a calloused mind."
I believe everything single thing he's saying about that. That's exactly how I've done it. There's no other way.
MINDSET
When I started doing the Two Comma Club X Program, the Original 2 Comma Club Program, the One Funnel Away... all my other programs, I thought I would be teaching marketing principles…
More often than not, I don't even get to the marketing principles, strategies and cool tactics... because people can't handle them. I can't even get inside someone's business and do what I know will work... because I'm fighting their brains.
I've got to break those proteins down... and I've got to do it faster than 4 - 21 days.
So I've gotten really good at breaking and rebuilding people's beliefs *QUICKLY* ...or at least satiating them enough to try and install a new belief in their brain.
So I'm trying to give you a few little tips and tricks on how I've done this. Tricks is a stupid phrase. I shouldn’t say tricks. There are no tricks…
There's the path and your speed on it. That's it. There are NOT really any shortcuts.
BORROW THE LIGHT
Understand that…
#1: If you're having a hard time believing that any of this works... or believing you could do it… or you don't make any money with it, or whatever...
Understand that you DON’T have to be your own source of light for a while.
If you're like, “I have a hard time even thinking like that…” Don't try and conjure it from your own head then. Borrow it.
I've borrowed light and motivation from other people when:
I listen to a ton of motivational videos. I listen to a ton of comedy. I'm trying to isolate my brain and borrow light, ideas, thoughts, and positivity.
“I really could do this because that person has and that person has, and that person has... If I haven't achieved my goal it means I'm the variable, NOT the idea.”
You understand?
BUILDING MIND MUSCLE
I have a playlist on YouTube. I think it's public. Anyone can listen to it. It's called Mind Muscle.
When Annie Grace started talking about this, I was like, “That's how I think about it.” It's so true.
Mind Muscle: I'm literally trying to build up areas of my brain to have consistent thoughts about... whatever. Positive thoughts, new ideas, new things…
That's how I can look at a funnel, or at a business, and just have tons of ideas on how to could solve any problem…
I have a lot of logged hours.
Waaay more than 21 days where I've constantly repeated thoughts trying to build up (now I know) those proteins in my head.
So #1: What I'm trying to help you understand is that if you have a hard time being positive...
(Not that you have to be this freakin' cheery fairy all the time, you know what I mean? I'm NOT positive all the time. I'm not.)
BUT… if you have a hard time believing:
STOP acting like you're the ONLY source of the light and the ideas that can install those new beliefs in your head. *YOU’RE NOT* INSTALLING NEW BELIEFS
Go find a ton of playlists or videos (or whatever) on YouTube. Motivational stuff that’s really inspiring to you.
Inspiration that makes you feel like:
“Man, I wanna take over the world, baby. What's up? Yeah!”
Save that, and then listen to it A LOT
Multiple times I’ve laid on the very floor with my phone above my head thinking about and listening to motivational stuff when I can't conjure it on my own.
Every single influencer, every single leader has a support system, and they’ll lean back on it when they're NOT feeling strong enough.
Just understand that.
I think there's this mentality sometimes like, “Stephen's got it all together. Russell's got it all together. All these people who are big, they've got it all together.”
That’s so freaking NOT true. That is terrible crap. That is a HUGE LIE. I'm begging you NOT to believe it.
What we've all gotten good at is knowing how to get into state.
WHEN LIFE’S NOT PERFECT
I'll tell you, this morning I'm tired, man. I'm tired. There's a huge to-do list on my desk. It's MASSIVE. In the past, that would stress me out and I would seek dopamine releases and distractions.
I’d watch excessive TV, play video games, or seek the feel-good of dopamine, the chemical distraction.
I’d try and get myself distracted and feeling good instead of focusing on that massive list.
This is something I've fought. I had to get over that. There's a huge to-do list on my desk. I mean it's absolutely massive.
There's a lot of stuff on my plate right now; there's a lot and it's big, big projects.
...And when I have a lot of creativity-based things on my head, that's a heavy weight.
However, I've got good at taking those things, breaking them down and belittling the weight. I think, “Ah, it's not that big of a deal.”
Really it’s a HUGE. Freaking huge. It's a big deal. I have a lot of pressure on my noggin right now, but the way I handle it is practiced, my friends.
I could not have handled this amount of pressure even two years ago... even a year ago. It is practiced. It is practiced.
There are protein build up in my head that shows me how to act in my various roles:
I'm just trying to help you guys understand that there is NOT a freaking soul on this planet that wakes up one day and says, "I got it all together!"
“Stephen, how do you have all these pieces together?” I don't! I just have more of it together than you do (if you're asking me that question).
So what I do is I build up a support system…
Find your inspiration outside of you. Know what inspires you. So that when you're NOT feeling it, you can plug into that. Get your little solar charge... and move on.
So, there are a few things that I do to do that:
I think it was Abraham Lincoln that said, "With all the pressures of my life, if I did not laugh, I would surely die."
I listen to A LOT of comedy, I don't think I've told you that before... because if I didn’t laugh I would surely die.
I'm trying to change the world, but you don't get it without really wanting it.
I'm trying to take something that I have that's very unique. That no one else has ever done, and go and change lives with it. And it’s working!
But you're not going to be successful without really, really wanting it. And I do, and so I'm gonna get it.
So what I want you to understand is:
Something that I learned from the army:
Fake motivation is still REAL motivation.
And so when I step out and I'm like, “Man, I'm ready to rock the day,” I'm not lying to myself.
I'll have a little Debbie Downer moment where I'm going to experience my true emotions as it is:
“I don't want to do what I'm doing right now.”
I'll have a little pity party for two-three minutes, and then I'll go through the things that help me get back in state.
It's a practiced system that I've developed over the past eight years.
I wasn't really cognizant of it until about four years ago. I really wish I had someone to guide me back in the day. I just didn't.
I hope that you understand what I'm talking about here...
You can literally change the makeup of your brain, but it doesn't start without your recognition of what you don't like about how you think.
HOW TO TALK YOURSELF INTO FALSE BELIEFS
One of the biggest beliefs I hear from people is, "Stephen, I have shiny object syndrome."
Believing that you have that problem is literally self-manifesting the fact that you have it.
I don't have shiny object syndrome, but I do suffer from insatiable curiosity… and I know that about myself. I'm not going to try and change that…
So I go into the playground zone... and then I get hyper-focused. I say, “NO” to pretty much everything that's out there. That is practiced. I used to say,“YES” to everything.
I equated the number of opportunities on my desk with success and I got nothing done.
That was a very painful period of me.
I knew I had the power to make money, but I wasn't because I couldn't focus.
I'm just trying to help you guys understand that there's no guru out there, no influencer, no one who has it all together... Each successful person you see had to build these habits in their brain.
Marketing itself is the act of changing beliefs with the intent of a sale. I'm literally rewiring brains with what I do... and I've gotten good at it. But the same is true for our own brains as we move forward.
If you're willing to shift up, change, break yourself a little bit, and go through some pain by thinking differently... literally, in a very short amount of time, you can be a new you.
A new life requires a new you!
If you're like, "I want that... but I've never had it before," prepare to change, my friend.
Get real about it.
Be open about the fact that you're freaked out. Name it. There's nothing wrong with that. You should be honest with yourself. Don't act like your pains NOT there...
Don't wallow in the pain. Come up with an attack plan. Figure out a way.
Understand that a lot of successful people, just know how to recharge and replug when things get though... and that's it. That's the secret.
I keep things simple with the thought that:
What I get done today will determine where I am tomorrow.
If I don't get the things I need to get done, then it’s like I’ve done nothing that day.
If I'm building a project, what I get done today will determine where I am tomorrow...
So, I better freaking build and do the things that create a real foundation... and not just fluffy dumb work.
I only work on those things that I can build upon and progress day by day.
So understand:
There are over 500 2 Comma Club Awards now. 500 people have made a million dollars. What other proof do you freaking need, right?
For most of them, this is the first time they’ve ever done anything really successful. It's not like they all came these successful backgrounds.
I just laugh every time someones like, "You always have it together." Yeah, that's not true. That's not true for anybody.
BOOM!
Just try to tell me you didn't like that.
Hey, whoever controls content controls the game. Want to interview me, or get interviewed yourself?
Grab a time now at stevejlarsen.com.
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| 01 Oct 2019 | SFR 281: Using OPE (Other People's Events) | 00:18:20 | |
How am I using the Perfect Presentation Script in OTHER people's funnels?
Are webinars dead?
Kinda…
Russell doesn't use the term webinars anymore, it’s now called a ‘presentation’.
… and it's because people are like, "Well, I'm not gonna do a webinar to sell my thing."
Frankly, people who think that are missing the point... ‘cause it's the format NOT the name that matters.
The script itself works extremely well... whether you call it a webinar or a presentation 🤓
So ‘YES!’ the webinar is dead…
Long live the Perfect Presentation Script!
HOW TO PROMOTE YOUR BUSINESS AT OTHER PEOPLES EVENTS!
So here’s a question for you…
Q: What has 5 parts and can be used to sell or launch *ANYTHING* on or offline (and why I’m cycling in the boonies at 10 pm)?
A: (You guessed it…) The Perfect Presentation Script!
And this may come as a shock to some people…
Selling a car, is the same as selling an info product, is the same as selling soap, is the same as selling insurance... etc. Sales is sales.
And the other night, while cycling in the boonies, I came up with a sweet NEW way that I could ‘kill two birds with one stone’ to use other people’s events to save myself hours of work…
Here’s how it happened...
NO THANKS, I’D RATHER BIKE…
Growing up, my parents said I was NOT allowed to drive unless I got my Eagle Scout.
I didn't wanna too... so I biked EVERYWHERE instead.
And it wasn't just down the road, I put in some serious miles in high school.
Recently, I started cycling again…
It was pitch black and I had only the w flashlight on my bike.
I was trying to study the road and pushing super hard, some things were coming at me fast…
It's totally a Children of the Corn scenario...
It was so *FREAKY* … but it got me thinking!
RELEASE THE PRESSURE
It’s been such an intense week!
We’ve been…
Now we're working with people to get all the inputs that my funnel team needs to build their funnel for them.
*Yep! You heard that correctly*
You may not know about OfferLab yet, but this is the second year we've run it.
It was successful the first year, but now we’ve found ways to make it even MORE successful.
So, anyway, it's been an intense week, and honestly, I need time to do aggressive physical activities just to stay in the zone.
I use my little Apple Watch to track my time and distance and I'm at 19 and a half miles in about an hour and a half...
Those of you guys who cycle might be thinking, "Oh, that's not that far, Steve."
I get it, but check out the bike I'm on…
It's a mountain bike…
Look how FAT those tires are.
Give me some credit!
I'm pushing pretty hard, and I burn A LOT of calories doing this.
I’m trying to get in more shape so that I can go jujitsu... it's gonna be a ton of fun.
MY SPEECH WRITING HACK
Anyway, back to that *sweet idea* I had…
It suddenly hit me that I'm speaking at events six times in the next six weeks.
Which means…
I have six speeches to plan and write and it takes me, on average a solid 8 - 15 hours to create each speech.
People are like, “Woah, Stephen, you don't need to do that.”
I've had people tell me, "Stephen, you could just take a marker, stand up, and teach."
Even if I'm NOT selling something for money, I'm still selling ideas.
And so I need to know…
This is my craft. I'm not gonna just stand up and just spitball it, that's dumb.
I’m highly prepared for every speech I give, *highly*...
HERE’S MY AGENDA
I'm gonna be speaking at Carnegie Hall along with...
...I'm really excited about it.
I'm NOT normally the kinda guy to name drop stuff, (and frankly, that kinda drives me a little bit nuts…)
But…
IT’S SOOO COOL!!!
These are some of the people that I've learned from over the years, and maybe you have too.
I'm pumped about it.
I'm giving two speeches at Carnegie Hall, and then the very next weekend, I'm speaking, literally back to back, at two different events in different locations.
On Friday, October 4th, (I believe it's the fourth), I'm gonna speak at Boss Con.
And then Saturday, October 5th, I'm speaking at Carrot Con and Daymond John is gonna be there!
Then I come back home to Inner Circle, and then I think the next week I’m getting on a plane to speak at Pruvit’s event.
A lot of you guys know I'm in Pruvit, I'm in Russell's downline.
I love Pruvit, I’m drinking it right now.
It's A LOT of speeches.
So I was thinking to myself, "Self, what else has five things? Oh, My Lanta, webinars/ presentations do."
So here's what I was thinking…
BREAKING DOWN THE PERFECT PRESENTATION
I'm allowed to sell at Carrot Con, but the others, I'm not allowed to.
So, if I just figure out which platforms would be best for…
... can you see where I'm going with this?
So there are five parts to the perfect presentation, and I'm gonna take the speeches I write, put them in order, and then…
I’ve literally created a whole NEW presentation from all the speeches for these events.
I freakin’ love the perfect webinar (oops, presentation) format; I use it for EVERYTHING.
It's how I sell my…
That format is so beautiful to sell *ANYTHING*...
Even something is FREE, you still gotta sell it.
I’M AN ARTIST
At OfferMind 2019 we collected about $1.4 to 1.5 million in sales.
We don’t have the final count, so we're not quite sure yet.
But it's about $1.4 to $1.5 million in sales and I think we'll get to 1.6 or 7 - which is crazy.
Here’s the thing, though…
I spent four days just creating the slides for that one hour pitch.
… four days on just the slides!
‘Cause I'm an artist baby.
I'm a scientist, but I also love the art part as well.
So when people are like, “Well, Stephen, you don't need to... “
*I’M GONNA PREPARE*
#GeeksGetPaid
However, instead of me spending 10 hours each for my next five speeches…
What if I just spent the time creating one webinar, took out the pieces, and I told it across different stages?!?!
Of course, I'm gonna have to adapt it a little bit. I know it's probably NOT gonna fit perfectly…
I can't just walk on to the last stage and just immediately start pitching!
I'm still gonna have to have a little origin story and stuff like that…
But I'm gonna make sure I do it in a way that I can lace together the speeches from the five different stages.
It's gonna be sooo sick- I'm psyched about it.
PULLING IT TOGETHER
I don't have that long to speak at Carnegie Hall; I have two sessions that are like 25 minutes each.
It's not that long and I get it, it's just an honor to be there.
That event's called Living Legends - so I'm excited to even be called a ‘Living legend’ - that's REALLY honoring.
So, 25 minutes is not really enough time for me to teach something in-depth meaty and juicy, which is what I'm kinda known for…
I'll still teach something, but I'm selling me NOT an idea.
Most people will have no idea who I am...
I don't think Martha Stewart even knows that I'm breathing air right now
... and that's totally cool.
So instead, what if I go and I actually sell them on me.
So I might as well tell my origin story at Carnegie Hall.
...and then, I'll give some cool nuggets on how to create cool offers and sales funnels and stuff like that.
BOSS CON
Then the next event I’m psyched for is Rachel Pedersen's Boss Con Event.
Hopefully, you’re going? I’m excited to see you there.
My guess is I’ll probably share Secret #1 or #3 at Boss Con.
Now, if you don't know what I'm talking about when I say this…
I don't wanna get too deep in that here…
But the whole point of this is, that I'm trying to find more patterns and places to tell use the presentation script…
So I'm basically breaking up a presentation funnel script at tons of events and I'm gonna use that to launch a product I'm promoting.
So, "Stephen, what products are you gonna promote?"
I’m so glad you asked… 😉
YOUR ONLY ONE FUNNEL AWAY
I love the One Funnel Away Challenge, and so I said…
“Just so you know, ClickFunnels... I think I'm gonna go sell the One Funnel Away Challenge at Carrot Con."
And they were like, "Cool, we’ve got some additional things we want you to test with that."
Hopefully, I'm alright to say this…???
But ClickFunnels is sending a bunch of One Funnel Away boxes to Carrot Con for me so I can sell One Funnel Away, which is super cool.
So understanding that I'm such a big proponent of One Funnel Away…
( I help teach a lot of the one funnel away challenge. I'm one of the coaches in the challenge.)
… it puts me in a kind of a neat spot where I can actually create a webinar selling One Funnel Away by telling it over five different events.
That’s *SICK* (in the modern sense)!
I'm so excited about it, it's gonna be awesome.
WORKING THE PERFECT PRESENTATION I guess the whole purpose of this episode is that it doesn't need to be an official ‘webinar’...
You just need to understand the principles behind why the presentation script works so well.
The presentation script tackles false beliefs in the order that the brain typically experiences any sale or decision.
For example:
When I decided to bike super far tonight, I actually went through the same process that I’d go through if I was buying something.
First of all, my vehicle-based objection to the bike ride was...
"Stephen, shut up! (Steve is talking to Stephen, the weak side of me) Go to a gas station and pump up the tire."
And that's what I did.
“Don't worry about it, just set your Apple watch, Steve. Go ahead and press the button, and start moving.”
"That's okay, son. You got yourself some Keto from Pruvit, man."
...and that's what I did.
Most decision-making happens in the process of the presentation script, not just sales.
That's the purpose… that's what I'm trying to say in this episode.
IT’S ALL SCRIPTED
So, if you're like, "Man, I'm gonna go sell something. I don't have time to do a full-out perfect presentation funnel."
Then *DON’T*... just take the idea behind it and lace it in these different places.
Every single product that I'm selling right now has a perfect presentation funnel selling in front of it... at EVERY price point!
I use the perfect presentation script for EVERYTHING, it's magic.
Probably three years ago, I realized that there was a hack to the game, and ALL I had to do was learn how to sell expensive things to people with money.
That's it!
Q: Guess what the best way to do that is?
A: The perfect presentation funnel.
Q: Guess what that means though? Guess where you can sell with it?
A: *ANYWHERE*
I was dropping voice mails on people's phones before OfferMind telling very brief two-minute stories to pre-frame their brains before they showed up.
It's ALL scripted, baby!
Every single little pause of my OfferMind speech.
There was a lot of thought behind…
I love my craft, man, “Oink, baby. What's up? Oink.” I'm very prepared, I have never stepped on a stage unprepared.
There have been many times that I’ve…
It's that big of a deal to me to step on a stage prepared because there's a lot that goes into it.
It's NOT about content, it's about beliefs and distribution.
That's direct response marketing right there; beliefs and distribution - that's measurable. [chuckle]
There it is, that's marketing.
Anyway, and that's the latest way that I'm using the perfect presentation script.
Alright, my friends, hopefully, you enjoyed the episode…
... and go do something freaky!
#GetRich. #BOOM!
SEE STEVE LIVE
So several years ago, I walked by a stage in a basketball stadium.
It was my college campus and I was deeply concerned with what I wanted to do in my life.
For some reason, I looked at the stage and thought, "Huh, one day I wanna be on stage. I wanna be an entrepreneur and I wanna buy and sell companies."
Well, while the last one hasn't happened ... *YET* (Muahaha)... stage and entrepreneurship have.
And as my business has grown and my message has spread, a frequent question I'm asked is, "Steve, what stage will you be on next?"
Now I totally get that this feels, maybe, a little conceited here...
But considering my childhood fear of speaking up, being heard, extreme lack of self-confidence, and getting in front of people, back in my growing up days, I feel satisfied.
I thought I'd tell you where I'll be in the world coming up.
And funny enough, just literally go over to seestevelive.com, and it'll forward you to the next place.
I love stage and it's one of my biggest things to look forward to in my current role in my business.
From little 10 person masterminds all the way to gigantic 5000 person events - from free seats to paid events - events have always been one of the ways I can deliver the MOST value and get the greatest “AHA’s” in the shortest amount of time.
Just come say hi, and go over to seestevelive.com.
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| 21 Sep 2018 | SFR 176: Why DotCom Secrets Changed My Life... | 00:21:05 | |
Boom, what's up guys? It's Steve Larsen. This is Sales Funnel Radio, and today I'm gonna talk to you guys a little about the book DotCom Secrets.
Now, before we cut over to intro which I love, I wanna share to you guys a little bit more about why this book is so important to me. That's what this episode is about.
I actually took the video that I filmed for bestmarketingresources.com. If you haven't checked that out yet, go do it.
Bestmarketingresources.com is the resource I created. It's the page I created to share with you guys all the things that I'm using to build my business.
There's only a few of us in my company and the reason why is because how a lot of these tools interact together back and forth with the way all the automation works.
Anyways, I wanted to share a little bit though about this book, DotCom Secrets. The reason why DotCom Secrets has been so powerful for me and the story behind it.
It is not just like I went and I just bought the book, okay? I actually wanna share with you guys the story behind it. How I read it... Where I read it... And what I did with it afterward - which I think is pretty unique. I know it's one of the reasons why I've been successful with this.
I really only read the book two times, okay? But it was such on a crazy depth that made it very very effective. So anyways, let's cut over the intro here
If you've not actually picked up this book... This book is better than my entire marketing degree. Just this one alone. Let alone, the rest of the education that ClickFunnels comes out with.
So anyways, let's cut over here and I'm excited to share with you guys the story behind my first time getting the book DotCom Secrets, thanks.
I spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now, I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.
The real question is, how will I do it without VC funding or debt? Completely from scratch.
This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learn, apply and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels.
My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.
So in college, we were really poor. We were crazy poor. I kept spinning up all these little companies trying to get them to make money. It took me about 17 tries to really get it off the ground. It's funny cuz when I look back... meaning 17 actual businesses.
And it wasn't like, I was just kinda half-heartedly doing the businesses, I was full in. It was not uncommon for me to walk streets and trying to sell people on the street. I mean, I wanted it real bad.
If you're like me, I mean you want it. You want it real bad, okay? I was the kind of mentality, still am, where I would go learn something and I wanted to make sure I understood it, but I also wanted to make sure I wanted to try to make money as fast as I could as well.
I remember once I pitched the owners of Vivint. Vivint Home Security. Not the head honchos, but very very similar, very close for that regional area.
Anyway, it was an insurance company. There's a bunch of people out there too. A lot of pest control, a lot of door to door people. A lot of... And I just pitched people guys.
I didn't know what I was doing. I was pretty much breaking every single rule that you could even imagine. But, whatever, I was just running, because we were living on loans, student loans. I was in college. I was in the army.
You know I went to basic training. We had a kid. I was married. I mean already right there I was in a very different demographic place in life than a lot of people my age.
I wanted to make cash. I wanted to be a provider for my family. And I found out that few weeks into marriage that my wife was just eating just one meal a day behind my back. She was doing that because we had such little cash, she didn't feel like she could eat.
And it's kinda like crap hits the fan. This was a true story. It was a few weeks after we got married. And it was really hard. I was like crap, we gotta make some cash somehow. I've got to make money.
This was about six years ago, almost seven. What was interesting is she... She was sacrificing for me. The amount of love, It's pretty intense, okay? And it still kinda brings me to my knees a little bit. I've had a hard time talking about this story because if you were you know...
Men specifically get their identity a lot of times by what they do. And I wasn't doing anything, you know? I was trying to... but I wasn't making any money. So I was like, we gotta make money somehow. At least get a food on the table. It was literally a, "Hey, how can we get food on the table?" scenario.
She was still packing lunches for me because she'd already graduated from college. I was still going, I was still working to finish. So she would stay home all day in bed while she was packing me a lunch. She'd eat one meal in the evening with me and that was it.
She was super weak after days and days and days of doing this. Weeks and weeks of doing this. And when I found out, it wrecked me, guys. It destroyed me. My pride was gone, shot everything. I was like, "we gotta make money somehow".
And so I was like, "Hey, I found out that we can get student loans." The student loans that we could get (thankfully we could get them), but they weren't gonna be there for like four to six weeks.
There was a window for when it would show up. And I was like, "Four to six weeks, we're gonna be dead' in two". I was like, "We're not gonna make it. How're we gonna do this?"
And I went... and I did something that was culturally against the way I was raised. I called my dad and I asked him for money.
I had jobs, working like crazy my whole high school years. I had some cases multiple jobs. I worked a lot. I'm not a stranger to the hard work. I don't care if it's labor jobs. I'm glad I did labor jobs. I don't care if it was... anyway. I worked and I knew how to work.
So for me to call and ask for money was not an easy thing to do. I was the oldest of six kids, I mean I'm still am. Oldest of six kids. And I called my dad.
We were not poor growing up at all. We were not like super wealthy, but we weren't poor. We weren't poor at all. We were middle class. My dad provided well, very well. So I mean, he certainly had cash and I knew that.
And I called him and said, "Hey dad, you know I found out my wife eating one meal a day. Could you float us like three grand and we'll pay you back as soon as these student loans come in?". You know, it made sense to me.
There's a long pause on the phone...
I was in this building, and I remember the sound of the AC above. It was hot and I took off my jacket. I was pacing around this classroom on campus, with the door closed. I think the light was either off or dimmed.
I was literally walking in a square around the room, fast. I was walking fast. I was like "Whew." And the stress that started setting in was huge. I remember I'd worked myself up to ask him this. I said, "Hey dad, would you give us some money?"
There's a long pause on the phone. I will never forget what he said. I remember how he said it and everything.
He said, I'm gonna try to do his voice. He said, "Son - ‘No,’ If I give you this money now. You will not exhaust the resources that you didn't know you had." How cool of a dad! Seriously, that's what he said.
And it was quiet. And his answer was. "Buck up," you know? In a loving way. We cried, both of us, man tears of course. I think we're flexing while we're doing it. It was really hard, but I had this fire start in my gut that I think most entrepreneurs fail to ever learn.
I learned how to get resourceful in a way that I think most people never learn. And I started running and sprinting. I started trying stuff and trying stuff and...
Because I've always wanted to, and I love America, but also because of the money - I'll be honest, I joined the army. I went to basic training in the middle of college. I took a semester off and I went... I went to basic training and with all my training and all the things I was doing, I was gone for like six months.
A little while after I came home I went back out for another extended period of time. I have been running hard enough that I wanted to get... I started seeing...
How should I say this? I stopped JUST READING books of wealthy people. I was reading them, and I was listening to the podcast and their courses, and I was consuming like an animal.
I was learning way more, way more on my own than I ever was learning in my classes. Way more! Including all my entrepreneurship classes. All the classes where we had to go and start a business for that semester and literally nothing else to do that whole semester.
I was learning far more on my own than any student ever. To the point was I was getting in fights with professors over stuff because I knew that what they were saying was wrong on some things. That's not to say, like, "Everything's crap." That's not true.
But there were some things that I was, "That's not right." I know that's not right from experience now. We'd kinda getting little tiffs about it.
Anyway, so I was at one of this little army training things, right? It was a month long, but I was laying in the dirt for 10 days. I started watching WHAT entrepreneurs were doing. Not just what they SAY they were doing.
Coz' some of them were so good, they don't know how good they are. You know what I mean? So I was watching what they were doing.
One of the guys I came across was this guy named Russell Brunson. And you guys obviously know that I'm a fanatic of his.
I had consumed so many courses by that time, so many books. I was a fanatic, guys, fanatic. I knew what I wanted. I wanted to make money.
I wasn't like, "Hey, I wanna blow the roof off and make millions." I just wanted to like an extra grand a month.
In fact, you can go back and watch the YouTube videos of me declaring that goal. I was like, "Hey, I'm just gonna try to make an extra grand a month." And I didn't hit it, but I started making money.
The next year, next January, I was like, "I'm gonna try and do three." And I didn't hit it, but I got close.
The next January after that, I was like, "I'm gonna try and do...", I think I said "ten" and I hit it. You could watch me the progression of it, guys. A lot of that has to do with this book - DotCom Secrets.
I read this book for the first time on one of those army trainings. For ten days I was laying in the dirt, I had my M16 in my right hand. I was lying in prone, and I would pull...
In army uniforms, there's a place for pens and pencils right here on the sleeve, which is really nice when you are like nighttime land navigation and stuff like note taking in general. It's nice to have it anyway...
So, I would lay down in the prone - that's part of the discipline of it, just sitting there. And maybe I didn't have the discipline enough for it. Coz' I would pull out this book from...
There were pockets in the uniform, and I kept this in a plastic bag. This isn't the same one. It was so loaded with dirt by the time I was done I gave it to some other soldier. I should probably follow up with him. But anyway and I had to get a new one. It was $7.95 free plus shipping. That was free, I just paid the shipping.
And even the $7.95, for me at the time, I really had to justify that. You know what I mean? I reached deep. When I was sitting there for like days and actually the first day realizing was like, I was gonna sit there for few more days before our next orders came in for our next mission, whatever. I was like, "I'm gonna read this book."
So, I would pull this book out of a plastic bag, trying to go as carefully as I could so that all the leaders and all these high ranking officers and stuff wouldn't see what I was doing.
I'd go choose these obscure places to lay in so no one would know where I am. I would just sit there with this book, and I would just hang out there. I would hang out there, and I would read. I got good at turning pages with one hand. And I read it like this. And then when I was like, "Oh, that's really freaking good! Oh my gosh!"
I would lay down my M16, mag wheel, this is the place it was. I'll go grab my pen and slowly, carefully write down the note and then slip it back inside my uniform and pick the M16 back up and just lay there and keep reading.
I was like, "This is so," kinda like to the side like this, "Wow, that's really good! Oh my gosh, this is freaking awesome. Why is no one talking about this stuff?"
In the evenings, if we ever did have a few minutes, I wouldn't be talking around. I would read. And I remember when I finished reading the book, It had rained the night before. Half my stuff was wet. I was sitting on my sleeping bag on a tarp. I finished reading the book.
I remember I closed it. I set it down just kind of on my lap but I kept my hand on it, and I just started thinking. I was like, "Dang, that's good. Man, that's good!. Holy Crap!".
I remember just like turning to the closest person next to me. I don't remember his name, I remember what he looked like. And I just started like, just like barfing on him all the stuff in here.
I remember I came back home, several weeks after that. I came back home, and I was like, "I gotta teach this to somebody. How can I solidify this in my head? How can I put it in there more? I gotta get this in, gotta get this in". So, I reread it.
I think I only read it two times, but I read it so slowly that I soaked up a ton. And what I did next really, really made it stick in my head. What I did is I went, and there was a professor of mine, a teacher of mine who was really...
She's more of like an assistant, but she was really trying to develop some assets as well in her life.
Anyhow, I started getting known for this stuff. I was starting to build funnels for people, actually successfully. It was cool! Word began to get passed around, and I started getting clients and referrals.
I was like, "This is the first time." It took 17 tries for me to make something work. Well, I was on maybe number 15 by the time I read this.
The number of tries that I needed to actually make something work got really really short because there were so much more successful from the get-go.
So I went and this lady, she's like, "Hey, would you swing over to my house I'll invite all of my family over, all of my kids and my kids, kids, and just teach us for three hours." I was like, "Cool."
I didn't know what I was doing, but I took this book. I went, and I stood in front of this group of strangers.
She's the only one of the whole room I knew, and I just taught for three straight hours to this group of random people... and that's a true story.
I never saw them again after that. I don't know what they did?
She said they were trying to figure out their value ladder. They were trying to figure it out I was like, "Alright, cool, cool, cool." And then now, I'd tell you not to worry about it as much just worry about one step on.
Anyway, but it's interesting guys coz' I went through, and I figured this out. And I started learning it, and I taught it to somebody else which made it stick on my head.
From that point on, my wallet got a lot fatter, okay?
I stopped having three to six months swings like, "This! This! This! This! This! This!This! This! This!". Instead, it was like, "THIS, just this business" and then a little bit few tweaks and then, "What? Check that out, it's working".
In fact, the business that I created off of this is the very business that I finished creating when I left Click Funnels, what? Isn't that funny. This stuff works. This book is ridiculous, this book changed my life. This book has changed a lot of my friend's lives, a lot of my family member's lives, a lot of my student's lives, And I'm a fanatic over it!
This is one of the books that's always next to me by the shelf. I reference it like crazy.
If you haven't read this and you're an online business, I think you're a joke. It's true. If you're like, "Hey, I'm gonna go, and I'm gonna build something." I don't really care what's online or offline now. You gotta read this book, okay?
The book Expert Secrets, and a few others, they're probably... I mean there's a lot of books that are out there that I know I'll continue to read, but I also know that I could not read any other book the rest of my life and I'm still going to be more than well-off, because of what it's done. That's a bold statement.
Anyway, so go and DotCom Secrets. Do it with an open mind, and do it in a way where you're like, "Okay, whatever this guy says." Instead of saying, "Man, this isn't true" - act like, "What if it is true?" There's nothing that's far-fetched in here - and it's a very easy read.
I'm not a fast reader, I'm actually a very slow reader. Meaning, I can read quickly, but I take so long coz' I'll read a paragraph, and I'm like, "Oh man, what about this and the connections here." I take all these notes and takes me forever to get from one page to the next. Takes me forever.
But anyway, literal scripts of how to sell stuff are in here. This is literally what I did when I launched the first funnel I made. The first one I made that was successful. It ended up doing a grand a week for over a year. That was more money that we've ever seen in our entire life. From going from, "Hey, we're eating one meal a day." Feeling like “nothing” to even just that, right?
My goal was just a grand a month, and it went to a grand a week, and I was like, "Okay, that was not as hard as I thought it was gonna be. Where was this information a while ago?" It was life-changing for me.
Anyway, hey guys use the link down below, it's my affiliate link. If you like that story at all... I don't promote things to you that I don't stand behind. I stand behind this like crazy. This book was life changing for me.
There are several other books that are like that. This one though, you know like Rich Dad, Poor Dad from Robert Kiyosaki - that's most entrepreneurs gateway drug.
This book though was like the gateway drug to actually make money from what Rich Dad, Poor Dad was talking about.
This is like, How to actually do it. I feel like the subheadings should be, "How to actually do what Robert Kiyosaki was talking about?"
Just coz' it says Dotcom Secrets, I don't want you to freak out. Everything that I do that's offline also comes from this book as well. You don't need to be techy for this.
Anyway, hey guys hopefully this is helpful. Use the link down below and go get your copy. It's free. If you feel inclined to get the upsells, they'll be worth more than the money he asks you for. A lot of the scripts, for the things that I create, are there.
In fact, the first time I bought this I didn't buy the upsells coz' I was like, "Those guys are trying to take my money!". All right! Coz' I don't know who he was. And when I read the book, I was like, "Holy crap!, I should give this guy my money".
Then I went back, and I funnel hacked that funnel. I've bought this book many times from that funnel just so I could dive through it.
So, I encourage you to buy slowly, right? Watch what he's doing. Not just the products he's talking about. Watch what he's doing. Watch why he's doing it. Try to understand why he's doing it. Watch, and it will show you a way to make money. Coz' it's not hard, okay?
It's like anything there's some work behind it, but it's shockingly less work than I thought it was going to be with the amount of money that comes off it.
I was like, "Huh!" I have built many of these now, and they've been very, very lucrative and fun - and have helped more people than how I was trying to do stuff the old way.
What's better than getting impact and income?!
Anyway, guys hopefully again this was helpful to you. Use the link down below, get your copy of it.
This book is near and dear to my heart. It will be for the rest of my life. Frankly, it will be one of the books that I'll require my kids to read. They are only not even five years old yet, so...
But I almost felt like I'd just start read it to them bedtime stories or something like that coz' this is daddy doctrine right here. I will not NOT read this. I will not NOT pass this info on. I feel like that'd be selfish.
All right guys, thanks so much. Use the this link to go get your copy of DotCom Secrets, then let me know how it is. Bye.
Ahh yeah!
Hey, obviously a funnel is already dead if you can’t even get anyone to optin.
SO, I spent 4 hours teaching an audience how to get high optins - when they work and when they don’t work.
If you want access to the members area where you can watch those replays, just go to freeoptincourse.com to create your free member account now!
Whether your new or experienced, it’s freeoptincourse.com
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| 24 Feb 2018 | SFR 115: Matching Storylines... | 00:13:57 | |
Take stories about you and craft them to the market you're selling to...
Hey, what's going on everyone? It's Steve Larsen. You're listening to the Sales Funnel Radio. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. Hey, guys. What's up? Hey, I am going to a lot of events right now. I have an event every other week for the next almost two or three months. That's a lot of travel that's coming up. Some of them, I'm going just to go, and some of them, I'm going because I'm funnel hacking actually. What I'm trying to do, I was talking to Russell about this, with him in his office the other day, and I was like, "Yeah. You know what's funny is I've spoken a lot in smaller groups. I've spoken several times in bigger groups." A lot of people don't know I was actually a singer in high school and in college a lot. I sang in bands. I sang in choirs. I was in musicals. So I mean, the most I ever sang in front of is probably 40,000 people. That was fun. I've done that a couple times actually. I actually really enjoy that part of it. Anyway. What I was telling him is that I haven't really done a lot of speaking in front of more than a couple thousand. Right? So what I'm doing is I've done a lot of speaking in front of a smaller audience, and I'm learning how to control the room. You know what I mean? It's been a lot of fun to go through and do that. I've had a ton of fun with it. Okay? I'm learning to control the room. I'm learning how to make everyone sway the way I want them to. It's been a lot of fun.
So I've been going around to these different events and watching. It's fascinating to watch the different experiences, I guess, experience the different ways that they interact with the room. Big guys in front of big rooms. It's been a lot of fun. I've actually really, really enjoyed it, and gained a lot of things from it. So I'm sitting here, and I'm speaking next week in front of 2,500 people. I'm super pumped, you guys. Oh my gosh, it's so cool. It's an event down in Dallas called the Happiness Convention. Anyway. So I'm putting my slides together right now. What's been fascinating is to go and put these slides together in a way that with all the different lessons that are happening right now. You know? It's been a lot of fun. I've really, really enjoyed, and I know I keep saying that, but I really do, guys. I enjoy what I do. It's so fun. I can't remember who I was talking to the other day, and they're like, "Oh, that sucks, man. You had to work on a Saturday. That sucks so bad." I was like, "Actually, I am completely addicted to what I do. I'm completely both feet in. I really don't have any other hobbies. This is my hobby. I like to get better at it, and better and better and better." So anyways. I am sitting here, and I am creating my slides, and I'm putting together the slides. I'm supposed to get them over to him today. I don't know if I'm going to be able to do that, but it's nice they gave me a full hour. What they're doing is they're letting me, I'm not selling, but I'm allowed to pre-frame my webinar, the stuff that my webinar sells. I'm allowed to go pre-frame that, and pull people from the audience over to that, and get them ready to buy that. So it's kind of fun. So I'm still breaking and rebuilding belief patterns the exact same way I would on the webinar. So what I've done is I've gone, and I've literally just cloned by slides for my webinar. I'm just adapting them to the room, removing certain elements from it, changing and adapting to the room, the audience that's going to be there. That's always been the hardest part is what I've noticed. It's funny, because there was a time I was speaking in Vegas. I sat down in the back of the room, and I had this stark realization that, oh my gosh, what I had just created is not for the right audience. So I pulled my laptop up, and I'm changing the lingo, same lessons, but the words had to change. You know what I mean? I was not using the correct vernacular. I was not using the correct isms from the people inside the room. I went through and I created. Luckily, I was able to really, really quickly go through and change what I was speaking about. Right? What was cool about it is that I gave the speech. It was awesome. It was a ton of fun. Then about six months later, no, it was about maybe nine months later, this guy walks up to me, and he goes, "Hey, man. I was there in the room when you gave that speech. I want you to know I made $100,000 from that speech that you made." He was like, "Thank you so much. I went out and I did the exact same thing that you were telling us to do. He was like, "I made a hundred grand." I was like, "What? Whoa." I don't know if that would have happened had I not addressed the correct individual in the room. Right?
I still need to break and rebuild the same belief patterns that I know are in there, but I've got to make sure that it's using the correct vernacular, using the correct stories. I got to use some of their isms. It's hard to always know what those are without actually observing the crowd. So it's funny, because I was telling Russell this story when that happened a while ago, and I said, "Yeah, man. I realized that it was not the right thing." He's like, "Yeah. I've totally done that." He's like, "What I like to do is go sit in the room, and watch the audience for a little while." He's like, "I'm watching the speaker, but what I'm really doing is I'm watching the audience to figure out what," I don't know if he'll remember he said this to me, but he was like, "I like to sit and figure out if my message will resonate with this crowd correctly, and I see what they're resonating with." He's like, "Then I go back to my hotel room. Then I go and I start writing. Then I go figure out the slides and stuff like that." It's so funny, because to so many people that is straight up ludicrous. "What? You finish your slides right before the actual presentation is needed?" Like, "Yeah." That's the reason why. Right? It's this ability, this speed, to be able to get things and produce things out there in a way that resonates with the crowd, but you can't do that unless you're okay with feeling a little bit of ambiguity of not knowing until you get there. Right? Anyway. I got to talk to him, and see, "Okay. Let me get you this rough draft of slides, but please let me get you an updated one after I get to the event." That's what I want to do. That's what I'm trying to do is, hopefully, is get these things done in a way that will allow me to adapt to the room. It's always funny, you guys. You'll start to experience this if you haven't already. Guys, Sales Funnel Radio listeners are rock stars. I know that. I know that about you guys. I know that. I appreciate you listening. I'm trying to give you the best sales funnel stuff. I got some really cool series and episodes coming up here shortly, and going to do a big ole round of interviews again with some experts of their industries. Anyway. There's a lot of cool things coming up here. I know that you guys have probably experienced that before. It's easy to see if the crowd is with you or not. Right? It's easy to see it. You feel it. It's the same thing with podcasting or publishing, whatever it is that you're doing. Any kind of communication piece, you begin to see and feel and know if the crowd is with you. In a very long roundabout way, that's all I'm trying to say in this episode is that when you are building your funnel, okay, make sure you are using a message that you know, not think, resonates with the people that are actually coming into your funnel, the same way that I would if I'm in front of them on stage, the same way you would if you were in front of them on stage. Right? You're trying to put this together in a way that, obviously, resonates in a really, really powerful way. I just had this really cool meeting with a guy who will actually be a guest on the show shortly here. So that's as much detail as you guys are going to get with him right now. He was like, "Hey, Stephen. I was looking through all your videos." He's like, "Your ability to invoke an emotion out of a video is amazing." I said, "Hey, thank you very much. I've been practicing it a long time." I said, "That means a lot." He goes, "Seriously though." It meant a lot what he was saying, and that's part of the reason why I keep telling everyone to just go freaking publish frequently. You're going to suck at it at first. Right? You're going to be bad. You'll be real bad. As you go, what you are really practicing when you're finding your voice is your ability, part of it is your ability to invoke emotion from those who are listening to you. Okay. That's what you're trying to go for, because if you can invoke emotion, you are at the foundation level of where you can start to break and rebuild belief patterns. Right? If I can invoke emotion from you, the listener, it means that I can start telling stories that will shape the way that you see the world or the industry that I'm trying to help you see differently. Does that make sense. Big ole nugget right there, big ole aha. That's why you publish so frequently. It's to find the voice, but really what we mean by that is your ability to invoke emotion. How can you do it in a way that is natural sounding and comfortable to you, right, to your personality? I know sometimes I'm a goofball. I'm a kid at heart. Some of you guys aren't. That's fine. All right. It's whatever it is that you are. So when you out speaking on stage, you're building the funnel, you're going out and you're writing copy, whatever it is, any communication piece, make sure it is resonating with the individual. Some of you guys might say, "Stephen, duh. I get that. Why wouldn't we do that in the first place?" What's funny is that when we write copy, a lot of times, we'll do it from the standpoint of what we think is cool. That's the wrong way to do it. Right? What you're doing is you are writing copy, you're telling stories as the other person would tell them. Okay? You're doing it as the other person wants to hear it, not how you think it sounds good or cool or professional or awesome. You've got to take yourself out of the copywriting experience, meaning you're not the one that you're writing the copy for. You're not the one that you're telling the story for. It does not matter what you think is good or bad. It is completely up to what the market tells you is good or bad, and because of that, you have to know them. I was coaching an individual, actually it was last week, just this last Friday actually. I was coaching somebody, and I was going through, and I was asking this person, "Hey, what market are you stemming from?" Meaning what's your sub market? They were like, "Oh, I don't know." I was like, "Then literally everything I say will be a straight guess." Then they're like, "What do you mean though? Just give me your opinion. Do you like this or not?" I said, "It doesn't matter what I think. I'm not the one filling your pockets, so screw my ideas. Right? Doesn't matter." I was like, "I'm trying to teach you a formula to extract it from the market.
She's like, "Hey, is this good? Is this bad?" I was like, "It truly," and I could tell it was frustrating a little bit for this person, but I was trying to make a point. Until you know what sub market you're selling to, not industry, sub market, your stories, don't even start writing them. Right? Don't even start writing your stories. Don't even start putting your copy. It does not matter until you know exactly what sub market you are selling to. Right? It's the same thing. Until I know the person, the type of people, right, the conglomerate, top average individual that's going to be in that room when I start talking to them, some of this stuff, I'm not going to know. I've got to get ground level, got to get right down to the nitty gritty. Right? I got to get down to the nitty gritty of understanding these people and who they are and their passions, their emotions, their fears, their desires, their stories, the stories they're most used to hearing, the stories that I can tell that they will resonate with most, and that will let me invoke emotion powerfully. Anyway. I hope that made sense. That's the power of this. It's starting storytelling. Yes, just get good at doing it in general, but eventually you got to be able to adapt it to the individual with the correct vernacular, correct examples that they are used to hearing so that you are going to where they are, and bridging a gap from where they stand rather than from where you stand. It does not matter what you think. Anyway.
Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnels for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today. | |||
| 19 May 2022 | Designing Fulfillment LIKE A Funnel | 00:27:23 | |
There’s a big difference between business and marketing. 💯 Many entrepreneurs put too much weight mentally and emotionally on building a sales funnel at the expense of other aspects of the business. A sales funnel is NOT your business. A Sales funnel role in your company is just one process to collect leads and close sales. You still need processes in place for fulfillment, systems, people, etc. The key to having a great business is to plan your fulfillment the same way you plan your sales funnel. Treating fulfillment like marketing makes resales happen because satisfaction will go up. 📈 It's one of the easiest sales increases strategies out there. 💰 Tune in 🎧 to hear how I’ve been building processes and designing fulfillment for my business over the past four months. Key Takeaways ⏲ - What I do day to day in the business (00:48) - Who would want fewer sales? (11:12) - Sales funnels are not your business (14:04) - How to design processes for your business (14:53) - Drawing fulfillment like a funnel (16:12) - Treat fulfillment like marketing (20:53) Additional Resources Learn more about VIP Lead Machine --- Connect with me here Download Season 1 episodes here -- Sales Funnels Radio is a podcast for all passionate digital marketing pros looking to up their game and stay ahead. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please follow and share!
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| 25 Apr 2018 | SFR 139: Walt Disney's Stack Slide... | 00:30:06 | |
I wanna dive deep into Disney's offer...
What's going on everyone it's Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio... I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now I've left my 9-5 to take the plunge and build my million dollar business. The real question is, how will I do it without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer... Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business, using only today's best internet sales funnels. My Name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. What's up, guys? Hey, just barely got back from Disneyland and it was a bunch of fun. Brought the whole family over and had our first kind of real vacation ever, and it was a lot of fun. We went and we stayed at a Disneyland hotel and it was kind of nice, especially with little ones. We could kind of monorail in and out of the park when we wanted to and get in an hour early. Anyway, even with a four-year-old and a two-year-old and my wife being pregnant, we still pretty much went on every single ride at Disneyland and California Adventure. And it was just a bunch of fun. It was really fun to go do that... And as we were walking around my wife and I could not help but just kind of contemplate the crazy journey we've been on for the past two years and just to look backward and go, "Oh my gosh. Two years ago there's no way we could have afforded this for all the things we were doing and the experiences." I always read stories, I always heard stories of guys that'd be like, "Yeah, man I went on vacation. I made more money on vacation then we spent to get on there, and we spent a lot." And I was almost in disbelief. I would listen to those stories and be like, "Okay, that's cool for that guy, there's no way I'll ever do that." Or I had to work from that place to believe to a spot where I felt like I could actually do that. And it was crazy because it happened. It was amazing. I'd be on a ride, I'd come out and be like, "Well, got seven more sales on that ride." It's crazy how much, anyway... So if you're like, "Man Steven, I don't know if this stuff can work or whatever." Just use myself as a point of reference an realize that oh my gosh it's completely doable for wherever you are. And keep moving forward on it. One of the fastest paths to cash that I've ever found ever is selling info products, and doing it through webinars. You guys know that you guys know I'm a huge advocate of that, and obviously using Click Funnels to do so... Anyway, it was fascinating though to walk around and see that and look at that. And we'd be like, "Man, we just spent like $100 more just to go hang out with Goofy one morning." You know what I mean? Just like really interesting stuff that we would never have been able to do that kind of stuff. I mean overall, it was like five grand but it was a ton of fun and it was really, really cool to have that experience with the family, with the kids. And more importantly, I think it was just this really cool milestone for my wife and I, and what we've been doing, and what I've been working on, and all the stuff that we've been doing and going forward on it. It was cool, it was very rewarding. Very, very rewarding to sit back and be like, "Holy crap." It's the first time I really stopped...
It's like maybe that's it... So, anyway, it was a bunch of fun. Totally got rejuvenated. Very excited for the day. Got a chance to get up work out this morning, do my hit training and scream like crazy on Instagram. If you guys aren't following me on there I think you guys would like it. I get to do really official episodes and thoughts here, however, a lot of the smaller day-to-day things and isms that I'm going through and learning I like to drop on Instagram now, so anyway, would love to have you guys follow me there if you want to. It's Steve Larsen HQ, that's my handle... Hey, I wanted to drop something out to you guys here. There was an interesting question that kept getting asked right before I left actually. It was about a couple of weeks ago, two weeks ago. We were there for a week. And right beforehand some interesting questions started getting asked, and one of them was, Steven, how did you get so good at offer creation?... And I just said the answer, "It's practicing." I practice offer creation like someone would practice their sport, I do, I practice it. It's one of my favorite things to do on an airplane, for some reason. Put some music on, for some reason, 30,000 feet, little caffeine and some dubstep, man you can make some sweet offers. But I'll do that a lot.
I do it a lot for the eComm space a lot. That's a fun one to practice on. I'll pick a random industry and I'll start creating an offer. So, what I wanted to do real quick, it was hard for me to not see the offer that was being handed over to us throughout our Disney experience. I wanted to go through and as an example of how I practice offer creation, I want to use Disney as an example. So, I'm going to show you what their offer is. You're going to see it, you're going to go, oh my gosh. But I want to point out why it's the offer, what they're doing, and when. They definitely have upsells. They definitely have continuity they're offering. They're breaking and rebuilding belief patterns. Anyway ... It's pretty strong to see what their culture is. Fascinating stuff, right? So, one of the ways to think about this because there really are a lot of ways to create an offer, there's a lot of modalities to do so. You can do it through Ask campaigns, and do it explicitly off of what the market's telling you to do, which is great. But if you do that you still have to come in with your own glaze and creativity to make something that's new. It can't be completely reactionary. It has to be reactionary with a little bit of the ingenuity. You could do it straight off of finding out what false beliefs are, which kind of gets gleaned from Ask campaigns, they might be one and the same. Another way to think about this offer creation thing if you're like, "Steven, I have no idea how to come up with this offer. I have no idea how to create an offer. I don't get it."... Here's another way to think about it and look at it. Whatever your main product is, whatever the main product is, let's say it's socks. Whatever the main product is, let's say you're selling socks, you're selling on Amazon, I don't care what it is. You're selling socks or you're a retail store and you sell food. Think through when you sell your product to somebody, you have to understand that it is like the laws of nature that when you create something you also create something else. When you create something, when you give a product to somebody else you hand them a solution to a problem, but you also hand them a problem. Most of us don't think of our businesses in that light. And this is where a lot of opportunity actually lies. And if people can learn to see this it is very easy to create offers very quickly. And if you're like, "Man Steven, I don't totally understand." A lot of people reached out and be like, "I don't understand this whole false belief thing, what is that? I don't understand how does this all happen from the ..." Another way to think about, if that whole side totally confuses you, one of the ways to do it is to sit back and think to yourself, "What follow-up problem do I create for my customer when they buy my product?" When I had it over ... It's the nature of all opportunity. In order to get the opportunity, you have to solve a bunch of problems.
By the time I was five we were skiing hitting the slopes a lot. All we wanted for Christmas was a ski pass so we'd go 20-25 plus times in a season. And we skied a lot as a family, and it was just a bunch of fun... But in order for me to be a really good skier, let's say an Olympic skier, there's a lot of problems I have to go solve in order to get that opportunity. There's a lot of problems I have to solve in order just to qualify for the opportunity to do something like Olympic skiing. What's my coach? What's my diet? What's my daily schedule like? Who am I coaching with? Who am I conveying myself to? What are the times I have to hit? What's my ski's like? What are the brand of my skis? Are they polish are they wax? You know what I mean? There's a bunch of stuff that you have to go solve, not just to qualify for the opportunity but when you actually get it there's a lot of other follow-up problems. Let's say I go and I actually get a gold medal in Olympic skiing. What happens? I have to turn around, there's a lot of other follow-up problems that you have to solve. Are you going to do it again? Are you going to stay with the same coach? Who are you going to train with? Who's the person you're going to be competing against? What's the diet? It's more problems. Sometimes it's more of the same problem, but you have to think through this. And another way to think of it is, what's the follow-up problem I create for my customer when they're using my product? That's the basic question to ask. I have a product, I go forward, I show them the product, there's follow-up problems.
People are like, "Hey this looks really, really cool." And let's say they call me on the phone. What would be some questions that somebody would ask me about my theme park? These are the follow-up problems. "Oh my gosh, you know this is super cool but I just don't know where I'm going to stay." The follow-up problem I have created for my customer is I gotta know where a hotel is. Like, "Oh, you know what this is so cool but I don't know what I'm going to eat." The follow-up problem I've created is they now need to find some food. Does that make sense?... Transportation, "I don't know how to get there." Does that make sense? This one way to think about that. And so, a by-product of Disneyland the theme park, a byproduct, the business, the side business that they had to get into in order to sell the theme park, they had to get into hotels. They have hotels. They had to get into the restaurant business. They've got restaurants all over the place. They had to go and they had to get into some kind of transportation business. We took this cool bus into the ... We stayed at the Disneyland Hotel, it was really fun. Does that make sense? When you hand your product to somebody else, yes you do create, you solve problems, but you also create problems. And when you are a smart marketer who can foresee the problems that you will be creating for them and then you solve those problems, my friends that is one of the keys to creating an amazing offer. Think of Click Funnels, for example, you guys all know I'm a forever die-hard Click Funnels fan. Russel Brunson comes out he's like, "We're going to make this thing called Click Funnels," or he and Todd. And they go and they put the whole thing together. What's the follow-up problem he created for us? What is it? Russel's like, "Don't worry about it. We got a butt load of info products that's going to teach you how to do the exact same thing." Does that make sense? "Don't worry about it. We created Funnel Scripts." Does that make sense? Most people are not thinking that... Instead, they just have their product and like, "This product's the best. This product's the best. Best, best, best, best, best ..." I remember when I was a traffic driver for Paul Mitchell in college. It was one of the Paul Mitchell schools and we ended up chatting with and working with either other Paul Mitchell's down in California. Anyway, it was a bunch of fun. Bunch of fun... Well, we were driving traffic to them but the follow-up problem that we created for our customer, Paul Mitchell Schools, that we didn't realize we would have, the follow-up problem that we created was, "Oh my gosh, I don't know if their websites good." We were just driving it to a flat website, we didn't know any different at the time. It was like four years ago, five years ago. And we were driving traffic directly to their website. And I was like, "Crap." And I had to go learn what makes websites convert. And then I was like, "Crap. They don't. I gotta make funnels." And I had to get into the business of the follow-up problem. And that literally guys is actually what put me into funnels. That's what got me started in funnels. Working for Paul Mitchell, realizing we were driving lots of traffic and it was not converting. And I was like, "Crap. How do I make websites convert?" And then websites weren't converting. And then I went through and I found what funnels were. Does that make sense?
Now, it's great to be concerned with the product, obviously, be really, really concerned with it. It's gotta be amazing, obviously, it's gotta over deliver. I'm a huge fan of if you over deliver in the present it sets up your success in the future. That's one of my little isms... Over-deliver it's awesome. But if you can foresee the follow-up issue that you created, solve that problem, and then give it away or bundle it when they buy the original product, oh my lanta, you're in business. Does that make sense? You think about like one of the things we always try and teach you and I want you to get as well, you've gotta understand what the core of your business is. One of my favorite books is the book Rework I love that book Rework, go buy that book, go read it. Very, very good, one of my favorites, definitely a top 10. And in there it gives the example, can you have a hot dog business without ketchup? Sure. Some people won't like it but you could, right? Could you have a hot dog business without the bun? Technically. Could you have a hot dog business without the hot dog? No. Right? Figure out what the core of the business is, that is the core of the business. Disneyland the theme park is the core of the business. So, let's think this through on a stack slide real fast. Okay. This is a bit more of a technical episode, hopefully, that's cool with you guys. But, let's think through the main item, the first thing on a stack slide is the main item. Theme park. That's the first thing that we're delivering... The second thing on the stack slide is what I call the anchor product, it's what they really want. They want to go to the theme park but why? They want to go to the theme park because of the rides. They want to get on the rides, they want to go and they want to experience thrills and you're selling an experience. They're selling experiences. Pretty much all of us are. If you can start to sell experiences it's a lot more lucrative. So, the theme parks, the anchor product is rides, that's the anchor of the product is rides. That's what they really, really want, that's the anchor. Then we think about vehicle and when we think about vehicle ... It was kind of funny walking around, we got upsold like crazy ... Anyway, I won't get to the upsells yet. No upsells yet. The vehicle, they're delivering relationships. They're not promising wealth, they're certainly not promising health. They're promising relationships. Disney sells relationships, that's what they sell. They sell relationships through the commodity of theme parks, of the movies. Does that make sense? And what they're selling, what their message is, "I'm going to show you how to be at the happiest place on Earth without worrying about a thing." It's going to cost you a lot but you're going to go to the happiest place on Earth without worrying about anything, how amazing is that? They're selling experiences. That's exactly what, and they're selling relationships, with you, with your family. You always see pictures with the families. "Let's do it for the kids. You didn't take your kids to Disney when they were young? What kind of parents were you?" That's kind of what they say. That's what their messaging is... So, if you think about like a vehicle-related product, there might be, "Man you know what, I really want to go to Disney." What's the false belief that I might have about Disney being able to deliver a relationship? "Oh gosh, you know what I just don't know. I don't know. I don't know if anyone's going to believe me that I went there."
"Don't even worry about it." Well, they have a billion photographers all over the place snapping pictures you weren't asking them to take and then we're just going to sell them straight back to you for $100. That's totally what they do. We walked into several different restaurants, lots of different rides, in front of the castle, all over the place, pictures, pictures, pictures, pictures, pictures all over the place. "No one's going to believe that I was there without a billion pictures. Rather than just me saying it." "What are the kids going to say when you tell them, yeah we went to Disney. What are you going to show them?" It's like a pride game a little bit that they throw on you. I'm not bashing Disney but think about the sales message. When it comes to internal, maybe some of my insecurities it kind of ties into the last one too, "No one's going to believe me. How am I going to remember this experience afterward?" "Don't even worry about it." Disney comes back, don't even worry about it we're going to through Mickey ears down your throat. There's going to be a billion different styles, don't you dare just buy one style. There's going to be tons of t-shirts, lots of stuff, tons of shops, which basically sell all the exact same thing. Lots of swag... Don't worry about it we're going to give you pictures so everyone knows you're there." And the way you're going to remember it is swag galore. In fact, right now I'm wearing a Disney shirt because I felt the pressure of doing that. And I'm a buyer, I buy stuff real easy. As far as an external related belief, usually I say time, money, and resources. You might say, "Oh my gosh, I don't know. Time wise, how long are we going to be there?" "You know what, there's so much for you to experience there's no way you could ever get it done in a single day. You have to spend a few extra days and we'll actually create a special package for you." If you notice when you go in and you buy stuff their offer is, "You can buy for one day or for slightly cheaper you can buy for three days." I don't think there's an option to buy for two, which is kind of interesting when you think about that. Three-day hopper pass. They don't sell a two-day option. It's almost like when you're selling supplements, you go from one bottle to three bottles, there's no two. That's obviously drastically increasing their average car value per customer. Now they have to stay another day in the hotel, they gotta spend $100 a day on food. Lots more opportunity for swag drops. Does that make sense? Very, very interesting. So, as far as external related beliefs like time, money, resources. Time, "Don't worry about it, it's three days, that's the best." When it comes to resources things like that, food, hotels, transportation. Disney hotels, Disney food, Disney transportation, Disney restaurants. Does that make sense? They're in the business of all these follow-up businesses because those are problems they created for the customer.
Anyway, that's kind of the stack slide, which is a little bit hard to say over a podcast. But hopefully, that made sense though. And I was like, "Yes. This is good right here."... We were offered upsells both in the way of continuity, but also in ways of just more expensive experiences. Upsells, every cashier asked us if we were an annual passholder. "Are you an annual passholder?" And I had to say no every time. No one likes to say that. No one likes to say that.... For the first time in my life, I've considered being an annual passholder. I doubt we'll ever go back for like three years, four years. It's going to be quite a while before we ever go back to Disney, but I seriously considered becoming an annual passholder simply because they asked me. And like every cashier asked me, every single photographer asked me, every single ... it was fascinating. They all clearly were trained to do that. And I did not feel bombarded all the way, but just the mere tick tack ninja kick you in the face nugget of just asking is what got me to start thinking about it. Anyway. There were handouts. There were handouts like crazy. As you exit the park. They're not doing it when you're in the park, which I thought that was a really nice touch. I wasn't walking around being handed all this stuff, which I actually really appreciate, that would have been over ... It already is a little bit sensory overload, but that would have been too much. As you're exiting the park there's handouts all over the place and they want to ask you, "Hey," you see things for Disney cruises, that's a vastly more expensive experience than what we went through. Actually, it was probably about the same by the time we were done. Does that make sense? There was upsells all over the place. The parade, guess what, they do a massive parade every single day and fireworks show pretty much every single day. Why? I was listening carefully to the words in the parade. They have thousands, tens of thousands of people lined up all over the streets, I mean it's huge. If you guys have never been there, it's a cool experience you should go. To look at it as a marketer if anything. Because it was cool. They had tens of thousands of people just lined up all over the place over I don't know how many miles of road. This parade went for quite some time and it was big, it was a huge production. Guess what it was? It was a freaking sales letter... I was watching it and I was listening to all the words. And they're singing about how happy it is to be on a Disney Cruise, no joke. They were singing about how cool it is, "Oh my gosh I found out that I got an annual pass." Seriously. They were singing about other stuff as well but literally, that was the lyrics of the songs and it was a lot of times the exact same songs over, and over, and over, and over, just on repeat. And they're dancing and going all over the place. And your favorite Disney characters are coming out, they're all dressed up, but they're singing. They definitely had shock and awe value. It was subtle but it was there. And they have an ascension process built just after you bought their latest thing. They do exactly what we're teaching you to do. That's why I was laughing so hard about it because I was sitting back and I was like, "Oh my gosh, I just paid for this. They're already asking for the next purchase."
Let alone spending several hundred dollars a day on food sometimes. Let alone all the other stuff that's going to go along with it, all the incidentals, the experiences. Of course, we gotta get pictures with Mickey, of course, we gotta go to the restaurants, of course, we gotta get the swag and everything, of course, we're going to ... we want the experience. We want to be able to go back and tell about it, no one's going to believe the fact that we were there without us having all this stuff. You know what I mean? That's exactly ... Anyway, it was so funny. There were many in the rooms themselves. There's stuff all over the place for Disney cruises, there's stuff for annual passes. When we checked into the hotel people were asking, "Well, are you an annual passholder? "No."... "Okay." And they don't offer it afterward. That was interesting. I thought that was kind of cool. No one said, "Well do you want to become one?" That was cool. Which is the only question I wanted to get people to ask on the doors when I did door to door sales. As soon as I got them to ask the question, "How much is it?" That's a buying question. We just shifted from essentially the sales message to the stack section of the pitch. "Well you get this and you get this and you get this. And it's only this much, but if you go there it's only this much." "What?" And they do a stack, right there. Disney has a stack. Disney does a stack slide... It was pretty interesting too, I noticed every single ride was an epiphany bridge script, literally. When you're waiting sometimes an hour in line two hours or whatever. When you're waiting in line, are the liens just normal? Is it literally just a fence? No. They're themed out to the max. You've got whatever ride it is, whatever the theme park ride, like Toy Story ride or whatever. There's Buzz Lightyear himself he's talking to the people in the line. There's pre-frames galore. Themed stuff all over the place. And opportunity for you to buy swag so you remember that exact ride. At the end of every single ride, the opportunity for an upsell, for swag for that specific ride. Think about that. Very, very interesting. Very cool, very clever. I imagine their average car value goes way up because of that. They don't just have shops on like the Main Street there and as you're exiting and entering the park. Literally, after every ride is an opportunity for an upsell. Very fascinating. Every ride was an epiphany bridge scrip. There was a pre-frame, especially even in the ... actually not just in the kid rides. There was conflict, there was resolution, there was literally, every ride was a story. Sometimes literally, and it would say, "And they lived happily ever after." Or, "Once upon a time ..." and then the ride would start, especially in the kid rides, but even on the roller coasters when you're getting on there was still some theme. There was still some story being told throughout it. Script being said or not, experienced. Anyway, very fascinating... But let's just think about this for a second. How did I know that Disney was going to be cool? How did I know that Disney was what they said they were? Besides them constantly putting out the paraphernalia, constantly putting out the stuff. I knew. Guys, they publish, yes I'm going to get back to that I shove it down your throats I know I do. They publish. How do they publish? Okay, they make full out movies. They make full out movies. Do you think people in the theme parks have seen the movies? Of course, they have. Who do you think the people in the theme parks represent? Who do you think? It's the fanatic purchasers. They change the selling environment. You get on a freaking airplane, you go and you spend far more money than the eight dollars it costs you to watch the movie in the movie theater. They went from an eight dollar price point, maybe $15, I don't know. And you go in and you spend ... I mean we spent a grand for our tickets for three days for three of us. Our little one was free. It as another two grand for the hotel. It was another grand for the flights and all that stuff. Does that make sense? I easily probably spent another grand combined with food and swag and all that stuff... That's exactly what we're doing. Guys, we're trying to show you that very ... I'm trying to help you understand, when you go in and you start selling your thing there is going to be a percentage of the people who purchase from you who want to spend more money for you. And the reason that they're willing to do so is because they love your culture...
Culture is brand... We know that guys. Forever I thought Disney, I thought that first letter was a backward G, I'm sure I'm not the only one that thought that when I was a kid... But Disney, the word Disney all over the place. Disney, Disney, Disney. What does it mean? What does it represent? What do you feel? What do you experience when you read the word? Their brand is so freaking powerful because they have so much culture that's built. They've got the swag, they've got the movies, they're telling stories literally through their movies. Then you can go and you can have the extra experiences, have the experiences all over the place. I'm going to go to the theme park, I'm going to meet the characters themselves real or not. I'm going to go over here and I'm going to find other ways to spend. Disney, Disney, Disney, Disney. Can I go on a different cruise? Of course, I could, but there's a Disney cruise. Can I go to a different theme park? Of course, I could, but there's a Disney theme park. And they just expanded. Guys, their business model, and their value ladder is so freaking nailed down. Continuity programs were all over the place. Ways for them to purchase more, annual passholder, that's an annual continuity program. You get a different experience with that pass. You get a different experience with this. Core experience, anyway ... Very fascinating. It was funny, when we were about to go we realized that our little four year old had not seen hardly any of the movies that were going to be rides for. So, we had to go buy all the movies and watch a whole bunch of them. We had to... That's exactly what I'm talking about though is that when the brand is that strong when the culture is that strong when the stories. There's heroes to journey stories all over the place. That's all it is. Their actual movies are all about that. I'm going to go leave ... You know you think about their movies, the protagonist leaves their home, they go towards this main thing but really there's this internal transformation. Cars example, Lightning McQueen, from Expert Secrets, that one's all over that. But each ride was that... They're trying to give you the same experience. You're the protagonist, you leave your freaking home, you go over to Disney, you feel as if you have this cool magical experience, actually what you had is this internal transformation, you're closer together with your family or you're closer with yourself. Does that make sense? It's all throughout it, and it was just buzzing my nogging all over the place. And it is so incredibly important to recognize that. The biggest freaking brands on the planet, a billion dollar industries they're using exactly what we use also to sell seven dollar things. Guys, hopefully, I was helpful. If you want to know how to get good at offer creation just practice it. I literally wrote out, I figured out their offer, I figured out the storylines, I used all the frameworks that I typically use to coach somebody for Disney. And I'll go do that for like I said eComm, we'll do that for some retail thing, I'll do it for real estate. It doesn't matter. It's persuasion. This is Persuasion 101. Marketing, not selling, marketing. And it's not something that's taught often. Anyways guys, hey, thank you so much. Hopefully, that was helpful to you and I'll talk to you later... Whoa, thanks for listening. Please remember to rate and subscribe. Hey, you want me to speak at your next event or mastermind? Let me know what I can share that would be most valuable by going to SteveJLarsen.com and book my time now. | |||
| 24 Nov 2017 | SFR 87: Leaving ClickFunnels... | 00:23:08 | |
...sadly, it's time...
Hey. What's going on everyone. This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business, using today's best internet sales funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. All right. My voice is a little bit shot. There's another story to that, another time. I have not slept that much in the last few days and I just wanted to get this episode out to you guys, because of something that has happened very recently. I've actually known about it quite a while, but it's not been let out of the bag for quite some time now, and that is that I'm leaving ClickFunnels. I know. I know. I just heard your gasp during the recording of this. You gotta understand. I'm not leaving ClickFunnels, like the software. I am not longer going to be employed there. The first time I ever said that, the other ... Anyway. I should tell you some of the story, so you guys have a little context with this, then I've got somewhat of a treat for you. It is a huge bittersweet for me, a huge bittersweet. When I first got hired at ClickFunnels I was driving. I was at Rexburg, Idaho and I was driving over to Boise, Idaho. I'd never been to Boise, you know, this is where we are now. I was driving over there, and after I was driving away after the interview, the interview went great. I think I've told you guys about that before, but the interview went great. As I was leaving, the moment I got on the highway, they called me and they said, "Hey. We want to hire you." I said, "Oh. What? That's so cool." They're like, "Yeah, but I don't think you get it yet." They say, "We wanna hire you, but we want you to be Russell's actual funnel building assistant. We want you to sit next to him and help him build his funnels all day. Are you willing to do that?" I was like, "You're gonna pay me to do that? Uh. Yes." The moment that I hung up with them, I first screamed like crazy, and I pretty much lost my voice in the four hour car ride home. I couldn't believe it. I mean it's like winning the lottery, even better than that. Yeah. Actually that's a stupid, stupid analogy. It's way better than winning the lottery. I went and I called my wife immediately afterwards. I told her ... I was like, "Babe. You gotta understand that, first of all I just got hired, and ..." She was going nuts. I was like, "Babe, what you gotta understand is that like, our life just changed." Okay? It was one of those moments where I just knew the course of it had just shifted. It's a big deal, you know. I hope that you're starting to identify those moments in your life. For me, one of the biggest first shifts, professionally, is when I first got my ClickFunnels account. Another was when I first read DotCom secrets. I had been trying to do this stuff for a long time. Someone recently said, "Steven you're so lucky. You got to sit down and Russell taught you how to build funnels." No. No, no, no, no, no, no. I was already building well before I worked there. Okay. I had my own clients. I was making money for other people. I was making money myself. I definitely was ... I was doing it. I was in it. I was running. I was already in motion, and obviously I learned a lot, from Russell like crazy. You know, we geek out together all the time about it, but anyway ... I've had another one of those moments. Anyway, maybe I'll tell you guys the whole story sometime. Guys, I'm an entrepreneur. Okay? I don't make a good employee, and I know that. It's my fault that I'm leaving. You know, it's not like I'm being fired. I'm not being fired at all. It's kind of a mutual agreement actually. Actually, in fact, Russell kind of suggested it that I go leave for a bit. Gonna go pursue some of my own stuff, frankly because I keep doing my own stuff on the side as an employee there, and...
We are actively trying to actually change the world... I mean it's something that is intentional. That's kind of one of the main point of this whole podcast, is that I'm leaving ClickFunnels. There's a whole bunch of stuff I've been doing and selling on the side, stuff that you guys don't know about, stuff that a lot of people don't that a ... You know, I've been scratching my own itches, you know. Selling stuff like crazy, doing things in here and there. I mean, I've never really stopped, and ... Anyway, what made me actually, kind of just push it over the edge, cause it's been on my mind for a while, really since like, June-ish, July-ish, somewhere around there. Maybe around August-ish. Somewhere around there, like mid-summer, late summer, somewhere around there. What really pushed me over the edge was ... I was talking to a mentor, a different mentor. I've got several mentors, which I recommend you all do, if you don't. I was talking to a mentor and he asked me ... He said, "Hey Steven. What's your five year goal?" I think I've talked to you guys about this before. I said, "I don't know." He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "I have no idea. I have no idea. I am focused solely. I never plan past six months, because I'm trying to stay focused." He goes, "Okay. I understand your point, but you gotta understand that you could be running in a completely different direction you actually wanna go, because you're not asking the actual hard question. What do you want to be doing in five years?" I was like, "Ah. I don't know." It stressed me out. It actually freaked me out. He's like, "Okay, well, what's your 10 year goal?" I was like, "I have no idea. I've never thought of that question before. I don't know. I'm just focused on what I'm doing right now and being the best in the world at it." I'm trying ... Am I? No, but I know I'm close. You know, I work really, really, really hard. Besides Russell, I don't know anyone else who's built as many funnels as I have in as many industries, like I just don't. I mean, I've worked super hard to get where I am. There's no shortcut to it. You can fluff it. Okay? This isn't some crappy thing that you ... You know, it's not a get rich quick thing. I hope it is some day. You know what I mean? Whoever said, "Don't worry. It's not a get rich quick scheme." He's like, "Oh dang it. Really? Darn it." I understand what they're saying. I hope I get rich with it. You know what I mean. Anyway, that was always my come back when they ever said that. The point is that, it freaked me out. I didn't know the answer to it. I did not understand what I actually wanted. That question haunted me. What's funny is that most of the time, whenever there's something that new that pops up ... Whenever, there's something that pops up that ... I'm good under that kind of pressure. I actually perform quite well under pressure. It's one of my skills. I like pressure, good pressure... You know there's bad pressure too, but there's good pressure. Good stress. I love it. I love being under that kind of stress, cause it's very growing. It's very uncomfortable, and at the end, I always pop out the other side with more confidence, more skill, a better know how. You know what I mean? And so, I look forward to those things. This guy's asking me, "What do you want to be doing?" It actually scared me. I went home and I started talking to my wife about it. I was like, what do I actually want? I didn't have an answer for a while, which scared me, because I was kind of tricking myself, cause I really did know what the answer was. The answer was ... I kept asking myself that you guys. I mean, an obsessive question. It's not like me to do that. I like the stress. I like the questions that come, because I get to tackle 'em, challenge 'em, move forward. Tackle 'em, challenge 'em, answer it, move forward. I couldn't answer this one. It was like I was wrestling something that wouldn't go to the ground. I was like ... It's not like me. You know, I try and just have a very aggressive attitude and it comes to my profession, cause I'm dealing with my family finances, you know? I'm not being a pansy about it. You know what I mean, I'm trying to ... I'm not trying to accidentally make money. I am trying to make money. You know what I mean? Funny enough, I think some entrepreneurs, you know, will get themselves kind of in that rut, where they're like, "What? I don't want to feel greedy, so I'm not trying to make money. I'm making it for those peop ... I'm making it for that like ... No. I mean, you can make it for yourself, you know, with good intentions. You know, anyway. Different subject. It scared me. For honestly, probably several days at least, which in my brain is a few years, I just couldn't answer the question. Finally, one day ... This is probably three months ago. Yeah. It was probably three months ago, maybe three and a half-ish. Anyway, one day I was sitting there and I was like ... I asked myself again. I was like, fine. I'm just gonna be totally honest. I'm gonna get to this place of vulnerability with myself. I was like, Steven. What do you want? I immediately just blurted out, "I want to run my own company. I want to run ... I've always wanted that, which is ludicrous to leave what I've been in. I get that. You have got to stare at yourself in the mirror and answer that question at some point, you know. Maybe it's that you are scared to death and you really think you may not be able to make it as an entrepreneur. I mean, challenge that, you know. Is it something you want? Then don't back down. You know, whatever it is that you're really trying to do. I was like, "Gosh. Dang it. I don't want to leave ClickFunnels. I don't wanna leave ClickFunnels." I still don't want to leave ClickFunnels. Most people leave their job, because they hate it, or because they finally beat the nine to five, or whatever. I could legitimately say I love Russell like a brother. I would do anything for him. I have got to scratch this itch. The answer freaked me out. And so, after a lot of conversations, a lot of long conversations, honestly a lot of ... I'll be open about it. I totally broke down in the bathroom at work, several times. I am not excited to leave ClickFunnels, for the sake of leaving ClickFunnels. I want to be there, but I'm trying to follow the answer and actually, the answer that I've given myself, and I've actually kind of been uncovering, which is that I wanna run my own company. I think I'll do a great job at it. In fact, I think I'll do a very good job at it. I'm cut out for that kind of thing. You know, my brain works that way. I'm excited, which is, I think is one of the reasons I've been a good assistant for Russell, you know, cause ... It's not like I'm managing just to funnel. There are parts of things where I'll manage, like whole aspects of what we're doing. You know what I mean? I'm excited to do it. Please understand. I'm not trying to showboat or be like, oh, Steven this, X that. You know, you're showboating. You're being whatever. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that, you have got to stand with full confidence in the thing that you're trying to do, and stop apologizing to others, but especially yourself for what your goals really are. Pause for effect. Okay? Think about that. For a long time, I'm know that, that's what I want to do. I've known that since high school really. It's always been a part of me. You guys remember a few episodes ago, I went and I actually talked about the ... I called myself the seven year overnight success story. I talked about the 17 businesses that I can remember, that I failed at beforehand. I mean, a ton of stuff. It's my not first rodeo at this stuff. It's not my first time making money on my own. It's not my first time failing on my own. It's not my first time creating awesome stuff on my own. I'm excited to go do it again, but I'm very excited. I've had several of you guys reach out, as kind of the news spread out there a little bit. This podcast will definitely continue. This is not affiliated ... Technically it's not affiliated with ClickFunnels. I just am obsessed with it, and what I know the mission of ClickFunnels is, and what they're trying to do. I talk about it a lot. Okay? Sorry. My voice is like shot you guys. I'll tell you what's happened in a little bit also. Anyway. That's what the lesson of this whole show is. This episode anyway, is that ... Get honest. Okay? When Garrett White stood up, a few lives ago, he stood up and he said, "You've gotta stop lying." Okay. He said a lot of expletives. He said, "You gotta stop lying. Stop lying. Stop lying. Stop lying. Stop lying to yourself. Stop lying to your family. Stop lying about your goals. Stop lying on what you really want. Stop lying about any desires you really have, things that freak you out. Whatever it is, you gotta get to this place of ultimate vulnerability and it's not easy to do." What's funny is that most people don't think that, that's honestly what it does take to be an entrepreneur. You've got to do those things, just like Robert Kiyosaki said. Any venture you start in any business, funny enough, it's your character flaws, a lot of times that blow up in your face and keep you from moving on. Not other stuff. Yeah, you gotta have an opportunity.
Awkwardly enough, until you address some very critical, key character flaws, you won't move forward, not at a quick pace, and not at a pace that you're hoping to actually make money at. That's what this whole things been about for me is just ... I'm just trying to be real. Steven, what that have to do with building funnels? Everything. Okay? Everything, has everything to do with it. Just get real about it. I was watching a post from someone the other day. They were saying how they're trying to build several funnels a week, or even like, one a day, or something ridiculous like that. I was like, "That's not the point. That's not the point." I know some people have used that strategy before, but some people use it as a distraction, where it's like this goal. It's this badge. "Oh, I built a new funnel every week for the last six months." Cool. And you're still not making money. Okay. You missed the whole point. Just choose one. Get good at that one. ClickFunnels comes with hundreds of funnels that you can go build. Truly, you need one funnel to actually kill it. You know what I mean? I mean, there's a lot of stuff you can do the other's for as well. Focus on one. You know, obsess with the one. Get real with yourself about what one thing you're actually trying to do. That's my challenge to you. A lot of you guys have asked. A lot of you guys have reached out. Steven, why on earth would you leave something like ClickFunnels? I get it. It does sound absurd, but I actually never in my life thought that I would go into the MLM industry, but I am. The reason why is cause, I'm frankly a little bit ticked off at that industry. Russell and I were looking at a definition of entrepreneur the other day. I actually really like it. The definition was that, an entrepreneur is somebody who takes responsibility for problem that is not their own. I was like, interesting. I have been obsessed, actually, silently ... For a lot of you guys, you don't know this, but for the last three years, I've been obsessed with trying to help fix the MLM industry, meaning, I think it's stupid that you gotta go talk to your family members and friends. I think that, just like in any other business on planet earth, if you sell the same thing, like in any MLM, or in any industry, or in anything else. If you sell the same thing as every other person out there, with the same script, the same everything, you're gonna really struggle in business, for some reason, all these MLM'ers think that it's gonna be different for them. That's not. Uplines don't teach that crap. Corporates don't teach it, because they don't know. I'm super fired up, really passionate about it. There's a lot of things I'm doing in the industry already that a lot of people don't know about. That's what I'm leaving to go do for a while. I've got a piece of software that I've been creating, that'll be done, honestly probably in about two months, that's killer, it's amazing. I've got a whole bunch of auto-recruiting funnels. Got all these cool .. Anyways, I've been building on the side for a long time. I've launched the beta of it about a year and half ago. Went great. I learned what was wrong with it, learned what was great with it. I've got a whole beta group that's been running for months. There's a lot of stuff going on, a whole podcast has been created out of this, which is killing it, so anyway, that's why. I'm very passionate about it. I'm passionate enough about it to leave the insane, insane, amazing, incredible, other synonyms, cool job that I had at ClickFunnels. If you compare what I'm leaving to what I'm gonna go do, it must be pretty freakin amazing. That's all I'm saying to it. I hope you get that, that I understand very much, what I'm doing and the pain is huge, which must mean that the potential for pleasure in what I'm trying to actually go do, must be even bigger, and it is, and it's stuff that no one's ever done before in that industry. I just wanna go help it. It drives me a little bit crazy. Anyway, it's not a pitch anyone. A lot of people have been asking and I thought I'd just answer it here. Anyway, I hope you guys get real. Get real is what it is that you are trying to do in your life. If you are not doing it, I beg you to get real with yourself, and figure out exactly what it you're trying to go do, and be willing to jump out without your parachute being built yet. Don't worry. You'll build it on the way down, cause the fear of hitting the ground's gonna be too strong. That's just how it works. That's just how it works. This game has so much less to do with being perfect before you do something, as it does with just taking action, and just doing stuff. You know what's funny? 80% of people out there, which I'm is much more than that, are just freaked out about life in general. If you're one of the other 20% that just does, something, you're already ahead of everybody else. Just do something. That's really what's been on my mind past little bit. It's like, man. Just get out and do it. Whatever it is that you've waiting for. "I just gotta have this membership site done," or, "I've gotta just, get this last piece together," or, "I gotta get this contract done," or, "I gotta meet with my lawyers." No you don't. "I gotta get my logo done." I hate that one. It's not true at all. "I gotta finish my website." Barf. No you don't. Okay. The only thing you need to worry about is selling. That's it. If you've never sold your thing, but you think it's gonna be the thing that saves you and gets you out of your thing, wake up. Okay? Papa Larsen's getting real with you, okay? Wake up. Quit hanging onto that false dream. It's not a real dream... What you do is you get real with yourself, and you get to a place of vulnerability, which is gonna take you, learning how to trust you, and a different level you've never gone before, and you say, "Oh my gosh. This is where I actually want to go." Then you have the cohunes to get out there and try and sell it for the first time. If people are buying it, ah, awesome. Now you're getting into a spot where the possibility of you leaving your job or changing your business, or whatever you're trying to do, actually can become real. Before that, you're just lying to yourself. Anyway, sorry my voice sounds weird. I pretty much didn't sleep over the weekend. I think I'm getting sick. I'm trying not to. I don't want to admit it, cause I feel like that's part of me getting sick. I don't know if that's true at all. I really don't want to get sick. Anyway, so I'm leaving ClickFunnels you guys and I'm really bummed about it, but it's because I've gotta go cut my own path. I'm just being true to myself. I'm stoked to do it. I'm extremely passionate about it, but there is a level of Steve Larson that the world has not experienced yet. I've done a lot of stuff in a nine to five setting, with Russell, which is, it's way more than nine to five, but you know, normal job. Oh Mylanta. I come back and I get all this other stuff done in the evenings, on the outside of my job there. A lot of people are like, "How do you do all that?" You haven't seen anything yet baby. Here comes Steve Larsen. Okay? I'm super excited. I'm just gonna come out of the gate just running and I excited to do it. I'm excited to be more a part of it, the entrepreneur world. I'm gonna figure it out. I got no doubt in my mind about that. I've already done a lot of testing a lot of the way. I've already made a lot of money along the way with my testing. It's been great. Anyway, Honestly I was planning on taking this episode an entirely different direction, but that's what was from the heart. Not necessarily about funnel strategy, but very much having to do with where you're trying to drive your ship. Some of you guys are running super hard, but in a weird direction. You just gotta get real with where you're trying to go, and not confuse, like I said before. Don't confuse your movement with achievement. It's not the same thing. If something doesn't have to do with selling your thing, quit doing it. You know, if you're not doing the stuff that you ultimately want to be doing in the next five years, change it. Get to it. Anyway guys. You're all awesome. I love this community by the way. I absolutely love all the guys. I love everyone who listens to this show, not just cause you're listening to it, but because I know that you guys are fighters. I was tired for years, of being around people who are just trying to just get by. "Well, I'm just trying to get by." It's like, really? "Oh Gosh. I have to work today?" I'm like, "Oh you kidding me? I get to work today." You know what I mean? I know this podcast brings those kinds of people around. I am intentionally trying to change the world, and I hope that you are as well. I hope you're bold enough to talk about that. It'll feel weird at first. It was weird for me for quite a while. It was not comfortable for me to say those kinds of things. I'm comfortable with it now. I've developed enough now. I'm in my own journey, in my own progression. I'm telling you right now. I Have some cohunes about your own future, and I'll talk to you later. Bye. Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Wanna get one of today's best internet sale funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels, to download your sales funnel today. | |||
| 18 Aug 2022 | Teaching My Kids Offer Creation From Scratch | 00:19:16 | |
I tell my kids what I do and try to get them to dream. I was surprised last week when they directly requested to learn how to make $10k/mon. So this is how I'm starting that journey with them and what I'm gonna have them do first… This is the same proven process I use on adults who ask me how to make money. It doesn't matter what you are selling; the process works every time. It's cool to teach my kids these things because no school will do that for them. Of course, it will be baby steps, and they must first tackle any false money beliefs they might have. Then they'll learn how to define their dream customer and figure out something cool to sell them using a script that makes them reach for their wallet. If you are starting out, this is the same process you have to follow. Also, you can teach your kids this formula. Tune in! Key Takeaways - Adding some constraints into your life (01:41) - Teaching my daughters how to sell (04:55 - Starting with the baby steps (07:43) - Internet Launch Secrets for kids (08:51) - Asset vs. liability (09:23) - Tackling false money beliefs (11:52) - The proven process of crafting any offer (13:23) Additional Resources --- Download Season 1 episodes here -- Sales Funnels Radio is a podcast for all passionate digital marketing pros looking to up their game and stay ahead. | |||
| 27 Feb 2017 | SFR 38: My Day 1 of 3 'Funnel Hacking Live 2017' Notes | 00:28:06 | |
Click above to listen in iTunes... Russell Brunson, Todd Brown, Brandon and Kaelin Poulin, Jim Edwards, and Stu McLaren...
What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen. You're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Now, for the next three episodes, I'm actually going to do ... This episode will be day one of Funnel Hacking Live, and I want to go through and show you the lessons I learned, and kind of what some of the speakers were doing and sharing with us. And then, obviously, next episode will be day two, and then day three. So the next three episodes are going to be a bit of an overview of the things that I learned. Let's kick it off. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. All right guys, now the first thing you'll probably notice is that my voice is shot. I am completely humbled by the number of you that I met who listen to my podcast. It was so awesome. But I met so many of you. I was totally touched, also, by the number of you ... I mean, I was not expecting gifts, but a lot of you guys ... Anyways, I'm saying thank you to those of you did that. That was very nice of you and I appreciate that a lot... I pretty much talked for three straight days and my voice is totally gone. I was going to do these last night while it was all even more fresh in my brain, but I was like, "Gosh. I can't even ... I can't even ..." You know, anyway. I was like, "Maybe if I go to sleep, everything is going to be better, and I'll wake up in the morning, my voice will be better." It's not. It's actually worse. I'm probably going to lose my voice, 100%. Anyway, that's okay. Here it goes though, all right, so you just have to, I guess, deal with that.
But, this is more the tactile stuff that I'm going to go over. The very first day that we had ... Gosh, it was such a good event. Oh my goodness. Everyone was going nuts, so crazy. Totally got my picture with Tony Robbins, which was crazy cool. That guy is huge. Anyway. I'm not a small guy either, but man, he was like a full two heads taller than I was. Anyway, all right. So hey, the very first day we had Russell Brunson speak, obviously, then Todd Brown came in and spoke. Russell spoke again about something so good, and I could see everyone going like, "Crap. I need to redo how my whole product works now that I've heard Russell speak." Brandon and Kaelin spoke. Jim Edwards spoke about copies. Stu McLaren came in and taught about membership sites and how to make millions of dollars with them, it was fantastic, it was amazing. Then we had huge round table discussions, and honestly, that's ... I really lost my voice from the majority of, really, two things. When people walked in the door for the very first day, I mean, music was bumping. I mean, it was so loud, it was awesome. The stage looked incredible; it was so much bigger than last time, which none of us could really believe. We were like, "Oh my gosh, this is just amazing." Melanie and our team did fantastic. It really, really went well. Just, I can't even ... It's hard for me to describe everything that went on there. But I ... As people walked in the door, I was screaming, "Yeah, what's up? It's game day baby," as loud as I could, slapping, giving hand-fives to everyone that came in. I'm pretty sure I started bruising my hand; it actually really started hurting. But it got everyone jazzed up and in state as they walked into the door, which is awesome. We wanted the energy levels to go up, because it pulled them out of their comfort zones. I try and do that a lot of times when I'm learning things, even on my own. All right, so Russell first spoke about creating a mass movement. These are really chapters that are hardcore in his new book. But the main point is that you really need ... You got to have three things in order to create a mass movement. The first one is, you need a charismatic leader. Second one, you got to be able to have ... There needs to be a cause. Then the third thing, I think it was a following... Crap, I should have brought all my notes with me as I was doing this. But, anyway, it was so good, because he started talking about ... This is way beyond product creation, right? Most of our audience speaks, and talks, and is focused solely on, "How do I create the funnel? How do I create the product?" Right? He's like, "Okay that's good, and you guys are getting really good at that as a community. But the next step is really, how do you get people to it." Right? Joe Polish, this reminds me of one of Joe Polish's courses, but he's talking about how marketing ... You think about sales, sales is what happens face-to-face, in front of people. I think that I've mentioned that before in this podcast. Imagine standing in front of somebody, that's how you sell them, right? But marketing is what gets them in front of your face, right? That's what turns their feet and gets them standing in front of you, and that's really what Russel talked about first. Very tactile, how to do that, how to construct the message, how to get it and put it all together. Really, really cool. Then we had a quick break. Then Todd Brown came in and he talked more about the big idea, and this idea that you could latch, go back in history and look at other marketing messages that were killing it, and just tweak those messages, and he showed you how to ... Again, the whole thing was extremely tactile.
But Todd Brown talked more about how to actually get that big idea, right, the one thing, and how to construct it. The big takeaway I got from him is that the creativity that your business requires is not in you. It's not. He said, "You have got to be obsessed with the market that you're in. As you dive into the market, and as you figure out what pieces are missing, the creativity comes from the market, not from you." If you're sitting there and you're not reading books, and you're not digesting things, and you're not there trying to get better and get your craft down, you cannot conjure the amount of creativity needed, that your business needs. I was like, "That's so key. My gosh." I started thinking back, and I was like, "Holy crap. He's totally right." Any time I've ever made a product that really has done well, it's because I have been obsessed with that market. I found out exactly what the pain points were, which essentially told me what to build. It didn't come from me. There was ... I actually wrote an e-book when I was in college, and I talked all about this, that man, essentially you don't need to be creative. That is the number one thing that entrepreneurs come out and they're like, "I got to create something totally new." It's like, "Ugh." Anyway, I'll talk about that some time later... But I wrote an e-book that talks about ... I call it "Product Big Bang Theory", which is where these new ideas ... I was like, "Oh, I got to create something totally new," and it's like, actually the market might not even be ready for that. Let's say you actually did pull that off, which is super rare, that something you just made was totally new, not influenced by anything else, that's rare. That doesn't happen very often, right? It's more about product evolution. Right? You look at current states of things and you make an improvement on the way things are, and sell the solution. Then the next person comes along, he's like, "Well that's cool. That brought me up to here. But, now let's go ahead and let's elevate it again." Why are there so many freaking iPhones? Right? That's exactly what product evolution is. That's how huge money is made. Not by product big bang theory; half the time the market doesn't even accept it, you know what I mean? Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked, but ... Okay, that was the first half of the day. It was so good. Then Russell came back on and he gave a speech about how to sell pretty much anything, without selling anything. That was his headline. "How to sell almost anything without actually selling anything." He talked about this concept of ... Okay, right now, you listening, right, think about the industry that you're in right now. Think about it, and think about what it took for you to become an expert in that industry. If you don't feel like you're an expert yet, just keep learning. Right? Keep learning, and the fastest way I know to learn is to teach. Right? This podcast also helps me, guys. It helps me sharpen my craft. Right? Sharpen the saw and get better, and better, and better... I always tell people to get a coach, because it accelerates your learning, and then be a coach, because it solidifies it. Get a coach, be a coach. Get a coach, be a coach. Get a coach, be a coach...
You go out, you get so excited, and the first person who you think is even remotely a good fit for a sales funnel, let's just use that as an example, you run up to them and you're like, "Sales funnel. Auto-responder. SMTP," and they're like, "Ah." You know, we call it technobabble... Technobabble's this thing that will kill the sale, always. The point of Russell's speech on that is that he said, "You need to go back to the time where you had the epiphany, personally. Right? That you needed a sales funnel, and you have to tell that story in a way that gets them in the same state, to have the same epiphany that you did. And then you don't have to be selling anything." Suddenly they'll have the epiphany. They'll realize, "Oh my gosh. I got to have a sales funnel now." You know what I mean? For me, because of the origin story, right? My origin story ... I've said this before, so I'm not going to go into it, because it's a big story. Right? I was in college, I was trying to make a lot of money on the side, and I was doing all right at it. I was getting hired by Paul Mitchell, the hair school. I was driving tons of traffic for them. We were building websites for some of their rising celebrities. Funny, because it was in the middle of my marketing class. We walked up to the teacher and I was like, "Hey, I don't want to come back to your class ever again. I'm already doing this stuff." He's like, "Cool. Just show me a deliverable at the end." So I went and I worked for Paul Mitchell during those hours, three hours a day, driving lots of internet traffic for them, and I could get huge volumes of traffic. I was getting all these people, all these ninja waves, white hat and gray hat stuff. We were getting lots of website visitors for Paul Mitchell there. I realized I could get tons of traffic. But I kept looking at the numbers, and they're like, "Okay, we're spending extra money on this traffic that's coming in. We know we're targeting okay, but why aren't people converting? How do I actually know that these people are making me money?" Right? It's a brick-and-mortar story. That was the big challenge, bringing them from online to offline, and walking into their stores. Right? That's when I realized, there was a skillset out there that I did not have, and that's what ultimately led me to getting all over the internet. I was like, "Oh my gosh. How do I do this? How do I do this?" That's when I ran into "DotCom Secrets" and Russell Brunson. That's how I did it. Anyway, that was the whole point of that though, is that you need to go back to ... start categorizing, start ... Sorry. I'm getting ahead of myself. Start indexing. I should say that, that's probably a better way to say it. Start indexing your stories. Okay? Russell told way over 40 stories in each one of his presentations. It's not because he's just sitting there telling stories, it's to help us. Now that you know, okay, watch what he does, watch what he does in his Snapchat. That's a huge, long, slow story that's going on. You see behind the scenes of what he's really doing in his own personal life. Right? That gets the attractive character up... He tells stories in his podcasts. He tells stories, and it's to help people have the same epiphany of need for what he's selling. Right? That's exactly what it is. That's exactly what he's doing, because he doesn't like hard closing people. He's not even that good at that. I'm not either. I'm not very good at hard selling... It's like, when I was doing door-to-door sales, that was one of the things I sucked at. I was like, "Man, I could come up with a sweet offer, but the best way to sell without selling is story selling." That's what we call it, instead of storytelling... Anyway, so we're going to keep going on. Then Brandon and Kaelin Poulin came up and they talked about social webinars, and they talked about how they spend a thousand dollars getting Russell's Funnel Hacks class. I'm sure you guys have had the Funnel Hacks class, you've gone through it, you know what it is. It's the, "My weird niche funnel that's currently making me 17 grand a day," which, that's very low compared to what it is now. But, anyway, they went through, though, and they started saying, "Hey, I got the thousand dollar thing, and all we did is we played Russell's thing for five seconds and then we stopped, and we implemented exactly what he was saying. We paused the video." He's like, "Sometimes it would take us hours to get through this set that he just showed, and we'd play the video for five seconds, then stop." Russell wanted them up there ... Sorry guys, my voice is shot. I'm trying to do the best I can here. Okay? But Russell wanted them up there to show you guys that you can go just follow Russell's path, and just pause the video. Just pause it, do what he said. Pause it, do what he said. The first year they did that, they turned that thousand dollar investment into 300 grand. The second year they did that, which was 2016, they turned it into 2.3 million. Right? Every time they saw Russell do something on social media, they paused the video and immediately did it. Right? I mean that day, they got it done, and that's how they did it. They didn't know anything about tech stuff. I know way more about click funnels than them. Right? The point was implementation, was getting out there and just doing it. Right? They used social webinars to do that. That was the name of their speech. They would stand up, and one of the cool takeaways I got from them was they said, "Hey look, if you can do it afraid, you'll be able to make it." Meaning, it's scary sometimes to do this stuff. You're like, "Oh, I don't want to do the webinar. I don't want to get out there. I don't want to be myself. I don't want to do a podcast when my voice sucks." You know what I mean, like right now? They said, "If you can do it afraid, people will sense that, they'll bond with you even more, and you'll be able to just take action and just get it done." It works out for everybody.
You go in, and he basically says, "Hey look. Look, copy is not written, it is assembled." All the top copywriters in the world understand that there are elements, there are fill-in-the-blanks, for whole sales letters. Right? Everything. If you need to change your sales letter a little bit, he's like, "Think of it like Legos. All right? You take one little Lego out, and you stick another one right there to complete the sentence." You know, how to blank without blank. You know, how to make a million dollars without leaving your house. You know, how to blank without blank. Over and over again. But that works for all copy, it's not just for headlines. It works for ... He said, "I became a great copywriter when I realized that, that copy was assembled, it's not written. You are not a copywriter, you are a copy-assembler." You might think, "Okay, wow. That's not ... Is that a big enough golden nugget to actually make a speech on?" Well, then he started going through, and he started showing us how ... I mean, this is how Funnel Scripts works. If you ever used the software, it's these inputs that you toss in, and it spits out all your sales copy. At the end, he said, "Hey. The best copywriter that I ever hired, ever, is me." He's like, "If you really want to get amazing at copies, Funnel Scripts is a great launch pad. It will get you there very quickly, but you have got to learn how to assemble it on your own." He gave all the funnels, and all the scripts, and all the fill-in-the-blanks that we would ever need for any type of copy, ever, while we were there. It was a really huge value. Most the speakers gave something ridiculous at the end. It was really nice. Just, tremendous value the whole way. Okay, then Stu McLaren came in. Guys, if you don't know who Stu McLaren is, this guy's one of my heroes, second to Russell, okay? What Stu does with his time, is he goes out and he has something called World Teacher Aid, and any time you ... Some of you guys ... We were actually shocked at the number of people that did not know this. When you click 'Add New Funnel' in ClickFunnels, and you build the funnel, as soon as 100 visitors hit that funnel, a dollar automatically gets donated to World Teacher Aid. Well, we presented him with a $76,000 check while he was here. Literally 100% of all the money that comes into World Teacher Aid is used for building schools in Kenya and Africa. They've built like 11 of them now. Anyway, it's really, really cool, really touching. But we were like, "Holy crap, 76,000 funnels with 100 people came in." That's what that means. Oh my gosh. But he came in and he talked about membership funnels. What he does, is he goes through and he says, "Okay, I'm going to make a sweet membership site, but I'm only going to spend 2 weeks out of the whole year running it." You're like, "What the heck?" He goes in and he says, "Okay. I'm going to go in and I'm going to, on week one, let's have an expert come in and teach something. On week two, let's do a live Q&A about it. On week three, let's do some kind of blog or post, or something like that, some other tangible item that they can go learn from. Then on week four, we'll do some other behind-the-scenes video. Like, 'Hey, this is how I really do it. These are the little hacks I learned.'" And that's what he does. If you look at those, week one, two, three, four, the only two pieces that you have to do ahead of time are getting an expert to come in. He flies everybody in. In two days he interviews, back-to-back, to back-to-back, to back-to-back, to back-to-back, 12 of them. Right? Pre-loads 12 months of content, gets it transcribed, puts it in the membership area, puts it on a drip thing so that it goes out for them after 30 days, after 60, 90, the whole way through the year. Then he creates the blog post for it, same thing. He gets the whole thing set, and then he presses go. The way that he makes $7 million a year off of membership sites, where he only runs them a couple weeks a year, is by the way he handles the cart. He does not leave it open cart all the time. He leaves it as seats. He's like, "Look. I treat you guys like students. I really do want you to know." So rather than these huge ups and downs in his membership sites, he will literally just ... It's like stairs, steps. It's a little up, and up, and up, and up, and up, and up, and up, because while the cart is closed, while people can't get in, there's a waiting list. If there are times when he knows he wants a little boost in the revenue or he might lose some numbers, he just goes to the waiting list and says, "Hey. Look, a seat is going to open up. If you guys want to jump in, go for it," and he'll get a little boost in the sales. That's how he handles membership sites. I thought that was a really great takeaway, and I just wanted to share that over to you guys. Anyways, after that, Russell is taking people to Kenya if they buy a school. We're just trying to raise money for charity. But we don't any of that, obviously. That's literally straight for charity. Then there were huge round tables at the end. It's like non-stop talking. It was awesome. It was really fun to talk to you guys, because half your questions are tactile, "Hey, how do I do this in ClickFunnels?" Then the other half are strategy like, "Hey, how would you sell this?" I got to sit down with so many of you and draw out funnels, and show you how I'd do this, and the ways we've seen it work. You guys know I've built over 140 sales funnels with Russell in the last 11 months. Way more than half of them have been all on my own. You know what I mean? Right at the beginning it was like, "Hey, build this funnel," and then I'd go out and I'd build it, he'd destroy like 90% of it. Well the percent that he's destroying is going smaller, and smaller, and smaller, and smaller. Until finally, the last six months has been like, "Okay, cool. Hey, just change the headline just a little." That's it. I was like, "Holy crap. That's so cool." But it's really fun to sit down with you guys and just start showing all these cool things we've been doing. Hopefully next year we get a round table. That's what I'm hoping for. Don't tell Russell, but tell Russell if you want to. Be like, "Russell, Stephen, why aren't you speaking? Why aren't you at a round table?" I was like, "Well, it's not my company or my call, so I'm not ... " Maybe next time I will. Anyways. Guys, that was the first day. We were there until midnight, and then we got back up. We had our meeting at 7:30, and then huge hand-slapping times the whole way, high-fives coming on in. It was awesome, again. Anyways, that was the first day. Hopefully something in there I said was of use and of value to you. Very, very awesome. I want to encourage you guys right now, if you want to ... I think we sold several hundred tickets for 2018. We sold almost 100 for 2018 right before this event actually started. But then during this event, we sold another couple hundred tickets.
We are going to freaking Disney... The early-bird price right now is 697. I think you can go to funnelhacking.com ... Well you can, I built it. Go to funnelhacking.com. You can only buy single tickets right now, not two. But, just so you guys know, a little inside track here, they are going to raise the price significantly higher for this one. Half of it's just because of demand, and because we bring in people like Tony Robbins. You know what I mean? That is not cheap. I am legally not allowed to tell you how much money it was, but holy crap. Get your ticket now, is what I'm telling you to go do. I'm not pushing an affiliate link, I'm not telling anything else, I just would love to meet more of you guys. About 75% of the room raised their hand when they asked if this was their first event. I think it's because you guys were listening. Anyways guys, fantastic time, and again, next two episodes, I'm going to go through the next two days here. I think you guys are going to like this. It got even cooler. I can't even believe the first day was just so freaking awesome. The first day, when Russell and I were talking about it and going through it, we were going through slides ... I made so many images for his slides. It was a lot of fun doing it with him. But, we realized that the first day is so foundational for the remainder of the event. All right? It had less to do with, "Hey, make this tweak on your funnel here and get an increase in conversions." That's not what the event is about. The event is about how to sell. The event is about how to actually be the business owner. It's about how to outsource. It's how to craft your message. That's really what this was all about. Okay? I saw a blog post from some guy, Billy Gene, and he was like, "This was the worst thing ever. Day one went by, and he didn't go through any tactics." I was like, "Are you freaking kidding me? What he just laid down there means you don't have to strong sell anybody else ever again, ever. All right? I don't like doing that. I'd rather put that on autopilot through a funnel, and he just told you how to do it." No tactics, my butt. Anyway. Okay, don't get me started on that, because what he put out there, there's nothing else from that event ... There's nothing else you could learn that was so valuable. It's pretty much more important than the offer. I have watched Russell ... Just so you guys know, and then I'll end this podcast. I have watched Russell, many times, not know a thing about the person's product, but because he asked certain questions, he knew how to sell it. Did you just have an epiphany? Because you should, about your own products. Some of you guys are so obsessed with your product, but you are not obsessing on how to sell it. They're different things. They're totally different things. Right? One, you've got, let's say ... I was asking someone at the event, I was like, "Do you know what's in a Campbell's Soup soup? What are the ingredients?" He's like, "You mean like all of them on the back?" I was like, "Yeah." He's like, "I don't know." I was like, "Then why'd you buy it? You don't know everything that's in it? Oh my gosh. You're crazy. You're nuts." I was like, "Now is that really that crazy or nuts?" He's like, "No." I was like, "You are thinking that everyone is going to look at all the ingredients in your offer, and all the little pieces, and all these things. That's true; the offer needs to deliver, it needs to be awesome. It's got to be amazing. But, just as important, if not more, in fact, I would say even more, you have got to obsess on how to sell it." I say, "Okay now, can you tell me what a Campbell's Soup label looks like?" He's like, "Well, yeah," and he goes through. I was like, "Okay, now why is that?" He's like, "Because they spent so much more time ... Okay, the ingredients list is on the back of the can, even. Right? That's not the highlight." However, it is the product; it's got to be there. But the message, what people see, the thing that pulls people in, right, the message they put on TV of you drinking this soup while you're sick ... Those are stories. That's how everything's sold. Anyway, I was trying to tell some of this, "Understand what I'm saying to you, that the product is important, but you have been obsessing over your product for the last several years." I knew he was. I was like, "Stop. Okay? It's time to obsess on the message. It's time to obsess on your culture. It's time to obsess on all the little analogies you're going to tell, and inventory your personal stories so people get attracted to you. Let's say your product got shut down, or you lost something, or whatever, that way people still know who you are." Does that make sense? That's the important of this, and that's really what day one was. Anyway, it was a long podcast guys, but hopefully you guys liked that. Hey guys, seriously, again, I would go get the ticket if you haven't. I'm so excited to show you guys day two and three. Holy crap. All right guys, talk to you later. Bye.
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| 09 Nov 2018 | SFR 190: Don't Hire A Marketer... | 00:22:43 | |
Boom! What's goin' on everyone? It's Steve Larsen, and this is Sales Funnel Radio.
Today I'm gonna tell you guys, and try and convince you that you should never hire a marketer.
I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today, and now I've left my nine-to-five to take the plunge, and build my million-dollar business.
The real question is, "How will I do it without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch?" This podcast is here to give you the answer.
Join me and follow along, as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business - using only today's best internet sales funnels.
My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.
What's up, guys? I'm excited for this episode, I've been thinking about this quite a bit here.
Recently, I had a guy reach out to me, it was over on.. I don't remember who..
I have tried to find it on my phone, actually, but he reached out, (and this has happened many times), and I just wanted to address it, because it seems to be something that happens often.
The guy reached out, and he said, "Hey, I appreciate what you're doing, I watch the show..." First of all, thanks for watching the show, and he said, "I watch the show, and I was just wondering, could I give you, maybe, 20, 30% of my business to come in and be the marketer for it?"
And when I see that, I cringe for many reasons.
#1: That's not an attractive opportunity for me at all, 'cause it means I'm gonna be the guy making it rain, and getting paid only 20% for what I bring in - so that's NOT a deal...
Why would I be attracted by that? I'm not going to be, right?
It's kind of like when people come up to me, and they say things like, "Hey, Stephen, look, I've got this great idea, will you do it? Will you come in, you build the funnel, I'll give you 50% of it."
And I'm like, "Why don't I just do the whole idea on my own, and keep 100%?" You know what I mean?
An idea itself is not an asset. Ideas are not assets. Ideas are not value, right?
So, if you just have an idea, and you try and go bring somebody in like that, that's not attractive. They might as well just go and do it on their own.
So, number one, that's the first, like, "Ewww!" That I had when I saw it. I was like, "That's not a deal to me."
But the second thing that I notice is, 'cause this question actually comes to very frequently: "Stephen, will you take 20, 30% of my company, Stephen, can I give you 50% of my company? Stephen, will you do that?"
And what's funny, what's interesting about this topic, is that there's a fundamental issue that is actually going on when somebody asks that question. You should never ask that question - EVER - especially for the role of marketing.
One of my early one-on-one mentors said, that if you think about a business as a car:
Finance - is the guy sitting over in the passenger seat, planning how far you can get with what gas you've got? He's the guy on the side going, "This is what we can do. This is what we can project." Finance, very future focused. This is gonna be the future.
Supply chain - they're the ones hanging out the window. They're the ones who are testing to see how much gas is left in the actual tank? They're the ones seeing when the next gas station is coming up? How far can we actually get based on resources? Where do we get the next resources?
The supply chain is very past focused, "This is what we've needed in the past."
The marketer - is in the actual driver's seat. They're the ones goin', "You know what - let's go over there. I think that there's gold over there! Let's go that way." Marketers are the ones that drive the entire company.
I'm gonna get a lot of pushback when I say that, but it's very, very true. There's no cash... your business is dead! What brings in cash? Marketing!
Money is the byproduct of marketing.
When I see somebody come out, and they say things to me, like, "Hey Stephen, would you please be the marketer of my company?"
What that says to me, that is an individual who has been solely married to the fact that they think that their product is what gives them money. It is not! The product is not.
Now that might be the exchange of what actually pulls the money to you, but that's not how sales are done!
When I see somebody ask that kind of question, I know that there's a fundamental misunderstanding of what actually is causing the cash to come in.
It is not about the product. That is not what's actually bringing in cash.
So when somebody comes in, and they something like, "Hey, would you come and be the marketer?" That tells me they have no idea why their product is selling. They have no clue why they're actually being successful, or not successful.
They have no idea what levers are really going on inside the company... where if they just turn this lever, and push away that one, money would start coming in a little bit more, right?
I know when I consult for companies, I know that there are always, ALWAYS three or four levers that I could just go turn, and money is the result of it.
And it's mostly because us entrepreneurs, we get so focused on being the technician... we get so focused on, "Hey, I got a sweet product. This product right here is incredible, this product's amazing." And you're like, "Yeah, you're right, that's true, you know what, you're right, that's true. Not many of you have done that." But it's not the reason somebody goes and purchases, right?
Very few people will ever go buy something just because it's brand new and never been done, right? That's important, that's attractive, that's sexy... But the reason people buy has everything to do with the actual sales message, and the ability to tell stories.
When somebody comes to me and says, "Stephen, take a percentage of my company to be the marketer." What it's telling me, is that they actually have no idea what stories are selling. They have no idea why they're actually bringing in cash on their own. And it's scary. That's a freaky place to be in - and I understand it.
So, number one, "What do you do if you're in that kind of scenario right now?”
For the individual who reached out and asked that question, (which, first of all, "Thank you very much, I'm honored, but the answer's, No") - I've got a few things here...
If you're in that scenario, and you're like, "Man, I just realized when listening to Stephen, I have no idea why my stuff sells."
The first thing you need to start doing is to go back to your existing customer base, and start asking 'em at what point they realized this would be a good decision for them?
And if they point to a feature, you keep digging until they point to a story - that's very key.
Go back to your existing customer base, if you have a business right now, and you go back to your existing customer base, and you ask them:
And you just keep digging, and you keep digging, keep digging. Ask a lot of people. Man, I'm gonna ask like 50 of your customers.
Go in and ask 'em, and what you'll start to see is a pattern around whatever story it was that you were telling. It might take some digging on your side.
Now, if you DON'T have a product, if you don't have anything selling, you might be in somewhat in this scenario, at a bit of an advantage, because you're gonna be able to go in and just start telling stories. Not about the product - it's storytelling, okay? That's what selling is. You're telling stories.
Every commercial, every ad, every infomercial, infographic, anything. Anything that persuades you is story-based.
So what I want you to do, is I want you to start going out and start telling stories to people. And when you're able to measure which stories cause the biggest "Whoa!" That's the story you should be using. And that's exactly how it works.
Whenever you start seeing a story - or start telling a story to somebody, and they're like, "Wait, what website was that? Wait, where did you get that? Wait, what tool was that? Wait, what product was that?" When they start asking questions like that, they're in heat. That's a person with a wallet, who wishes to be lighter.
They're walking around like, "How do I buy this thing, I really, really need it."
I can't remember what product it was I just did that too recently, but I was listening to somebody, and they're like, "Yeah, just do this, this, and this, and I got this cool product." I was like, "I need that too!" And it was a cool story, I wish I could remember the specific experience. I just remember that just happened to me recently...
When you start to see those stories having that kind of an effect on an individual, you make notes of 'em. Earmark that story.
When I launch a product, one of my favorite strategies is just to just start telling stories on a podcast, or other people's podcasts, or a youtube channel, something like that. And what I'm doing, is I'm testing stories.
I'm trying to see like, "Okay, which of these stories is causing a positive buying reaction?" I don't care if it's from me or not, yet, I'm just trying to see if the story sells. The story is what's selling.
I don't even have to have a product yet, and I can get people to start purchasing.
And again, there can be, obviously, a very ethical and moral bridge to cross there, and make sure you don't cross that. Stay ethical, stay moral with this stuff, okay? But that's truly what's causing the actual purchase to happen.
So, the first two things:
Number one, coming to me and saying, "Do you want 20 to 30% of my business to be a marketer?" No! No! Because that means you don't know what you're selling, and you don't know why it's selling.
You might know what, but you don't know why. You don't know why the thing is actually selling.
Number two, right? The point I was just making right there - It means that the person whose business it is doesn't know stories that are selling. (And those are obviously very tied, those first two.)
But honestly, what I wanted to do real quick here, and I just wanted to give you guys a little piece of advice on who you should hire.
I'm not just saying like, "Don't hire a marketer." What I'm really doing is I'm trying to help you understand who you should hire. Don't hire a marketer!
Every time I've built a funnel for somebody, quick story...
One of the first roles I had at ClickFunnels was to build Russell's personal clients funnels - His personal clients who came to him, and these are hotshots, right?
You can imagine the kind of guys that Russell is willing to say yes to. They're hotshots, they're big guys, they're extremely successful, very well-known.
I was the guy on the side, just hammering these things out. Just pounding out tons, and page, after page, after page, funnel after funnel.
And what was super interesting about it is that, literally, just about every single time I was done building the funnel, and it was a success, and we got this huge influx of cash for them.
We were like "Sweet. Well, hey, that was a great project, appreciate it, your funnel's done now, keep running traffic to it." Then we would just, like, walk away - and the funnel would die almost every single time.
I can think of one instance where that wasn't the case.
I remember at one time, though, I think was running eight different company's funnels. It was eight! It was ridiculous!
So I'd be going in, and I'd be like, "Alright, this over here, we're in the health industry. Over here, we're in the camping industry. Over here, we're in the this, we're in the that..." All these broad areas...
I’d be looking at numbers and tweaking. I was like, "Russell, they need this…. Russell, ah, ah!" And I was pulling my hair out.
It's hard enough just to get an individual to build one funnel in their life.
You literally are one funnel away from the life you'd like. That's why we say that all the time - it's not a cute saying. It's very true.
Imagine doing eight at the exact same time? My brain's already on fire, but it was like extra ablaze. It got really, really stressful.
What we realized was that we had done so much of the marketing for them, figuring out which stories do sell... and not just what the stories are, but how to tell them.
There were so many things we'd figured out for them, and they had not had the epiphany yet on why those things were working. So then, when we left, they didn't know the three levers they should just keep turning, and cash would pop out the bottom.
So we literally stopped working with companies where the CEO was not also the marketer. 'Cause there's a business owner, a marketer, and an entrepreneur. A lot of times, especially as the company grows, that they're not always the same people.
I don't like working with companies where the CEO is not also the entrepreneur and the marketer. There's a sweet spot for me where I like working with that kind of company.
We'd go in, and I'd start working with a CMO, and I'd build these funnels, and we'd put them out, and THEN, I'd have to re-sell the entire concept again from the ground up to the entrepreneur, the CEO, or the business owner.
So there's a combination there that I like to work with that is very, very attractive to me. I know that I can go blow those types of companies up.
It's not that I can't make it work for other companies. It's just that there's so many holes to jump through that it's ridiculous. Lots of red tape. Especially when the organization starts getting bigger. So I don't like to work with anybody who's not the ultimate decision-maker.
If I build funnels with people, it's so rough when that business owner is not also the marketer.
And it makes sense - because the marketer's the one driving the sales. They're the one figuring where the next vein of gold is, but if they're not also the entrepreneur, the CEO, or business owner - it's hard. You're constantly re-selling the organization on what you're doing, rather than having the leader/marketer be like, "Rawr - let's do this!"
Never outsource your marketing!
We always joke that outsourcing your marketing is like outsourcing your sex life... You're not gonna do that.
Selling is the sex of business. The relationship is the fulfillment afterward. That's the big joke with it - we say that a lot.
The whole key, that's what I'm trying to say, is that when you go in, and you're not working with somebody who's the ultimate decision-maker in some form or fashion - who cannot control, or influence, or maintain their organization, and you are re-selling everybody, that is a terrible funnel-building scenario to be in.
I've been in it enough times to know when it looks like that might be what's going on, okay? So, does that make sense? There are multiple reasons why I say no, okay?
I just want you to know, real quick, who you should hire.
My goal of Sales Funnel Radio is to turn you into a marketer. Marketers make cash. Money is the byproduct of marketing. Marketing is the thing that gets you guys money coming in. Loving customers who continue to buy after they make that first purchase. I want to turn you into a marketer.
I'll probably do a podcast episode soon... in fact, I might do it after this one, where we'll just go over definitions so you guys can understand:
They are very different and unique scenarios.
They are all very different. Do not think they're the same. They're completely different things.
So the person you should hire…?
You need to think of it almost like a web... That's how I think of it.
If you are the main marketer, especially if you're small. Especially if you're just starting out in this game. (Now, if you're big, this also applies to you as well.) But the issue is, "You are the marketer... now, WHAT is marketing?"
Marketing is the act of changing beliefs with the intent of a purchase to happen.
That's all marketing is.
That's my own definition, but as I've just gone further and further in this game - that's what it is.
Marketing is not necessarily an ad. Marketing is not necessarily Facebook ads. It's not necessarily logos.
For a long time, I spent time asking myself the question, "What is marketing itself?" The essence of marketing itself, what is it? "It's Belief." It's the act of changing somebody's beliefs. It's the act of changing the way somebody sees the world.
You might do that through some kind of educational thing. It might be through some comedy ad. There are many ways to pull that off... but all you're doing at the core of marketing is shifting someone's paradigm. That's it.
You're changing the way they see the world.
That should be up to the main business owner/ CEO/ entrepreneur/ business owner/ the main decision maker. In my mind, that should be the same person as the marketer. I don't know why you would ever hire out the marketing department.
Everybody's in the marketing department. Everybody in your company should be in the marketing department! You're just changing beliefs. In my opinion, my very strong opinion, that mission should be down to every person in the company.
Anyway, so as got the main marketer, you go out and I start trying to figure out who you need to hire? That might mean a Facebook ads person. That might mean a creative individual, meaning like they create creatives like pictures, and logos, and stuff like that. That's not marketing, but it's a piece of it, right?
Honestly, a lot of the people that I hire for my content creation team, they aren't marketing, but they're part of my marketing engine. They're part of my engine that changes people's beliefs, their relationship with me, and my products. That's what marketing is.
So Facebook ads - that's not marketing - but it's a piece of it.
Creating logos, slogans, business cards - that's not marketing, but it can be a piece of it if you're tossin' in a little story.
I think the biggest waste of space EVER, is when you go into those arenas...
I went to a basketball game with my siblings and my dad - it was a few years ago for Christmas. We went to a basketball game, and we walk into this huge, huge stadium. I think it was in Phoenix. I can't remember who they were playing.
There's the people. There's the players. The stadium is all lit up and everything... but what else is out there? Banners, right? You got people's names - that's it! "Chase." "Coca-Cola."
That's NOT marketing, that's advertising. Does that make sense? Very different. They're very different.
I live in a world called Direct Response Marketing; meaning that the marketing I create is intended for the person that I hope buys. It goes direct to the consumer - right to the individual. That's the world that I live in - because my dollars are measurable.
I know that when I spend this amount of money, like 99% of the time, I get a customer, right? It's measurable. I don't have to go get big dumps of cash coming on in...
So, when you think about yourself, when you think about your business - when you think the way it's structured... You've got your market, you are the marketer; meaning the stories are coming from you. You're the attractive character of your business.
If you're the attractive character of your business, you better freakin' be the marketer - because the marketing stories that you're gonna be telling will most likely be about the attractive character.
Then you might have a Facebook person, an audio person (if you're doing something like a podcast) a video person - all these are pieces of marketing, but not marketing itself!
That's the whole point I'm trying to get down to.
So when somebody reaches out to me, and they say something like, "Will you come out and be the marketer?" I'm like, "Yeah, but I'll probably bring a whole team with me and I'm just gonna be the storyteller." That's what it really means to be the marketer. Anyways, that's all I'm trying to say with this.
It's funny because I've been asked multiple times, "Do you know any good marketers that I could hire?" Guys, you can't find good marketers to hire. I was talking with... I think it was Trey Lewellen, when I was over with him, hangin' out, and he and I were laughing about this very concept. He and I were talking together and saying how funny it is.
He's like, I keep getting asked, "Do you know any good marketers to hire?" And he said the same thing. He goes, "I always laugh when someone asks me that. You can't hire good marketers because they've figured out how to make money so easily that they're just working for themselves."
There's no such thing as hiring a good marketer - which means you need to become one yourself! Does that make sense?
I could find a good copywriter, I could find a great ads person, I could find a great... BUT it's dang near impossible to find a good marketer - because they're not hireable. Good marketers are not on the market. They're not looking for anything.
You can tell when somebody is a good marketer because usually, they're turning down every opportunity. They're so focused on what they're doing. they get the game - they understand it. There's are enough clicks that happen' "Oh my gosh, are you serious, that's how it works?" They're just doing it on their own anyway.
It's funny, 'cause I've had multiple requests for that in the past little bit. People have reached out, and they're like, "Okay, well, if you're not hireable, do you know any other good marketers I could hire?" “No!” I know a lot of people that you could probably train up, but in reality, they're not gonna be as obsessed about your product as you are - so just learn how to be a marketer. Just learn how to do it. It's not something to outsource.
I can find someone in finance, I can find a supply chain, I can find someone in fulfillment. Marketing is that thing, you don't outsource.
You can't find a good marketer, they're not looking. They don't care how good your opportunity is, they're already knee-deep in their own.
I hope this episode was helpful to you, and I hope that what it did, is it helped re-create some of the relationships between what marketing really is, your company.
Money is the lifeblood of your business. Cashflow is the lifeblood of your business. What's tied to that directly? Marketing! You don't outsource that. You could outsource the ads, all these different pieces I was talking about, but don't think you're being attractive by giving away percentages of your company to good marketers.
A joint venture, something like that, maybe? But, they're not motivated by that, okay? They're just not out there on the job board. There's no such thing as a poor marketer. There isn't! Which is why it's hard to hire 'em! Because they've figured out the game. There's no such thing as a poor marketer.
If somebody is poor, they're either new, or they're not a marketer. That's it.
If you figure it out, there's just a few tweaks to make the game real easy. That's what this whole podcast is meant to try and help you learn and understand.
I know this one was a bit of a rant - I was kind of all over the place a little bit, but hopefully, you got the idea:
"Don't hire a marketer! You are the marketer."
You try and hire a marketer, it's not gonna work. Be the marketer, hire out specific roles in your campaigns. That's it. That's what you hire. Don't try and find a good marketer... or hold out on your own business because you're trying to find a good marketer. It doesn't work that way.
Alright guys, thanks so much.
Hopefully, you enjoyed the episode, if you guys liked it, please share it. It really means a lot to me, it really makes me excited and feels good when I see your reviews.
It means a lot to me when I see that you guys have shared it. This is something I've dumped a lot of my own money into, just to get some of these lessons out, 'cause I wanna help share, so it really means a lot to me when you kind of pay it back, pay it forward so to speak.
Anyways guys, thanks so much, hope you guys enjoyed it, and I'll talk to you guys in the next episode.
Bye. Boom! Thanks for listening. Again, please remember to write and subscribe.
Hey, you want me to speak at your next event or Mastermind? Let me know what I can share that would be most valuable by going to stevejlarsen.com, and book my time now.
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| 10 Mar 2017 | SFR 41: WHEN Is A Biz READY For A Sales Funnel??? | 00:41:23 | |
Click above to listen in iTunes... My 11 Point PDF Checklist + I'm Publicly Leaving Funnel Building :( DOWNLOAD THE FREE CHECKLIST AT SteveJLarsen.com
What's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Now, before I get into the episodes, or this episode, I just want you to see a little behind the scenes. Typically, what I do when I get these podcasts together, is I'll just write out a whole bunch of principles of things I know that you guys are struggling with, have questions about, or there's a challenge. I'll go directly address that so that I can just keep trying to provide value. Or, I'll go interview somebody and we'll go dive deep into their business. By the way, I've got about 20 more interviews lined up for you guys. It's going to be great... This podcast is actually a little bit different. This one actually took me about an hour and a half to two hours just to prep. There's a lot of cool things going in it, so I'm encouraging you right now before I start, get a pen and paper if you can. I think you're really going to enjoy this. Anyways, without further ado, let's jump into this. Again, welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. All right, all right. Now, while I was getting this all together, I was remembering the way I got into this industry. I've shared a little bit of this, but there's a certain part of it that I've been realizing that I haven't really shared. It's so key to success, I mean right out the gate. I had a little podcast episode a little bit ago called 'How I Broke into the Industry.' I almost wish I hadn't put that out there, so that you guys could hear a little bit more of some of the things that really happened behind the scenes.
Anyway, through various things, I actually waited on college for a little bit. I was doing a lot of construction jobs and just trying to get money together for it. I told this story of when I walked away, and I was like, "Yeah, no more construction jobs. I'm done with this." I started going and learning, and I was doing door-to-door sales. I was like, "I got to learn how to sell stuff," so I was doing door-to-door sales. When we got married, we had like no money. You want to provide, especially as the man. Like, "I want to be the man. I want to provide for my misses." That's how I was feeling. The problem is that I couldn't. I didn't know business. I didn't know how to sell. I didn't know what marketing was. I had no idea on any of that stuff. I went into what I thought was going to be a prestigious thing going into a business degree, and going into a marketing degree. I started listening to this podcast called ... Actually, I can't even remember it. I can't remember what the name of it was, but it was a guy named Sean Terry. He was teaching how you could flip houses for zero cash, and it was totally legit. It was awesome. It was actually really, really cool. I learned a lot from him. He got me going and out the gates. I'll fast forward a little bit. There was failure after failure, after failure, and as I started getting into this funnel game ... I've told you a bit of this story before, I went to door-to-door sales. I realized that you could actually attract people who want to buy your stuff, rather than go door-to-door and ask people to buy who are not planning on it. I went from door-to-door sales to writing eBooks, and made my first funnel; although I didn't realize that's what I was making. I was using WordPress and all these tools and systems, and then I learned how to drive traffic because no one was buying my eBook. Then, I got hired by Paul Mitchell and started working on building sites and sending traffic for celebrities, which was kind of cool. I was like, "Man, none of this traffic's converting." That led me into Russell Brunson, and I found how to convert and actually sell online. That's really where money started happening. That was four years. I didn't stop. I kept going, and going, and going. Four years! It was painful. It was very painful, because I refused to get a normal job. We were living on student loans, and I was like, "Crap. Like, this is my time to figure this out big and I've got to do it now." I did not sleep much. I did not do any really extra-curricular activities at all. I worked my butt off, and I know I did, and I'm really proud of that. Here's one of the major lessons I learned... As soon as I learned what funnels were and I started building my own funnels, we launched a company called Fixed Insurance. We were doing smart phone insurance. We had customers and there was money coming in. It was great. I was brand new. We kind of mismanaged it a little bit. It wasn't the business I wanted to be in, insurance business. I wanted to go be in ... I wanted to work with people directly, one-on-one, and make their business explode. I wanted to do essentially what Russell now calls the certification program; but that didn't exist then. I was going around and I was going from client to client. I pitched to the owners of Vivant. I went over and I was working with some of the top leaders in different MLMs, building their product, MLM funnels, selling lots of their product. I was going and it was super, super awesome. The big problem was, was that none of them were big payouts. In between each of those successes that I was having was a crap ton of failure. It wasn't until I started looking back, like two days ago, literally. I was looking back and I was thinking, 'Why did this work, and why did that not? Why? Why did some funnels explode a business, and other funnels I mean, did nothing?' Even in the same business, every once in a while, a funnel would go in and it would blow up, and then would do nothing again afterwards. Like, 'What's the difference? Why? Why? Why did some ... Why did some businesses just not take?' I was going back and forth, and I was looking around. I said, "Oh my gosh, I think that there are times when a business is ready for a funnel." All right, now that's not normal thinking, right? We usually think that a funnel is good for any business at any time, always, ever; and yes, that's true. I'm not saying that you should not build funnels if you don't have all these elements but I started looking at all the people I've built funnels for. I've built over 150 funnels in the last year alone. Actually, 11 months; in the last 11 months alone. A lot from my own clients, a lot for obviously for Russell's, a lot for click funnels internal, for click funnels external, for all the clients that he's got. All over the place, from supplement funnels to funnels for toilet paper, no joke. Funnels for lots of webinar funnels, lots of info products, retail; I mean across the whole gambit, MLM, local clients. All over the place. It's been a lot of fun and a hardcore education, learned way more than my entire marketing degree combined. It's been fantastic. I started looked back and I started seeing the patterns. I noticed that there's a specific moment when a business is ready to accept a funnel. All right, you got your pen and paper now; because I created it's 11 pieces in this checklist to help you and I know when a business is ready. What I'm going to do is I'm actually going to go open this thing up. You can hear me clicking around right now, but what I did though is I figured out that ... it's not always ... I got to be careful of what I'm going say here, because I don't want any one of you to jump out and suddenly say "Well, Stephen said it's not good to build a funnel yet." That's not at all what I'm saying. What I'm saying is there's a moment when a funnel explodes the business. If you don't have one at all, if you have no extra income jumping in on you, that sucks. Build a funnel... All right, get it out there, start testing it; but there's a moment when the funnel explodes the business. What I did is I build what's called ... I've been calling it, it's just the pre-funnel build checklist. It's kind of a dumb generic name, should have probably made the name something different. I said, "How I know if the business is ready for a funnel." This is a checklist you guys can all go download right now if you want at Steve J. Larsen, my full name is Stephen Joseph Larsen, so SteveJLarsen.com. I said, "No, I'm not saying you should not ... I'm not saying that you shouldn't build a funnel if you don't have these things. " This is simply a list of the things I use to gauge how much I think a funnel is going to expand a current business. I've gone through and I've built a whole bunch of funnels for lots of people and my own personal clients, this bit of a checklist I'm running through, it was all mentally in my head until I sat down two days ago and wrote it out. I was like, "Holy crap, this is totally what I do." I created and personally use this list to vet out potential clients and prep my own businesses for a funnel. The point is to remember that funnels are not business models, or the complete business. There's been many times I've built funnels for people before I understood this. I built them just an awesome funnel. I will say that's the one constant is I build really good funnels; like a natural ... Not a natural ability at all, I shouldn't say that. Crazy enough, the things that I used to build funnels, I'm very good with the Adobe Suite. I'm very good at layout and design, and that's all I did in high school. I wish I did sports, but I was the head editor of yearbook. I got three state awards in Colorado for my layout and design. I know that's where a lot of it comes from, and super grateful for that. I had no idea it would apply to what I'm doing now, but it does.
When I was in college and I started going back, and kind of walking back; I went and I started trying to find a client that I could blow up. I had all these start-ups. I had all these people that wanted funnels. I had 15 businesses on a waiting list in the middle of college during my marketing classes. I walked up to the teacher and I said, "I don't want to be here anymore. This is dumb." He said, "Honestly, I can see you're doing cool stuff. Why don't you just give me a cool deliverable at the end of the semester, and I'll see you at the end." I walked away and never came back to class. For three hours a day, I held my own class just trying to make as much money online as possible. It was the coolest thing on the planet. I call myself the student of exceptions. The answer's always 'Yes,' until you can get a 'No.' Just go freaking do it. Stop waiting for permission. Stop asking for permission, just do stuff. That's kind of my mentality. It's like get out of my way, that's kind of what it is. Anyway, what happened, though, is I was looking around. I was like, "Okay, I need to prove the market that I know what I'm doing on a lot of these things." Nobody knows who I am. I remember doing my first periscope and I was like, "Man, no one knows who I am. No one's going to watch this." I think I had one person watch it. The next day, I had maybe two. The next day I had maybe three. That's literally how I built this. I was like, "I got to prove to the market that I can do this stuff, and that I've been doing it, and that I can ... " I've just never marketed myself out as a person that does this. What I started doing is I started looking around. I didn't realize it, but I was using this checklist inadvertently to vet out businesses. I went and I said, "Okay," and a lot of you guys have asked this question to me, which is actually what has started spawning this podcast episode. You said, "Hey, Stephen. I've got to know how to start. How do I get going? How do I prove myself?" They're like, "Well, there's this cool start-up that wants me to." I'm like, "You said the word 'start-up.' Okay, if you're trying to prove quickly to the market that you know what you're doing, do not build for a start-up." I've told a lot of you guys that. I said, "You need to go build for a business that is ready for a funnel, and will just explode it. All right? It makes you look like a champion... It makes your funnel look like a champion, and makes the business look like a champion, all right? Because you've made them a bunch of money in a short amount of time. Well, you need certain things in place in order to actually do that. Does that make sense?" I started looking around and I was calling buddies. I'm going back to the story. I made a huge list of businesses that I thought would be cool to go build funnels for. I was sitting there and I was like, "Okay. I could my own. I could build one for a company that's already established, where they could blow it up. I could go," and I made this big list. I started going piece by piece, and I started shotgun emailing tons and tons of businesses. It's actually funny, Justin and Tara Williams in the inner circle, Russell's inner circle, they're one of the people I reached out to. They were just too slow to get back to me, so that's one of the reasons I work for Russell now and not them, which is kind of funny. I went out and I started shotgun telling people, I was like, "I will build you a funnel. I know you don't know what it is. I will do it for free, and I will show you once it's making revenue, then let's talk about me getting paid; but first, let me prove myself." It was like "Whoa." These people were like, "Who is this kid?" Then I had them proving themself to me, because then they came back to me and they're like, "Well, I want you. I want you." I was like, "Well, I can only take one of you guys, so who's it going to be?" About that time, I met a company down in Florida. I will keep them nameless, Echo. I went and I was checking out their stuff. I was like, "I could totally build for these guys. These guys would be a good candidate." I met the owner, and he was like, "That sounds amazing. I have no idea what you're talking about. Sales funnel, what does that even mean, right? That's all techno-babble. No one really knows what that is unless you're in the industry." I was like, "Well, I know you don't know what it is. I'm going to build it, and then let's just do this. So these are the things I need from you." I was like, "X, Y, and Z." I said, "I've got to have one, two, and three from you; and this is what we can expect in the timeline. Let's go," and I went to work. I started putting the funnel together. First I ran an ask campaign and I ran out there, and I got tons, like 150 responses in a day. He already had a pretty big customer base. I said, "Oh my gosh." I started looking through the responses of the ask campaign and I was like, "Oh my gosh, did you guys know that they want X, Y, and Z?" They're like, "No." We went and we built a ... We, I. I built a trip bar funnel and I launched it out to these guys. We made them like 20 grand in two days. It brought in an additional 30 grand on top of that over the next week or two, all to his internal list from an ask campaign. I was like, "Cool! I got my story. Woo!" I looked back and I was like, "Why did that really work?" That's because of this checklist. I've danced around it, but let's jump into it here. This is a slightly longer podcast, but I hope you see the value in what I'm about to say here to you guys. If you can't find a business that matches these, I'm not saying you shouldn't go do it, but look harder. If you're really trying to prove yourself, or you're trying to break into the industry, or your own business; let's say you're not building for other people but for your own business. You're trying to make these things work. You're trying to make your funnel work for your business. It might be because your business is not hitting these criteria, so let's jump in.
Is there already sales happening, or is this a start-up? If it's a start-up, I usually will always say 'No,' unless they're throwing just an inordinate amount of money at me; because they haven't build the funnel around it, or they haven't build a business. You'll see more what I'm talking about as I move into this. This is a whole aspect of this business that most people don't think about, or know about, or we even really talk about. I don't think we've really thought about it before. Anyway, number two, what assets do they have? Do they have an email list? Do they have social presence, phone numbers? Do they have a website at least? Are they at least online? Do they have things like logos, images, videos, copy, sales copy. Do they have those things? What I'm really trying to figure out here is if they have enough people and enough following for me to run a successful ask campaign. An ask campaign, if you don't know what that is, is where you go out and you say, "Hey, what's your number one challenge with X, Y, and Z?" You get back a whole bunch of responses from this open-ended question, and it will tell you what to sell them next. It's really helpful. Number three, can they name and do they know who their competition is? This blows me away. When people can't say who their competition is, it's almost like an automatic 'No.' What it means is they haven't actually gone through and they don't know their own place in their own industry, and their own spot in the ecosystem inside their own industry. I wrote 'This is huge. If they can't name their own competition, but are telling me their revenue is massive, I'm going to strongly question that.' What I'm really looking for here is someone to funnel hack. If there's no one to funnel hack and they don't know who I can funnel hack, I get skeptical on the future success of the funnel right off the bat. I got to be able to funnel hack people who are being successful. It's the other reason why I don't do start-ups, because if there's no one to compete with, it's ... You're a pioneer. You're not modeling anybody. You're doing something that no one has done or no one's been successful with. That means that you might be drifting into an area where you're selling products that are based on improvement, not products that are new opportunities. Improvement-based offers are terrible. New opportunities sell a lot, just right off the bat. Anyway, you might be selling into a red ocean. Or, the ocean is so blue that the market isn't ready for it. How many of you guys use all the features in Excel, or do you just use the basic plus/minus multiplication, division features? It's the most ... Anyway. Different story. Are they trying to be a market disrupter, or are they trying to make money? You know what I mean? That's what I'm trying to say. Number four, how many products are they selling or can they offer? If they're selling complimentary products to their customers, I would know how to structure the funnel almost immediately. If they're only selling one product, I know we're probably going to have to make some of their product not just a funnel. That's fine, I just charge more. That's what I wrote. Basically, are they selling more than one product? If they're selling more than one product, successfully, it's a really easy way to make the funnel. If they're only selling one thing, typically a funnel has at least two products, different variations at least, of the same product. If they don't have that and they want to make a ... That's the hard part when insurance companies come to me and is like, "You guys have a single product, and your only other product is more insurance." I'm like, "Ugh. Like, we got to create another product here." They're like, "Oh, okay." All right, number five, what is their current monthly revenue? Some people will quote their glory days revenue. Find out how much they're really making... If they're spending their last dime to build a funnel with you, feel sketchy about it. What money will they have to drive traffic with? Plus, they get too needy. It's like going to a five star restaurant after not eating for two days. You'll hardly taste it and no one will enjoy the five stardom. Don't sell broke people. I know that I build high level funnel, and I don't want to sell level two ... business a level ten funnel. That sounds harsh, but you're actually doing a disservice if you do that. Number six, do they already know what kind of funnel they want? This matters, because it's how I gauge their education level. If they know what kind of funnel they want already, I don't have to continually educate them on the vision of what I propose to build; and especially during the build. It's much easier. Again, not a deal breaker but I go from being a funnel builder to a funnel builder plus coach. I need to allocate my time accordingly. If someone doesn't even know what funnels are, it's kind of like ... It's fine if it's this way, but you're going to be educating them a lot further. One of the people I most recently built for, they pay the ten grand, they came in, they built ... Actually, I'm going to try and interview them here soon, so you guys can all see. It's really cool. It's a political campaign funnel for another country. I live in America, and it's for another country. He's actually about to get elected, and the funnel actually helped him take office. How freaking cool is that? Anyway, but they already knew what kind of funnel they wanted. It made it really easy, because I could just build. I didn't have to coach. It's fine if you have to coach, I just have to change some things. All right, number seven, do they know their numbers? Do they know how much it costs for them to acquire for somebody? CPA? Do they know what their average cart value is per customer? Do they know what their earnings per click are? Et cetera. If they already know the numbers, that helps a lot. Number eight, do they have current and consistent traffic? If not, what's the plan to get it? If they don't have any kind of traffic flow that I could just drop something into, that's going to be hard. It'd be like if I went to ... I live in Idaho now.
It's so much easier to go find somebody who's ... It's like the Nile, they already got tons of traffic. Just drop a whole bunch of dams in there, you're going to get electricity off of it. It's the exact same principle. It's hard to build for somebody who doesn't have traffic yet. It's fine, again, if they don't. You got to know what the plan is. Who's driving it? Do they think it's you? I've had people who thought I was going to drive it. I was like, "No." I'm like, "I'm not going to drive your traffic for you." Anyway, number nine, what software and systems do they already? This is so big. This is an element we don't really talk about a lot, but you're going to become an integrations master if you're trying to build for other people. Even if you're for your own funnel, you're going to have to be somewhat of an integrations master as well. Do they know they're going to require additional software and subscriptions to build their funnel? Here's a little story. I had some people who wanted me to build a funnel using Infusionsoft. I ran the other way. I said "No." Number ten, this is so big. Again, we don't really talk about this. Do they already have their own performing fulfillment? I wrote it all caps in here, selling and funnels is the sex of business. Fulfillment is the red headed stepchild with a mole on his forehead that no one wants to think about but will actually kill the business. I wrote a little story here. I said, "I once ... " Yeah, I was stupid once and built a funnel years ago for somebody who had no fulfillment. I was just excited to get the client. I made them some quick cash in a couple days. They frantically called me back and asked me to turn it off. They're like, "Turn it off! Turn it off!" I was like, "Why? You guys are making all these sales! Are you kidding me? I just like two X'ed your company." They're like, "I know, but we don't have ... We can't handle it." I ended up having to go build this whole inventory system in the back end. They got so gun shy from it making all these sales that they never turned it back on. I was like, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard." They still wouldn't do it, though. Number 11, I said "Finally, have they ever been successful in anything at all, ever?" That sounds harsh, but ... Anyway, I wrote a little note on this one, too. I said, "This might seem like a joke, but someone who's never done anything, ever, in life, at all, but who has all the previously mentioned steps, has potential to be a massive basket case of emotions. Then, you'll turn into an icky life coach again." Unless they're really, really upping the price, I'd run the other way... You're not trying to keep people out, but what you need to understand is that there's been people ... There's a guy I was building a funnel with once. It was for ... He was selling a book that was, once people read it, they automatically wanted to buy product for some supplement thing. It was a long time ago. It was probably, that was about four years ago, probably. Three and a half, four years ago. I was building a funnel for him. This was before click funnels existed, but I was using things like Get Response, and WordPress, and things like that. I was building a funnel for him and literally every move I made, he was excited about but questioned like crazy. It was the most ... It was damming to my progress, just like a dam with water, but where it doesn't let the water through. I had to verify every single step the whole way, because he had never been successful in something before. He was having little successes here and there, but nothing where he could let go a little bit and say "Okay, you take the reins. I trust the expertise, and you should back off ... I'm going to back off a little bit and you just go build this thing." These are all some of the lessons I've learned. Again, this is kind of a long podcast but I wanted to show you guys some of that. Final note, and you can get this checklist and I'll show you out. I said, "Final note, this list sifts out a lot of people, and I realize that. But, that's why I made this checklist for my personal use. Your goal, and it's honestly what I've been using in my head all along, and I had no idea; but if they didn't meet these criteria, which was different than a lot of the criteria that I've seen out there for other people... But anyways, your goal is to match your funnel building skill level with the correct client for you. I waded through three plus years of bad, bad, bad clients to learn this. All right." Then, I put the actual website there. It's a little checklist, a little asset that I put together for you guys. I think you're going to really like it. There's some spelling errors and stuff like that, but anyway I think you'll understand the point of it. Guys, I wanted to ask you something. I've got actually a bit of announcement here, this is kind of a bittersweet thing for me, personally. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it, but I'm actually leaving the public funnel building game. I'm pretty sad about it...
To commemorate this whole 'Hey, I'm no longer going to be doing this thing,' I wanted to just take on my last few clients. I'm excited. I want to be able to focus more. It's actually Russell has asked me. This is the reason I'm doing this is Russell's asked me to no longer really be doing anything more publicly, and to focus on helping him with Click Funnels. I completely understand what he's asking. I love Click Funnels, you guys, we are changing the world. It's so fun, but understand what I'm saying here. What I'm going to do is I'm totally going to make you a cool deal for the last few people who want me to build for them. I have until the end of March to make this happen. I only have space for three people because I put my heart and soul into these funnels. The thing I can promise and guarantee you, all my integrity, my very name, and maybe even my kids, is that I'll give you a sweet funnel. That that's something that that's what I do. It's all I do, every day, all day for ... It's been years, especially this last year with Russell. I've given some pretty big info on this podcast, you know what I mean?
I just wanted to obviously this type of information I'm giving you is not ... It's not going to do anything for you if you don't actually go build one. The reason I'm doing this is like I said, I am publicly going to no longer be offering funnel building services. I've had to increase my coaching price. I first started hundred dollars an hour and I coached a lot of people and it was great; but I had no life. So I increased my price to take people even more serious, to $400 an hour; but it still, again, I had to stop. I bumped my price up again, just because I can't handle the volume. I'm being totally honest and vulnerable with you guys right now as I say this. I'm going to make this quick. I know I've been going for about 30 minutes here, and I apologize. Hopefully you guys hear what I'm telling you. You can get this checklist by going to SteveJLarsen.com. Also, there is a spot on there where you're going to see if you want to be one of my last three people, there's a spot for you to put down your name and a deposit. What will happen is I'll go through this checklist with you and I'll vet out your situation. If we're a fit, that deposit will go towards the price I charge for the funnel; which is ten grand. I thought about doubling my price, and that would be totally appropriate; but it's not even that. He wants me to stop building altogether; as far as external funnels. I'll still have my own projects that I'm building out, but I will no longer be doing it for other people.
I don't think anyone really in the financial area is doing what we just pulled off. Then, I'm also building for a company called 'A Statue of Responsibility.' There's the State of Liberty on the East Coast, an equal sized statue called the Statue of Responsibility's going on the West Coast. They've asked me to build the funnel for them to make all the donations so that that statue can get built on the West Coast. They're just trying to figure out which city it's going to go in; so super cool stuff. That's basically it, so I mean technically that's five, but one of them's about done. I only have room for three more clients. This is real urgency and scarcity, you guys. I know that we teach you guys to do the real urgency and scarcity, like 'Oh, it's never going to happen again!' This probably literally will never happen again, because I'm going to sink my teeth even farther into Click Funnels. I know that there are, and ... I didn't just want to come out and say "Oh, you can't get any more funnels from me. I'm out and out of the count." Yeah, right. You can't. I'm tapping out. I literally had to ... I'm going to show you guys some of the things in here, but I literally had two choices. Russell and I have had some heart-to-hearts on it. Two choices. Russell said, "Okay, man. Like, I really need more help with what I'm doing. You can go build your own stuff and keep this going, or stay with Click Funnels. And I want to help you, um, help you there, as well." I was like, "Man, like this is just nice. My wife and I have been talking about it. She's like "This is a weird, nice problem to have. You know, which direction are you going to take?" That doesn't mean ... It will probably be like five years before I go and accept a funnel build for somebody else, you know what I mean? Unless again, it's like this inordinate amount of money. There's no way that I have time to do it anymore. This last little rah-rah. I just want to remind you guys that there's a lot of you guys I know that are thinking about hiring me. I've had 27 applications to build funnels just in the last little bit. 27! 90% of you guys I know sadly, you don't meet some of these criteria, or the ten grand is too much. That's okay, just keep pushing it, keep rushing it. I can't build for you, and that's okay; but there are a lot of you, though, who do have the ten grand, who are wanting me to build. I'm trying to give you this real urgency and scarcity and tell you that like, "Look, I cannot. I am not allowed. I can't. I can't move forward anymore building funnels after these three clients." Those are my two choices. Literally, your two choices are whether or not I'm going to go build for you because this is real urgency and scarcity. I have to move on. The landscape of my profession and my path is starting to change. For three years, I built for start-ups. For this past year, I've only built for professionals, people with at least ten grand. I have a buddy who sells $50,000 funnels. Anyway, ten grand for a funnel, the type that I build, I know it's actually dirt cheap... I just want to remind you guys that ... It's kind of funny. You think about the attractive character, this is the reluctant hero category. I'm trying to show you guys the magician's hands, kind of like what Russell calls it. I'm trying to show you what I'm doing here. I am closing this, and so I actually wanted to make you guys an offer. I'm going to make you guys an offer right now. I'm excited to do it. Not only are you guys gonna get a funnel that writes $10,000, I'll build you guys whatever kind of funnel you want. I'll do all the images. I'll help put the copy together. Videos will probably have to be done by you, so it's your face on them, but I'll help you put those together as well. I'll help you write the emails, the fulfillment emails, which there's a lot more to do on those than I've noticed you guys do. All right, help you write the soap opera series, helping you write sticky emails that will get people back in to buy, even several weeks after they've left your funny. All the different communication pieces, and that's $10,000. That's a value of ten grand. I remember the first time I charged ten grand. I was like, "This is crazy!" Then they went off and they did these amazing things. I was like, "Wow! Ten grand was nothing!" All right, I'm also going to give you guys every funnel I charge for. Every single one of them. That's about $1,000 value, almost; so I'm going to give you guys every single funnel.
You guys are going to get my insurance funnel. You'll get my podcasting funnel. You'll get my live coaching funnels, the funnel I use to get all my coaching stuff in. Which by the way, does quite a bit, monetarily. Anyway, you guys are going to get all those for free. I'm just going to share funnel them over to you. I'm going to build the funnel for you. Then, I'll give you every funnel that I charge, I'll give it to you for free. That's 11 grand in value. I'm also going to give you guys two coaching sessions post-build. This is huge. I charge $1,000 for an hour now. That's a $2,000 value. A lot of you guys, post-build, I've noticed will want to ... Obviously you're going to want another coaching session. It's like a check-up, it's like going back to the doctor after a surgery. 100% totally get it, so I'm going to give you guys two coaching sessions for free. I'll do it like two weeks after, and then one month after I'm done building. Usually my building period is two weeks, so within two weeks you'll have your funnel back; dependent on how quick you can get me the assets that I need. There's the built funnel for ten grand. Every funnel that I charge, for free, I'll give that to you for free. That's another $1,000. Two coaching sessions, that's $2,000. Then, I'm also going to give you ... Guys, I don't think a lot of you guys know, but I do a lot of stuff with the affiliate game. I've only got like 20 affiliates for Click Funnels, but it makes an extra grand a month; which is awesome. I don't do anything for that. I'm going to give you the email series I use to get people in the door. It's worth a $1,000 a month to me, right now. A real, real cost and I don't do anything. I should drive ads. I should drive traffic to it. I don't, and it still makes a $1,000 a month. I'm going to give you that specific email sequence, which is awesome. It's worth $1,000 a month. Again, get the funnel built. I'll give you ever funnel I've ever charged for, for free. Two coaching sessions, my affiliate email sequence. Then, the last thing I'm going to give you guys is I want to feature you guys on the podcast. I think it'd be cool for everybody if you guys, if we go and we peel back the funnel, maybe after the coaching sessions are done or whatever. We go through and we show the progression of the funnel, and we show how what we're doing. I thought it'd be really cool to feature you guys on the podcast so that everyone can see what we did and how we pulled it off. All together, that's like $15,000 in value. Obviously I charge ten grand for it. I'm going to give you guys $5,000 off, free for that. That's real urgency and scarcity. If you guys go to SteveJLarsen.com, you'll be able to download the checklist. Then, right after that on the next page, you can hold your spot. Again, it's $500 just as the deposit to hold your place. The reason I do that is because a lot of people want me to build their funnels, but the $500 helps me know that you're serious and in a position for me to build your funnel. If it doesn't work, I give you the $500 back. That's no risk to you at all. If we are building the funnel together, then it just goes towards the $10,000 price. That's only $9500 after that. That's it, guys. Go to SteveJLarsen.com. Again, my full name is Stephen Joseph Larsen but it's SteveJLarsen.com. You can download the checklist that I use to vet companies. You can use it to vet your own, and how much a funnel will blow up your business. Then you can also reserve one of my last three places for funnel building. Some real urgency and scarcity on this, okay? You guys have 'til the very last day in March to do this. The very last day in March. I have to do this now. You know what? Actually, what's the date? I only have two weeks, because I have to have the funnels almost done by the end of March. Anyway, the countdown clock for the real world time that I have to stop building funnels publicly, or I get in trouble, because I need to focus inwardly on Click Funnels. It will be done. Go to SteveJLarsen.com, get the checklist, and go to the next page. You'll be able to see what that all is. Guys, thanks so much. Again, you get the funnel built, ten grand. Get every funnel I've built and charged for free. I'll give you everything I have. Then, I'm going to give you guys two coaching sessions for free, for two grand; and then my email sequence for all my affiliates that gets loaded straight into your Actionetics. I can share link all my email sequence straight into your Actionetics account, which is awesome. Then, I'm going to feature you on the podcast. I think everyone will get a lot of value from that, actually. That's going to be really cool. That's real world value of over 15 grand. I'm going to give it to you for $10,000. Anyways, guys, again, SteveJLarsen.com. I will talk to you guys later. Bye.
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| 10 Jul 2018 | SFR 155: How I'm Creating An Affiliate Army... | 00:19:48 | |
What's going on everyone, this is Steve Larson, and this is Sales Funnel Radio.
Today we are gonna talk about how to create your own affiliate army.
I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now I've left my 9 to 5 to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.
The real question is how will I do it without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch.
This podcast is here to give you the answer.
Join me and follow along as I learn, apply and share marketing strategies to grow my online business, using only today's best internet sales funnels.
My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. What's up guys?
Hey, so one thing I wanna get out of the way real quick is in the last few episodes I know I've talked a lot about things that I was doing at Clickfunnels when I first started working there. And the reason why is because what you'll notice that I'm doing, is I'm actually modeling the very things that I was doing over there, in my own business. Why? Because they work.
I had a hand in creating a lot of those things, and I've done it before so, why not just do it again for my own company, right? And so to tell the story, real quick:
I was just starting at ClickFunnels; I'd been working there like three months, and I noticed Russell started doing this weird thing...
He grabbed an iPad, and he sat figuring out how to mirror his iPad to his computer. I was like that's kind of weird. He would record his computer. And he was sitting there, he was writing out the script…
I think I was working on Biohacking Secrets at the time, or something like that. Feels like about the right timeline I think.
Anyway, so he was writing those things out, and I would kinda notice him, you know just over my shoulder, just watching what he was doing. And I was building stuff, putting things together
He did this really cool presentation where he showed how to be an affiliate, and the power of being an affiliate. Right, and if you guys know what I'm talking about, I'm talking about when we created affiliatebootcamp.com.
And then something magical happened. This was one of the things that was a catalyst for me - that gave me confidence to actually teach the things that I was doing.
He turned around and he said “Hey, do you wanna make the videos for this?” I was like, “Are you serious? Yeah!”
On the outside I was like, “Yeah,” but on the inside, I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is crazy, right? Holy crap. Oh it's Russell Brunson.” I was pretty sure lightning would strike me if I didn't do a good job.
Right, that's what was going through my head... but I didn't want him to know that. So I sat there and we started going through the different topics, coming up with different topics and different ideas for what Affiliate Bootcamp training was going to be.
Now I knew affiliatebootcamp.com, he had used that in previous businesses, but the current version of it right now, at the recording of this video, I created.
I remember I stayed up super late multiple nights filming and re-filming. I don't know if he knows that I did that, but I did that so many time because I was so scared that it wasn't gonna be amazing.
And so I'd film, and I'd re-film, back and forth, back and forth…
They were only 15 minute videos teaching a single really cool strategy that was very powerful, but I wanted to deliver it well. So I stayed up super late.
I remember Russell went out of town once and the project was due soon. I was probably over obsessing, but just 'cause I wanted to do a really good job.
So I was there really, really late. This was well over two years ago now - I was there super late, telling my wife, “Babe I gotta finish this thing... I'm doing the videos.” And she's like, “Whoa, that's crazy!” So anyway, I was super excited about it.
I filmed a bunch of these strategies and taught a lot of cool stuff. And then I showed some of my own stuff that I had be doing to get affiliates at that time too.
And that's what a... You know then Jon Parks came in with this amazing amazing job, right, teaching incredible Facebook strategies. Right, and it was really fascinating the way it all came about, and a lot of people joined Clickfunnels because of that.
So yesterday what I did... I was going through and I have a Facebook group, if you guys don't know…. It's where I dump a lot of my strategy sessions. It's where I bring up a lot of things that I'm thinking of throughout the day. These podcast episodes are a little bit more... I think through them heavily, and I make sure that they all are like... It feels a little bit more permanent, right?
The Facebook group though, that's what I'm doing on a daily basis. It's called The Science of Selling Online, go check it out - it's free.
Anyway, yesterday, I did a deep dive with my group about creating an affiliate army. It was funny because half the people on the Facebook live told me that they were in Clickfunnels because of those original videos I did for Russell…
They're were like, “It was after seeing that strategy, that I decided to come and join ClickFunnels.” I was like, “No way,” it was a ton of people. Lots of 'em on the Facebook live that said that. It was crazy.
So, I wanna show you how to get your own affiliate army. I also wanna show you more of the strategy of why you should want your own affiliate army. It's a little bit like where to start…
My brain's all over the place on this one. I'm excited to go through this:
Number one, we need to talk about the Dream 100. And funny enough, I feel like there's this, almost like a... It's almost like when I mention the Dream 100, people are like, Oh yeah... the Dream 100....” There’s this attitude around it... “Freakin' do it - it works!”
We shipped out a whole bunch of packages yesterday to our Dream 100 - AGAIN. It's gone really, really well. It's super fun... really neat stuff.
You have to know that I treat Dream 100 and affiliates different... While I might do a joint venture, I’m not necessarily looking to do a joint venture with an affiliate. However, I am seeking to do a joint venture with a Dream 100. Does that make sense? It's one of the major differences between the two.
People can go out and they can promote my product, but they might not have a much of a following yet. It's not worth me doing a specific webinar with that person,right?
A Dream 100 person is an influencer. They're a ‘river owner,’ right? They own traffic. They own eyeballs. I can do a joint venture with them, but that's different to most affiliates. Does that make sense?
For example; when we were getting the Expert Secrets book out of the door, we spent a significant amount of time... Dave Woodward did an amazing job putting together this cool campaign inviting people to promote the Expert Secrets book.
Who made that list? Influencers. A and B list influencers, maybe even some C list. People who owned traffic, people who already had a list. That's Dream 100s style strategy.
All I wanna do with influencers is get them on a joint venture. Maybe a webinar we can do together, or something like that. Affiliates, though, are different…
What I do with affiliates is, I go and I create assets for the affiliates. I want to make it as painless as possible for them to promote my product. What do I mean?
If you guys log into your ClickFunnels account... If you don't have one, you're crazy…. You can get your free trial accounts at salesfunnelbroker.com - you get free funnels too. Yes, it's an affiliate link, okay? - go get it though. It’s awesome.
If you go inside the back area in your ClickFunnels account (when you get a Clickfunnels account, you're automatically an affiliate for Clickfunnels) … Let's say you want to promote the “Expert Secrets’ book; if you go into your CF account, there's a bunch of assets in there.
You’ll find a unique link that you can send people to - so you get an affiliate commission. Scroll down and you’ll see pre-written emails, image assets and pre-done videos that you can use. There’s lots and lots and lots of pre-done assets just to promote Expert Secrets.
That way, all the affiliate has to do is grab an asset, and put their affiliate link under it, and press go - or turn on the ad. It's super, super painless.
I don't wanna offend anybody when I say this, but stereotypically, affiliates are very lazy people... meaning they have their own projects going on, right?
For me to get them to actually promote my thing, I have to do a lot of work to remove the pain that they'll feel when they start to promote my product. Does that make sense?
So, just understand that I'm talking about how to create your own affiliate army - I'm not talking about the Dream 100. That's a different strategy. I'm gonna go different things with them. I'm gonna treat them differently, I'm gonna massage court and date them very differently than an affiliate.
For affiliates, it's a great way for them to make a whole bunch of cash quickly without a whole lotta fulfillment time. So just know that that there's the difference.
Now that we've established the difference - there's a huge difference in the way you treat them.
One has a following, one doesn't. One has an existing success that's happened, one usually doesn't, and that's fine.
Some people just wanna be full time affiliates, and that's great.
A little while ago, I was standing in front of Russell in his office there with him and I was talking about some cool things I wanna go toss together. I was talking about campaigns, and I said one of the campaigns I wanna run is my own Affiliate Bootcamp. And he was smiling and he said, “yeah that's a super cool thing to do,” because you train people how to sell for you.
Right, think with me real quick on this….
In Affiliate Bootcamp, when I'm going through and teaching how to promote and actually get cash as an affiliate, (which a lot of you have - which is amazing. Super cool)... Every example that I'm giving is actually a ClickFunnels product. So it's free training showing you how to promote ClickFunnels.
Mine will be completely free as well. It will be what I drive ads to. I will definitely get money back and those ads are definitely gonna be profitable ads.
Every example that I give will be my own product. I'm pseudo teaching how to promote me, alright? And that's cool, it’s totally fine.
So I started thinking through, like okay right, Affiliate Bootcamp goes through things like YouTube, it goes through things like podcasts. It goes through things like how to use other people's content and blogs. And while I'll still go through some of those strategies, I wanna add in some of those new things as well.
So here's my plan, here's my strategy. This is me being completely open, completely vulnerable. I'm excited to invite you you guys - it's gonna be totally sick. It's amazing, oh my gosh.
In my affiliate training, I wanna to show you how to use Chatbots for affiliate commissions... 'Cause there's a way and there's a FREE way. How to use things like offerwalls. How do you use things like the strategy Todd Brown was talking about, along with Instagram and Facebook groups.
I want to show you how to use strategies that have come into play more heavily in the last two years. I mean obviously Facebook groups were there. But how do you use the most up to date strategies as well?
I have a habit of going really deep with stuff... sometimes it's kind of a negative... But this is gonna be amazing. I was thinking to myself, “Self, why don't I have other people who are already experts teach those things?”
A lot of the people who are doing my YouTube, my Instagram, my Facebook groups, my blogs, my podcast stuff… The people I'm spending a lot of money for on a monthly basis to have around... What if I asked them to be the ones who do the training?
They'll just spend 10 -15 minutes teaching the strategy, how to promote, and how to actually be an affiliate. You could use it for any product, but we'll use our product strategically as the examples in there. It's teaching people how to be affiliates for me. Right, does that make sense?
Russell was really excited about it. It's gonna drip out to you over 30 days. You can obviously speed up and go a lot faster if you want... but we're putting together now. It's planned for the end of June. So I'm really, really, really, really excited about it.
There's a beta list and you can jump on the training and do it kind of live with us. That's the plan so far anyways. Go to affiliateoutrage.com and get on the waiting list.
There's a cool monkey there, it's like a gorilla, and he's got glasses on, and they're the Clickfunnels colors.
What I wanna do is, train my own affiliate army. Create my own affiliate strategy and teach people how to promote my stuff, 'cause it's freakin' awesome.
Right, and one of the campaigns I'm putting together is I wanna show people… I have watched multiple people become wealthy with just one campaign. One! When I say campaign, I don't mean Facebook ads. Facebook ads, YouTube ads, Google ads, those platforms are destroying the term campaign. They're destroying it. That term is being lost.
Campaigns are not ads. A campaign might include ads, but it's not a campaign. Does that make sense? I know it doesn't make sense yet, follow me…
Doing something like a seven day launch. That's a campaign. Ads are included as part of that. But an ad is not a campaign.
So what I started doing a little while ago, is I started thinking through all the strategies that I've either been a part of, or I've seen people pull off - where just the one campaign has made their product a lot of sales and cash.
So I thought well, what if I got a whole bunch of campaigns, and did all of them? Right? If one's not amazing - six are, right!
So what I did is I went through, and I started putting together six different very unique campaigns… (Watch what I'm doing closely from about June through the end of October.)
This has been in the works for quite a while... But it is campaign strategies, not just ads. We're gonna scale ads, ads are gonna go crazy. But there's six different campaign strategies that I'm using - that I've seen, been a part of, or done in other areas where it's made a lot of cash.
This 2 Comma Club award right there - that's the result of one campaign. That's one campaign! So I wanna go through and show you guys how I've pulled all this stuff off. How I've actually done it.
Watch what I'm doing. I'm gonna make my own affiliate army, and then I'm gonna do an affiliate contest…
Then the top ten affiliates, I want you guys to fly out for a day or two. We'll just do whatever you want. We'll work on funnels together. I'll help build your businesses, I'll help you do whatever. That's part of the gift I'm gonna give.
But where I did I learn that? Ah, the Expert Secrets book, right? That was part of the campaign of that launch. There was a Dream 100 campaign, but there was also an affiliate campaign.
Campaigns are events, they're not ads. It drives me nuts, I'm starting to get all itchy about it.... Campaigns are not ads! Campaigns are EVENTS.
They're succinct events that are happening inside of a period of time. They're things that you're doing to create pressure, and then release pressure towards your sales page, or towards your order page, right?
Anyway, I am excited for all this stuff. So watch what I'm doing here… I'm creating an affiliate army by teaching them how to be affiliates for anybody. I don't care if they don't promote my stuff. They're on my list, right, and I'm gonna show them why promoting my stuff is really freakin' profitable.
I give amazing affiliate commissions, and at the same time, I'm not gonna be the one to put it all together, I'm gonna crowd create it…
I'm gonna grab some of my most trusted people on my team, and have them go in these incredible skill sets that have taken them a long time to go master... I'm gonna have them do little pieces of the training. What does that do? That scratches their back and mine at the same time, I'm totally cool with that... why would I not be?
I'm not a genius at YouTube. I love it, but I'm not a genius at it. Why would I teach that? Let's go have the person who is a genius teach that.
Right, why don't I teach Instagram? I love Instagram... Instagram's blowing up. And it's really, really cool. (We're at 11 and a half thousand followers now, which is really, really fun. And... Anyway, gosh, super cool.) But I'm not gonna teach Instagram because I’m not an expert.
There was a principle that I learned when I was 20. Actually I was 21... I remember where I was standing when I realized that successful people are not necessarily renaissance men. They don't act like a renaissance men. They act like an orchestrator.
They stand up and they put the pieces together. That's it! They're contractors basically. Just be better at it than most contractors are. Anyway, I hope that that's helpful to you.
Remember to watch the campaigns that I'm going to start launching and putting out... use them, follow them, right.
We're gonna do a seven day launch. We're gonna do all sorts of stuff. We've got a really cool summit that we're gonna do that's coming up as well. It's to promote the same product, but from different angles - because some people are like’ “I don't wanna be an affiliate... but man, I'll check out that summit…”
“I don't wanna do this... but man, I'll come to a two day event.” You know, a little masterminding...
Does that make sense? I've laced these all together, so watch very closely what's gonna happen. It's one of the reasons why I know it's gonna do really well.... And 'cause the product is selling well, the offer's amazing, the story's incredible, the funnel's fantastic. So now it's just time to promote.
Let's scale those ads - we're doing right now. And it's working. Our SLO is selling, and it's liquidating ads costs. It's exciting guys.
Anyway, thanks for following the journey, and where I'm taking the ship. Again go to affiliateoutrage.com if you wanna be on that list, and watch that training - it's free. Watch how I'm unrolling it, it's very methodical.
Anyway, we're gonna talk about a lotta cool stuff with that, but if you have anything that you wish was in that training, man let me know, okay, let me know…
Comment on the YouTube version of this video. Put on there what you would love to have inside that training.
We're gonna go through Facebook ads, we're gonna go through different groups. We're gonna talk about Instagram. We'll talk about all tons of different traffic platforms and how to use that to gain affiliate commissions for whatever you're promoting.
My hope is that you choose to promote my stuff, 'cause it's really good. It's not all the plan, but it's a snapshot, okay. I’ll document even more along the way and you guys can follow it as we move forward.
So anyways, hope that's been helpful to you, as you start to think through which campaigns you’re using to promote yourself?
If it's just ads...man, do a campaign. Do something big, right? Do something real big, make an event out of it. A seven day launch, that's another great version of it. I don't wanna give all the secrets away. Okay, I'm not going to…
Anyway, I'm excited about it though. I'm excited for what's gonna happen here with this. Watch what I'm doing, and feel free to follow along @ affiliateoutrage.com I'm having a lot of really incredible experts come on - who are frankly really expensive to get - to teach some cool stuff to you guys.
So anyways, thanks so much and I'll talk to you guys later. Bye.
Many of you don't know that I actually made my first money online as an affiliate marketer. If you wanna know how I funded my entire company without using any of my own money ever, you can learn to do the same for free @ affiliateoutrage.com
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| 07 May 2019 | SFR 240: Real Marketing, In A Single Sentence... | 00:11:28 | |
There's a single sentence I use to gauge the belief level of those I'm selling. Here it is (and here's how it'll speed up your marketing education)...
Imagine a simple sentence that could help you identify the points where your potential customers are getting stuck before opening their wallets to give you cash...
Sounds good, doesn’t it?!
… and what if I could show you how to increase sales by using this sentence to show you the BEST way to communicate with your dream customers???
Well, Holy Batman (and all the Avengers)!
Watch this space... because that sentence exists, and I’m gonna show you how to apply it to your business!
“OH, WHAT?!!” Yes, you heard me right!
FINDING YOUR CUSTOMERS OBJECTIONS
I first had this realization when I was coaching the original Two Comma Club X people, (way back in the day).
I realized that there was a single sentence that could help people identify where their marketing was lacking.
Over time, I started to develop this idea and test it out...
So today, I’m gonna help you to understand your customer more.
But first...
A BLATANT PITCH
What I’m about to share with you is actually taken from a segment of my first OfferMind event… and here comes the pitch ;-)
#Everyone should come to OfferMind.
Tickets are already selling fast, and I'd love you to be there.
We have an amazing event this year. We ONLY have 1038 seats and Russell Brunson is keynoting!
… and the swag, well that’s another story!
… BUT I’M NOT PROFESSOR X
One of the things I hated when I first started learning about marketing was that gurus would say things like:
“You gotta join the conversation that's happening inside your customers head.”
...and I'd be like, “Okay, how do I do that?” But that would be it… that was the sum of their advice!
It was frustrating for me...
I was like, “ … what are you talking about? Are we talking a Charles Xavier X-Men kind of thing? How do I get inside their head?”
… I felt like I was lacking some special power.
I didn't know how to actually pull off what these gurus were talking about!
… so I started coming up with a cool way to get inside my customers head by watching what they were saying.
CREATING A FRAMEWORK I don't like creating something that I can't measure, and so I put together this simple framework.
The framework massively follows the vehicle, internal and external false belief formula that we use to move a customer through the process of buying.
What's cool about this sentence is that it helps me figure out:
I want to show you:
When I join the conversation in my dream customers head, (using this technique) I can see whether the belief they’re stuck on is:
Then once I know where they’re stuck, I can engage with them in that place and help to move them along to the sale.
I’M A DETECTIVE
I do a lot of Facebook Lives, and as I'm doing them, I'm watching the comments to see the reactions.
There are certain things that my potential customer says that let me know:
“Oh my gosh, my sales message/ funnel is NOT doing a certain thing well enough…”
It's the way people say things which makes me think:
“Hmmm… it looks like that person's stuck on internal based beliefs. They think that they’re NOT good enough to pull off what I'm showing them … or they don't think they have enough time?”
I run a sentence through my head to analyze comments and get inside the head of my dream customer
Let me ask you a question…
ARE YOU A SALESPERSON?
If you have a business, your hand should be up!
Q #2: Do people ALWAYS buy the moment they see your product?’”
A: Probably not!
What! But I thought your product was the best? I thought it was amazing...
(This is where it starts to get good my friend.)
Q #3: Why don't people buy?
A: (When I asked the audience at OfferMind they gave me these reasons)
...but ULTIMATELY, those are *NOT* the reasons why your customer isn’t buying… and it all has to do with HOW the brain experiences a sale.
NEW IS SCARY
I love the movie The Croods.
The daughter wants to have new experiences, and in the beginning, the father is really scared of leaving the cave.
He tells a story which ends with the words, “...and one day she saw something new, and died!"
The fact is that there’s a part of EVERYONE’S brain that reacts the same way when it sees something NEW.
It's the same psychology.
Anytime something new pops up, we start to go into ‘crap mode’ and part of your brain starts to run red flags.
YOUR 3 BRAINS
One of my favorite books is called Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff. In the book, Klaff talks about the three parts of the brain that you actually talk to during a sale.
#1: The first brain you're talking to is the croc brain.
The croc brain is a picky and cognitive miser who's primary instinct is survival only. This means it’s looking for ways to reject you.
No pitch or message is going to get to the logic center of the other person’s brain without passing through the survival filters of the crocodile brain system first. And because of the way we evolved, those filters make pitching anything extremely difficult - Oren Klaff
People don't know they're doing it, but they’re actively looking for ways to say no.
People wanna be included in stuff. They want to be where they’re supposed to be. They want the feeling of togetherness that oxytocin gives, but they don’t want to get kicked out of the tribe for doing the *WRONG* thing.
We want to be around other people. We want to be accepted but we also don't wanna be in places where we're not supposed to be.
Q: What does this mean for you and your product?
A: It means that when your customer comes into contact with something new, subconsciously they start to find ways to let themselves out of the pressure of actually doing the new thing.
This is such a huge deal when it comes to sales.
Your customer is looking for a logical way to release themselves from having to move forward.
Once you’ve satisfied the Croc brain that there’s no danger to its survival, you move on to…
THE MID-BRAIN
#2: The Mid-Brain is the part of the brain you pitching to if you satisfy the croc brain.
The mid-brain is concerned with status and position, so it starts to come up with objections like:
If you satisfy the objections of the Mid-Brain, you’ll move onto…
THE NEOCORTEX #3: The Neocortex = the logical part of the brain.
.... we think the Neocortex is where the sale happens, but it only stands a chance of the other two brains have already decided to buy.
The Neocortex comes in to justify the sale logically.
When we speak about features…
… we’re speaking to the logic driven Neocortex and thinking that's where the sale happens.
BUT that's NOT what happens…
MAPPING THE SALE
I've figured out a way to map and measure how sold somebody is.
*This is powerful stuff*
Here’s how the brain experiences the sale…
#1: The possibility of product service working, in general.
What they're gonna ask is:
“Oh, you got this cool thing called funnels? Does it even work?”
They're gonna question the vehicle itself… Does it even work?
… and if they see a possibility that it could work, they graduate to internal based concerns.
#2: The Possibility that they might succeed
The very next thing that they're gonna say to themselves is:
“Oh, I see it works in general, but I just can't see myself pulling it off.”
A lot of people I coaching play *that move* thinking that they’re logically letting themselves out of the sale and taking action.
They're like:
"Hey, I believe that what you're talking about. Yeah, it’s true... but there's just no way I can pull that off."
That's means I sold their brain, one third…
I’ve got them past the first vehicle base hurdle, but then they got stuck on the second internal objection.
In their mind, the customer is saying things like:
… so it’s your job to move them past this hurdle so that they can get a ‘YES!’
Once they graduate the first two hurdles, they get a ‘yes’ to the questions:
If I can help them through the first two questions, then they progress to the third category.
#3: The possibility of them having enough resources on the journey.
They ask the question:
“Am I'm gonna have enough?
They see that:
… but they don’t know if they’re gonna have enough resources to make the journey.
They wonder if they have ‘enough’…
The overall fear is that:
I don't have enough RESOURCES for my journey.
They see that it’s possible to make the journey... however, they’re worried about what it will take to get there.
… and so you have to resolve that concern.
The good news is that it's one of the easier objections to actually resolve.
FALSE BELIEFS
If you look at how your customer responds, it’s easy to run their reactions through a simple sentence to see which objection they need to move through...
I hope that you can see that this is a *BIG DEAL* for your sales conversation!
Finally…
HOW TO BUILD A FUNNEL IN 11 MINUTES!
(Yes, it’s possible)
Occasionally, I’d walk out of a coaching session and Russell would say:
"Dude, glad you're done. I go live in 11 minutes! Can you finish this funnel?"
I'd be like, “11 minutes to build a funnel? Oh my gosh!”
So in my head, I’d run through the exact formula I’ve just shared with you:
BOOM! … things are always soooo much easier with the right framework!
Until Next Time... #Get Rich, Do Good!
If you're just starting out you're probably studying a lot. That's good. You're probably geeking out on all the strategies, right? That's also good.
But the hardest part is figuring out what the market wants to buy and how you should sell it to them, right?
That's what I struggled with for a while until I learned the formula.
So I created a special Mastermind called an OfferMind to get you on track with the right offer, and more importantly the right sales script to get it off the ground and sell it.
Wanna come?
There are small groups on purpose, so I can answer your direct questions in person for two straight days.
You can hold your spot by going to OfferMind.com.
Again, that's OfferMind.com. | |||
| 03 Jul 2018 | SFR 153: How To Pay For Expensive Things With Your Business... | 00:21:34 | |
Boom, what's goin' on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and this Sales Funnel Radio.
Today we are gonna talk about how to pay for expensive things with your business.
I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.
The real question is, how will I do it without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer.
Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels.
My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.
All right, guys, hey, I'm excited for this episode. This has been kind of a long time in the making. This is gonna be one of those episodes that have kinda been on my mind for a long time as something that I wanna share with you guys and teach you something really interesting.
I wanna tell you a story, okay? We were planning Funnel Hacking Live 2017. I remember being on cloud nine, I could not even believe that I was in the planning sessions for Funnel Hacking. I was freakin' out about it, I was super excited. I was with Melanie, Dave, and Brent. It was just fun to be in the room. Russell's like, “Dude, what if we ask Tony Robbins to come?” We're like, “Oh my gosh, that's crazy.” So they started doing some research and reaching out to his team.
Tony's team reached back out and said, it's gonna cost about this much. I am not privy to say the amount... I'm not even gonna allude to it... but I will tell you that it was a lot of cash. It was a butt ton of money. It was so cool to watch how Russell handled it…There is a lesson that I picked up... I was watching him like a hawk. I always do.
First of all he goes, “Oh my gosh”, with this face. “Huh, oh my gosh, huh, oh god, I feel sick, huh.” What was interesting was what he did next...
There was a moment where he freaked out, and that's appropriate and everyone can feel free to do that when you wanna buy something expensive. But then, he just said “Yes.”
Then he was very careful to structure the FHL event in a way that would pay for Tony. Isn't that interesting? The event literally liquidated the cost of Tony Robbins.
If you go look at any time he's ever had someone really big on - that's how he structures it. That's really fascinating.
We started doin' some pretty interesting things that were very expensive. Things like the Harmon Brothers.The Harmon Brothers, they're the ones who did the viral video...
Hopefully you guys are cool with me telling all these stories? I wanna link it back to what I'm doin' right now and hopefully you'll take something cool from this.
The Harmon Brothers, it's public knowledge, so I'm just gonna say it... they charge half a million dollars to do a video. One video! A three, four, five minute video. Half a million bucks. They're expensive, but they get results. They're really cool, so they can charge that money.
Instead of Russell going, “Gah, are you kidding? Half a million dollars?” Which was appropriate (and we all did that at first)... what he did was start figuring out a way to liquidate the cost with some kind of campaign, event, or product.
So that at the end, he is left with both the asset and with his own cash in hand. Meaning he doesn't let his own cash out, he created something else to pay for the expense. Does that make sense? This is the smarter VC funding way.
You guys know I'm pretty against things like VC funding, but it's because of this very principle right here.
Think about a free plus shipping book funnel. A free plus shipping book funnel or even a webinar funnel... A lot of times in a webinar funnel there’s a self-liquidating offer before somebody even gets to the webinar.
There’s a product to purchase even before someone gets to the webinar - that way, an average of 10% - 15% purchase the product, then it liquidates most of the ad cost. So everyone who comes and buys during the main product during webinar is actually pure profit. Does that make sense?
That's how it works in a funnel, and the same principle can apply your business and the way you run it. This is the principle that I’ve been applying to my business.
I told you guys about the story at this last Funnel Hacking Live, someone was like, “oh man, maybe I can get a discount on the 2 Comma Club X Program. Maybe I can split it with a few other people!” and I was like, “No, wrong question!’ Questions invite revelation... So you need to change the question.
Instead of asking “How do I get a discount?” ask the question: “How can I afford the most expensive things in life?”
Solve that problem, not the question: “How can I get a discount?” You'll solve either question... but most people don't ask questions with intent.
So what I said to him was: “Look, go figure out how to pay for the most impressive, most expensive things in life, and at the end of it, you'll be left with the thing that you wanted that's very expensive, and you'll be left with a paying asset.”
If you just go out and say: “Oh man, I guess maybe we'll have to get someone cheaper” or “I guess we have to take this cheaper option over here.” What ends up happening is you get a much cheaper experience and there's no asset!
Usually you end up paying out of pocket. Does that make sense?
So start thinking about how to liquidate costs... this is something most entrepreneurs end up getting pretty good at as they go down the road.
I would watch Russell, and it's an active theme. He goes and figures out what he wants to do and then figures out what he can create to pay for it.
And so I started applying this strategy too.
About two years ago I launched a funnel explicitly to do this. What eventually started happening was I started making more money off that funnel than I was getting paid at my job.
In essence, I replaced my income with this funnel that was running on the side while I was working at Clickfunnels. Isn't that interesting? I'm always looking for some kind of asset to do that. When I finally left ClickFunnels, I didn't take a paycheck from my business for almost three months. We were living on savings through March. It wasn't until April that I got paid. It was fine - we had cash, it was just I wanted to make sure the funnel was awesome. I wanted to make sure the business had enough cash flow. So I was like, well, “How do I remove the cost of me?”
I launched my funnel, I got it off the ground. Things are doin' awesome. It did a lot of money.
Grant Cardone says “Cash is King.” But in reality CASH FLOW is king. Cash flow is king. Cash is NOT king, Cash Flow is King.
If you think through your business and you think about how much do you pay yourself right now? Or do you have a business you're actually paying yourself from? I make it a consistent amount so I can count on it. And then I ask the question, “How can I replace that cost?”
I pay myself eight grand a month before taxes, before costs - and I have people that work for me, I have a team, then I need to liquidate those costs.
At the beginning I asked: “How do I remove eight grand a month?” Boom, I'm gonna start a coaching program. I went and launched the coaching program and that removed the cost of me taking money from my main product. Does that make sense?
All I want is for my main product to scream it to a million bucks. Structurally, the way that I'm doing this is that instead of me getting paid out of the profits from my main product, I take money from this entirely separate thing over here - from coaching or something else.
Then the product can just roll on itself. We can spend a crap ton of money on ads and get a lot of people in there fast. Is this making sense so far? This is how I've structured it from a money standpoint. From a cash flow standpoint I can pay for expensive things like my content team this way.
In the last episode I talked about my content team which is 26 grand a month in hard costs before I even think about ad spend. “26 grand, oh my gosh,” right?
Back in the day, I made 18 grand during my first year of marriage... only $18,000. And it was loans - so I wasn't even making it! We were living on students loans, guys.
So I’ve gone from $18,000 my first year of marriage to 26 grand a month on hard costs that are not direct cash flowing things! It blows me up... that's a lot of money! $26,000 a month on the team as an ongoing cost.
So I was like: “Okay, okay, how do I remove that cost from my main product?” My main product could pay that cost... but I don't want it to. So what I did is I upped my coaching. I increased my coaching availability. I increased my consulting.
A lot of people have reached out lately and asked: “Will you fly out for a day? Just come in and work through our offers with us, work through our funnels with us. We're not asking you to build 'em. We just want you to come double-check, look over the top of it... How much is that?”
I'm like, “Sweet, well, 10 grand a day... Fly me out and we'll do that... I'll dive deeply through your stuff with you. I'll teach you. I'll show you what to do and how to put it together. I’ll critique and tweak, or build it straight from the ground up and design your marketing with you.”
So that's what I've been doing. I’ve been going through and figuring out different opportunities to remove the cost of the team, my salary, the hard costs that I have. I want to completely remove them and liquidate them from my main product.
With my main product, we've kept the ads tiny because I've been testing stuff. As of yesterday... I'm actually really excited, it’s the first full day that our self-liquidating offer was up on the webinar. It's doin' well.
It has an 8% purchase rate right now, which is okay... I'll keep tweakin' it and making it better and better. But it's a good starting place, right? It tells me at least that there's need for it. That it’s actually working…
I'm liquidating my ad costs, so now everything in that webinar purchasing process is pure profit.
The whole principle of this entire episode, what I'm trying to say (and I know I've said a lot of things, and hopefully you've followed it), is that you need to find a way to liquidate ‘your costs’ from your main product so that you can keep enough cash flow to scale your product fast.
I was talkin' to somebody and they're like, “I'm gonna go get off the ground here, I'm just gonna quit my job immediately.” And I was like, “Duh, don't do that.”
I had active cash flowing funnels... I had active cash coming in from another source before I ever did that. We had savings and security - you know what I mean? The waters were well tested.
I'm a risk taker, but I'm a calculated risk taker. It took a lot of time to actually put that stuff together and get things rockin' off the ground.
I’ve got an SLO in my funnel. It’s liquidating the ad costs. Awesome! If it's not always break even at least it's always like nothin' now. So when it's all said and done, the cost is really, really tiny to acquire a paying customer.
Then the business side, I'm like, “Sweet, how do I remove myself from the books of that product specifically?” I don't wanna get paid from the profits of that product. So I remove myself from the books with coaching consulting and speaking. I'm speaking in loads of different places recently. It's been a ton of fun and I’m liquidating all the costs of the business which means I can get a sweet content team together and publish way more.
I’ve liquidated the cost of my content team, my salary, the people workin' for me without taking any money out of my business.
Don’t ask, “Uh, how do I get a discount on stuff?” It's a bad question! You'll answer it… You just don't want to answer that question. It's the wrong question.
So the next thing I want is a super ninja support team. If you guys didn't listen to my deep dive on webinars... it's in two parts… it's a few episodes ago. It's probably 10 episodes ago... It's worth listening to.
One of the things that I've been seeing other guys do on webinars is have live support. So now I want to toss in support on my automated webinars too... This represents a new cost coming in.
Watch how I'm gonna handle it. We already have awesome support, but I want 24/7 support. I want three people in eight hour shifts. Sheesh. A good support person, you can typically get good ones, maybe I won't say numbers, but it's not gonna be cheap. So how do I replace that cost?
So I thought, okay, what if I do this? If my webinar is what the main revenue generator is right now, it's like the big product that I'm pushin' out the door… how do I make it so that it further replaces the support person cost?
I wanna beef up support and I wanna get a full-time assistant. Those are the two positions that I'm looking at right now. So how do I remove that cost and not bankrupt the company, which we're not close to at all, but like, right? How do I make it so that I don't have a negative month?
I don't wanna have my first negative month - I wanna keep goin' up. How do I do that? So this is what I'm thinkin'... Follow me on this…
On the broadcast page for my webinars, the replay pages, right underneath, I have a cool chat box, but now I wanna have live support on the page while they’re watching.
If someone's has a question, who's gonna fulfill those support tickets? Support. Who's gonna fulfill that live chat when they're on the webinar? Support.
A lot of people just have a last question or two before they actually purchase something from you. If they don't get it answered they won't buy it. It's that important to them, even if, in hindsight, it's a really small question…
This is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna add in a live chat box element - so that when they click it opens up Facebook Messenger right there. Then they can chat with one of my three support people tight there on their profile.
If a support person closes that person, number one, it brings in more cash... Number two, I'll give that support person some affiliate commission. That way they’re motivated to close people when they do write in. Isn't this interesting?
If support answer a few extra questions and bring in the cash, it will probably liquidate the cost of my support team. Will it actually make extra cash? Probably not, but it will probably remove the cost of the support person. Does that make sense?
Anyways, that's what I'm doin'. Maybe this is a little bit too crazy for me to go into on a actual podcast episode... but that's what I've been doin' lately, which is kinda interesting.
What if the question is not: “How do I do this?”... but: “Who knows how to do this?” Go listen to that podcast episode from Russell if you haven't…
Maybe the question is not, for example:“How do I build a funnel?” … but “Who knows how to build a funnel?”
If you don't know how to build funnels, you could go learn... or you could find someone who already knows how to do it. Go find the right “who” with the know how and your speed increases. And that's I've been focusing on lately.
Going from six to seven figures is not a matter of more hours in the day spent in the office, it is a matter of leverage. And so that's what I've been figuring out.
I've been getting this team, and I've been putting people together. I'm getting these support people, and it's been awesome, you guys. All of its been awesome. I've been able to liquidate the cost of my team through the coaching and other stuff.
Next episode, stay tuned, I wanna show you the other way that I'm gonna replace them again with more revenue. I'm very, very excited to go through and share that thing with you.
Anyways, I'm excited. Hopefully this episode made sense to you? It's just a recap. I know I kind of went deep with all this stuff…
Just the same as I would create an SLO or some kind of self-liquidating offer that pays for ads in a funnel… I’m doing the exact same thing in my business now.
I've removed “me” completely from the cost of my main funnel profits. I've removed my team completely from my main funnel profits. The more people I put in, instead of figuring out: “Can the business handle it?” (The answer's yes, but I don't wanna ever go negative on my revenue or my cash flow)... Instead, I ask: “How can I remove that cost from my business?”
I'm getting a few more support people and I'm just plugging them into the closing process. So I'm getting support people, a little bit more aggressive support people... People who know how to close a little bit.
Support people who know just even the smallest amount of closing techniques, so they can come in and answer and close people. People who can answer support questions and support tickets when they come in, but who can answer any kind of closing questions too.
That's kinda the thing I wanna go build team-wise. I wanna to put that together. I'm really, really pumped about it. I hope it makes sense.
What's funny is that when you start asking and answering these sort of question, your speed's gonna increase like crazy.
I've never met anyone who made a ton of money just on their own. It always takes a team. Everyone benefits as the entrepreneur and the business move together.
So just start answering these questions: “How do I attract the right ‘who’?” - “How do I liquidate the cost of the right ‘who’?”
Russell was a room with a lot of brilliant people... I think it was at the Genius Network, but I'm not sure. Anyway, someone said:
“Don't figure out how do I do this, how do I do that.. That route takes you forever... Yes, you'll become a renaissance man - which means you're really gettin' good at nothing.”
Instead of asking, “How do I do this?, ask, Who knows how to do this?”
I was on a coaching call, I'll end it with this…
I was on a coaching call with another amazing mentor of mine and he was telling me, the one question that I should start learning how to answer is: “How do I hire people that I can't afford?” And if I can answer that question, everything blows up.
He asked me to start thinking about that probably about six weeks, eight weeks ago, and I've been answering that question. It's the reason why my team and my business is accelerating is because I have learned how to hire people and bring people in that I can't afford.
How do I do it? I do it by creating a liquidating asset that covers that cost.
I still have one funnel. I still have one thing that I'm doing, that's it. My focus is there, is absolute. However, on the cost of the actual business itself, to start really leveraging the speed of the team, I need to go create something else that pulls in and liquidates the cost of that person.
That's the question I wanna pose to you: “How can you hire people that you can't afford?” And when you start doing that, oh my gosh, it's crazy. There's so much expertise that will get brought into your company and your business, it's ridiculous.
I don't even know all the stuff that my team do for me - it’s insane. It's really cool. Problems get solved that I didn't even know existed. And they get solved in an expert way rather than a just good enough way.
All right guys, hopefully this was helpful to you, and I will see you on the next episode.
Please get a chance to rate and subscribe and review this podcast. And please share it.
I would love to be able to share my message with people who are kinda just starting out and haven't quite made it yet. Or people who have made cash, and they're trying to figure out how to scale. That's where my expertise is - in offer creation and the storytelling.
Anyways guys, thanks so much. Have a good one, and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye-bye.
Hey, thanks for listening. Please remember to rate and subscribe. Got a question you want answered live on the show? Head over to salesfunnelradio.com and ask your question now.
| |||
| 22 Aug 2016 | SFR 2: Yard Manager, Door-to-Door Sales, ...Paul Mitchell? | 00:18:10 | |
Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. Hey you guys. I'm actually super excited for this. I can't believe I'm recording the first episode of this podcast. I mean this is awesome. I love podcasts. I think they're awesome. I've learned a lot from them. I've made money because of things I learn off podcasts. I've gained a lot of respect for a lot of people. Anyways, so I'm excited to be doing this podcast and I remember the idea first came up, and I was like, "I don't want to get podcasting. I don't want to go out and start, I don't know, going around and trying to interview all these people and stuff like that." What I want you to know is what you can expect from this, though, because I'm excited that I decided to. I used to do a lot more parascoping than I used to. I got 600 parascope followers, and something interesting happened when I started publishing. The moment I started publishing, I started getting a ton of interaction with people. Way more than my ad spend, right? It's super fun. It was just, so, I've got to tell you, it's as much for me to be doing this podcast as it might be for the things that you learn in this. Selfishly, I just enjoy it. It's super fun. I feel a connection whenever I do that, and then I get feedback from people and they say, "Hey, I used that tactic and I made money with it." It blows me away. Super fun. Anyway, I enjoy that a lot. What you can expect from this podcast is to learn specific sales funnel strategies, whether that's for webinars, trip wire funnels, product launch funnels, automated webinar funnels, anyways. If those don't mean anything to you, no worries. It's okay. I'll go crazy deep on some things, but other things not. I promise to keep it interesting as well. I hate monotone speaking podcasts. Oh my gosh, they're so boring. Those are the ones I always play at 2 time speed. If you didn't know you could do that, it's on your iPhone, but you can play things at 2 time speed, really fast. I kind of tend to talk quickly, so that might sound weird, but what I'm going to do is talk about sales funnels, things I'm building right now for clients. I've been building sales funnels for the last, about 4 years and the first one I even built was for this guy named, actually I can't even remember his name, but he was an artist and we were selling his art. It wasn't quite like gif art, but it was ... Anyways it was cool. It was cool stuff. I remember I built the sales funnel, cool, and no one came to it. I was like, "what the heck?" I was like, "I've got to go learn how to send traffic." But I didn't, and time went on, time went on, and I was like, "Hey, I'm going to go learn door to door sales, just because I want to learn how to sell in really hard environments." That's why I did it. I went and I was like the number 2 sales guy for a while. I mean I was like crushing it. It was awesome. I was selling pest control and there were bugs everywhere so it was great. I remember while we were driving out to one of our areas one morning. I was looking and we were on the highway and it was a great day out. I remember it was blue skies, you know, just fantastic out. It was hot, crazy hot. I remember looking around and seeing all these billboards as we were driving down the highway and thinking, this is crazy. I get up every morning and I convince people who were not planning on spending money that they should spend money, and I'm not doing bad at it, which is awesome. That's a skill. But everyone who's seeing these billboards is planning on spending on something when they call that number. It completely switches the psychology of the sale. I'm like, oh my gosh, that's incredible. I was in college at the time. I was like, I've got to learn how to do that. What I did is I got online that night and I started putting out all these ads, just free classified ads, all over the place selling our pest control. "Hey, if you got this issue, call." "If you got this issue, call." "Hey we're doing a sale. Call." My phone started blowing up. I couldn't believe it. My boss called, he's like "How are you getting all these sales?" I was like, "They're calling me." He goes, "Are you kidding? What the heck?" I said, "I'm kind of shocked it's working." I remember I pulled like 10 phone sales in a very short period of time. It's funny because for a door to door salesman, there's different ratios right? Hey, I know that if I pitch 50 to 60 people one of them on average will say yes. That's a crap ton of work and a lot of talking, right? When I was doing this it flipped it and I closed 90% of the people who were calling, always. I think there was only 1 or 2 who didn't purchase, because they called because they had a problem and they knew I had a solution. I was like, "this is nuts. This whole thing is crazy. Why am I selling this way?" It was a great way to learn how to sell, and it's a fantastic skill to have. I've used that many other places, but the interesting thing though, I was hooked after that. My sales numbers started sucking because I started thinking like, "How else can I blow this up?" I started thinking about ... Anyways, I kind of quit door knocking and I went home that summer. We made money. It was a good experience. I came home and that just always stuck with me. I was like, that's nuts. People are clicking ... It's not clicking. That's where I'm going. They were calling. I was like, how can I get them to click on things that I want them to online? So I started getting obsessed with this stuff. Just like, okay, I've got to go make a product and then I'm going to get ads and then I'm going to drive it to that product. Wow, revolutionary Steve. It's not that crazy, but what's is that to me that was a huge deal. I went and I built this product and no one came and it never sold and no one came and it was tumbleweed after tumbleweed. I was like, crap! That's when I was like, I need to learn how to send traffic. I started going and I started learning all these traffic techniques and it's super cool. At that time I was, this is just the story of how I got into this so you guys know. I thought it'd be good to tell as the first podcast. At the time I was in my internet marketing, it was called Intro to Internet Marketing. It was one of my classes in college. It was bad, man, it was so bad. For the last couple months I had been studying traffic, right, because none of my ebooks had sold. Still on Amazon, by the way. Anyway, so I started learning all these traffic techniques but by the time that internet marketing class came up in college, I had been studying enough stuff and practicing enough and had made enough money that I knew everything he was already talking about, and I knew that what the teacher was saying was old and was wrong and wasn't going to work for what he was teaching. I told the teacher that. That's not always the wisest thing to do to a professor, but that's what I did. I drew up this plan, and it was hey I'm going to have this squeeze page. People will come in. They'll opt in and I'll get their email address and then after that I'm going to push them over to the sales page of like someone else's product. I was practicing affiliate marketing. I would get a commission when I would send a buyer to someone and someone else would make the product. That's called affiliate marketing if you're not familiar with that. It worked. I put 50 bucks in to some ads. I woke up and there was 50 bucks in my account. I was like, "Oh my gosh! Are you kidding me?" I went and I called my buddy. I was like, "Dude, get over here! It worked!" He comes flying over. I was like, "We didn't really make anything, but we gained 17 subscribers and we broke even. We got 17 people that we know are basically buyers and 2 or 3 of them specifically and now I can go market those people because we know that they want this stuff." It was like, "Oh my gosh, this is crazy." I was like, "We're got to figure out how to make money with it though." Anyways we told that teacher, hey we don't want to do this. We don't want to come to your class anymore and I want to go do this stuff. He's like, okay. We got out of that class the rest of the semester and our deliverables was that we had to teach the rest of the class what we were doing at the end. It's funny because it sounded like ninja stuff. Thinking back, though, it really wasn't that crazy. We were just doing what works. What was nuts is we ended up getting so good at sending just a crap ton of traffic. I mean, like 53,000 people in 2 days type of traffic. We sent so much traffic to different places. It's crazy. Our professors and teachers started obviously noticing that, because we would talk about it in classes before they'd start and we were just excited about it, and sometimes we'd go ask their advice. Well there was a Paul Mitchell, you know like the hair school, that needed help with their traffic and they said, "Hey we got 2 kids that are doing pretty good with it." So we started working with some of the owners of different Paul Mitchells around the nation. There was one in Idaho, no there's 2 in Idaho, and then 8 more ... I can't remember. No, there's just one. One in Idaho and then 8 more down through California. We were on the phone with all these business owners making millions of dollar every year, telling them how to send traffic and stuff. We're like, you got to do this, got to do this, got to do this. They're like, "We don't want to do it. We want to hire you to do it." Okay. They started paying us 1,000 bucks here and there, and they'd give us an ad budget and we'd go send traffic to the different Paul Mitchell sites, and we were good at it though. A normal ad word was like $50 on Google and we were getting it for like $5 or 5 cents even at these different places, and it was awesome. People were loving it. Here's the thing though. As we were driving all this traffic and we started building some sites for some of their uprising celebrities and things like that ... That's a different story though, but it's crazy cool. They started asking us this question. They're like, "Why when the traffic comes, why isn't is actually doing anything?" They were like, "We're spending thousands of dollars in ads but why is it that we aren't actually getting more people?" We're like, "Oh you know, the next ones are coming along. We're just ... It's all about the numbers." Pretty standard stuff you hear in door to door sales. "Just a numbers game." Complete bull crap, in my opinion. That question just never left me, and I was like, how the heck do you do that? We ended up moving on and I helped start a cell phone insurance business for iPhones called Fixd Insurance. It's still up. F-I-X-D Insurance. Fixdinsurance.com. That was the first sales funnel that I ever built. It was because of that question, what do I do with traffic when it hits my site and how do I get it so that they buy stuff? That's what a sales funnel is and answers. Anyways, classic sales funnel. Here's a story too for you to for that. Ads have gotten really expensive to send to just a flat website, right? If I'm buying ads and it's going to, I don't know, WebMD.com, just because everyone will probably know that site. If I'm buying ads to that site, it's very expensive because 90% of it is going to leave without purchasing anything. I don't know if Web MD actually sells anything, but let's say they did. 90% of that traffic is going to leave without ever doing anything. It's very very pricey for these people to send traffic. Us internet marketers, we had to come up with a different way, right? We had to come up with a way to make it cheaper and to get back our ad costs while still getting a customer, and that's what a sales funnel does, right? You come in, you give them something that's free or discounted that a lot more people will take. 20, 30% of people will purchase or opt into. Something free at the front end. Now you got their contact information so then you can put them on different email campaigns and cell phone campaigns and follow ups and direct mail campaigns or whatever it is. You got their information and over the long tail, as they purchase, you're going to make back your money. That's just a one page funnel. We were like, well that's all right. It's not amazing though. What we did is, us internet marketing industry, we started going and saying hey, why don't we add a product that's slightly higher priced to the next one. Less people will take it but we'll make back more of our ad spend money, right? You got this free thing and then one more thing that's hey, like 20 to 50 bucks. Then we do that again, but we hiked it another time so now it's 97 to like $150. That's the typical price range for the next one, depending on what industry you're in. Anyways, it's kind of cool. My cost, like I have a site called secretmlmhacks.com. I've built a ton of sales funnels in the last, especially the last year. Probably close to 20 of them custom. It's not like I'm selling the same one over and over again. I'll tell you guys more about those as I go along. Just so you know, the stories I'm telling here are from case studies and things I'm learning personally. I will reference other people in this podcast and I will give them credit, but I will also use just the things that I'm using that are working. That way you guys know. Anyways, we started going and we started driving this traffic to these different sales funnels and they started working. For secretmlmhacks.com, that's one that is mine. It cost me like $1.30 to get someone into the door, typically, and then my average cart value at the end after it's all said and done across everything is like $2.80. You can make a business off of that. McDonald's, McDonald's, McDonald's. They spend about $1.81 just to get you to their drive through. That's their ad spend. On average, per customer is $1.81. If they sell you a $2.08 hamburger they've made 20 cents. You can't make a business off that, so what is their "up sale"? They ask you, would you like to biggie size that? Would you like fries and a drink with that? Now that they've done that, they've recouped their ad cost and their average cart value jumps up to I guess like 5, 6, $7. You can make a business with that now. Now they're making 4, $5 after their ad spend in every single thing they go. That's how it works though. Know what your ... It's all about what's your cost to acquire a customer and what's your average cart value. If your average cart value is higher than your cost to acquire a customer, you have a business. The simplest way to do it is to have a sales funnel that helps you recoup your ad cost. You don't try and make money first, just recoup your ad cost, and then you sell them the other things in the back end. Amateurs focus on the front end. The pros focus on the back end. Anyways, that's maybe getting a little too technical for this, but that's how I got into it. It's just me asking all these questions, like how do I do this? How do I do this? Why isn't this selling? Why isn't this selling? Then it suddenly clicked after like 2 years of trying in the internet space. My purpose of this podcast is to cut down the time it takes for you to learn these things. I'm just going to tell you some sweet nuggets. I'll tell stories in every one of them, usually, just because I hate podcasts that don't have stories. Stories are amazing. Stories engage us. I have to tell stories, so I'll tell lots of different stories and different scenarios and things that I'm working for right now. I love sales funnels. I am a full time builder and I use a tool called click funnels. If you want a trial of that, go to salesfunnelbroker.com and click on resources and there's a trial for click funnels there. I used to build everything in Word Press and that was not a fun experience. Click funnels is awesome because you can build literally anything, and I'm not a coder or programmer. I'm not a "tech guy." I might be now considered more of a tech guy because I've self taught some code things, but I would never consider myself a coder or a programmer. I use click funnels because I don't have to be a coder or programmer, and I have completely say in what I build and do. It's not like you're getting a template. You can use the templates, but I always blank them out anyways and delete everything and just start over and build what I want. Anyways, guy thank you so much. I am super excited for this podcast. This is actually a dream come true for me. It's as much for me as it is for the things you'll learn here. Anyways, please subscribe and let me know what you think about this. If you think the idea's cool, or if it's stupid, either or, I just want to know. Feedback would be awesome. Please comment, rate this podcast, subscribe. I would love to send out more of my stuff to you, and my whole purpose is just to help you make money online or offline. Sales funnels work offline, like McDonald's. But make more money using sales funnels because ads and competition have really increased, especially because of the internet. All right guys. Thank you so much again. Please let me know what you think about this. Bye. Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Have a question you want answered on the show? Get your free t-shirt when your question gets answered on the live Hey Steve show. Visit salesfunnelbroker.com now to submit your question. | |||
| 26 Jan 2023 | Using Funnels In Company Acquisitions | 00:16:50 | |
Funnels can be used to guide a user through many things. The obvious ones are leads and sales. The not-so-obvious is fulfillment and onboarding, but now I'm using them for company acquisitions. Here's what's happening… I've been asking myself what's in play for me in the next 5 years that I can get so focused on to delete 80% of everything else, which is a super hard thing to do, but I've done it anyways. We've just started buying partial or full companies at certain stages and fixing them up. And since season two of this show is dedicated to documenting my journey to 100 million, I think this new M&A vehicle will get me there faster. Tune in to hear what we are doing in this space. Key Takeaways - What we've been doing (00:29) - Why we got into mergers and acquisitions (03:05) - From a consultant to a business partner (06:46) - The vehicle to take me to $100 million (07:30) - Getting my drive back (10:14) - Taking my funnel background into M&A (13:10) Additional Resources - Connect with me here --- Download Season 1 episodes here -- Sales Funnels Radio is a podcast for all passionate digital marketing pros looking to up their game and stay ahead. | |||
| 02 Jul 2019 | SFR 256: How I 'Earn' The Chapter... | 00:27:08 | |
This is the process I went through to write my chapter for the new Affiliate BootCamp book...
I actually didn't know that writing books would be part of the journey, but I’m here to document my journey, so I have to tell you that…
When you start publishing a lot, people start to ask you to publish in other fashions as well
… so, quite unexpectedly, I've found myself writing A LOT of guest chapters in some REALLY cool books.
So today, I want to show the process of how I write chapters for books.
..honestly, I NEVER thought I’d be giving book writing advice ;-)
BOOK WRITING ADVICE, LARSEN STYLEE
Now, some of you guys may have seen this in the past, but you might get new insights on:
https://media.giphy.com/media/SRlH6uLa5zI3FPBaLK/giphy.gif
The chapter that I’m gonna show you is for Russell Brunson's New Affiliate Bootcamp Program - which comes with a book.
Russell had a ton of us write an answer to the question:
How do you become a ClickFunnels Super Affiliate and make enough money that you can do kinda what you want to in 100 days?
I was like, "Oh, that's a sweet prompt."
I spent most of Christmas writing it…
I think you’ll enjoy seeing the process I use... 'cos I don't write crap, and it takes A LOT for me to write how I do.
In fact, some people have reached out saying things like, "Stephen, you could do it faster than that!"
I'm like, "Yeah maybe, but it might be way less cool!"
WHY I LOVE AFFILIATE
My first big money came from affiliate marketing
I wanted to build a team and products when I was working at ClickFunnels, but I didn't have discretionary income or time…
Working at ClickFunnels is not a 9-to-5 job - it's way more than that.
I was like, "How can I crap done when I still have an actual job?”
So I started droppin' out these cool little affiliate promos, and I'd make money, but I wouldn't take the money as profit…
I never take money from affiliate marketing as profit.
I'd go in and dump it back into hiring a team or getting a piece of a product done…
I remember the first time I hired a coder to go in and code the first version of the blog for Sales Funnel Radio…
I ALWAYS used affiliate cash to build my business it was NEVER my own money.
I don't ever use affiliate cash for profit, it's ALWAYS an accelerant to do expensive projects I've been waiting to do.
So I want to share with you what I've been doing.
So check this out…
I relaxed the first few days for Christmas, and then after that, I was like, "I have got to work,” like, I can't not work.
It's the same method and pattern that I use to write my own book, to come up with stuff for the 30-Days chapter that I wrote.
METHOD IN MAY MADNESS?
First of all...
(For 30-Days, I didn't draw a picture, it actually would have been easier to write.)
"Oh yeah, let's talk about that. Hmmm, that's about that. So is this, so is this, so is this…."
… so it's a BIG process.
I don't write crap.
I wrote out it wants you to do it in 100 days, well 100 days is 14 weeks, so I said, "Well, this is what I'd do week by week." It's an aggressive plan, but it's very similar to what I've actually pulled off.
I almost felt like I was documenting - it's not so much theory because it’s what I actually did...
And I did most of it while working aggressively for somebody else - so you guys can totally do this as well - it's the reason I wrote it that way...
So I went through week by week…
I literally went through week by week saying, “This is what I'd do.”
What's fascinating to me, is that nowadays I feel like people forget... like, they build the funnel, they get the traffic, but then after that…
It's almost like we've forgotten or neglected what campaigns are.
It’s interesting that guys like Bill Glazer and Frank Kern talk about campaigns.
Frank Kern just came out with a campaign-based book to teach this stuff - I wonder if they've noticed the same things that I have?.
I was careful to NOT just teach:
… it's NOT that kinda stuff at all.
… it’s basically a launch campaign and an evergreen campaign that will keep this going - and that's what's so cool and super unique about this.
It’s leveraging the actual content that ClickFunnels has already created and proved works really, really well.
It's a blend between what you see Russell and ClickFunnels doing, mixed with what I would do.
So it's really cool, it's a HUGE shortcut to the whole game - I'm really pumped about it.
FINDING YOUR ‘WHO’?
The whole thing's start out by finding a money-prone 'who'.
Think about this for a second…
If you go to the actual homepage of clickfunnels.com - on the right side, they’ve got this cool new onboarding sequence for different industries, which asks if you’re:
So you can choose, "Hey, I'm an agency/ freelancer/ e-com/ B2B,” or whatever…
What I did, (and this might make some people feel a little uncomfortable or a little bit weird), but…
I went through each of the10 categories and crossed off the ones that I would NOT try to sell ClickFunnels to.
Yeah, I know, and it's not to make anyone mad, and I'm not saying you can't, but remember the prompt is, “How would I retire in 100 days - just selling ClickFunnels accounts,” and this is an intense prompt because obviously…
For example:
# B2B - I love selling people the B2B space, but sometimes there's a longer length of the sales - just 'cos the deal and who you're dealing with - it can take a little bit longer to negotiate higher-ticket things.
But I need 100 people, so I don't know if I'd go for the B2B space if I was going to do it in just 100 days. I'm NOT saying you can’t do it - I do sell to that space, and I do sell ClickFunnels to those spaces as well, but not in that time frame.
# Network marketing - sorry but that's NOT an area that I would go to because the cash flow for so long is not big enough to justify a $97-a-month thing, (even though 97 bucks a month is nothing compared to what ClickFunnels actually does).
There are several categories that would be, "WHAT! WHAT! WHAT!” to that price point...
I don't want that kinda person.
So at the beginning of the first week or two, I'm helping you figure out the 'who' that is money-prone enough…
(... their numbers that they deal with are big enough in their industry, and the sales come frequently enough)
... so that it’s easy for them to justify a $97/ 297-a-month subscription to ClickFunnels.
After that, I help you come up with a unique offer.
So think about this scenario…
YOU’RE UNIQUE OFFER
If somebody's gonna buy something like Funnel Hacks, or Funnel Builder Secrets, or if I'm a ClickFunnels affiliate selling ClickFunnels to a specific 'who' they need to be:
Hit all those buttons and... it's a short distance to the sale.
Russell writes scripts to break and rebuild beliefs, but he can't break and rebuild all their false beliefs.
So what if I was just to pull out the false beliefs he didn't solve; solve them with my own products... and then give that away as a bonus when they buy through my link.
So that's part of what weeks two/ three/ four talk about, and I'll tell you how to do that as well.
Weeks five/ six/ seven/ eight, we start getting into more campaigns, and of course, I'm gonna talk about publishing a little bit in the chapter I wrote...
Publishing is a way of leveraging to get a list fast - so that you go and actually sell your dream customers ClickFunnels/ Funnel Hacks (or whatever)… and then give away your bonus when people buy through you.
I would not ever sell ClickFunnels straight out - ClickFunnels doesn’t even do that.
I'm sure some other affiliates would disagree with me on that, and that's totally fine. It's just, for my personal strategy, I just wouldn't. I never want to spend money without the immediate chance to reclaim the cash.
...so because of that, I wanna promote a ClickFunnels product that cookies them, so they can get ClickFunnels from my affiliate link afterward.
Does that make sense?
...if this sounds Greek or whatever, you guys are gonna learn more about this in the actual chapter itself.
SELF PUBLISHING YOUR WAY TO CASH
I never put a dollar of my own in my businesses ever.
How?
Well, that's what you learn in my chapter as too ;-)
... but it's NOT challenging.
The way I do it is to actually leverage what's already existing inside ClickFunnels.
I've never written anything like this plan before... and I haven't seen anyone else do that either.
MY SHAMELESS PITCH
What I have for you now, is a special offer - check this out...
It's gonna be a very light pitch, this is super easy to get, it's not an expensive thing at all…
But I want to do is bribe you to go get the New Affiliate Bootcamp through my link.
I'll share with what you're gonna get - 'cos it's really powerful stuff…
The first thing you're gonna get when you buy the New Affiliate Bootcamp through my link…
Go to makeaffiliatesgreatagain.com - Thank you, Trump!)
… the first thing you're gonna see is a page that says, "Here's what you're gonna get from Russell…
*A TON OF VALUE* But then as you scroll down the page you’ll see…
“Here's what Stephen gonna give you," and this is the offer that's on the page…
So the first thing you're gonna get is:
BONUS #1:
I pay A LOT of money for my team to go build those things, and I'm gonna give you guys that share funnel for FREE.
All you have to do is sign up and Russell will say, "Hey, thanks for signing up for the free summit - you should join The One Funnel Away Challenge, so you can learn to set up all your affiliate stuff."
(You don’t just sign up for the Affiliate Bootcamp - you have to *actually go purchase* The One Funnel Away Challenge through my affiliate link…
https://media.giphy.com/media/fAoIpBeHpqsR9gMIUT/giphy.gif
...then you get ALL these bonuses - which are super powerful.
The next thing I'm gonna give you is…
BONUS #2:
It’s a BIG chapter
I spent most of Christmas writing that thing, and it's a HUGE.
It took a long time to write that chapter.
Read out loud, it's about an hour and 10 minutes!
I loved writing the 30-Days chapter, but this one was even more near and dear to my heart because affiliate is where my first dollar came from.
What you’re learning in that chapter are true-and-tried principles.
The reason why the audio chapter's cool is 'cos I give a lotta extra things that I couldn’t fit in the written chapter.
There’s a lotta extra side commentary in there - it goes a little bit deeper and explains a few things more.
I did get a few people who reached out and say, "Stephen, that was an intense chapter..."
So, I was like, "I know, let me explain some more in the audiobook..." So that's why I did that, and it's already ready for you - it's awesome.
All these things are ready for you immediately.
Anyway, the next thing I wanted to give you is
BONUS #3:
I sent it to my funnel builder team to teach them what we're about to build, and so it's pretty awesome.
I take my whiteboard and I draw out the funnel on camera to teach my team the funnel and what we're gonna do…
I was never planning on this being part of the bonus, but I thought, "How cool would that be if you could actually see a little bit behind-the-scenes of how I actually do it?"
… so you’re gonna get that as well.
It's a strategy video for my funnel team, but I'm actually just gonna go toss it out for you, so you can have it as well.
I think it'll be really powerful for you to see how I actually handle all the funnel builds, and I'm gonna give you the chance to do that, a-right now - just go to makeaffiliatesgreatagain.com, and sign up there.
The next thing I'm gonna give you… BONUS #4:
I get asked to speak a lot - at the time of filming and recording this, it's June, and I spoke every single week the whole month of May.
I speak a lot now, and I'm really, really pumped about all the cool things coming down…
It depends on the scenario, but most of the time I don't charge to speak - I'd rather sell while I'm there.
So sometimes what I'll do is I'll say, "Hey, I’ll come speak if you give me the video of my speech afterward." It's not all the speeches I've ever given, but some choice ones that I've really loved doing, (especially of late), that we're just really on point, and gave people a lot of clarity.
Some of the most famous little quips that I've come up with are in those speeches - and that's where I actually discovered a lot of them.
So there’s some major behind-the-scenes funnel-ology in these speeches.
… see all those boxes at the back of my office?
I'm not a slob... we do what I tell you to do, we're doing it right now.
That's what this stuff's for - that's what Coulton's been doing right over here...
Literally right before I turned this video on, that's what he was doing with all these boxes over here.
So…
Well, I gave that whole speech and full strategy at Dream100 Con... and you guys get access to that speech.
Dana is also comin' to speak at OfferMind, which I would love to have you guys come too.
VIPs almost sold out, by the way, so go getcha ticket - we are super excited about that whole thing.
Actually, I'm pretty sure, actually, I'm not allowed to say the next name. Hold it please! (anyway, back to speeches ;-))
Billion Dollar Body - I absolutely love Amanda and Nicholas Bayerle - such an awesome couple, a model couple in my opinion. Super, super cool, down to earth.
They have a very high-ticket group, and they asked to come in and speak in a high-mountain cabin, and you get that speech as well.
And then, the last one that you get, as of right now, (I'm gonna keep adding as I go, 'cos I wanna collection of all the cool stage speeches I've done).
But anyway, some of you guys might know Alison Prince. She is so cool - one of my favorites.
She was at one of the original FHAT events that I was teaching and her business exploded after that - so fun, so fun.
I’ve had a chance to work with her quite a bit, and anyways I have mad respect for her. She's helped me personally a lot.
Anyways, I got a chance to speak at her Clan Con event, and I love the speech that I gave there, “Holy crap.”
(That was the one where I had food poisoning in the hotel the night before)
All the speeches are available for you immediately.
Now, once I teach you guys how to actually do this affiliate game and my strategy behind it, (which is the point of the chapter)...
How do you actually launch your offer?
BONUS #5:
I don't consider myself a professional affiliate at all.
BUT…
I definitely have a repertoire for the affiliate game, which is hilarious, 'cos I don't consider myself a professional affiliate at all.
So you're gonna find out...
You are gonna see me doing MORE what my chapters' teaching - cos like it's a freakin' sexy offer, right?
You get ALL this for FREE if you just sign up…
HERE’S HOW TO GET THIS OFFER!
Last up…
BONUS #6:
OfferMind was free last year, it's NOT free this year.
There's a full blog post teaching why I used that strategy… and why OfferMind will NEVER be free again...
This year, there are ONLY a thousand seats, I'm super psyched about this...
I'm very, very pumped about it.
So *YOU* get a discounted ticket to OfferMInd as well!
Can I overdeliver? Is there anything else I can give you that's really freakin' cool?
I want this to be talkable - I mean, this is a HUGE offer, it's ridiculous!
BONUS #7:
... 'cos again, I don't consider myself to be a professional affiliate - So why are they asking me?
(it's free - you don't even have to buy anything at this point)
The Mini-Course teaches you, some of my top tips on affiliate marketing:
I'm really, really pumped for you to have it…
THE CLASSIC STACK MOMENT
Here we go. Ready! Oh, baby...
Here's what you're gonna get:
All you gotta do is go to makeaffiliatesgreatagain.com, and sign up before the NEXT One Funnel Away Challenge….
Here’s how...
That's a lot of stuff right there.
Just for people to be the room for the Billion Dollar Body Speech was 18 grand.
I don't wanna misquote prices, but these were NOT cheap - just for the speeches.
So anyway, just go to makeaffiliatesgreatagain.com,
If you sign up for The One Funnel Away Challenge, you get all this…
To be super clear on this….
The One Funnel Away Challenge costs $100
get…
Is it OK if I overdeliver - is that all right?
Haha - awesome episode, right!
Hey, bear with me for just a moment while I tell you about makeaffiliatesgreatagain.com.
Probably one of the most fragile phases of being an entrepreneur is that tender spot where you have just enough cash coming in to get excited, but expenses also increase a little while you take on new tools and new systems, new teams.
It can be heart pounding, and frankly, nerve-wracking.
Well, one of the ways I've kept ownership of my companies and NEVER picked up any debt or used any of our family finances to grow the business, was through affiliate marketing.
My first dollar online actually came from affiliate marketing, ONLY a few years ago.
So I often get asked the question:
“Steve, how can you have been bootstrapping this and scraping by so hard just a few years ago, but now have a business that makes millions in revenue?”
… that's a fair question.
So besides having kick butt products, when I've needed to get some extra cash for an expensive project, I have a very specific method of affiliate marketing that gets me paid to sell other people's products.
You wanna see how I do it? Just go to makeaffiliatesgreatagain.com.
ClickFunnels actually wants to know how I've been doing this as well…
So I just wrote a chapter in ClickFunnels new book called Affiliate Bootcamp... and if you wanna see my chapter, and be shown how I treat affiliate cash in my business…
…. just go to makeaffiliatesgreatagain.com
You'll get a bunch of other cool stuff from me - like, the actual Make Affiliates Great Again Funnel…
The one you're gonna see there - it’s pre-built - it’s awesome - and you can download it.
You also get my audio chapter on how I create affiliate offers. You get the actual video of me training my team on how to build Make Affiliates Great Again - it's crazy valuable.
Plus you also get several my other stage speeches.
How I launched my affiliate offers…
And you'll even get a discount ticket to OfferMind… + the Make Affiliates Great Again Mini-Course…
Is it okay if I over deliver???
If you want ALL that for free... plus other things, literally just sign up at makeaffiliatesgreatagain.com... and then, sign up for the New Affiliate Bootcamp through my affiliate link. Go figure.
My friends, get rich, give back.
| |||
| 26 Mar 2019 | SFR 228: Leveraging A FunnelHub... | 00:29:44 | |
FunnelHub is kind of a new term, and it’s something that Mike and AJ Rivera are experts in.
A funnel is not a website… but sometimes people still get confused...
About a year ago, somebody reached out to me, and said, “Hey would you please take a look at our funnel it's not converting very well?”
They hired me to come in workout what was going on. I went to look at their funnel… I opened up all their URLs, and I immediately, off the bat, I could tell:
This is NOT a funnel. This is a website.
When I told them they were like, “No no, no, no, no, no. This is one hundred percent a funnel.”
I said: “No, one hundred percent, without a doubt, I swear on my life, this is NOT a funnel... because for starters, you’ve got exits all over the page.”
A funnel is a funnel because there's only one way to progress. You either have to purchase or opt-in. If you can exit in any other way, besides the one way forward, that's NOT a funnel. That by definition is a website.
I was like, “Guys!”
So we switched a few things up to make it a legitimate funnel, and just that one switch alone, BOOM!
WHAT THE FUNNELHUB???
This is the 228th episode of Sales Funnel Radio, and it's funny to me that a lot of people still have no idea about EVERYTHING that I offer…
And I get it…
It's for a lot of reasons:
… there's a lot of moving pieces.
However, there's gotta be a way to help everybody understand what it is you're selling at all times…
And that’s what I'm excited about what I’m gonna share with you next.
I have two very special guests today and they’ve created what they call a FunnelHub. It's NOT a website. It's almost like a directory.
A FunneHub looks very similar to a website but it has a different intent.
This is the official launch of my FunnelHub.
The old Steve J Larsen site is completely gone and SteveJLarsen.com has been TOTALLY REDESIGNED.
It's very exciting!
So now you're going to read an interview I did with my AMAZING FUNNELHUB creators so you can learn MORE about FunnelHubs and why your business needs one.
So let me introduce, Mike Schmidt and AJ Rivera...
WEBSITES ARE DEAD…?
Mike and AJ are members of the Inner Circle and they own an agency called they’re from AnchorWave…
Mike: Awesome, thanks so much Stephen for having us.
AJ: Super stoked, man.
Steve: Oh it's gonna be awesome. You guys approached me... when was this? It was a while ago.
Mike: It was in October, we were at the Traffic Seekers Events in Scottsdale.
Steve: That's right, yeah, yeah. And basically, they came to me and said something that would be very dumb for me to say no to: “Stephen can we build you something for free?” I said, sure!
… and as kind of a case study, we want to walk through what they built. because I believe that what they've got will revolutionize websites.
A lot of us make fun of websites. I make fun of websites. We all know that Russell in ClickFunnels' world definitely makes fun of websites.
Mike: Totally.
Steve: But you haven't built a website, you’ve built what you call a FunnelHub. We're definitely gonna get into that... but beforehand, we'd like to know about you guys.
What do you guys do?
Mike: So we have a web design digital marketing agency based in Tucson, Arizona. We have about a team of 20 people here. We started in 2003, so celebrated 16 years in business this year.
We've built A LOT of websites. More than 1300 by our closest count at this point.
Steve: Oh my gosh.
Mike: What's funny is we heard Russell recently renew his efforts around the death of a website.
Steve: He did.
Mike: And for those of you guys who were at Funnel Hacking Live, he enrolled us in the promotion of that message. I had to turn to Anthony here and say:
“I don't think that we can share that video for Russell, given what our company does.”
We have a lot of experience helping a lot of different types of clients build websites in order to build credibility and help them serve a local market.
We joined Russell's inner circle about four and a half, five years ago, before it was cool to be in the Inner Circle. It was just a bunch of nerds in a room giving Russell a lot of money to geek out on stuff.
And now, thanks to what he's done, and what you've done, it’s kind of elevated that status quite a bit… but originally, we joined in order to start our expert business.
Given our experience of running a sizable team, building websites, and doing digital marketing for a local type client, we just kind of understood inherently that there was something we needed to get out there and teach to:
So about three years ago, we started something we call Agency Mastermind - which is a group that's all about teaching the things that have helped us be successful in our world, to people out there.
We've just crossed the threshold, at the end of last year, to achieve our Two Comma Club Award.
Steve: Whoo! Nice!
Mike: We got to officially hang that on the wall not too long ago. So it's cool.
HOW TO INCREASE SALES
We live in a world where we are:
So things started to kind of collide for us, and especially with our proximity to a lot the people who are just doing some really, really amazing things with funnels, (yourself being one of them)...
We started to see this picture of how we could really redefine and bring our 16 years and 1300 websites of experience to something that Russell's currently saying is totally dead.
Steve: If Russell sees this, we still love ya. “Viva la funnels!”
Mike: Totally, and we get where that's coming from. There's parts of our bodies that feel that websites are dead for certain things and where the funnel makes more sense... and there's a lot of places it does. It’s the most amazing tool we've ever implemented for our expert business.
Steve: That's awesome, that's awesome.
So, obviously, we throw so many rocks at websites from a direct response marketers viewpoint.
I was looking at some stats just off Shopify; with like a single product on there, or multiple products... I mean they don't convert except for like maybe one to three percent (if you're good), you know.
From that standpoint, I can certainly see why Russell throws rocks at websites.
Mike: Totally.
Steve: But you guys, I mean, you're like scrapping that whole thing, and while it kind of looks like a website, you're calling this thing a FunnelHub...
Could you talk about that a little bit?
Mike: Yeah.
AJ: Yeah, so sure…
VIVA LA FUNNELHUB The idea behind the FunnelHub is really that, you know... Russell's right; the funnel's where the sales are going to happen.
We know that there's a lot of hot buyers that go through that process. When you're driving paid traffic, you're going to get them to a landing page, you're going to end up getting them to a webinar, or sell them something.
All your hot buyers are going to raise their hand and give you money. But what happens to everybody else that isn't in that bucket? They're gonna go, typically, and research your brand.
They're gonna do a search for you just to see if you're legit and they end up in the middle of nowhere. They're not sure what the message is.
Once you reach a certain level of status in doing this, (like yourself), a lot of people are coming to you and searching for your name because they have heard you on a podcast…
Or because someone told them, “Hey you gotta check out Stephen Larsen.”
So, of course, they're gonna Google that, and now they're kind of lost.
...they're having to piece all this together on their own.
So the FunnelHub is a spot where we can still guide them through that process.
We can still let them know everything that Stephen's about... and then get them right back into the sales funnel where we know that conversions are gonna happen.
That's the goal.
We want to communicate the movement, communicate the message, and then get them right back to where we know they're gonna actually give you some money.
Mike: Yeah, I think what's important…
If you figure that we're all high-fiving and celebrating the fact that we got three or five percent of the people that made it into our funnel to hand over cash...
Or three or five percent of the people who made it to a webinar to sign up for a course…
We're all really excited about that three-five percent who convert... but what about that other 95 percent?
What do they do? There's kind of a thought process that goes:
Those 95 percent of people, they're gonna buy sometime between three months and three years of interacting with you. The question is, are they going to buy from you? Or are they going to buy from somebody else?
CATCHING THE 95 PERCENT
The FunnelHub is about making sure there is a safe landing for that 95 percent of people, (by the way you probably paid for or earned them through your efforts)...
Giving them a place to get back into those funnels and really even cross-pollinate into things that they may not be ready for.
Steve: It's almost like a way to kind of turn them from warm and cold traffic to a little more hot before they re-enter your funnel.
Mike: And to think of it from a strategy that a lot of us look at in terms of our emails…
We hear about soap opera and Seinfeld emails that go out. For a lot of people, these may be the only other way that they're nurturing somebody along to build that relationship.
The FunnelHub is the only other platform, aside from email, that you can truly own.
At the end of the day, you're renting space on Facebook, you're renting time on YouTube.
Instagram is making it, (at the current moment), pretty easy for you to reach out to people... but those things change.
… but what won't change is:
You're going to own your customer database, and you're going to own your FunnelHub. And those are the two places that you can truly use in order to really nurture that 95 percent along.
Steve: Totally, and you know what's funny, everyone watching and listening to this, the thing that has made it so starkly real for me that I need this, is I actually have a lot of products that I sell…
But I know the majority of my audience has no idea what it is that I actually sell because they came in on one thing that was attractive to them…but I've been testing products and processes and things like that.
So, there isn't anything that's pushing them to the next thing... or saying, “By the way, I also have *these* things.”
Mike: Right.
Steve: So when you guys first started talking about this, I was like:
“Oh my gosh, yes, it is the death of a website... but the birth of a FunnelHub.”
THE BIRTH OF A FUNNELHUB
When should somebody start looking to build a FunnelHub?
Mike: What we look at is if you're currently running a successful funnel that's getting you leads and sales every day, that means that you are building a mass of people who are going to be looking for you and going to be needing something like this.
So it's a wide spectrum because you could have just one funnel doing that, but many of us have built several funnels that are producing leads and opportunities.
Signs that I look for:
How you organize that in a FunnelHub is a really, really key place for that.
AJ: - Yeah, I think I'd add to that:
If you're spending a lot of time getting some earned traffic, (appearing in a lot of podcasts, different publications or articles online where people are just being introduced to you)...
...those are other indicators that you probably got the shadow traffic that's looking for your brand online.
Mike: And tell me if you think this sounds familiar?
You get introduced to someone, maybe through a Facebook ad or some kind of social post, and maybe you follow them a bit.
Maybe you opt into their funnel…
And then, one day you decide to look up something you saw them advertise…. you do a search for their name and their product…
And what comes up is their 25,000 dollar high ticket coaching application.
You're kind of brand new into this world, yet the thing they're leading with, (or Google's helping them lead with), is the funnel that's NOT appropriate for you at that point in time.
Steve: Straight to the 25 grand market.
Mike: If we could get those all day long without anything else
Steve: No one would build anything else!
Mike: Totally, but I think we can all relate to that scenario where it's like, this person has this really deep thing, but all I'm looking for is that thing, lead magnet, this thing they promised they could help me do…
... and I can't find it anywhere! Right?
I'm ready to start dipping my toe in the water with you... and work my way towards that one-on-one 25,000 dollar Hawaiian vacation that we're gonna go on.
That's a scenario that I think a lot of us can relate to…
Where the FunnelHub comes in play to make sure it's very clear how your world and business works.
I think we see that happening more and more with a lot of people in this space. PUBLISH YOUR VALUE LADDER
#1: He published his value ladder. First time ever.
Being in the inner circle, he had shared with us a number of months back…
About a year ago, he's like, “Guys, I'm working on my value ladder. I've promised the team that I will never change it for the foreseeable future.”
...'Cause he's one of those guys, (just like a lot of us), that has a lot of good ideas... and he's constantly reorganizing what this means and looks like.
Steve: It took him like four months to get serious on that value ladder too. He changed it a million times.
Mike: Totally.
AJ:- All of us do, right?
Mike: It's a living breathing thing and that's a totally natural thing.
So the lesson isn't that you gotta lock it in place, but you do need to publish it... and you do need to help your people understand how they can move through your world.
They wanna know, they wanna buy, they want an offer, so making that clear is really key.
So we saw him put it on the screens and he published it. He printed 5000 plus versions of this thing, then distributed that to all of us so we could understand:
...and that's really important for a lot of funnel hackers to pay attention to.
If you're not clearly communicating how to buy, people are going to make up their own story about what it is you do.
CLARITY EQUAL CASH
So the FunnelHub steps in place to really clarify what that is for people. So that way, they know how to move through your world.
Steve: Definitely! You know, there's a podcast episode I did a little while called Branding Comes Second. And I think when I said that, people heard, branding doesn't matter.
I was like, no, that's not what I said. It comes second. It comes way down the road…
In fact, there's a great book called Niche Down...
Once you have something that sells, once you have an amazing thing, you really should start looking at branding things.
I'm not throwing branding to the wind and saying it doesn't matter. I'm saying it's NOT what makes the sale…
But after the sale, it starts to matter for second and third sales.
One of the things that Russell taught me was that when people start saying cool things about you on Facebook or other places, start screenshotting it and keep a folder for it.
Start collecting those kinds of things for in the future, so you can go back and already have assets ready for essentially a FunnelHub.
What assets should somebody start collecting if they're not quite ready FunnelHub yet?
What should people be collecting along the way that makes it attractive and easy to build one?
Mike: Well the cool thing is that Russell's kind of outlined a lot of that in Expert Secrets.
AJ: Yeah, absolutely, that plan's already out there about establishing the attractive character, about creating the future-based cause, about creating new opportunities.
So what we find is a lot of people are aware of that, (and they might be communicating a lot that through their funnels), but for somebody that comes to their website... they're not seeing any of that.
They don't get that full picture.
So this is also helping people just do what Russell says and making sure that all of that stuff that they've worked hard on is put in a spot where people can actually see it, feel something for that movement... feel like they're part of that movement... and want to be part of it.
Mike: As you're working through those things and coming up with your:
… these are ALL the pieces that need to be represented there.
That's why this isn't just some fancy, “Oh, Russell killed websites, so let's call it something else,” type move.
Steve: No not at all.
Mike: This is very much about how do you align the important lessons from what we've learned in Expert Secrets and what we do as building an expert business and having that place where all this belongs.
This isn't just for the people who might land on that page and your audience.
It's for you as the expert to really have something to point at.
I know that there have been times where I've written my manifesto and re-wrote it. And I’d have like four or eight versions of it in my Google Drive…
Which one of them is the right one?
Being able to point to my FunnelHub and say:
… that's what takes that nebulous thing and really solidifies it … for not just the audience, but for the expert too.
Steve: Totally! So you're collecting those things along the way.
Again, a value ladder is a marketing idea and there are different products that represent that idea along this FunnelHub...
The FunnelHub is a representation of all the marketing idea that you have that's not just a value ladder... it's a manifesto and the title of liberty that you hold up and wave the flag around with. It's really such an awesome platform to do that on.
This is the unveiling of SteveJLarsen.com!
STEVE J LARSEN: THE ORIGIN STORY
The guy who owned SteveLarsen.com wanted like 30 grand, or whatever... and I was like, ‘There's no way!”
So Stephen Joseph Larsen was available, so I bought it and I built it … and it was terrible!
It's always poorly represented of what I do, and now it’s rebuilt. So do you want to walk us through it?
Mike: Yeah, we'd love to.
AJ: We're super proud of this, man.
Steve: It's incredible! I think I ran around the house a few times when I saw it the first time. Look at that!
Mike: Here we go. First things first, is I think we're going to have to get a picture of you with a proper beard here now.
AJ: Photoshop that in or something.
Steve: Yeah.
Mike: This FunnelHub is really designed to help guide people through the journey that they have with you.
A big part of that is helping them understand the programs and offerings that you have and really providing that piece.
So we've obviously got the events…
These are the things that people want to know about you:
Steve: I'm so excited for people to see this. I guarantee most of them don't even know half that exists.
Mike: How many people listening to this knew you had, how many people knew about FunnelStache? They may have come in another funnel…
Obviously, a hundred percent of the people reading this right now know about Sales Funnel Radio, but there is an opportunity to ascend those people through the other things that you offer.
If you didn't know, Stephen is the offer creation king.
Clarify in your mind that he's the category king of helping someone clarify and launch an offer to the world…. And that's what this FunnelHub is really driving at.
As cool and as amazing as the podcast is, (and the stories that are told), at the end of the day, they're all in service to really building Stephen as the king of the offer creation.
It's NOT about funnels.
We use funnels, yes, but it's about, “How do we leverage the offer?” And that's really what this is doing.
AJ: Yeah, one thing I'd mention on this page is that this is a living breathing thing.
I feel like a lot of people feel like they can't get started with this unless they've got this all planned out and they know everything about their value ladder…
But this can change…
This is electronic. Unlike Russell printed 5,000 copies of his value ladder... this is just a graphic that we can update.
So if you have a smaller value ladder right now, and you know it's going to get bigger, give us what you've got and we can communicate that, and as it grows we can continue to add that later as well.
Steve: Yeah I'll say the thing that I was really kind of relieving to me was when you guys said that it could change. When we first started working together, I was feelin’ I can't ever change it! It's permanent. It's like a book, it will be printed... it cannot stop ever.
AJ: It's NOT a tattoo.
Mike: Absolutely, so one thing that we haven't touched much on is the media and speaking opportunities…
DO YOU HAVE A BLOG?
A blog is one component of a FunnelHub. It's one piece of that.
And so when you just reduce your web presence to just, “Hey it's where I publish my blog,” ...there's so much more that should be there.
We're not putting that there just for the just for fun, it's actually to help people understand:
So our mission here with the FunnelHub is to help people understand that it's much more...
A FunnelHub is much more than a blog. It's much more than a website. It's really helping to help paint that entire picture that needs to be shown.
It’s even a big part of a traffic strategy and it's a big part of a Dream 100 Strategy. That it's NOT something that just kind of gets left off to the side.
AJ: - Yeah, I have an example of somebody in the Inner Circle, I'm not gonna mention her name, but she had an opportunity to appear on a pretty big podcast... and they went and searched for her name online, and they didn't like what came up. So they pulled that opportunity away from her.
So if she’d have had a FunnelHub that clearly outlined her movement, who she was, had all the credibility indicators that they were looking for to feel comfortable to welcome her on their show... then she would've been able to take advantage of the earned traffic there.
Steve: So awesome. I love that you guys asked me, “What are all the questions that people ask you over and over and over again?”
You put that in there…
There's a FAQ…it's awesome. It helps support everything that I'm doing. Anyway, I'm excited.
Everything is going to have Steve J Larsen in it.
Mike: And kind of like to bring it full circle, what's cool about helping this audience, and coming from the point of view where we have our own expert business, is that we get that the experts are really busy and have a lot on their plate….
The fact that we got Stephen J. Larsen to dedicate some time to work on this project among all the other things you do, is amazing... But really, what we asked you to do is pretty minimal.
Steve: Oh, that's what was shocking to me. There's people who have asked stuff like that, and I'm like, “Ahhhh!”
I was excited to do this, but I think we had like three meetings and you just caught the vision and went and did it. It's rare.
Everybody listening and watching... it's rare to have somebody who clearly understands like FunnelHub/ websites, but then, also funnels and the funnel world and the roles between the two.
That’s rare. I don't see that often. So it was neat. You guys just took it and ran. It was really cool.
Mike: That's something we see as a unique aspect we provide:
It's kind of an “Ah-ha,” and I almost feel guilty... or dumb, for not really thinking of this sooner.
They say there's a reason for everything... you know, some kids take the slow path through school, and that would be me.
Being in the inner circle as long as we have, the timing was just right around this.
AJ: For a long time, we never even talked about that side of the business. We just went to the inner circle asking for advice on our expert business and getting a lot of tips with that.
They didn't even know we had this agency.
So this is like a coming out for us, not only in the inner circle but everybody else in the Funnel Hacking community... like, “Hey, we've got an agency that can help you with all this stuff.”
Steve: Totally awesome. Where can people get information?
I know about half of my audience is already killin' it... and this actually would very much apply to them.
The other half, they're kind of brand new, which is great and “Welcomed,” just know this is also what's in store.
...where should people reach out?
Mike: Absolutely, so the best place to connect with us regarding this is FunnelHub.xyz. Yes, you can get an XYZ domain name!
Steve: I didn't know that.
Mike: And now we know that too…
But on that page, you'll find a lot of information about what we're talking about here today, also a little bit of video preview of Stephen's website.
You guys who are not watching the video, just head over to FunnelHub.xyz ...and you can kind of get the whole story there, as well.
Steve: Yeah, it's cool too, because they took the reins, they went and built it all out, and then I just did a critique... like, “Hey change this vernacular or whatever.”
They're always there, even on a monthly basis, for when I reach back out and say, “Hey, my product's changed... this has changed,” so nothing is cemented. That very much was like, “Ahh…” That helped me a lot.
Mike: As much as I would love to credit for the design or putting this whole thing together, it was absolutely our team here that helped out with that.
Jill one of our project coordinators played a major role in jockeying that. So, what's cool is, even though we're busy running our own expert business, you have access to the team that can make that happen.
Steve: You have a pretty big team too.
Mike: We have a team of 20 people here in Tucson, Arizona. So right outside this door right here, Jill's office is right there.
We've got the team that shows up to work every day to do this kind of stuff. That's something we're really proud of that and really proud of our team.
I hope that you guys can see the labor of love through the FunnelHub that was created for Stephen.
Steve: Totally! You all know that we focus heavily on hiring the who that knows the how.
Entrepreneurship is NOT about you learning how to play EVERY instrument in the orchestra. It's about you being the orchestrator. You're the conductor.
I want you to understand clearly that the who to FunnelHubs is definitely Mike and AJ.
Go to FunnelHub.xyz and check them out. They are the experts, they birthed a lot of this concept. You're getting it right from the horse's mouth.
Guys, thanks so much for being on with this. This was awesome.
BOOM!
If you're just starting out you're probably studying a lot. That's good. You're probably geeking out on all the strategies, right? That's also good.
But the hardest part is figuring out what the market wants to buy and how you should sell it to them, right?
That's what I struggled with for a while until I learned the formula.
So I created a special Mastermind called an OfferMind to get you on track with the right offer, and more importantly the right sales script to get it off the ground and sell it.
Wanna come?
There are small groups on purpose, so I can answer your direct questions in person for two straight days. You can hold your spot by going to OfferMind.com.
Again, that's OfferMind.com. | |||
| 04 Apr 2018 | SFR 131: Assets To Collect BEFORE Funnel Building... | 00:16:15 | |
Jumping straight into ClickFunnels after having an idea is actually the wrong order to go...
Hey, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today, and now I've left my 9-5 to take the plunge and build my million dollar business. The real question is, how will I do it without VC Funding or debt, completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business. Using only today's best internet sales funnels. My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. Anyway, what I was doing is I wanted people to understand more about the order that I go through to launch my funnels, and this is important for you to understand because I feel like people do it backwards like crazy and it drives me nuts and this is one of those areas where I recently have had a lot of clarity and really has helped me to know when to suggest to people that they're ready to start the funnel building stage, okay. Because I feel like one of the major errors people make is that the first thing they do is they jump into Click Funnels and start building something, but they don't even know what they're building and then when they build it they don't have the sales and so I'm trying to ...
If you wanna know how, "Stephen, how did you build so many funnels so fast?" Well, it's because ... Building a funnel was really step three every time, step ones and twos were already done and so I could just do step three build, build, build, build, build, build, build, build, Right, does that make sense? Anyway, so, I hope that you will be able to enjoy this. Let me queue it over here right now and I hope that you enjoy more of ... I just hope that it helps you understand more of the order that I funnel build in. I know I've already said that but this will be powerful because the first time I every did this it did not go well on my own and it's because I did not understand these core pieces and elements of funnel building itself. The first time I ever built a funnel that actually went really well, it was probably like my fifth funnel. And I went through and ... This was like four, five years ago and I went and I was building these funnels right? And I was putting this stuff out there and I originally was doing it in WordPress. Terrible, right? Terrible experience, it was awful. I was building it all in WordPress and I was building funnels for ... Actually, I built this funnel for this artist and it actually went really, really well. It was technically an eCom site but the way we were trying to sell it was a little bit funnel-ish. It was before Click Funnels ever existed. And then I went through and I was building funnels for people with Get Response, their landing page software, okay? It was ... It's rough, oh my gosh, like actually using Get Response landing page software in a funnel scenario. It was like, "Oh my gosh, it was nuts." So, when I saw Click Funnels like a few months after it came out, I was like, "This is freaking awesome, are you kidding me I've been trying to do all this stuff by hand and these other scenarios are super, super hard." I was like, "This is crazy."
And we didn't have money to get something like Click Funnels. $97 a month felt like this insurmountable amount of money and we're like, "Oh my gosh that's, are you kidding? $97? I see the value. I see, but I don't have $97 a month." You know? And I was like, "How do I do this?" And so what we did was we decided that we would, and I was like, "Grrr." I was reading a lot of Robert Kiyosaki at the time and I was like, "Robert Kiyosaki always says that poor people say, 'I can't afford it', and rich people say, 'how can I afford it?'" And I was like, "I'm gonna try and practice this." Right?
I was just trying to figure the game out. I was hustling as hard as I could. I'd get all my homework done in a few hours and then I'd go hide in these box office seats in the basketball stadium and I'd wait for the security guards to not look at me and I would throw my bag through the front window of the box office, or sorry the box seats and then I would wait for the security guards to look away again then I would jump through the front window. And I did that for a year and a half and up there was it was quiet, the internet was fast, I could stay and hide up there, way past building closed and I did that every day for a solid year and a half. What we did was, when Click Funnels came out, right? We were like, "We gotta have this tool. I want to build this funnel." This was the first real successful funnel that I'd built. We decided, it was really two funnels we built. The first one was we were like, "Okay, what we're gonna do is plan out the whole business. Let's plan out the entire thing. Let's plan it all out and then we'll press go on our trial and when we press go on the trial we have two weeks to build the funnel, bring customers in and get them paying for Click Funnels so that we can have it and our customers would pay for it." And that's totally what we did. And it worked. We both said goodbye to our wives for like two weeks, and we planned out the business and we pressed go. Boom and we just ran. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know how to like ... I didn't even know how to change colors of a column, like I was so new in Click Funnels that I quickly became 'that guy' to the support people, because I asked at least two questions a day, every day for like a year. I was like, question, question, question, question, question, question, question, and I was like, "Crap, I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this, hook this up, here the, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." I was like trying to go as fast as I could because the timer was going, right? That kind of good pressure is fantastic for the soul and for your progression. And so I .... But you gotta be willing to experience it, know what I mean. You gotta say yes to it. And that's what we did. And I'll tell you that we built the funnel, we got it out there, and it was for this insurance, smart phone insurance funnel. And we didn't make money but we didn't really lose money either. We both kind of broke even. And it paid for Click Funnels, it paid for our stuff and that's really what got us going. And it's really what got me the tool.
But I was like, "Oh my gosh. I got this idea for this sweet product no one's ever pulled off before, it's going to be freaking awesome. Aahh!" And so I build this product and I'm spending ... because I was in the army ... I was in school. We had a kid. You know what I mean? Life was busy. It took me about eight months to build the actual info-product, okay, and put it together. And write the scripts and Funnel Hack the crap out of people, you know what I mean, put all the pieces together. And then what I did is I went through and I launched it and then put it out there. Nobody bought it. I was like, "What's wrong with you guys? This product is freaking incredible! Are you serious?" I just spent tons of time making the funnel. Lots of time putting the product together and then when it was all said and done, after eight months. No one was buying it. I said, "What's wrong with this?" This was now four years ago. That's the amount of time that's gone ... And I was like, "Oh my gosh, are you serious? What's going on with this thing?" One of the issues that I learned over the last few years, I've now coached over 700 people through the 2 Comma Club coaching program. I've coached a whole bunch of people through my own and the pattern is always this. Is that people will start by jumping in and they're like, "What funnel should I build?" Right? And then when they get in, they get into to create funnels they're like, "This is freaking awesome. Oh my gosh", right? What funnel am I going to build? And then they build this funnel of what they think it should look like, because they've seen other peoples, and that's great. They're funnel hacking. But then, they're like, "Crap! What should I sell?" And they get like, oh man you know what, maybe on this page we'll sell this. Maybe on this page we'll sell this. How 'bout this page we'll sell that. Right? And then they're like, "Crap! Now the products are in there, how do we even make this thing sell?" Now I know I have a funnel. I've got the products. How does it sell? And I will tell you, that's exactly what I did and it took another solid 3-4 months for the thing to actually even sell well. When I finally figured out that last piece it was $1,000 a week, no ad spend, for a year. About 50 grand then. Right, crazy cool. But looking back on how that whole thing went, it's exactly the opposite of what you should. It's unfortunately the natural tendency of everybody that comes into the funnel world. They start over here at the funnel side. Then they figure out what they should sell. Then they figure out how to sell it. Wrong order entirely. Start the other way. So when I launched, and one of the reasons why I felt like I could leave my job, which I was super sad to do but I realized I needed to. You gotta go the other direction. And this is one of the reasons why I knew I could leave the security of a 9-5. My very cushy, plush, amazing job next to the Russell Brunson, you know what I mean? I just love the guy like a brother. It hurt me personally to leave, I didn't want to leave. But I felt like my own personal progression I needed to, so I did. But this is why I felt like I could, one of the reasons why. There's a few things that I was looking at that I knew was going to be the reason I would be okay. Because I left with no product, no funnel, no script, there was nothing. I had nothing created. And within four days, I had already cash-flowed $3,700 and then within another three weeks we were at $6,000. But the product wasn't even made.... And this is what I did first. This is what we're going to go through with all of you students as well, super excited to have you guys. We're going to dive through. I think we have eight of you today, eight, nine of you today. Something like that. Number one you've gotta start instead with the message. The sales message. What gets people off of their butt and they're wallet is like flying through the air. Whoosh! Take my money! Right? That's all you should care about. What is the sales message that breaks and rebuilds the beliefs, and gets them to you and saying, "Yes, I am willing to buy. Take my cash." The issue is that people, instead they'll start over on the funnel side. And when you start on the funnel side, you end up creating an offer tethered by the funnel that you created. Does that make sense? And then you come over here to offering, you're like, "Cool. I made this sweet thing. I made this cool product. This awesome offer." And then you end up creating a sales message tethered by the offer that you put together. You immediately are going into an improvement based offer when you do it that way.
The book, Innovators Dilemma. Innovators Dilemma talks about that. Since you're creating a new niche, the problem with markets that don't exist is that since they don't exist they can't be analyzed. And since they can't be analyzed, right, you're not going to be able to go ... You're going to make it based off of your own precepts. The issue with that is you are immediately going into an approved base offered. So let's fix, the fix, the way to fix all of it is to sell. Figure out what message sells. What message gets people off their butt, because people are inherently lazy, and money in your hand. Then you create the offer with them. You create the product with them. So that they are helping you discover at the same time, in tandem, it has to happen at the same time. They're helping you create this new niche, together. It's not made off of your own precepts. It's not made off the precepts of just a single customer. You're doing it with the people that you've been selling. And when you do that, oh my gosh, it's so much easier. Number one, because you're not going to over shoot the bounds of what they need to feel fulfilled. Number two there, you're going to be able to go in and they will literally help figure out ... You're going to get cash in your pocket before you ever start doing it. And when I did they said ... I didn't get out there and say like, "Hey, here's a bait and switch on you. Oh, gotcha it's not made yet." No. I was very clear and open. Look, it's not done yet. Because of that, I'm going to give you early bird pricing. Ezra Firestone just talked about this in an interview with Ryan Moran. He does the exact same thing. He goes out and he sells a little bit cheaper to his beta group. I didn't. And then they help him create the product. Then when you know what offer sells and fulfills the message that you promised in your sales message, then you're going back and you're doing all the ninja crazy stuff with the funnel. My funnel right now is limping along. I know it is so broken. I know it is. I don't care. For the first three months of me doing this, I have not cared. I don't even have a consumption, I don't have all the ... I don't have the bells and whistles in my funnel, because I know it is not what makes the sale. The sales message makes the sale. Your product never is good enough to sell it by itself. So stop caring about it. It's not what puts cash in your pocket. Figure out what the sales message is. Then go out and then fulfill whatever that promise was in the sales message, fulfill that with the customer. Help them, have them help you make it. And then you go out and then you start doing all the funnel stuff. I'm finally at a spot now where I just proved after the funnel works and now I'm going back, I'm circling back to the actual sales message itself. I'm fixing my script. A lot of stuff's wrong with my script. It's still the original script that I wrote, pretty much, three months ago. A lot of stuff I'm going to fix there. Then I'll go back to the offer, sexify that out, make that even more attractive. Really, really cool. Then I'll go back to the funnel. Add more cool stuff, more ninja stuff and I'll go back to the script, back to the offer, back to the funnel, back to the script, back to the offer ... does that make sense? That's how I do that and that's the way you do it where you're not waiting like over a year to get paid like I had done the first time. Anyways, I am ... We're going to drive through some sweet peoples' funnels today. Make sure you got a solid plan and then help you implement that and then we're going to ... Then we're going to go ahead and help you get a plan. So month one for you guys, just so you know, is all about getting that thing off the ground. Month number two, and you can do it faster but this is generally how I focus on it, month number two's all about traffic. And reacting based on what the market is telling you. The reaction area. Like I said before, this game's about you becoming a good detective rather than this brilliant innovator. That's not true. That's not how that works at all. People stress out like, "I'm going to be this big creative", no you don't. You gotta funnel hack first and then create something new and you do them in tandem. Funnel hack and be creative second, not first. I was taught very wrongly in college about that. That I gotta make something that's brand new, something totally prolific, oh my gosh it's gotta be something amazing, something nobody's ever seen before. Are you kidding me? That's the most risky crap on the planet and you will lose cash. Anyways, do it this way it works out. I don't care if you're selling eCom, info products, retail, B2B, doesn't matter. That's the model that I use that I go through it. First sales message, what actually gets cash flowing. What are you going to do to fulfill on the promise that your message made? And then you obsess over the funnel and then I repeat it several times until it's amazing and then, then I feel like I can automate it, walk away and be like, "Sweet! Boom! Done. This is awesome. That's epic."
Hey, thanks for listening. The most common question I get is, "Steve, will you look at my funnel?" Of course. Whether you want me to coach you, give some hand holding and guidance during your funnel build, or simply review the one you have; head over to coachmesteve.com and book your session now. | |||
| 03 Mar 2017 | SFR 40: My Day 3 of 3 'Funnel Hacking Live 2017' Notes | 00:22:44 | |
Click above to listen in iTunes... Garrett and Danielle White Family, Russell Brunson, and TONY ROBBINS...
What's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen. You're listening to Sales Funnel Freaking Radio. Whoo! Hey, this is actually a special episode. This is part 3 of 3 in my review day-by-day of Funnel Hacking Live Event that Russell just threw in Dallas. I'm actually in Dallas right now recording this. I didn't want to leave the hotel room before doing this and spiting it out and everything was fresh on my mind. So, I'm just sitting inside here in the actual hotel room itself and just getting these podcasts out to you guys. These are kind of a review. Today, will be a bit shorter than the other two. The other two were a bit long, but I wanted to go in-depth so you guys felt like you were getting some values from the podcast itself. Again, and just as the others, if this is the first episode of this 3 part series that you're listening to, go listen to the other 2 first.
Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. Where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow you online business, using today's best internet sales funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. Again, thank you to all you guys that I was able to meet, and talk with, and take selfies with, and all the gifts you guys brought, which I was not expecting that. And it was very, very humbling. Anyway, guys, thank you so much. Again, my voice is totally shot still and talking as much as I am is not helping. But it is what it is. The very first person who came in was Garrett White with his wife. Now okay, Garrett has spoken every single time at the Funnel Hacking Live Events. The reason Russell likes to bring him in is because he also helps people implement. Now you think about, Garrett made this point as well. He's like, "Okay, I know you like coming to Funnel Hacking Live and you get a whole lot of extra goodies and nuggets, and things that you don't get anywhere else. Think about it, if you would just freaking read the book, watch the tutorials, and do it, you're going to be farther along than the majority of the people who are out there." It was really funny to listen to, but it was like, "Okay, okay, that makes sense." There is a lot of stuff that you can't get from a book that you do get at the event. It was actually really cool to listen to him and hear him say that. He was there with his wife though and we've never done that with him before. And his kids on the stage. Garrett was the same Garrett, swearing like a storm, but he went through and he started teaching us more about, like an echo of what Setema taught. But even more depth on certain areas; it was really cool. He was banker actually and in 2008 when the economy really tanked, he lost everything. He realized that he had no idea who his wife was. He had no relationship with his kids. He realized that the life he was living was pure crap. He hated it. He realized that a lot of it was because, again similar, was the story he was telling himself. Which was kind of cool because, Tony came in and talked about "the story we were telling ourselves." There was kind of a theme there for many, actually several speakers, not just those three. At least, that's what I picked up. Maybe that's what I needed to hear. You know what I mean? You guys might have picked up something different, who were there. Anyways. So he said, "You need to choose yourself." I don't mean that in like a freaky-deaky way, like weird. Meaning you got to create yourself, okay? Know who you are. Know the story you are telling yourself. He had us turn and scream, at the top of our lungs, at our neighbor that, "I am a marketer." Number 2, you got to live in the land of yes or no, none of this maybe crap. "Maybe I'll get this done." That means no, you're not going to do it. It was interesting to hear him say all that stuff. "Got to live in the land of yes or no. No more maybes." So, he had us turn to our neighbor and scream, "I am a closer." So, number 1 is, "I am a marketer." Number 2 is, "I am a closer." Number 3 was ... He said a lot of times when we get in these businesses, we start getting followings and we, guys I've been totally guilty of this and it's been cool to hear him say this. Because right now, sitting here right now, as I'm recording this podcast there's probably 400 messages, collectively, between email, tons of Facebook messages ... Oh my gosh, I can't even handle it anymore. It stresses me out. I want to give, and give, and give, and give, and help. I feel guilty that I can't give, and give, and give, because I have to live too. You know what I mean? I know a lot of you guys listening to this, you guys get the exact same way. We attract like people and you're listening to my podcast. We're probably really similar. You start to feel guilty that you can't help everyone and their mom at all times, for free. You feel guilty that you can't get out there and do that. I was like, "That's so true. I've totally had that experience before." Now, Russell has since been teaching me that it is your moral obligation to sell people. It's your moral obligation. It's actually the name of the last section in his new book, by the way. After he and I talked about it, because it's such a huge deal. People feel guilty about talking other people's money. He goes, "No dude, think about this ... Russell told me this and then also Garrett White was saying this on the stage too. He said, "Okay, think about it. You've gone through, you've done the epiphany bridges with people. You've been selling like crazy. You've helped them realize the need for the product. You've gone in. You've changed their paradigm of the world. Then you don't sell them something?"
You guys know that I built the funnels for Marcus Lemonis on the tv show, The Profit. That was like 11 funnels in a day; it was nuts. Marcus saw the vision. Marcus caught the benefit of the funnel. He understood it... He had the epiphany. Because he talked to Russell about it and it was super cool. He's like, "Every business needs a funnel." And we're like, "Yeah, that's why it exists. This is freaking cool, right?" He's like, "Oh my gosh, yeah." Then what happened is, I went out and started building all these funnels for all these peoples. That was my role in the company shortly after I got hired. I was building these funnels and I was putting them together. It was all these companies. You guys probably haven't heard of ... A lot of them were tv show episodes of the show, The Profit. I was going back of all these episodes he'd done in the past and building funnels for these companies. I'd build them and I'd put them together and the whole way, the whole way, I had to keep selling these people on why they needed the funnel. They didn't have the epiphany. We built these beautiful funnels. Oh my gosh, these guys could be making so much extra money and they came in and were like, "Cool." And it sat for like months and months and we're like, "You're not doing a dang thing. Why not?" And they're like, "We don't even know what this is. What do you do? Why is this" ... And I was like, "I've been telling you. I've been showing you. I've been coaching you. I've showed you so many times how this thing works." And they're like, "We don't want to do an internal launch to our list. Why would we do that? They've already bought from us." And I was like, "You are idiots." Oh my gosh. So what was hard and what was challenging is, if people have the epiphany and you don't sell them something, then you are actually doing them a disservice. If people pay, they pay attention. Right? They need to put some skin in the game, psychologically, to actually go in and digest and get after something. There is something you have to pay, whether with time, or with money, or with some sacrifice in order to actually get stuff. Understand it. Implement it. Push forward on it. Everything is bought with your time, your thoughts, anything. Right? And if you go in and you say, "Hey, here's this really cool product and I'm giving you this awesome offer and I'm going through and I'm ... Guys, the funnels I give for free on my site, I should charge for my full 10 grand price for a lot of them. I don't though. The ones that are 100 bucks or a 127 bucks and people come back and complain about it. There's only been one person who's actually complained about it. It's because they didn't know ... I don't even know how they got on the page. I don't even know what they bought. I mean they probably don't know how to turn on Facebook. Anyway. There's only one person complain, I couldn't even believe it. But no one else has complained. But then I'll go back and realize that some people have just not implemented it. I'm like, "I wonder if I charged more money, if people would implement this harder." Like half of the people get it and they push forward. The other half don't. Interesting. That's what Russel's been teaching me, is like if you've gone through this whole thing and you've taken away their ability to pay with money, they have to pay now with something else. Does that make sense? It's the moral obligation to sell. Right? So, Garrett White had us screaming, "I'm a closer! I'm a closer! I'm a closer!" at each other. Because we need to live in the land of yes or no. Charge the money. Charge the money. And get out there and make the sale. Because, then they're motivated. They've go skin in the game. You've changed their mindset and you've actually given them a way. The product is the path. Right? The service or the product is the path for them to actually get done what you were just saying they could. And it scratches everyone's back. That's how it happens. And people who can't afford it? That's okay. It means they're trying to figure out how to afford stuff. That's the phase that they're in. That's okay. Anyway, I shouldn't keep going about that. So, he had us screaming at each other, "I am a leader, not a savior." And then we whispered it. And it was really interesting to feel that. I have a vested interest, you guys, in your success. You guys know that, listening to my podcast, but there are just some people that I just can't help. And I can't do it for free anymore. I did it for free for three years just so I could prove myself to the market that I knew what I was talking about. That I was motivated enough to get it done. All right? That I was getting it done. That I was getting real results for the companies. And I gave it free, and free, and free, and free, and helped, and helped, and helped, and helped, and helped. But what really brought more people success, was when I started charging. And I didn't realize that until Garrett came out and he said that. I was like, "Oh my gosh. That is true. I am a leader, not a savior." Right? I am very religious and I believe in Christ, but that is not the point of this podcast. But it was interesting to think about that on that level. It was like, "Gosh, very fascinating point, my friend. Thank you very much." He's like, "There's no hack to work. Quit looking for an excuse to suck." All right? He's like, "Just suck. Just freaking do it. You're going to suck. And then you'll suck less. And you'll do it even more and you'll suck less. And eventually, you'll suck less, so little that you'll actually be good." He's like, "You just got to start. Just freaking do it." And his little daughter came up and she wanted to be on stage with him. And he's like, "Well, it's going to cost you." This is the backstory of how she got on stage with him, his little girls. "Well, you've got to make $1000." So, this little girl followed Russell's path; read the book as a punishment for time-out for something she did.
She went through and made a webinar. She made $1200 on her first webinar as a 10 year old girl. It was so cool. And he was like, "Now what do we tell people who are just bad-mouthing us?" She immediately knew what he was asking and she started yelling, "I don't care about you. You probably don't know how to do half the things that I'm doing." It was really funny. Anyway. I'll stop on that. It was a big epiphany that I had for the event. That was really cool... Then Russell came through and we have a sweet traffic course. I mean you guys are starving for traffic. So, what we're doing is flying in the top experts. The people who don't sell courses. Right? These are the people who are so freaking good that you can not attain them unless you pay ridiculous amounts of money. We were like, "What if we paid the ridiculous amounts of money. They train us as a team how to do it and you guys get a camera on the inside watching us do it and how to get trained and how it worked for us. It's really just such a freaking good offer. There's a table rush. That was the first time I ever experienced a table rush. People go up before he was even done and just ran to the back, because it was gosh it was so good. Then we had a big break and Tony Robbins's security was there... And we didn't know it, but they were testing us to see if we were actually bouncing people. I like to fight, so I was like, "Make me a bouncer, please." I look like a softie and I smile and hug like one. And I'm always pumped and excited, but there's this other side of me that really likes to fight stuff. Which is why, I think, that I got drawn into the army. Anyway. So, apparently they were testing us. They were like, "You guys are doing a great job. We're really impressed with your staff." We're like, "Yeah, we're totally freaking security guard. Yeah, what." Anyway. So, Tony Robbins came in. I have got a full page of notes, and graphs, and stuff he was saying. I don't even know where to begin on this, you guys. It was so good. Gosh, it was so good. He was like, "Hey, raise your hand if these three days, while you're here, you're kind of stressing because there's things in your business that you know you need to get done, but there just not getting done without you. Raise your hand, if you're that way. Now, repeat after me, keep your hands in the air: I am a business operator, that sucks." It was really funny. He was like, "Okay, you guys are business operators, not owners, if three days is making you freak out. Time to expand it a little bit." He was like, "I'm not trying to be cheesy. A lot of people think of me as a happy, happy, thinking, go-lucky kind of guy. That's total bull crap. I am more of a strategist. Realize when I say that 80% of success is your psychology, it's all about your state. What state are you in, if someone tells you bad news? Act like you're having bad news right now and go make the sounds and noises you would next to the person. Shoulders slouch, you know, and face kind of gets upset. You know? And he's like, "Okay, now stand up and introduce yourself to someone like you're scared of them. Notice how your body is. Now, let's go talk to people like we're excited to see them, like it's a long-lost friend." And the room was like ... It was ridiculously loud. You could hear it basically out the hotel doors, way in the back of the hotel. It was so cool. So we were jumping around like crazy and it was really, really cool. We went through three different forces of creation. He talked about us, you know, who we're spending the most time with. Life is decisions not conditions. He told us his story, which was very, very humbling. He said that success was the result of good judgment... How do you get a judgment?... By failing like crazy... He's like, "You get good at judgment by learning what bad judgment is, because that's what you make." Anyway, guys, I don't want to keep rambling on here. But, gosh, it was so freaking good. It was about how you kill your fears and people stood up. He's like, "What is really the most scary to you? I'm not going to make you guys share it. So, just he write it down. And then he's like, "Let's share." It was really funny. "I lied to you." And he pointed at one girl and he said, "Stand up. What do you fear most?" And she said and it had to do with, I can't remember, insecurity or something like that. And while she was describing it, he was like, "Okay, raise your hand if you can identify with this."
He said, "I realize it was fascinating to have the epiphany that the mind is different from my mind. Although it's happening in the same place." And we had people from so many countries there and different religions, different languages even. People all of the world came to this event. So he was like, "Interesting. So people from all over the world, different languages, different backgrounds, totally different places they came from. We all feel the same feelings, though. And yet we are so our own person and think that all our problems are our own and no one else is thinking them. That's total bull crap. So, understand there is the mind and then there is your mind and you need to separate them. And when a thought like that comes in, just know that it is the mind. You can dismiss it and you can move on. It was really cool. It was really cool, guys. I don't even know what else to say on this huge page of notes. I got nowhere else to go on here. He talked about motion determines emotions. If you're feeling sad or depressed or bored, freaking start moving. Just get up and already your body is going to start changing. Your biochemistry will change. You'll feel happier just by moving. Stop sitting. We are a sitting culture now. We just sit. We don't do anything. Just get up. Do stuff. You'll feel better and you'll be happier... It was really cool actually. Anyway, guys, that's all I got for you on this one. Those are the huge, key take-aways that I got from those three days. Thank you so much. I just want to point out to you guys. Thank you. I really appreciate all the awesome stuff you've done and meeting you guys. I had to step out a little bit on Tony Robbins at the end, because we go pictures with him. I'm sure I'll post that as soon as we get back. You guys get to see that it was kind of cool. It was the whole Click Funnel team that was there with Tony. It was really fun. All the inner-circle people got their picture with him and it was really fun. And it was cool to go through those experiences together. It was very, very bonding. What I do know is that Click Funnels is far more than a software company. It is a marketing company, but it's ... I mean, do you see Russell as a standard CEO? No, this company is so much more than just CEO from some competitor that we have. By the way, he totally took the gloves off and we were 100% fighting and trying to destroy Infusion Software and Leap Pages now. Everyone got their own comic book. It was really cool. It was totally over-delivered in true Russell fashion. Anyways, guys, I will talk to you later. I've got some cool, special announcements in the following podcasts here that I'm going to be doing, because I want to take action on my own business and the things I do with you guys based on what I learned at the actual event. So, I'm going to do that. I've got some cool things going on that are going to be coming out here. And things that I'm no longer going to be doing or offering so that I can focus and help out where it's needed right now. Oh yeah, hey, one thing that was cool, before I get out of here. He brought us to this place called Medieval Times as a staff afterwards. Crazy cool. You go inside and you sit down and it's one of those dinner theaters. You go inside and it's like a big arena and there's real, live horses jousting in front of you. It's the craziest thing. The guys are riding at each other. They literally joust each other. Splinters of wood going all over the place. It was the craziest I've ever seen. They were sword fighting and sparks going all over the place. It was really cool. Anyway, it was awesome. I was actually really impressed by that place. It was funny because we are the Click Funnels Team and we were walking around trying to funnel hack them. Okay, they got this many seats. They're probably pulling this much revenue. Overhead is probably this much. We were figuring out their whole business while we were sitting there and they were serving us. We were looking up all these different words, medieval vocab. So we were like yelling. Someone did something wrong and we were yelling, "Forfeiture!" It was really funny. Anyway. You should totally go there. It was totally awesome. It had nothing to do with the event. It was really fun, though. Anyways, guys, you are awesome and I will talk to you later.
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| 06 Sep 2019 | SFR 275: What Content Goes Where | 00:20:37 | |
You can publish the exact same content on multiple platforms and get completely different reactions from your audience. Why?!
I really don't read that many books!
I have a different method of learning - that’s kinda controversial… and a few people have gotten a little fussy with me about it.
Here’s what went down... (and it’s kinda funny!)
A little while ago, I was talking about a book that I had consumed.
I was like, "Hey, I read this book."
What I meant was that I’d listened to the book.
Then someone reached out and said, "Stephen, did you actually read the book or did you just listen to it?"
I was like, "Who the freak cares?"
So I wanted to address that question... because it raises a few interesting points that can seem, at first glance, kinda opposing … 😉
I want to let you know...
But first, let’s start with WHY I don’t read that much...
HUNTING ANSWERS
I'm NOT a slow reader, but it's NOT abnormal for me to spend two to three months reading a book.
...and maybe you're like me, but I'll read a paragraph and often, I’ll get distracted by thoughts...
I'll sit back and ask:
"How does this plug into my framework? Does it fit here or there?"
The question I'm asking is:
“Is this TRUTH?”
… just because it's in a book doesn't mean that it's true, right?
I’ll go off on these mental tangents… and that can take A LONG TIME...
...so because of that, sometimes, I just want to absorb the main ideas from a book and so I’ll just go with the audio version.
Back in the day, when I first started this game, I read more books cover to cover, but now that I've read enough of them, I focus more on…
... and that's what guides my education.
I'm more hunting answers rather than trying to consume and master all the content.
I want the information faster and I wanna know the key points quicker.
I can listen to books at 2 x - 3x speed, and be like:
"Oh my gosh, key point. How does it relate to the framework I know causes success? BAM.
You know what? I thought that was a cool idea, but I actually don't think it works. It's an attractive idea, but that doesn't mean it's right.’
Okay, let's NOT insert that idea into the framework…”
I think A LOT of people, feel weird about the fact that they're listening to a book, instead of reading it.
I've heard many people apologize by saying, "Well, I didn't read the book, I just listened to it."
*THAT’S STUPID*
...seriously, who cares?
It doesn't matter! I consumed the book, (let's call it that).
STOP GETTING HUNG UP!
If you're like me, and you like listening to books, stop apologizing for that.
It doesn't matter! Who cares, okay?
Yes, I listen to books. I listen to books far more than I read them.
I know some people will be like, "Well, you have to read the book to take in the information! "
But that’s NOT TRUE
In my head, it’s like the movie Beautiful Mind...
I can close my eyes and see my framework and where it plugs into all the frameworks of my favorite funnels.
I can see all the follow-up sequences and all the promo sequences.
It's drawn out in my mind.
One of the reasons I use my whiteboard like crazy is 'cause drawing is how I learn.
Now, let's get historical here…
CONTENT MARKETING BC Back 2000 years ago, a lot of the time, Dads were big storytellers, and people would listen to their grandparents and their fathers.
Q: And how was information passed?
A: By speech.
I can guarantee that none of the kids were sitting around going, "Dad did you read that in a book ...or did you just hear that from grandpa?"
… you know what I mean?
Just because the method of passing on knowledge has changed doesn't mean that the knowledge is bad.
Thousands of years ago, orators, (people who got up and spoke) were the teachers...
There weren't many books.
It's NOT like they were over at the printing press - they were handwriting that stuff, man.
No one was sitting around saying, "I'm sorry, I don’t believe you unless it’s handwritten with a quill on a scroll!”
Too many times we get caught up on the whole method of information delivery.
Don't apologize for the medium that you learn from the best.
HOW I LEARN…
I listen to audio...
I’d rather download a program and listen to it while I'm going about my day than sit down.
Sometimes, I need to pace around.
However, just to get contradictory here, there is a subconscious power of a platform that you can utilize to boost *COUGH* your ‘authority’...
And that is the second point I wanted to make in this episode.
BOOSTING YOUR ‘A- WORD’ WITH CONTENT MARKETING
One of the biggest questions I get asked is, "Stephen, how do you become an authority?"
I'm like, "Man, I don't freaking know?"
In fact, I was talking to Stacey Martino, an amazing relationship expert, at the Unlock the Secrets Event.
I was like, “... sometimes I don't know whether to burn my skeletons in the closet 'cause I hate 'em or hug 'em because of what they’ve made me?”
I'm NOT talking about secrets and stuff, it’s just the past and some level of crazy experiences that we go through the further we get…
… and not just the entrepreneur path.
Any path will require you to kinda purge yourself and keep getting better.
I was telling Stacey...
I never tried to be an authority.
I just did what Russell said, (which was to start publishing), and I accidentally got in a little bit of limelight.
… but *that's the lesson*
I could just talk to someone on a street corner and they might be, “Yeah, that’s interesting, and who are you???…”
BUT...
A podcast has waaay MORE authority with the same freaking info.
Think about it!
Being seen on certain platforms generally increases your status...
People are like:
The medium that you consume information from vastly affects how the audience perceives the information. The medium is a pre-frame for the information.
If I'm gonna go scroll through Instagram, I treat that information differently.
Every platform has a different context:
There's a context behind each platform!
UNLOCK YOUR CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY
I started thinking about this subject during the Unlock The Secrets event.
(A brilliant event by the way)
It was 3 days, literally, deep-diving into Russell's 3 books and teaching (in more depth), how to do what was in the book.
In fact, a lot of times, when I first started attending Russell's Inner Circle meetings, (not as a member… this was years ago, when I just was sitting on the side, just kind of listening and observing)...
I was shocked to find out a significant percentage of the room had NEVER read Russell's books, but we're in, (at that time) his $25,000 Mastermind, (which went to $50,000).
I've told that to people in the past, and they were like, "What? That’s psychos, that’s crazy!"
But ask yourself this... “Is it REALLY crazy?”
Obviously, you get waaay more from a mastermind than the book itself...
However, a lot of times, Russell would be teaching some of the very concepts and principles from the book to his Mastermind.
It doesn't matter if people:
The BIG lessons are:
#1: Who freaking cares if you've been reading or listening to books.
#2: Understand the other side of that coin, and know like, "Oh my gosh, the mediums that I choose to publish on are actually affecting my audience.” #STATUS
It's funny because people ask, "Stephen, you haven't written your book yet?"
It’s funny, ‘cause I'm saying the same things that are gonna be in my book in my podcast…
There’ll be more detail, clarity and refinement… but basically, it’ll be the same stuff!
WHERE YOU DELIVER MATTERS
What's interesting is when you're chatting with somebody and they share something they’ve learned, and you're like, “Really?”
And they're like, "Yeah, yeah, I read it in this interesting book."
Q: What do usually happens?
A: It satiates the question.
You think, "Oh, they've read it in a book, therefore it's probably good. Therefore, it's likely to be true.”
There's a HUGE lesson, right there…
The method of content delivery does carry authority.
For example:
I could give the exact same speech face to face to someone on the street that I gave at Funnel Hacking Live
...and they'd be like, "Oh that's really interesting."
But for some reason, put me on a stage with the exact same speech…
… and there's MORE Authority.
People will trust what I say far more quickly
There's an increased speed of trust and affinity just from just being on a stage.
If I take that same speech and put in a book, “Whoa!”
For some reason, our brains look at content delivered in a book and go, "Oh my gosh, look at that, this person is an expert... "
So, I’ll say it again…
The method of the information delivery matters.
YOUR CONTENT MARKETING PLAN
Maybe you consume my content on…
...or wherever, (we put it all over the place).
However, if you watch me, I know that MORE authority comes across in a video than if you’re listening to me on the podcast.
... and that's okay, we all consume differently.
But I know that’s the case… and that's fascinating!
It's the reason why when you say, “I listened to a book,” instead of, “I read a book,” people will try to discredit the fact that you read the book.
“Well, you didn't actually read the book…!!!”
What they're really saying is, “I heard it from a higher authority!”
...even though it's the same freaking information.
It’s so funny!
... whether you're B2B or B2C; it doesn't matter...
The medium you choose is a pre-frame for how you’re perceived.
I know people who are like, "I'm NOT gonna go on that platform because the context of that platform would not do well for the information I'm giving!"
I get it.
… which is why there's A LOT that I can't or will not share on a podcast.
People reach out and say, "Stephen you give so much stuff on your podcast. What else can possibly be in your courses?"
#TonsMore.
There's A LOT more helpful stuff in my courses ...because the context of the platform allows me to do more.
For example:
The context of OfferMind allows me to change…
Information is just information, but the way you choose to develop your content with the platform you put it on vastly affects how people are gonna perceive and consume it.
WHAT MATTERS MORE THAN WHERE YOU GET YOUR CONTENT?
Can you imagine if you treated every one of my podcast episodes like you were sitting in an audience watching me speak?
You would treat the episode with far more affinity and far more, (I hate using the word), *authority*...
At Unlock The Secrets, I was sitting dead center in very front row, and someone said:
"You're taking notes, Stephen?"
I was like, "Yeah, duh... Russell Brunson's speaking!"
"But you sat next to him..."
"That doesn't mean that I’ve' stopped learning from him."
There's a reason why Russell continues to cite Brandon and Kaelin Poulin, Alex Hormozi, and myself as success stories, I try to be his best student, which means…
One of my tricks is learning for two.
Learning for two was a theme of this show probably 200 episodes ago.
HOW NOT WHERE…
It's the way I treat the things that I learn that’s sooo powerful...
Just because I'm learning from someone face-to-face versus on a stage does NOT mean I should treat it differently!
… but people have a tendency to do justthat.
*DON’T*
YOUR MISSION
Go find the one, the two, the three people that you wanna keep following who will teach you a skill set that you know you need, (not things you're getting distracted with)…
And anytime time you’re listening to them speak, act like they're on a stage.
Anytime they speak, act like you paid $100,000 for a one-day consultation.
I used to charge 35 grand for a day's consultation and the waiting list was more than I actually just had time to do, so I don't do it anymore.
It was funny how differently someone treated the exact same information because of the context.
Let me give you an example:
When I left ClickFunnels and I wanted to join the Inner Circle, I was like, "Dude, Russell, let me pay full price."
He was like, "Oh, man you don't have to... "
I said, "No, no, no, no. It's because I need to treat the information like I paid money to be in it."
I also got charged an extra five grand this last year to be in the 2 Comma Club X program on top of my normal Inner Circle fee, which was funny because I'm one of the coaches.
I was like, "Ah, dude, you're paying your fee.”
If I don't feel a personal investment, if I don't allow myself somehow to change state with it, I will NOT treat that information how I need to treat it.
DO WHAT WORKS
It doesn’t matter if you read the book or listen to the audio…
Who the freak cares????
What matters is how I treat the information.
When I listen to books…
...I have tons of text message screenshots 😂
The last book I actually physically read was (I think) David Goggin's book, 'Can't Hurt Me,' which is so good.
(Don't listen to it if words offend you 😉)
When people are like. "Well, Stephen I'm not publishing yet," I get it.
I didn't want to either.
But one of the reasons why it's so powerful to publish is because…
People will treat the exact same message differently just by you changing the medium that you deliver the message on. … that’s why we pump out so much content.
One of the BIGGEST reasons is... ( and I hate saying it) *AUTHORITY*
The medium you choose is a pre-frame for how you’re perceived.
… you can shout your message on a street corner, and the chances are that people will think you’re CRAZY, but increase the staus of WHERE you place your content…
...and you also increase the status of your message!
COMING FULL CIRCLE
A few days ago, I told Russell:
"Dude, good news, man. For 2020, we have the very room that the 2026 Funnel Hacking Live was in”
Funnel Hacking Live 2016 was my very first Funnel Hacking Live.
It's the one where:
I was like, "Let's go full circle."
It'll be September 2020, I don't like giant events cause I tend to learn a little bit less and the speakers can't go as deep…
So it will probably be a 1000-person event.
If you didn't get a chance to come this last year, we'd love to have you next year.
Go to offermind.com, we're making it so that you can grab tickets year-round - so you can plan and stuff like that.
AH, YEAH!
Hey, wish you could geek out with other Real Funnel Builders and even ask questions while I build Funnels Live?
Ah-oh…
*Wish Granted*
Watch and learn funnel building as I document my process in my funnel strategy group.
It's FREE!
Just go to the scienceofselling.online and join NOW.
| |||
| 13 Sep 2019 | SFR 277: How I Prepare To Speak | 00:26:50 | |
Here's a snapshot of the mental stuff I do to stay in the game before I speak on any stage...
It seems like questions often come in themes and in waves.
I don't know if it's just 'cause I have my ear to the ground listening to what people are asking me…
But it seems like the recent wave of questions are all about, “How do you prepare before you go on stage?”
By the time you read this, OfferMind 2019 will be over, and so I thought it would be the perfect time to share how a guy who used to hate public speaking preps for LIVE events
I didn't really think about my preparation until people started asking the question, but when I started to look more closely, I discovered that:
Before I speak on stage, there's a pattern that I go through that comes in two phases.
… you may find some of what I do a little surprising, (and frankly, a few years back, I could never have imagined myself doing some of this stuff 😉) MY TWO-PHASE SPEECH PREPARATION
On my office floor right now, there’s tons of yellow paper all over the place…
... and it's where I collect my ideas as I start to think through and organize my content.
I've done it for a couple of years now... and the system works well for me, and so I keep doing it.
So it's the preparing/ thinking phase where:
(I actually use a cool bit of kit that Alex Charfen introduced me to, I’ll show you a bit later)
However, as the actual event gets nearer, my behavior changes a bit as I move into the 2nd phase.
So I thought it would be kinda cool if I wrote a list of the things that I do, and shared them with you… STATE CONTROL 101 There were many times at ClickFunnels when Russell would walk in and be like, "I'm not gonna lie, I really don't know what I wanna do what I gotta do today...”
I’d say, “Yep, I'm not gonna lie, I gotta build three funnels today, me neither!”
...and we’d be like, “How do we move forward?”
So we’d take a moment, and sometimes we’d…
...but we always used the same few things to kick us into state (usually, Seven Nation Army).
We’d jump about and do some Tony Robbins type state control…
I did mentally make fun of it for the first little bit….
But then, I was like, "Oh my gosh, what if, what if this actually works?”
... and I started doing it.
*IT WORKS*
Suddenly, it's like, “Man, I'm really tired, but I'm ready to rock.”
And as the last three years in my ‘stage speaking career’ have unfolded, I’ve come up with my own kind of state control patterns that help me get ready to go on stage.
PRIMING YOUR RAS RECEPTORS
I've been listening to a super fascinating book lately called Buying On The Brain.
...it's a challenging book to chew.
You really gotta think hard when you listen to it.
So if you're like, "I don't wanna go listen to it,” don't worry, 'cause I'm a nerd and I'm gonna distill it down and bring the key takeaways back to the show…
Anyway, I've been listening to this part of the book and it talks a lot about the RAS receptors in the brain...
Let me explain…
Have you ever woken up a little bit late with that anxiety feeling?
You’re fast asleep and suddenly, you wake up - BOOM! “Oh, crap the alarm didn't go off,” or whatever… and you go flying out of bed!
Everyone knows that feeling...
You get that hasty, “Oh, My Gosh,” feeling and you go flying around to get all the pieces together, and jump in the car…
You’re like "Oh, my gosh, hurry!”
You go super fast as you're driving to the office or wherever…
Finally, you arrive wherever you're late for and you're like, “Oh, my gosh, I'm sorry!”
... and the rest of the day you kinda feel a little bit off!
Q: Is the rest of the day really off or is that just kinda how you were pre-framed?
What's interesting about RAS receptors is that, once we focus on them, the brain starts to look for those things above everything else…
The great news is that we have a lot of control over *WHAT* we focus on.
I was talking with my wife ('cause I teach her a lot of the things I learn to make sure I know them)...
I was like, “Did you ever notice how when we bought our car, we suddenly are seeing that car all over the road?”
(We got this new car, it's like a family car, family SUV 'cause we've got three kids.)
She's like, “yeah!”
I was like, “I learned why! It's because we have these things called the RAS receptors and whatever we put our attention on we start seeing in the world.”
.And so that brings me on to another way I like to prepare…
SEE YOUR FUTURE
Before I go on stage, I make sure that I’m visualizing:
Before the last OfferMind, the way that I prepared relied heavily on visualization.
WINNING THE MIND GAME
There’s a fascinating study around the concept of visualization…
They hooked up an Olympian to a whole bunch of brain sensors and said:
"Okay, Olympian, go do your event."
The Olympian ran around the track (or did whatever their event was) while their brain waves were tracked.
After they’d relaxed, the same athlete was sat in a chair, hooked back up to sensors, and asked to close their eyes to imagine doing the same event.
NOW HERE’S THE FASCINATING BIT…
There was zero difference in the brain scans between the real and imagined events.
The brain didn't know that the imagined event was NOT real.
So that’s one of the reasons why pretending, play, visualization, setting goals and thinking about where you're going to be in the future are very powerful tools.
This was my second OfferMind, but I have mentally visited the stage hundreds of times by the time the event came around.
Do you understand that?
That's a BIG principle - it's a huge concept to understand.
The same thing was true with:
...I think about it and visualize it happening waaay before the actual event!
It's the reason why obsession is practically required for you to succeed.
When people say, “Have life balance…”
What the freak is life balance? I don't know what they’re talking about. I'm just gonna be obsessed!
I'm gonna think about it mentally, and in my head, I'm gonna visualize outcomes!
I'm not gonna lie... until I started learning about some of these studies, I thought this stuff was woo-woo crap!
But several years ago, I started realizing like, "Oh my gosh, if I just think about my future, I can help make it happen."
It's not like the book The Secret where it’s like, "I'm gonna have a $1,000 show up in the mail today."
It's NOT like that.
But when you sit down, and you're actually running the event in your mind - things start to happen the way that you see them
There's a reason I started dreaming in the ClickFunnels editor after I started working for ClickFunnels… Because funnels were so ingrained in my head; when Russell was like, "Hey Dude, I need this funnel in the next two hours."
BOOM!
I knew that play because I had run that play in my head so many times.
Visualization is crazy powerful.
The brain fires the exact same as if you were actually doing it, your head doesn’t know the difference.
I TALK TO MYSELF
Here's a little vulnerability...
I don't know what the deal is with warm showers in the morning, but I start talking to myself.
I totally monologue and think about being on stage.
I remember growing up (when I was a late teen), I thought about being on stage A LOT.
There’d be times when standing in the kitchen late at night, I’d freaking monologue in my head like crazy. This is something that's been very practiced in my head and my brain for such a long time.
I didn't really realize that until I started learning these other studies, and I was like: "Oh, crap, I've been preparing for this far more than I realized."
And there's a caveat to it... there's another side of the coin…
THE ‘BIG’ BUT...
If you have a natural tendency to be fearful, you gotta cut that crap out. You are literally creating a self-manifesting future.
It's NOT that you have to be the other side. all emotionless and iron steel, but your thoughts truly do matter.
...I have visualized what it's gonna be like when they go: "Please, welcome to the stage, Mr. Steve Larsen."
Everyone yells … the bass starts pumping and I see myself running across the stage with the lights strobing.
I visualize that A LOT.
It sounds conceited, but that's NOT what I'm saying.
I'm saying…
I've run my speech in my head a lot of times to train my RAS receptors.
CHOOSING HOW TO SPEAK ON STAGE
I make sure that how I wake up, (especially in the weeks leading up to an event that's gonna be really big and intense for me), is a conscious choice…
I wake up and I just choose that it's gonna be an awesome day.
It's as simple as that…
My RAS receptors are looking for ‘the awesome’ in the day and NOT the curve balls that are bound to happen.
I definitely choose my RAS receptor focus by deciding:
This stuff sounds cheesy, and I'm not gonna lie, I thought it was some fluffy crap until I started doing it.
Then I was like, DANG! *THIS STUFF WORKS*
I watched Russell execute things when he was like, "Duh, I'm not gonna lie. I really could use a nap right now."
He would sit back and he would take a moment to feel his feeling and then choose the outcome.
I am NOT my feelings and neither are you.
Sooo…
#1: I practice focusing my Ras receptors
#2: I do A LOT of brain practice and visualization.
...which means it has - my brain doesn't know the difference!
I visualize it a lot, and it’s something I did a lot naturally as a kid without realizing the impact it would have.
If you could be a fly on the wall of my office, sometimes you’d see me put my headphones on and click into this weird mode where I’ll forget where I am... and do my event inside of my head.
… it's kind of a form of meditation - (which brings me to point #3 ).
#3: Meditation
I wanted to share the actual meditation device that I use - 'cause a lot of you have asked.
It's NOT part of my routine to do it every day, but especially as events come up, I definitely meditate far more than any other time.
There's a thing that I use called Muse, (and here's a little product placement 😉)...
It's this headband that goes around the front of your head, and once you put it on it measures your brain signals in real-time to let you know if you are getting off course with your meditation.
So, it helps guide your meditation!
... it's really cool.
So if I start losing focus on my meditation, it actually simulates a rainstorm - it's like you're in a rainforest.
And if you start to get away from meditation it increases the tropical storm in your headphones so you know to come back.
And when you come back, the rain stops and it becomes peaceful with these birds...
...it literally trained me how to meditate.
'Cause, I'm not gonna lie… I kinda made fun of meditation for a while too 😬
But in order for me to have a clear focused head, I need to meditate...
I use this headset when I travel too and I meditate sitting in the chair in my hotel room.
I also have other practices that help me to manage my state:
I want to stay relaxed and focused on the weeks leading up to an event.
MY SPEECH PREPARATION SOUNDTRACK Music is a huge part of my life.
In the time preparing for the event, I focus heavily on music that has very few words.
I want ‘my own thoughts’ to be what goes through my head.
In the day leading up to the event, literally 24 hours ahead of time, I listen to a lot more aggressive styled music.
Some of you guys asked for those playlists - I don't know if I'm gonna share some of those playlists with you, but I go to war in my head.
I think about becoming ‘Steve’.
A lot of things I'm doing right now are pretty rare, and I know that.
At the Last Funnel Hacking live, a lot of people wanted to come say hi, and I appreciate that…
But I started getting followed around the hotel and pitched at the urinals.
People were following Colton and I jogged around the whole event, and it got weird.
I'm totally down with saying ‘Hi,’ and shaking hands and ‘let's take a picture,’ whatever…
But people were physically grabbing me and taking me places, and it got really weird.
The bubble was crossed many times and it got awkward.
Colton and I would run around Funnel Hacking Live to avoid people and that's why we were missing deadlines. We were moving so that we wouldn’t get stopped.
...and it felt awkward 'cause I wanted to say ‘hi’ because I wanted to say, "Thanks for following."
But I couldn't get away.
I'm fine with that, as long as I can pull a ripcord and be like, "Okay, I gotta go get ready for this now," but people weren't letting me go anywhere.
So, like, "Hey, I gotta go here, I need to get backstage," or "I have to go to the bathroom," or whatever might be.
But for the first time, last year's Funnel Hacking Live was really aggressive.
I think it was because of the One Funnel Away Challenge.
And I get it.
It'll happen to you if you choose to publish and do what I tell you to do.
But first, it was like 100 million X the intensity of the year before.
I've NOT developed that part of me… or learned how to handle that pressure yet.
(but I'll keep working on it.)
So I texted Dave Woodward and said, "Dude, can you come help me?
I don't wanna be rude, but I really have to get out of here, but people wanna say hi, and I know that I've helped them.”
... and so it was weird and very conflicting for me.
Dave came and he grabbed me and he brought me backstage to a green room, and I shut the door.
I was supposed to go on stage for my speech in an hour, and Dave was like, "Dude, you're white as a ghost. You've never had that happen before, have you?"
I was like, "No. No."
At that moment, I was Steven. I was a little bit nervous and kinda freaked out a little bit.
A lot of my kid and my teenage tendencies to retract, pull in and pull back were happening... and I was aware of that.
It was like, "I can't... Steve, where are you, man? You're going on stage soon, man."
I'm telling you this because this is a trick that I've learned.
Todd Herman has a book, Alter Ego, and I’ve 100% created one for a lot of stage stuff.
(I don't think I've told you guys the story…)
But I did planks and push-ups...
I did a lot of push-ups, sit-ups, and planks for the next hour, listening to David Goggins swear at me.
I closed the door, shut off all the lights, I needed no input. I needed to decrease the inputs as much as possible…
I'm listening to David Goggins swear at me, and about 15 minutes beforehand, Steve showed up, and I was like, "Boom! Let's rock this."
They put the headset on me and I went out, and it was an awesome impactful speech.
So anyways...
I go to war in my head
STEVE VERSUS STEPHEN
One of the reasons I listen to the music I do is because that's one of the ways I conjure *STEVE*
I'm NOT always *STEVE*... but I think people expect me to be.
I've had a few people, locally at grocery stores, walk up to me and they're like, "Oh my gosh!"
And I can feel their eyes...
They think I'm gonna be like, "Boom! Wow! Yeah!"
They think I'm *that way* ALL the time.
It's just a thing that I've learned in order for me to keep my message across.
I know I talk a lot - and we need a pattern interrupt sometimes 😉
Funny enough…
...were three things I never planned on being this big massive thing, and now, it's kind of what I'm known for. 😂
Anyway, the major point is that…
I take a moment to go to war in my head.
Before I go on stage (or anything like that), I think about…
And suddenly, it's really easy for *STEVE* to come out.
It's real easy for me to be my true self and not retract as I used to as a teenager and as a young kid.
Anyway, I hope that this makes sense...
This might be a different episode than you were expecting?
It's not about slides, it’s about how I mentally make sure that I'm fit and ready to rock?
PUBLIC SPEAKING ADVICE LARSEN STYLEE
People are fighting for what they think they should be doing in their lives and they're trusting me with that. I take that very seriously.
In my office…
A while ago, I learned from a really awesome company that:
When you don't eat, a hormone is released in your brain that increases your mental focus.
And when I went to my first Funnel Hacking Live, there were actually times when I didn't eat.
I was hungry, but they believe it's because you needed to go hunt down your food and so you need a higher level of focus.
...you see what I'm saying?
I really wanted to get the most I could out of that first Funnel Hacking Live and so there were times where I didn't eat for quite a while.
I was starving, but that doesn't mean I need to eat, right? That just means I'm hungry.
I'm NOT my feelings
... and so I sat back…
… and you can feel it happening.
*Massive Levels of Mental Clarity*
You’re hungry, but you’ve got that fighting edge.
There are times when I am creating slides and stuff like that, where I will do kind of strategic "let's get crazy mental focused" style fasting.
Anyway, there’s A LOT of stuff in my office that I use to prepare.
SPEECH PREPARATION - FAST RECAP
Play every little detail using all the five senses.
Go into that scenario and run it top to bottom in your head as many times as you can.
In fact, I heard a really awesome athlete say that"Your practice should be so intense that the game seems easy."
He said:
"By the time you actually get to your event, the amount of work that it's taken behind the scenes to get there makes what you're doing seem really easy.”
The practice is way harder than the actual event.
I was like, "That's a really good principle." I visualize a lot.
When I wake up, I take a moment to think about the event:
I go through a lot of that stuff.
It's a massive, massive cornerstone of all this.
There’s A LOT of little tricks you can use to make sure that you’re on your A-game.
Next year's OfferMind is actually going to be in San Diego in the same room as my first Funnel Hacking Live!
It’s a massive full circle, I’m so excited for it.
We actually just had the contract signed which is exciting - it’ll be mid-September 2020 - I'll make sure the dates go out.
So anyway, guys thanks for following the journey, and those of you who are coming next year, go grab your ticket and go get rich!
So, several years ago, I walked by a stage in a basketball stadium.
It was my college campus and I was deeply concerned with what I wanted to do in my life.
For some reason, I looked at the stage and thought, "Huh, one day I wanna be on stage. I wanna be an entrepreneur and I wanna buy and sell companies."
Well, while the last one hasn't happened ... *YET* “Muahaha…” stage and entrepreneurship have.
And as my business has grown and my message has spread, a frequent question I'm asked is, "Steve, what stage will you be on next?"
Now I totally get that this feels, maybe, a little conceited here...
But considering my childhood fear of speaking up, being heard, extreme lack of self-confidence, and getting in front of people, back in my growing up days, I feel satisfied.
I thought I'd tell you where I'll be in the world coming up.
And funny enough, just literally go over to seestevelive.com, and it'll forward you to the next place.
I love stage and it's one of my BIGGEST things to look forward to in my current role in my business.
From little 10 person masterminds all the way to gigantic 5000 person events - from free seats to paid events…
Events have always been one of the ways I can deliver the MOST value and get the greatest “AHA’s” in the shortest amount of time.
Just come say hi, and go over to seestevelive.com.
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| 12 Mar 2018 | SFR 120: Seeing The $3 Million Pitch... | 00:30:18 | |
Here's what I learned while watching Russell in his $3 Million Dollar HOUR...
What's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now here's you host Steve Larsen. Steve Larsen: Hey, what's going on, everyone? Hey, so I just barely left ... Where was I? I was in Vegas. I forget where I go now. I'm traveling a lot right now. I'm going all over the place. I was home for a few days, went over and traveled. I'm only home for a few days again. I'm going to go travel again. I'm home for just a little bit, then I'll go travel again. It's all over the place right now. It's been fun. I really, really do enjoy it. Missing the family though a lot actually, but it's been really interesting. I had the very rare opportunity of watching Russell pitch. I was at Grant Cardone's 10X event and it was a great experience. I got to go sit down and watch. Honestly my favorite speaker was Grant himself. Okay? Besides Russell. I'm going to talk about that in a second. If you've not heard the huge news with that, which is pretty amazing, but I was sitting there and I was listening to Grant Cardone and he was teaching amazing stuff. Absolutely love listening to him. Super dynamic speaker. Great guy to listen to. I got a lot of great things from other speakers as well. Frankly the whole reason I went down to this event, okay, I was not planning on going to this event for quite some time. It was about a month ago. I remember I woke up one morning and I started thinking ...
I actually did not realize how big of a deal it was. I'm going to be completely honest with you. I didn't realize how many people were going to be there until I think the day before ... Not even. No, no. Yeah, okay, the day before I went down there, there was 8,500 people. 8,500. I didn't know. I have never been in an event that has been that big, that huge. I had no idea it was going to be that big, which there was pros and cons to it. Obviously I'm a huge fan of ... Obviously the pro of a smaller venue is you get a little more of the personal touch. However, the con is you may not get to network quite as much. I mean there's no way I'm going to meet 8,500 people anyway. Anyway, literally the entire reason I went to this event was to go watch massive, massive influencers speak to massive, massive audiences. I've spoken enough on other stages. I've taught a lot on other stages. Obviously not just on Russell's, but a lot of others. There is this vibe. Okay? Each presenter pulls different energies and relationships out of the audience, and it's fun to watch. They will match and they will mirror to the personality of the one speaking. It was fun to watch. It's always fun to watch. If you have ever listened to Darren Stevens, he talks about universals and truisms, things like that, to bring the audience together to get them to do things that you want. I love studying stage and I love studying stage presenters and what they do to actually control the audience. They have no idea most of the time that that's what's going on. Anything from small and OP things, down to the words you say, the gesture you use, the stories you tell. Stage to me is an amazing performance. I have a lot of respect for it because of ... If you go watch a movie, they can do a million takes, but like on a stage, you got to be an A game the entire time. It's all in one take. It's super, super amazing to watch what these guys do. It's honestly what I aspire to do. I want to go do that really bad. I'm really pumped. In a few days, I get to go speak in front of 2,500 people and I'm so excited. It's going to be over in Dallas. That's the biggest group I've ever spoken to. I didn't realize that that actually is a lot of people until Dave Woodward told me it was. I was like, "Oh, I didn't realize that ... I thought everyone's ..." Anyway, I'm excited about that and that's awesome, but knowing that, knowing that that was going to come up, I wanted to go watch this event and it is the reason that I went. I don't know what I was expecting or what I was even thinking, but I wanted to show up and I wanted to go, like I said, to watch how these guys interact. For some reason I had it in my mind, I knew that Russell was going to go and I knew he was going to pitch, and I knew that he was pulling off some very special things to be able to pitch to that many people. That is a skillset of its own, but I watched. I was like, "Yeah. I'm going to go." I didn't tell him I was going to show up for a while and I went and I showed up and got to listen. The shocking thing right from the beginning, I don't know why I was expecting anything different. I thought well, there's got to be some extra thing that he's doing for that many people. What is it? There's got to be some extra ... I knew he was going to use the perfect webinar script. I knew he was going to go through it. That's what I teach guys in Two Comma Club Coaching. I go through and teach you how to actually set up a webinar and get it going, which is ... Frankly, it's one of the major reasons I left my job. I wanted to go prove out and who that that's actually something I knew how to do as well, not just teach it. I'm actually doing it, which I am. It's great. I'll keep accounting for what's been going on there in future episodes here. I don't know why I expected anything to be different. I sat down and I can tell you that he used the perfect webinar script just like he would anywhere else. What was fun for me because I love that script. That script has made millions of dollars. I can think of very few of activities in my life that are worth studying that are that high leverage of an activity to go study than to learn how to pitch one to many, right? Instead of one to one, one to many like that. What I did is I started taking these notes and Russell got up and I was so excited. I know. I want to watch a master in his game, right? I got to watch him do that a lot of times sitting next to him face to face or right at his side or whatever in his office, but it was always over a computer, right or it was always over ... There'd be these smaller stages I go see him present of, but never one that big. For some reason I kept thinking that there would be this extra X factor. I can tell you, I even wrote down, I wrote small audience versus large audience equals the same. I don't know why I thought it'd be any different. There was a few things though, little extra flares, right? Little extra things. I mean he's been doing it so long. How can you do it truly 100% the same every single time? There was little tiny things that he did along the way that I thought were just brilliant, little shows of mastery all throughout, right? I took notes of them. I wanted to go through a few of what they are. There's one massive big one. I'm going to save it to the end. There's my little hook to stay to the end, okay? One massive one. There was a huge shift in what he normally does. It was brilliant to watch it guys. Absolutely amazing to watch it. I knew it was coming. I was excited for it. We had studied this stuff before we've gone ... Anyway, it was right before I left actually. He had this huge memory hit. I'm like, "Oh my gosh. There's a guy who used to ... He did a pitch this way. Let me go find it." Like 15 minutes later he had dug up all the pages from years ago and all the emails and he was like, "This is it." When he found it, it was amazing. He's got an elephant brain for marketing stuff. Absolutely incredible. It was one major thing that he switched. There was little funny phrases along the way that I keep continuing to pick up on and put it on my own webinar. Every time I do, I swear my wallet just gets a little bit fatter, which is fun. I hope you guys are doing those things as well. Anyway, this is a skillset to just study and learn and obsess over.
I ripped the audio from every single one of them and I put them in this ... It's literally 11 hours of me listening to Russell pitch back to back to back to back to back. I will just listen to it, right? I've got it all together and I will just listen to it. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. One after another listen to ... There's all that education that matters that much in my opinion than learning that skillset. Have no mistake that I'm obsessed over this process. I absolutely love it. I love doing it. This is the thing for me to get better at. It's where I've dropped my anchor. You know what I mean? For a long time I just kind of ran around looking for different things to go do. Then in front of me, I've got also a whole bunch of notes. What I wanted to do is real quick just run through just a few little things. Some of them might seem tiny. Okay? Some of them might seem tiny. There's one major one though and I want to go through what that is. I want to document it. He certainly will I'm sure because it's just freaking incredible. If you don't know, he did over $3 million in an hour and a half. $3 million dollars in 90 minutes. He had a 90 minute slot. $3 million. His goal awhile ago was just to do a million dollars in a day or even in just a year, right? I think it took four years to hit that million dollars in a year, which is awesome to hit that. That's huge. That's so cool to do that, and then he did again and again and again and again and again and faster and faster. The time getting shorter and shorter and shorter, right? Even the Two Comma Club Coaching program, we did that in three and a half weeks for a million dollars. Finally, building up to this thing, this scenario where he did $3 million in an hour and a half, which is ridiculous. It's so cool. It's so cool. I'm so excited for him, so pumped for him. I went nuts on Voxer just screaming. Oh man. I'm so excited for him. Anyway, I want to go side by side real quick here. If you study the Funnel Hacks webinar, the Funnel Hacks presentation, like I said, this is like the highest leverage stuff I believe you could ever go study that will pay you and pay you and pay you and pay you to learn how to do this stuff. Now I understand. I know there are other ways to pitch. I know there are other scripts. I know there are other formats, but this one is doing amazing. Why change what works? I've been going back through ... I'm sorry. I've not actually gone to the actual content here yet. I promise I will here in just a moment, but what I've been doing also for my own webinar is I've been going through and I've been studying a lot of the big webinar people today, right? I've been funnel hacking Liz Benny and watching her stuff. Dan Henry, right? Obviously Russell. Been going looking at Akbar Sheikh. I've been going and looking at each one of their pieces. Not just the pages, but inside each one of their scripts. How are they saying what they're saying? How does their slide say it? How are certain things here and there that are changing? It's been cool to go through and do that. The major foundation piece of my offer, that came from the market, right? I funnel hacked to a certain extent. I funnel hacked to a certain area and then after that, I went and I made my offer. The actual changes to the funnel, now that the product's done, now the product that I've been selling is totally done, now I'm just focused on two things: the funnel, how can I improve the funnel, the actual buying experience and selling experience, number two, promoting it. That's it. Those are my two activities until I die basically, right? Well, number one, I'm really focusing right now especially on the funnel. I know there are things that are broken. I'm fixing them right now. We're getting those done. I'm very excited for that. Then I'm going and I'm focusing on how to sell this stuff obviously. I've been going through that and I've been changing all these things. My head has already been very much in the spot. That's the whole reason why I'm trying to pre-frame what I'm going to tell you that it's not like just random things I wrote down. This is stuff that I looked at very specifically that what he was doing that I'm going to go through and I'm going to add. Anyway, at the very beginning, like in the Funnel Hacks presentation, one of the things that you do is ... There's really two introductions inside of the perfect webinar and I don't think people realize that. There are two introductions. Number one, you introduce the webinar. Okay? Why the heck are they there, right? Why are they there?
We were sitting down in the movie and the movie preview started showing up, right? The movie previews are showing and they're these little basically little mini stories that are supposed to get you excited about the real thing. It's always funny. Everybody becomes a movie critic at the end of a movie preview, right? You always see everyone's heads turn to each other and go, "Oh yeah. We should see that. It looks great," or you'll see everyone's heads go, "That looks weird. That looks stupid. Dumb. Weird." Everyone becomes this movie critic. Why are you bringing this up, Steven? Because every time something new pops up in front of us, our heads starts to run through a filter, much like a movie preview. We run it through a filter, right? Number one, am I in danger? Needs of the body. Am I in physical danger? Can I eat it? Should I run? Fight or flight? Should I meet with it? Random stuff like that, but there's these criteria that your head runs through whether or not you're trying to to keep you safe and keep you alive and keep you breathing, right? It's the same for every piece of marketing. It's the same for every piece. Unless you can get past the first part of that brain, you will not pitch that person. They will not make a buying decision, right? There are two introductions to a webinar. The first introduction is introducing the webinar itself, right? That's where Russell says, "Hey, look, you're in the right place. This is where I'm going to show you how to do this without this. Here's my earnings disclaimer. Here is a testimonial of somebody else doing this thing." He doesn't even talk about what it is yet or who he is. The second introduction is introducing him or me, right? Because I'm doing the same thing, right? The first I'm introducing the webinar very methodically. Number two, I introduce myself. They got to fall in love with me now, right? The whole reason for those two, especially the first introduction, is to get past that first part of the brain so that they know, "Oh, I'm in a safe place. Oh, I can let the guard down." I literally have been saying that in my webinars lately. "Guys, feel free to just let the guard down. It's okay. Let the walls down. This is a safe place and safe environment for us to all learn." I can't remember everything I say without my slides here yet. I don't have it totally memorize slide by slide yet like Russell does, but it's going in that direction. There's two introductions. The story, Russell use the story at the beginning talking about the Four Minute Mile and he's using it right off the bat. The story is breaking and rebuilding beliefs. It's getting everyone the same plain. That's actually a form of NLP. Especially from stage, it's very, very clever for him to do that from the very beginning, to begin with a story like that. Most people know that story, which brings a sense of community and bringing together, right? All those little things. If you read the book Launch, the nine mental triggers, he is using those like crazy at the very beginning of that pitch. It's very crafted very, very well. He's going through and that's what he's doing. He's going through and he gave the story about the Four Minute Mile. It was absolutely incredible. He tells his own story. He's using an epiphany bridge. "Oh, how cool to be if I made a million dollars? This guy made a million dollars in a day. My Four Minute Mile is what if I just made a million dollars in a year?" He's talking about these internal and external desires, using epiphany bridge script, right? Now what we need to do is we need to see that this guy is not the only nutcase who actually had these results. He goes through and he's showing ... Because that's what the brain is thinking. He goes through and he's showing success stories of others, showing some video testimonials, right? He's using the same exact format and formula. He very, very closely to the point ... It was right after he introduced the webinar, right after he kind of introduced himself as well, he goes into what he calls a price marinade. This is the major difference for fear of talking forever and talking your face off guys and getting to an actual point of this podcast. I'm going to go straight to the main idea. Okay? We've been going for a little bit. I'm just going to talk about it. He does what he calls a price marinade. He's talked about his before so I feel totally fine talking about it as well.
In this scenario, he took that first part and he made it known in the very beginning. This is very key. This is very, very key. This is a huge deal you guys. You don't pull this off without a lot of finesse, which obviously he has and he could do very, very well. What he did is he went and he said, "Here is the price. Before I sell you, before I have anytime to break and rebuild your belief patterns, which is the rest of the webinar, to do the stack and to tell three more stories, before I get a chance to do that, I'm going to tell you the price of this." It's a very interesting play. I feel like I'm going through and I'm talking about and commenting on football plays from the Super Bowl right. It's a very interesting play though to go through and watch a pitch man go and pull part of the price, the most expensive aspect of the price, and bring it at the beginning of the pitch, of an hour and a half pitch. That's a lot of time for someone to get out of their seat and walk away. It's how he did it that was very, very clever. It's called a price marinade because you bring that price forward and you talk about it at the beginning and you bring it up first so that it marinates. The brain has time to get used to that price point except that the price point that you said is actually real and say yes to it along the way. Is this making sense? I know I'm like going deep into the weeds right now and it's not normal on my podcast to do this. Usually when I do this, people are like, "Oh, that's an okay episode." I'm like, "No. That was like the most gold I could have given." It's because it's not wrapped in terms of the story right now. That's why people might feel like that. Understand what I'm saying. He brought the most expensive, the total value of a stack, and he brought it first. This is what he said, "My goal is to show you that everything that I'm doing here for you to be successful you need to invest $11,552." That's about how he worded it. Is that okay? He made everyone raise their hand. I think we raised our hand or we did something physical to attach to that verbal thing where we said, "Yes. Yes, Russell. I agree. If you can give me 10 times the results of my business right now," we're talking about 10X even he tied it right into it, which is awesome, "if you can give 10 times what my business is doing now, of course, I'll pay you $11,552." This was masterful. This was masterful because he charges $3,000 for the product, but they've already said yes to a much higher price point. Now he has the entire rest of the "webinar" live from stage, though in front of 9,000 people ... How many people were there? I think it was 8,500. He's got the rest of the time to break and rebuild the beliefs that are saying no to $11,552. He went through and guys, the way he crafted it was just incredible. Just incredible. What's interesting is Russell's following the path with ClickFunnels that all of us would be expected to follow as well. First, you write a sales message. You make sure it sells. Then you actually built the product to make sure it fulfills what you sold, right? Then you kind of go on the road selling it like crazy, and you're doing the same webinar to tons of people for a long extended period of time. That's kind of the road that I'm getting on right now and I'm feeling that shift... In fact, I was talking to Cole. You guys know, he's my buddy and he's my first full-time employee, which I'm very excited about to be happening here in a month or two, which I'm very excited about. He was already keeping me on track saying like, "Dude, stay focused man. Don't go getting on anything else," but I'm willing that shift right now. I'm feeling the shift and Russell was in the shift. The shift is don't go build anything else. Just sell the crap out of the thing that you've proven, right? You go and you go and you start selling and selling and selling and selling and selling and selling and selling. Russell for the last little while has done nothing, but the Funnel Hacks webinar... Very few other webinars here and there that he's built from scratch. This one though, I think he built the majority of this one from scratch. It was amazing to watch the template and the way he used the template of the perfect webinar script and he took certain parts here and he moved other parts there. You need to see what parts are malleable and what parts are not. What's interesting is it's no surprise what's not malleable. Storytelling? That's not malleable. You tell your stories. You get good at telling stories. You want to know how you sell? Tell stories. You want to know how to market? Tell stories.
Then he's releasing it at the end. Same thing with the Funnel Hacks webinar. He introduces the constraint. Hey, this is what ClickFunnels is. It's $297. For $297 you get this and this and this and this and this and this. He's saying that because that creates limits, that creates barriers, right? You get this many contacts. You get this many funnels. You get this many this and that. He's saying that so that at the end of the webinar he can release the constraint for his fast acting bonus and get people to get it. This was like loaded with tons of constraints at the beginning with tons of constraint releasing at the end. That's why I was so freaking nuts and excited about the pitch that I was seeing. I was like dude, you usually just put like one limiting thing at the beginning and then you release that constraint at the end. You put like a hundred and price marinade. Oh my gosh. $3,000 price point. Thee million bucks in an hour and a half. Oh my gosh. Huge guys. Hall of frame right there in my mind. Should be in yours as well. I know that he's got this Two Comma Club Coach trophy, but they better come up for another way for what he just did. $3 million in an hour? That should be its own award. Most of us is just trying to hit that in much longer period of time. It's pretty funny. Walk inside ClickFunnels and he's got I think 17 or 18 Two Comma Club awards of his own, and three of them are $10 million products besides ClickFunnels. The dude knows how to sell. Mad, mad, mad props, my friend. Absolutely incredible. Very fun to watch that. I encourage everyone of you guys to obsess like you would over sports or obsess like you would like a hobby over the act of pitching. You've got to sell. Everything depends on sales. Don't think that you can be in marketing and neglect sales. They are different. They are different. The better marketer you are, the less hard sales we have to do, but you still have to learn how to sell. You still got to learn how to pitch. You still got to learn how to present an offer. Obsess over these elements. These are the things, these are the dials to turn. These are the most high leverage activities for you to go obsess and absolutely love. Anyway, that's all I got for you guys. I'm sorry if it was a little bit in the weeds. It's a little bit of a different styled episode than normally I would do, but I just wanted to talk about that and help you guys understand like why that was such a big deal. It was a huge deal on a lot of accounts. My brain, my little marketing serious brain is going nuts. I literally was just about to end the episode, but I forget one other thing that you guys should all know about. One of the things I've struggled with ... Struggling is the wrong word for it, but like is a challenge when you're face to face with people in an event to get people when it's time to go buy to actually stand up, the physical action of them to stand up and go buy at the back table or back of the room or whatever. The reason why is because they will sit there and they just kind of look at you and they don't want to be rude because you're talking. You have to give them permission to stand up even though you just said, "Go to the back right now. There's order forms on the back. When they're gone, they're gone," or whatever, right? You have to actually say it. It's interesting to watch Russell ... Two of the things here that I've just learned from those are huge, huge, huge guys. I hope that you are soaking this in. This is annoying that I'm going this long, but it was cool to watch him. Several times when he got to the part where the actual call to action came, he would be like, "Guys, if you can tell this is already going to fit you already, like stand up and go to the back. Stand up and go to the back. Seriously right now. Stand up and go to the back. Get up. Stand. Right now. Just get up and go to the back." He kept saying it like that way. Then he would stop like in the middle of the stack. I stood up. He was super nice. He talked about my MLM Funnel in his presentation. All this people around me were asking about it. I stood up to go down to the table and they were like, "You bought already." I was like, "This is something to buy again." I started walking down. He still went for another like 15-20 minutes it felt like. It was funny at least. About 15 minutes. He wasn't even done with the presentation and there was probably a thousand people. He wasn't even done. That's what I want to come say. He was not done and he kept going and going. He was finishing the whole presentation, but there was already this huge massive people at the tables turning their order forms like hotcakes. That's what I want you to understand and know is that ... He continued to throughout, continued to say, "Stand up and go to the back. If you know this is a good for you already, oh look at that. Those are the smart people who are already in the back right now just standing up and go to the back." He kept giving permission because people don't want to get rude. They're sitting there. They're listening to you. They're in this docile state. You got to break that. He'll continue to say it over and over and over and over, getting them permission to come up. I've used that tactic in the past and I made the stupid mistake of not continuing to say it. I kept talking afterwards and some dude sat down after he saw that I kept speaking. It pissed me off. He didn't go buy because he was trying not to be rude to me. That dude should have just went and bought. I did not continue to say stand up. Stand up. When you're doing live events like that, continue to say, "Get up if you know this fits for you. Get up. Keep going. This would be helpful for you. Get up." Then the next day what he had was a ... He was able to stand back up and give a ... It was basically a re-offer. He like did a double close. It was really interesting. He gave away some really cool ... He basically stood up and said, "Look guys, I pulled $3 million out of the room. If you guys want to know how I did it, I've decided that I'm going to add my presentation and all the stuff that I did inside what you bought. If you're like on the fence relieving like in the next little bit, you have got to stand up right now and go to the back and purchase right now because I'll give you ..." He's adding his extra bonuses in. I thought like how interesting is that? The guy is offer creating off the fly. This is incredible. Just making it even better and better and better and better. Anyways, he did this cool follow up thing. I was thinking like how would I apply it to a webinar? I'm thinking if I can, that's going to be a cool thing where I do some cool unadvertised bonus. Hey look, if you're still on the fence, I decided to add X, Y and X in. I think it'd be awesome. Anyway, I'm excited to go apply some of the things that I saw to the online webinar. This certainly apply. Man, guys, I get more excited about Funnel Hacking Live than Christmas and this was like the most exciting thing I've ever seen in my life.
Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to SalesFunnelBroker.com/freefunnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today. | |||
| 11 Jun 2019 | SFR 250: Living Legends... | 00:28:21 | |
I have the incredible honor of speaking at Carnegie Hall in September with MARTHA STEWART, MICHAEL E GERBER, DAN KENNEDY, HAL ELROD, and other beasts. I'm beyond humbled by this. Here's the full scoop...
Frankly, I just love being on stage speaking and teaching.
Some of the early stages I got to talk on were Russell's - I did a lot of fulfillment for the original Two Comma Club program.
Back in the day, we did something called the FHAT Event which lasted for 3 awesome, intense days.
We’d go from:
By the end of the event, everyone was just exhausted.
Russell did the first event because he was testing materials and seeing where we needed to change things…
Then after that, he largely handed it over to me, and he just came in for a few one or two-hour guest speeches.
WHAT I LOVE ABOUT ENTREPRENEUR EVENTS
I remember there was this one particular FHAT event…
On the second day, I took a break to grab some food and went to Russell's office to sit down. Russell was like, "How are you doing?"
I was like, "Wheeew….” I was just bringing it down... and trying to relax for a second…
... THAT was a very aggressive fast-paced stage for me - I loved it.
Russell goes, "How's everyone doing out there?"
We’d always talk about how the audience was responding:
We’d chat back and forth exploring all the scenarios, but this time, when Russell asked, "So how are you doing?"
I kinda paused for a second…
https://media.giphy.com/media/1qXJDYI8lTG8SVhUZW/giphy.gif
Russell noticed and asked, "What is it?"
He may not remember this, but I said, "Dude, I can see those who are getting it and those who aren't. They're not telling me. I can see it."
And he goes, "You're getting that already, huh?"
I was like, "That's a thing?"
Russell said, "Yeah, yeah, I can stand up at any moment and, I've been doing it so long, I can see those who are with me and who it's clicking for and those who it’s not - so I'll stop and I'll cater to those people who aren’t getting it." https://media.giphy.com/media/7YCVWDMbIWTBNuTD9c/giphy.gif
I was like, "Okay, that's what that is. I'm starting to see that.”
MY FAVORITE MOMENT…
My favorite moment on stage, (and this may sound a little cheesy), is the moment when I see in somebody's eyes that they suddenly realize, "Oh my gosh, my capacity is greater than I thought it was and it's actually always been there."
It's funny to watch as people…
They're like, "Oh, that dream I've been going for all along is actually possible now."
I don't know. I don't know how else to describe it besides that…
But it's a thrill for me because you can see it happen in peoples' eyes as they listen to you.
Those of you guys who educate, teach or get on stage, you know what I'm talking about.
There's that moment where you can look at them, be like, "Bam, right there... I just caused the epiphany." About 6 months ago, during the Two Comma Club Cruise, I’d just finished a big session, when a guy walked up to me and goes, "You're a really dynamic speaker."
People have told me that before, and I still don't know what that means... So I said, “Cool! Thank you," but what he said next made my jaw hit the ground…
He looked me straight in the eyes and asked "Do you want to come speak at Carnegie Hall?"
I was like, "Are you completely serious right now?"
He said, "100%. We're going to see if we can get all these huge names," and I was like, "All right. Cool. Just keep me in the loop."
Six months later, it's happening - it's in the bag - it's an event called Living Legends, which is extremely honoring.
So I'm going to share an interview that explains EVERYTHING to you…
BECOMING A CELEBRITY ENTREPRENEUR I have a very special guest…
His name is Clint Arthur.
Clint and I, have frankly only known each other personally for probably six months, but I am blown away and just completely floored with what he does, his skill set, and who he helps.
What he does, when you're in a certain place, is completely magical and I'm very, very honored to have him on here.
So Clint, thank you so much - welcome to the show.
Clint: BOOM!
Steve: In the middle of Carnegie Hall. What?
Clint: Yeah.
Steve: It's a proxy BOOM! Oh man.
Clint: That's a Carnegie Hall ‘BOOM!’ for you - that's what that is.
Steve: You're warming it up for us - thank you so much.
Clint: Yeah, baby. Yeah, baby. Well, it's a pleasure to be with you... I met you on the cruise, I think.
Steve: Yeah.
Clint: The 2CCX Cruise - that was an amazing experience…
Really, the best part of the whole 2CCX program was the cruise.
I really believe that's because it was a special event.
When you participate in special events, it's not only great for the sales funnel… it's great for sales funnels for a reason...
It really does deepen the experience of the customer/client/ the person you're trying to transform their life... it opens up possibilities for people to have MORE community.
So as a result of that, here we are - so great to be with you.
Steve: That's so awesome. We're really honored, honestly.
Now just because some of my audience may not know who you are, which is baffling... but could you tell everybody what is it that you do?
Clint: I am a celebrity entrepreneur - which means:
I'm the MOST famous guy that nobody's ever heard of.
I’ve created systems, formulas and scientific methodology for creating celebrity positioning in the eyes of your customers and prospects.
So part of that is, I have done 107 television appearances.
You might have seen me on FOX Business Channel, CNN, Headline News, or The Today Show with Brooke Shields… When Brooke Shields said, "Clint, you can have all of these plans and want to scale Mount Everest, but how do you keep from falling off the track?”
I said, "You've got to invest in mentors." I said it then, and I meant it… and I mean it even more now.
Investing in mentors has been part of the reason why I have gotten to where I am.
Part of what I've done to become a celebrity entrepreneur is to become Dan Kennedy's Info Marketer Of The Year - that's a great honor for me.
It’s something that really opened things up for me in my career and deepened my relationship with Dan Kennedy as my mentor.
So those are some of the things I've done.
I've also written a bunch of best-selling books...
My new book is called Celebrity Entrepreneurship.
Some of my other best sellers include:
I wrote this other book called The Last Year Of Your Life - where you live as if you're going to die at the end of the year…
I told one of my friends, I'm going to add in videos and audios, it's going to be the greatest book of all time with those attached as links in the Kindle book, and he goes, "Why don't you just call it The Greatest Book of All Time?"
So I did, and that became my first real big selling book…
I sold 26,000 copies of that book.
Steve: Wow. That's awesome. That's incredible.
Clint: And it has contributed to …( I don't even think you know this…) Starting June 8th, I will be the host of a NEW talk radio show on WABC Radio in New York City called The Greatest Show of All Time.
Steve: Oh my gosh. That's amazing. Just pushing straight on in there. That's incredible.
Now, actually, it was Peng Joon I started talking to about what it is that you do, and everything…
He was talking about just how incredible your stuff is and how amazing it is.
Why is it important to eventually become a celebrity entrepreneur for your audience?
Clint: Well, I say on the back of my book that entrepreneurs struggle because they think that people are buying their products and services, but really people are buying you.
Who you are is more important than what you actually do.
...especially if you're selling a product or service that's similar or equivalent to others that are in the marketplace...
The only difference is you.
If you're a financial advisor/ a realtor/ a doctor, or selling any kind of widget, there's a similar widget to what you sell - the main difference is who you are.
HOW TO BE A SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEUR…
What I do as a celebrity entrepreneur is help my clients position themselves as celebrities in the eyes of their customers and prospects.. and that's really using marketing on your personal brand.
That's what *this* is all about.
… and that makes all the difference in the world because people are NOT buying your widgets; they're buying you.
Steve: Absolutely. I just so appreciate you taking that angle on it too.
There are a few places I've spoken at... where it's only been about getting authority for authority's sake, but you're saying let's get it so it pushes the message and the product more…
… because that's what they're gonna be buying anyway.
I love that. I'm very, very thankful for that. It's awesome.
How did you get started doing this?
There are gonna be a lot of questions revolving around ...
This is not something that my audience is gonna be very familiar with.
Clint: Hey, I started out as an entrepreneur selling butter.
Steve: Really?
Clint: Yeah, really. That's really where this all began.
I was selling portion controlled butter in Las Vegas to hotels and casinos.
So if you've ever eaten bread and butter at Bellagio in Las Vegas, thank you for helping to put my daughter through the University of Southern California…
For a long time, pretty much every piece of bread at Bellagio was buttered with Five Star Butter, which is my company.
What happened was a lot of these celebrity chefs starting coming in: Bobby Flay, Gordon Ramsay, Emeril... and I wanted to get the celebrity chefs, so I came up with this idea…
What if I could be a judge on Iron Chef America and make myself a celebrity butter expert, not just the guy selling butter?
I talked the producers of Iron Chef America into making me the judge of Battle Butter... (you can watch that episode on my website, fivestarbutter.com and see me judging Battle Butter).
That was the beginning of my celebrity positioning as an expert.
Now, I tell you what, it changes things when you become a celebrity expert in what you do, it really does.
THIS WILL BLOW YOUR MIND
I heard a statistic that:
That's why, if you're not the number one top celebrity, you are surviving on crumbs while everybody who you admire is feasting on giant pieces of pie.
For example, Tony Robbins, Date With Destiny…
Date With Destiny alone represents 10% of the entire live event seminar industry in its revenue.
Steve: Oh my gosh.
Clint: If you do the math, which I have, you will see that just that one event is 10% of all live seminar tickets.
Steve: Geeze. I had no idea.
Clint: Because he's the number one guy ... And here's the funny part…
Go into any bank in America and ask the teller, "Do you know who Tony Robbins is?"
… they're going to say ``No,” because he's NOT a real celebrity - He's a celebrity entrepreneur.
The same thing goes for Grant Cardone, who everybody worships…
I will show you videos where I'm doing seminars with financial advisors and I'd say, "Anybody recognize this guy?"
Not one hand goes up.
Nobody knows who he is because they're NOT his customers or prospects... and yet two months ago, he filled up Marlin Stadium...
And most of the people watching this video know exactly what I'm talking about.
Steve: OH, YEAH.
Clint: When you're a celebrity entrepreneur, (which is something that I pioneered, systematized and scientifically analyzed how do you do it), you're a god to your customers and prospects…
... but the rest of the world doesn't know who you are.
And that's what I help my clients to do.
Steve: It seems extremely magical sitting on this side of the screen listening to that. That's impressive. That’s so, so amazing.
Now, what should somebody do if they're trying to get started as celebrity entrepreneur?
Clint: Okay. Well, the important thing to understand is that there's no time that’s too soon.
The sooner you start building your positioning as a celebrity in the eyes of your customers and prospects, the better off you are... because the product you're selling is irrelevant.
A lot of people come to me and say, "I don't have a product yet. I don't have a book yet. I don't have this data or anything yet, " and I just say;
“But you have you. You're already you. And you're always going to be you so you might as well start building your personal brand."
Really, there are five ways to do it.
I'm not saying you have to go on Good Morning America first - that's a mistake. Don't go on Good Morning America first, go on little tiny local TV shows first.
I wanted to meet you, Steve, because you're such a great speaker…
I don't know if you've always been, but I doubt you've always been…
I’ve personally found that speaking is an acquired skill.
You have to learn how to be a great speaker - so there's no time that's too soon to start learning that, is there?
So go out there and start learning how to speak and start speaking in important places - the second part of my formula is to become a VIP speaker speaking in very important places.
That's taking photos with famous people, and anybody who goes to my website will see I'm in photos with all kinds of famous people from Brooke Shields to Caitlin Jenner - Ringo Star to Mike Tyson - Hilary and Donald Trump. I don't care.
I'm an equal opportunity celebrity selfie slut.
The more famous they are, the more I like it. That's it.
I've already dropped some of my best selling book titles on you guys.
I told you right in the beginning, I was Dan Kennedy's ‘Info Marketer of The Year,’ and you, as an entrepreneur, need to figure out how you can win awards too.
Steve: That's amazing...
Clint: Ideally you want to win an Academy Award, but if you don't have an Academy Award, then you've got to win something else.
You won a Two Comma Club X award, you won a Two Comma Club award - whatever you can get!
The better it is, the better it's going to be…
You put all those steps together and you’ve radically transformed your positioning in the eyes of your customers and prospects.
Ultimately you want to accomplish each of those things.
Steve: That is insanely valuable. I hope everyone's enjoying that. I can't put it off anymore… Where are you standing... and why are we talking about it right now?
I can't even hold it back…
CARNEGIE HALL
Steve: Oh!
Clint: Yeah! And the reason why I'm in the lobby of Carnegie Hall in New York City is that I just finished my meeting with the production manager, the stage manager, the person who did all the contracts for my first of its kind entrepreneurial conference at Carnegie Hall.
They've never had an event like this before…
“It's so unique, Clint. We've never had anything like this, Clint. We're so excited. We can't wait to sit in on and see some of the people that are going to be ... You're really going to have Martha Stewart at your conference?"
Yes. I'm really having Martha Stewart at this conference.
"You're really going to have Coco and Ice-T?"
Yes. Ice-T and Coco are really going to be there.
"You're really going to have Scorpion - the guy who produced five seasons of the TV show Scorpion for CBS? My dad loves Scorpion."
Steve: That's a good show.
Clint: That's what the lady said.
I'm like, “Yeah, Scorpion himself. You're going to be able to pick the brain of the smartest man on earth. Imagine what you're going to find in there.”
Albert Einstein previously spoke at Carnegie Hall. His IQ was 160. Scorpion's IQ is 197.
Steve: Holy Cow!
Clint: ...and who else is going to be speaking there?
Dan Kennedy will be speaking at this conference.
Michael Gerber, the author of The E-Myth, number one New York Times best-selling book for years and years and years
….he’s changed so many entrepreneurs' lives.
Michael will be doing multiple days of speaking at this event, including the hot seats on the stage.
Amazing. Who else?
Jerry from Ben and Jerry's ice cream, the founder.
So look at this…
You've got Martha Stewart who turned herself into a household name...
Then you've got a guy who turned cream and sugar into a household product. Right?
Steve: Yeah.
Clint: Who else is going to be here?
Oh, Hal Elrod, ‘Miracle Morning’. Are you familiar with that book?
Steve: Very. Yep. Got that and the journal right here.
Clint: Right? Self-publishing phenomenon. By the way, he's one of my students.
Steve: Oh, cool.
Clint: He couldn't afford to come to my Celebrity Launch Pad TV Publicity Transformation Event.
He registered, and then he calls me the next day and goes, "Clint, I'm really sorry. I talked it over with Ursula and we really just can't afford it."
I'm like, "Wrong. I'm going to make it possible for you to do it. We're going to come up with a payment plan and you are coming on Celebrity Launch Pad."
He booked himself on 13 shows
I have the video of him, and he's like, "Any time I'm being considered for a speaking gig, I send them my TV appearances for them to evaluate me because it separates me so much from everybody else who's trying to get those same speaking gigs."
Anyway, he's one of my students and he will be speaking there.
Who else is going to be speaking there?
Princess Marianne Parker, another one of my students.
She transformed herself from a Bulgarian peasant to the princess of etiquette.
She's going to tell you how etiquette saved her life and made her wealthy.
And who else is going to be speaking there?
This guy named Steve.
Steve:
I heard he had big eyes and he’s probably gonna yell a lot. He's gonna drop a few ‘BOOMS!’ in the Carnegie Hall.
Oh!
Clint: This event is called The Living Legends of Entrepreneurial Marketing.
This man, Steve, built 500+ funnels for Russell Brunson and ClickFunnels. How freaking legendary is that? Unbelievable.
I'm really excited to have you join us on the main stage for two sessions of dropping booms all over Carnegie Hall.
I'm really excited to share you with my audience because you're such an amazing speaker man.
Dude, you are an amazing speaker. I love you and I'm excited to share you with all of my friends who are going to be coming to this event.
HERE COMES THE SCARCITY & URGENCY
There are only 600 tickets total for this event.
Steve: Holy smokes.
Clint: Super special. Super special event. Tickets are available and people should be getting their tickets as soon as they can.
Steve: That's awesome. Hey, so what are the dates so people know?
Clint: September 26th/ 27th/ 28th in New York City at Carnegie Hall. Yeah, the one, the only Carnegie Hall. That's right.
Steve: The actual Carnegie Hall.
Clint: Yeah, the actual one!
You know who's spoken in here besides Albert Einstein? This is the coolest.
In 1906, Mark Twain gave his last lecture at Carnegie Hall.
I've asked Dan Kennedy to come and give his last lecture.
I said, "Dan, if you were going to die and you knew you were going to die and your kid came to you and said, ‘Dad, what should I do to thrive as an entrepreneur?’ that's what I want you to share with the audience."
That's what Michael Gerber is going to share.
That's what Martha Stewart's going to share, Ice-T, Coco, Scorpion, everybody. You too.
What is the magic sauce to thrive as an entrepreneur?
I'm so excited to hear what everybody has to say.
Steve: Yeah. I just, I can't even tell you how stoked I am.
When you asked ... I was trying to ... “Oh, yeah, no, I'll be there, Clint. Yeah. Let me check. Yeah, no, I can be there.”
Then I hung up and I just started yelling.
I'm so excited, man.
Thank you so much. Very excited for it.
And you guys, you can go to seestevelive.com and it will take you over to the tickets - so you guys can go get booked up. Only 600 tickets, guys. That is NOT many. Go get one - especially for all those names.
Clint: There's not 600 left... I've already been selling tickets.
Steve: Oh, really?
Clint: A lot of the VIP and Elite Tickets are already taken.
There are different levels…
There's general admission - if you just want to come and you're scraping it together to make it.
Step up and show up for this thing - it will change your life. Going to events really does change you.
Steve: Yeah, it does.
Clint: You told the story of going to your first Russell Brunson's ClickFunnels Live and how that changed your whole freaking life.
Steve: Yeah, everything.
Clint: Well, that's what's going to happen here. Where was that ClickFunnels live? Somewhere in Orlando?
Steve: Yeah. San Diego, actually. Yeah. Yeah. It's far.
Clint: San Diego. Dude...
This event is at Carnegie Hall with Martha Stewart, Dan Kennedy, Michael Gerber, you and Scorpion, the smartest man in the world.
You see, what people don't understand is that the venue changes the event.
You can have the same performers, one of them performing, one time performing here and the next time performing at some arena someplace.
You're going to get a much more intense performance at Carnegie Hall because the venue brings out the power from the performer.
The performers rise up to the venue.
You know who else has spoken in Carnegie Hall? Aside from Albert Einstein and Mark Twain, we had…
If you have been a living legend, you've performed at this venue.
...and that's why I selected it. That's why I'm paying the big money to get it.
That's why I'm paying the big money to have all these incredible names come and share their last lectures with my audience to change entrepreneurs' lives and their vision of what's possible in the future.
Steve: Man. I'm not going to stop press and record. This is so awesome. Holy smokes!
I'm so psyched about it.
So September 26th through 28th. Literally Carnegie Hall! Obviously, New York City. 600 people.
Go to seestevelive.com. and it’ll take you right over there.
Anyways, Clint, thank you so much for being on here. I really appreciate you being on. I can't even explain what kind of an honor this is.
Clint: I'm so excited to be doing this. I have a testimony on my website from Peng Joon, because he came and spoke at one of my events at NASDAQ, and he said:
"Clint specializes in creating experiences."
That's really what I do... and that's what I've created here:
The experience of this unique first time ever entrepreneurial conference in this venue is going to be historical, life-changing, and career changing, and you don't want to miss it
I'm looking forward to sharing it with you, all of your friends and your audience; September 26th, 27th, and 28th. Thanks, Steve.
Steve: Oh, sir, thank you so much. Appreciate it. We will see you there.
BOOM!
SEE STEVE LIVE
So several years ago, I walked by a stage in a basketball stadium.
It was my college campus and I was deeply concerned with what I wanted to do in my life.
For some reason, I looked at the stage and thought, "Huh, one day I wanna be on stage. I wanna be an entrepreneur and I wanna buy and sell companies."
Well, while the last one hasn't happened ... yet, Muahaha... stage and entrepreneurship have.
And as my business has grown and my message has spread, a frequent question I'm asked is, "Steve, what stage will you be on next?"
Now I totally get that this feels, maybe, a little conceited here...
But considering my childhood fear of speaking up, being heard, extreme lack of self-confidence, and getting in front of people, back in my growing up days, I feel satisfied.
I thought I'd tell you where I'll be in the world coming up.
And funny enough, just literally go over to seestevelive.com, and it'll forward you to the next place.
I love stage and it's one of my biggest things to look forward to in my current role in my business.
From little 10 person masterminds all the way to gigantic 5000 person events - from free seats to paid events - events have always been one of the ways I can deliver the MOST value and get the greatest “AHA’s” in the shortest amount of time.
Just come say hi, and go over to seestevelive.com.
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| 09 Feb 2018 | SFR 110: The 30 Day Stats of My Webinar... | 00:33:44 | |
Click above to listen in iTunes... Here's how the first 30 days of my webinar are going and what I am going to change... Hey, hey, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen, and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Welcome so Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. Alrighty, guys. I am super pumped for this because I'm going to walk through, as I said ... That was about five, six weeks ago, I launched my webinar, and the webinar that I launched out there and put out there has been ... It's been going fantastic, and I wanted to walk through some numbers and some stats. This is a lesson, so this is Sales Funnel Radio, right? I want to show you guys when you actually launch a funnel, and you guys know my philosophy that, look, you don't need to know everything, and in fact, it's best if you just know the formula for this whole business game to work online, and then all you do is you start your business and product ideas through the formula. While some of them are not going to work, you're just going to go out and you're just going to try it again. That's totally fine, and if the formula works, you're just trying to find the right idea and market match that actually makes the formula work and blow up really, really well. So what I want to do is I want to walk through the actual webinar that I launched. Now, the webinar that I've launched has been in the making, the actual planning of it as far as like, "Hey, I'm going to go do this thing," it was in the planning for, I don't know, a year? It did not actually exist until about four days before I actually did it. Does that make sense? So I went through and day number one ... So this was January 1st. January 1st was a Monday, and on Monday ... and I did it on Thursday. The webinar actually launched on a Thursday, so Monday what I did is I went through and I just created my registration process itself meaning you could go in, you could register for the webinar, there's a confirmation page, a little bit of indoctrination series.
So I actually made the registration process itself before there was anything else. I didn't even make the script. There was no script. There was hardly any product at all, at all. Day number two what I did is I went and I started actually making the script, and I didn't finish it at all, but I came up with my three secrets, and I came up with the actual offer itself, the actual stack slide, the actual offer. Then day number three I put a membership area together, put some stuff in there, and then the actual order process so people could buy. Day number four, I actually did the webinar, and I woke up on the day of the webinar and I got up and I started the actual slides at 8:30 in the morning, and the webinar was at 2:00 pm, and I was just slide creating like an animal, and I was getting all these pieces together, and music was going crazy. That's the secret to good funnels, by the way. It's music and caffeine. So I was making the funnels, putting all the pieces together, and I get out and the time starts going away and suddenly it's 10:30, and I'm like, "Crap. I just barely started the secrets," and suddenly it's noon, and it's two hours away, and I'm like, "Oh my gosh. I'm only into secret number two here." If you guys know the webinar formula, that means I'm a third the way through, maybe halfway through, maybe. About an hour before the webinar starts, and there's 270 people registered for this one, and I was like, "Oh my gosh. Holy cow. I'm not going to even finish this thing," and I'm going as fast as I possibly can, and I literally finished the slides two minutes before the actual webinar started. That was some stressful crap. I recommend you not doing it that way, but I got it out the door. I just did it. That's the whole point. I just did it. If you've not launched something and you've been consuming all of my podcasts and you've been reading the books and you've been learning about the methodology and the formulas behind the stuff that we know works and you still haven't launched it, just set a date and just do it. Just do it. Know that it's going to go out kind of broken, and it was for me as well, and I told you in the last episode that it in part it has to do with a lot my storytelling that created an emotional experience for people that allowed them to know that it was going to be a little bit broken and that they were okay with that. They were fine with that it was a little bit broken out of the box. All right, so anyway, that's huge. That's a massive, massive piece right there. So anyways, I launched it, and I sold it. So I'm going to go through some numbers here. I want to go through some stats so that you see what I see, so I can show you what I'm seeing and what I'm looking at because I mean even when I worked at ClickFunnels, I was the lead funnel builder. We went through. We were building funnels like crazy. I was cranking out ... I mean, man, my entire almost two years there it was like one extreme deadline after the other. I mean I felt like I hardly ever got a break. I got a little burnt out, I'm not going to lie. It was a lot, but I was cranking them out on average almost one a day, on the average. It was just like, "Holy smokes." It was a ton of funnels, and love it, enjoyed it, still enjoy it, still doing it, just now for myself. Anyway, so what I wanted to do though is I wanted to just go through and just show you guys how like, "Okay, look. Here's the standard of after we launch a funnel, any funnel, usually out of the gate it does not do that well. There's some broken pieces with it. We expect that, we know that, and the reason why, here's the reason why. A lot of what we build, a lot of what we put out there, has to do with what we call an ask campaign. Now you guys have heard this before, I'm sure. When we were expecting our first girl, our first ... four years ago, over four years ago now. When we were expecting our first little one, we were literally in the delivery room. My wife was getting induced, and I am so sorry to admit this that I did this. This was stupid. I should not have done this, but we had been in that room for hours and hours and hours, and I was like, "Oh." As a man, there's not that much you can do. My wife's getting ready to deliver our first kid. We're super excited. We've been in there for a while though, and spent the night in there, and it was ... We were just exhausted, and we were just waiting, and we were just waiting for the new one. She wasn't actually in labor yet, but we couldn't go home yet because it was in this weird limbo stage. At the time, I was listening to a lot of Pat Flynn, Smart Passive Income podcast. It's a great podcast. I went through, I was listening to a lot of them, and that's where I learned about Noah Kagan, and Noah Kagan had this product where if you had any questions you could literally text Noah and he would text you back. So I was sitting in the room, and I was texting Noah Kagan, and I was sitting there in the middle ... and my wife's about to give birth. That was stupid, okay? I did not earn brownie points for that, but here's what I learned... I went and I was texting him, and I was like, "Hey, man, I really want to get your course," and I hadn't really figured this game out yet. This was four and a half years ago, and it's crazy she's that old now. That's nuts. Anyway, so I was texting Noah Kagan, and he goes, "Hey, man. Hey, man, I got this cool idea, and all these people say they really want it, which is really awesome. Do you think I should go build it?" He's like, "That's cool, but frankly, I don't care what people think. I let people vote with their wallets." That's what Noah told me. I was like, "Huh. That's interesting. That's very interesting." Okay, now take that, follow me real quick. When most of this product is started from an ask campaign, they're not voting with their wallets. They're voting with their opinions. People behave differently when it's actually time to take the wallet out. So here's the whole point. The formula that we teach, the formula that I teach, the formula that we go through sort of like, "Hey, this is how we know big money comes online in this formula. Start with an ask campaign, figure out what people want, and then just deliver it." There's a whole bunch of stuff in-between that, but that's the premise of it. Figure out what people want, ask them what they want, and then go make it. The issue that can happen, and the reason why funnels fail out the gate usually on round one, is because we did an ask campaign where there was no money involved. It's just their opinions. People behave differently with what they say versus what they'll actually take their wallet out for.
The thing is that there was not actual wallet involved with that, so I have to take what they said with a little bit of a grain of salt, put it in the formula, and toss it out there with the expectation that now that I'm actually asking for people's money, they will probably behave slightly different than what they told me during the ask campaign because now their money's involved. They're going to vote with their wallets, just like Noah Kagan told me. So I tossed this stuff out there. I put this stuff out there with the expectation ... and Russell's the exact same way. When we were there all the time, we'd put these things out there knowing that there's a gap between what people say they want versus what they will actually do and get. There's a gap there, and this formula will close that gap as much as it possibly can, and then when it comes to launch it, you have to see and watch the numbers and see how things behave and then react appropriately. That's why the stuff usually fails out of the gate, but you're very close to profitability on round number one. Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense what I'm saying. All I'm saying is that there's a gap between what people will say they will do versus what they actually do. "Oh, yeah, I'll do that," versus the people who actually do it. We all know that. I mean take ... It's just barely turned February, right? New Year's resolutions, we all say, "Oh, yeah. I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this," and then when you actually get to the part of execution that can be a little bit different, and it's because of we say we want something versus us actually doing it. It's the same thing. It's because we're stemming the information that we're collecting on those ask campaigns is coming from people saying, "Oh, yeah, I want this and this and this. This is what I'm really struggling with. Go make the product for this. That'd be great," versus what they actually get their wallet out for. There's a little bit of a gap there. The formula, the Expert Secrets formula, the Dot Com Secrets formula, all this stuff that closes the gap as much as it possibly can, and then it's your job as the marketer to go look at the numbers and learn how to be a detective and go, "Huh. They all said they wanted this, but the numbers are telling me they want this. Let's go switch this right here." So all I want to do right now is I want to walk through some numbers of my current webinar. Is that cool? even though you're not in front of me. Is that cool? Does this sound awesome? Can you guys see how this could be helpful to you? You guys seeing how this could be applicable in your own business? Okay, so let's walk through this though. So I wanted to set that backdrop so you understand what I'm doing and what I'm looking for and why I'm looking for it. It's because of that gap. It's that action gap between what they say and what they'll actually do. So I created this whole thing off of all the stuff that we teach. I used the exact same formula, the exact same process. We practice what we preach. I practice what I preach... So I went out and I created this thing with the understanding that it will most likely fail out the gate. Now, it didn't because I've been publishing like crazy on a second podcast. That created a lot of affinity. That created a lot of emotion towards the upcoming product that they all knew that was coming up. I created pressure just like Hollywood would by tossing out a preview six months before a movie gets released. I did that on purpose. It was lot of planning that went into that. So I want to walk through some numbers, and I want to walk through some numbers week by week just for the first four weeks. We're just going to go through a few different numbers here. I'm going to go through the registration rate and then I'm going to go through actual purchases, and then I want to go through the indoctrination series. As I go through it, what I want you to do is I want you to take note of what it is that you would do. How would you react based on the numbers that I am actually tossing out there. I've never done anything like this before on my show, but I think it's ... Let me know if you like this, first off, because I want to keep doing this kind of stuff if you guys find it helpful. This game is more about becoming a good detective. It doesn't matter what you think. It matters what the market thinks. It doesn't matter if you like something or don't. It matters if it sells. It doesn't matter. It's your job to just use the formula, plug a whole bunch of different ideas through, one of them pops and explodes and now you're just a detective tweaking things based on how the market reacts to it. That's it. That's it. That sounds crazy, but if you realize that's really all it is, simplify it in your brain and just go master the process and master the formulas? Oh my gosh, guys, the game is not that crazy hard. I just talked about in the last podcast how you really don't even need to be that amazing at sales copy if you're a good storyteller, so start practicing stories and start learning the formula. Anyways, let's dive through these numbers here. So what I want to do is I want to go through and I want to toss out just some numbers, some stuff that I've been going through right now, and so I'm going to go week by week by weeks, so through four weeks of the different numbers, and I'm excited to show you. I know what my issues are. I know exactly the problems. The market has spoken. I know exactly what the issues are, and I'm excited to go through and keep fixing them. So this is it then, okay?
That's insane, and the reason it was so big is because I was promoting to my hot list. I was promoting to my hot list. The people that were on my following, the people that were waiting and begging, they're watching the quote, unquote movie previews, they're listening to my other show. I was priming the market, letting them know it's coming up. So I had almost a 61% opt-in rate, which is on my registration page, which is pretty freaking awesome. As I moved down though ... So there was 37 purchases, so we made 37 grand. The way it worked out is I think it was 21,00 in sales on the webinar, and then I did another 17,000 on the follow-up sequence, which is awesome. So cool. Holy crap, that's like we did $37,000 or whatever the math is on that. $37,000 on the first week, with no ad spend, just straight to my actual not list. Now, understand that's going to skew the numbers a little bit. I did not promote to my hot list again after that. It was all about cold ads, cold traffic after that. Not cold, but warm. I don't care about cold traffic for a long time. So that's $37,000 in sales, which is awesome. Now here's what's interesting. Before we move on past that, the actual registration page, 61% opt-in rate. That's 286 people who registered for the webinar. Unfortunately, it is very standard in the webinar space for only 15 to 20% of the people to actually even show up. If you're getting that, that's pretty standard. It sucks, but it's standard. It means you're not failing. Of the people who show up and who start watching the actual pitch, they stay on long enough to watch the pitch. If you're closing at 5%, yes, 5%, it's usually a six-figure webinar within a year if you're doing it every single week. If you're closing at 10%, that's a million dollars usually within a year. 15%? That's very, very good. So my webinar right now is closing, on average, anywhere from 10 to 12%, sometimes 15 with the follow-up sequence, but it's doing really, really well. I've nailed the offer, I've nailed the story, and it's going awesome. So what's interesting about this is so that week number one, 200 people registered, 280 people. Only 40 of them went through my actual indoctrination series. 40 of 280. What is that? That's 40 ... It's only 13%. Now, that's through email. 13% meaning 13% click-through rate of all the emails that I sent. That's unfortunately also pretty standard. I mean that sucks though. Oh my gosh. It's terrible. I don't like that that's normal. I don't like that that's standard, so I'm trying to figure out the next piece on that. So let me compare week number one with the following ... I'm just going to compare with the next three weeks, basically, instead of going week by week by week by week. Okay, so that last was hot traffic. That last was very hot traffic. That was my hot list. The next three weeks I'm talking about here is weeks two, three, and four, and it's to cold traffic ... Not cold, but Facebook ads. We're running Facebook ads. On average, we're spending about five to six dollars per registrant for a Facebook ad. That's how much you're spending to get someone to register, which is, again, pretty standard. It's pretty awesome. I would love it to be obviously very, very low, but anyway. So three total weeks together, 612 people registered. Of the 612, again, only 39 people actually went through and opened up my indoctrination series. So I will tell you, looking at the numbers, that is the place that is sucking it up the most. I've got to get people indoctrinated. I've got to get people consuming stories before they get on the webinar. That is one of the keys and secrets to the perfect webinar. You've got to try and get the sold before the webinar starts. That's one of the big old keys of this whole thing. So I'm going through ... Oh, I mean, gosh, that sucks. 39 people of 600 are actually going through and looking through my indoctrination series? That ... Ugh. So my biggest thing that I'm focusing on right now is my show-up rate. That's all I'm trying to get to. I'll go through some more numbers in a second here, but the two things, as I go through this ... and keep that in mind as I go through these numbers. I'm being a detective, and the market is telling me to focus on really two things. Oh no, it's three things. There's three things I'm trying to fix. Increase my show-up rate, which my show-up rate is pretty standard, but I don't like that, so I'm going to try and ... I've got a few ideas of how I'm going to blow it up. There's some Facebook Messenger bots and stuff like that that we're going to be using. It will still be the same indoctrination series, but we're just going to deliver it over Facebook Messenger because I think a lot of my audience is there rather than their email all the time, so I'm just going to go where they are, and I'm going to follow them. So I'm going to try and increase my show-up rate. The second thing I'm going to try that I'm going for here, I'm almost done actually building the product. Yes, I just said that. So I've been selling it without it actually being done, which is awesome because it means that the market is creating it with me, which makes the product way less risky for me to actually go create. It makes it way less risky for me to actually go be successful with this because they're making it with me. The market is telling me what to do. I went through and I talked about that a few episodes ago. New markets must be discovered with the inventor and customer at the exact same time. It's the nature of a new opportunity. Anyway. Okay, so number one, I'm trying to increase the show-up rate. Number two, I'm trying to increase ... Weirdly enough, weirdly enough, I actually ... I'll more than break even on my ad costs on the webinar, but the majority of my sales come in my follow-up sequence, almost all of them. For example, there was a webinar we did. We spent $500 in ads, and I'm just keeping things low right now, just so you guys know. In total, my webinar has done about $80,000 in the first month, which is awesome, which is way awesome. $80,000. 37 of that was hot traffic. Anyway. I hope I'm not diving too much into numbers here and it's getting hard to listen to and follow. So let me finish just this idea, okay? So I'm working on my actual show-up rate. Number two, I'm working on my actual ... When I say, "Hey, here's the URL. Go and buy," I'm trying to make more of a table rush so that the amount of sales I'm getting in the backend is also how many I'm getting when the actual webinar happens. Does that make sense? Because as soon as I say, "Hey, go buy, everybody. Go buy," there's a few sales that come in, but then there's a bunch that come in during the follow-up series. I'm like, "What is going on?" Weird. Super weird. It was super weird. All right, and then the third thing I'm trying to focus on is the actual follow-up sequence itself, and I want to make my scarcity and urgency sequence stronger, and I think I know how I'm going to do it. There's a few different places I'm going to go tweak and make better. Some of it has to do with my actual stack, but most of it has to do with how I'm doing the actual scarcity and urgency follow-up sequence because people are knocking down my doors trying to buy it still, and I'm like, "Hey, you got to get on the webinar." I know they want it, and I've had to say no to a lot of people on stuff to ... Anyway, so that's what I'm trying to let you guys know is that me looking at these numbers is what tells me what to focus on next. It's not up to me, which is so nice. It's not up to you and your own business. After you just get the thing off the ground, just launch. If you haven't actually put the product out there, just launch, and then it's all about you being a good detective. It's about you looking at the numbers and going, "Huh. That's fascinating." So in total we only spent $3,000 in ads on the first month because we were just testing where the buyers are. That's it. We're just testing, and at $3,000 in ad spend on the first month and we brought in 40-something thousand in revenue from that. I mean some of that was probably some hot traffic too, but trackable, from Facebook ads itself. We're still 10xing our money right now. So while we're figuring out where those places are, I'm finishing the product, we're getting stuff out the ground, but then this week, for me, the whole thing should be completely done, which is awesome, and then I'm just turning up the juice. I'm going nuts. I'm turning it up like crazy, and it's going awesome. People are loving the product. We're having successes from it already, which has been great. People are using ... Anyway. It's just been awesome. I've actually had a lot of you guys go buy it. Not a lot, but I've had some of you guys go buy it from this audience because you guys are just funnel hacking me, which is honoring. That's awesome, but anyway. So one of the things I did, I also then want to just point out here. I don't know if you guys are running webinars. I encourage you to. If you have nothing out there, I encourage you to actually the Expert Secrets model, figure out how you can package up whatever it is that you're good at, and go find an audience that you're a little better at what you're trying to sell, and they'll buy it from you. It's one of the fastest ones to make a good chunk of change... So one of the things that I did on week two that really helped is I went and I added the option to buy through PayPal, and so if you go to my order page right now, which I'm not going to tell you guys what it is because I don't want you to ... I want to see what my stats are still, but if you go to my order page, you can click a button and buy through credit card or you can click another button and buy through PayPal, and it still does the exact same things as what it would happen is if you bought through Stripe or something like that. It's super cool. Found this cool little piece of code, and just dropped it in, and now I can do the whole thing with PayPal also, which is awesome. Funny enough, I get about 30% of my sales is actually through that PayPal option now. 30%. That's big. I mean that's huge. 30%. 37,000 at the beginning was through hot audience, subtract it from 80,000. Means we got ... Yeah, that's about right. About $43,000 has come in from the ads and we're spending $3,000, and about 30% of that 43,000 ... Yeah, yeah, about 12,000 has come through the PayPal option. Yeah, anyway, super, super awesome. Really, really love that. I'm going to go keep putting that in in pretty much every funnel I make now, that PayPal option, so that they can do either or. It's getting the technology's figuring out how to do this stuff with multiple pay options now inside the same funnel, which is awesome. So anyway, hey, guys, I hope that made sense. I realize I got a little bit techno-babbly with that, but I just hope it makes sense what I'm trying to say is just watch the numbers, you guys. It's all about figuring out what the numbers are. I just finished reading the first section of Ready, Fire, Aim. That's what it talks about. It's like, "Hey, look." You've got to know what your numbers are. You have to know what they are. From cold ads right now, I have $7.07 earnings per click. Seven bucks. That's huge. That's amazing. That's excluding my hot audience promotion that I did. I don't promote to them anymore. I'm not going to keep pounding them. I'll come back and probably promote it again once a quarter, once every six months, but that's about it. The rest of it now is I'm going through it and I'm running ads, and then I'm also doing Dream 100 stuff, and I've been shipping packages to a whole bunch of big people, and they're wanting to promote, which is great, and I've had a total of I think of about seven MLM owners asking for this product for their entire company. It's good. I know it's good. There's nothing else out there that's like this, so anyway. Hopefully that was helpful for me to go through some of these numbers here, and I hope you guys understand what I'm trying to do and what I'm looking at. It's very, very key to understand what that is. It should be relieving to understand that really it's not in your hands. It does not matter what you think. You don't have to worry about all this stuff sometimes that I see a lot of people worrying about. Most of the time, just put it out there and see how people respond, and if you're like, "I wouldn't buy this," it doesn't matter. You're not the one buying it anyway, so who cares what you think. Just put it out there, see what happens, be a good detective, and work backwards. So for me, I'm looking at this, and I'm like, "Man, yep, all my numbers are right within industry standards as far as a good webinar goes. Everything's awesome. Cool. Awesome. Built it from scratch just a few weeks ago, which is great. About to fix it and finish up, but man, look at this. I got to fix my show-up rate. You know what? I got to increase more of the drive so people go buy as soon as the webinar is over. I mean my follow-up series is going amazing, but how can I tweak that and make that even better? Oh, how can I ... ?" It turns into this game. It's the reason why we say, "Don't automate it for a while." Don't automate it for a while, so that you can tweak, so you can go back and forth like, "Oh, man, I changed so much stuff." I had a webinar that I did. It was two or three weeks ago. It had only a 6% conversion rate, and I was devastated, but my follow-up series brought in another 7,000 in sales. I was like, "Holy crap." So I was like, "Okay, well that series is working well, the follow-up series, but what about on the webinar?"
Anyway. I hope that makes sense what I'm saying. This is a fun game. I don't recommend you go do it totally cold and outright if you still have a 9:00 to 5:00 job, and you've never done it before. Build it up on the side. That's exactly what I did, and all I did was document me. I just documented the journey of me creating the thing along the whole way, and it made it super, super profitable, super easy. It made it super safe and secure because I knew there was an audience waiting for it, and that's what made it release and go out. So next phases for me, what I'm doing is I don't want to take any profit from this so far. I want to live completely off of other areas, so I'm turning on other funnels. I'm putting other things out there where all my living expenses are taken care of, and I can let the money that's coming in off of this webinar fuel more ad spend so I can just explode the thing and blow it up. We're just testing with real small amounts right now, really small little pieces of cash all over the place, and by doing that, we're not actually spending that much money in ad spend. $3,000? That's it in ad spend to get that kind of revenue? Holy crap. If I was to give you $42,000, would you give me $3,000 back? Yeah, of course, but we're keeping it really, really small, and we're starting to find where those pockets are, and now it's all about figuring out these different places and pieces that are going to make the numbers better, but anyways, it's been a ton of fun. I've really, really enjoyed it. I love what I do, and anyway. Webinars are just so awesome. There is such beauty to selling stuff that's more high-ticket. Too many times I see people selling stuff for super cheap because they're afraid to charge that much money. You're not the one putting up the money anyway. It does not matter. Just figure out how to charge more and then justify for it. Anyway. All right, guys. Hopefully it was helpful. I know it was a lot of numbers. It was a bit of a techno-babble as well, but I hope you see the process that I'm going through, and I hope that you mirror it. Guess what I'm doing? I'm documenting my journey. That's it, but the next places I'm going to go figure out and next pieces I'm putting on is I'm tweaking a lot of the script, show-up rates, all that other stuff. So I'm going through and I'm funnel hacking some of the top webinars in the internet in general right now, watching their webinars, and watching what closes they have, and watching the things they put in there, and watching ... because I know my actual offer itself does well. It converts well. I want to turn up the sexy on that just a little bit, but I know the offer is not actually the big issue right now. It's what can I do for more scarcity and urgency? How can I lace in more of this? You know what I mean? Anyway, that's what I'm doing right now, so I'm going, I'm funnel hacking the greats. I'm going, I'm seeing what they're doing. I'm putting those things in and it's the very process that I preach, and I hope you guys can see that and just get it out. Just put it out there, whatever it is that you're doing, and just get it out. So anyways, guys, hopefully it was helpful, those current stats. I'll probably, whenever there's something significant for me to update as well, I'll probably let you guys know what's happening again, but that's an accounting for month one, January, and you guys all know my goal for this year is a million dollars, and I'm on track for it. A million dollars is what, 82 grand a month? We did $80,000 and then I sold a lot of other stuff in other places, so we're actually right on track, and we're just in the testing phases, so I hope, I think that it will happen faster than the end of the year, and I think it will, but ... Russell was telling everyone that he thinks it'll happen by summer. That puts some serious pressure. It's like, "Whoa, I didn't know you were going to give that kind of prediction there. Okay. How can we turn up the juice if that's what you're Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your pre-built sales funnel today. | |||
| 31 Jul 2018 | SFR 161: My Favorite Rollout Strategy... | 00:17:26 | |
Boom what's up guys it's Steve Larsen, and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio, and today we're going to talk about how to roll out products. This is my favorite rollout strategy.
I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today, and now I've left my 9 to 5 to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.
The real question is, how will I do it without VC funding or debt? Completely from scratch. This podcast is here to give you the answer.
Join me and follow along as I learn, apply and share marketing strategies to grow my online business. Using only today's best internet sales funnels.
My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.
What's up, guys? Hey, I'm excited for today; I'm excited to be able to share with you some neat things that, frankly, I don't see many people doing.
The first product I ever launched and put out the door was an utter failure - the thing was terrible, okay? But I didn't know that at the time.
I spent inordinate amounts of time putting together the product. I thought my product was the best product ever -I was so excited! I was running towards it.
In my mind, I was like this thing's going to change everything - this is going to be incredible. I was excited, and people would be like, "What are you doing? What do you spend all this time doing?"
I'd be feeling a little smug about it like, "You don't know - just you wait and see!" There'd be people coming up to me and saying things like, "Larsen, what's up now? You doing that thing again? Alright, good luck with that..."
I was actively seeking what I called, "My Shut Up Check." My shut up check"was something that I sought as fast as I could when I was launching.
This was four years ago, and I hadn't perfected the rollout strategy that I want to talk with you guys about today... But what was interesting was I'd go build these things, I was looking for my shut up check.
The shut up check was a concept I learned from a guy I was listening to six or seven years ago. The shut up check is the first check you get from your business.
So when someone says, "Oh, you doing that thing again? Is that even gonna work?" You can pull it out that check and be like "Shut Up! It is working, here's the money." That's your shut up check.
I hope that you've gotten your shut up check to throw in the naysayers faces a little bit? Not that we would ever do that... BUT TOTALLY DO IT ;-)
What I wanna do real quick is share with you guys how I roll out my products.
What ended up happening with that first one is, I spent eight months building it... and then when I finally launched it, and I put it out there... nobody bought it. And it's because nobody knew about it.
It took three or four months before cash actually started coming on in, and I kind of abandoned it. Until I figured out better ways for traffic - and then I started making more money. But I don't want you to go through that, okay?
I was in the middle of college, I was doing stuff with the Army, I was super busy. So for me to spend eight months of my time - we're talking late nights, early mornings - time I could have been with my family... And then, to not have it work - that was so mentally tasking it was ridiculous. I don't want you to go through that.
So instead, I wanna share with you how I roll out my stuff.
I have marketing books in bookshelves all over the place. I was reading this book, Positioning (It's written by Al Ries and Jake Trout) ... just kind of thumbing through it.
Frankly, instead of reading front to cover, I'll thumb through and find chapters that look interesting, and I'll go learn something specific from it.
Anyway, it's kind of cool, they say, “When you make a new product you must by default, position against the old product.” I thought “Hey, that's super cool.” I totally get it, when you're making an opportunity... and he's saying a whole bunch of other great stuff.
I really like what they say at the beginning. They say that, “we live in a communication-saturated environment.” There's so much communication; you're listening to me, you're listening to other people ... Don't listen to other people, just listen to me ;-) There are so many people speaking.
Back in the day, not enough communication was the issue. Inside of organizations, not enough communication was really the issue. Maybe even customer to business, or business to the customer - not enough communication. Those are serious issues for sure.
However, there are also massive tendencies to over-communicate now. I believe in consuming a very information very low information diet - as Tim Ferriss teaches and talks about in 4 Hour Work Week.
I'm very careful who I choose to listen to and very careful about what I consume. If I'm not learning for intent, then why am I learning? It's just noise. I ranted about that on a previous podcast. I really like what Tim Ferriss says about the subject.
In Positioning they say, “Today, communication itself is a problem. We've become the world's first over-communicated society. Every year we send more and receive less.” Now as an entrepreneur, as a marketer, that is a terrible terrible place for you to be.
It has to do with something that was mentioned in the beginning of the book. There's a point that I really like ... (There are a few points that I disagree with too - sorry. Actually - not sorry - I believe it. Just from my own experience of rolling out products)
This is the point; “For years, all of us in the marketing area have taught to our students to build a marketing plan around ‘The 4 P's’.” If you guys don't know the 4 P's; the 4 P's are like the Bible, they're like gospel. Especially in corporate marketing.
The 4 P's are: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. What's the product - what's the price of it? Where you gonna place it? How you gonna promote it? Now that makes sense, but he makes a great point. There's some areas here that I agree with and some that I won't here, and I wanna share with you why - and it has to do with my rollout strategy.
The next point is; “I began to realize some years ago, that some important steps needed to precede the 4 P's. All good marketing planning must start with research before any of the P's can even be set.
Research reveals (among other things) that customers differ greatly in their needs, perceptions, and preferences. Therefore customers must be classified into segments.”
Research, get them into segments. You can't serve all segments. I agree with that. I wanna walk you through how I do this without getting technical. So, I'm gonna put the book down.
The scariest thing ever, is for you, as a marketer, or Sales Funnel builder, to go out and launch a product that nobody has ever heard of. Scary, scary crap! That's so freaky.
I remember I was watching a lot of gurus launch their products, and these gurus would go launch their products, and a lot of times the product wasn't even built when they were selling it. I had this moral compass conflict inside of me, "Is that right? Is this ethical?" I was like, "that's kind of weird," and I had a hard time with it for a while.
Every time I teach this strategy, someone says, "Is that right? Is that real? Is that okay?"
Let me explain what's really is going on behind the scenes: They're doing the four Ps, they're doing research and segmenting, they're doing all these other things inside there. They're positioning the new product against the old one. This positioning game heavily affects what makes a good marketer.
The stories you tell, all that stuff that stuff matters tremendously. The reason I'm talking about this is that I'm doing it right now for two products.
If you guys are part of my group The Science of Selling Online, I just built 'Affiliate Outrage' live, in front of the group. I designed the marketing message, drew out the funnel, and then I built the funnel live.
Now, I'm doing it again with another product in front of that group - for FREE - anyone can watch it. I go through, and I say, "There's a need right here, right everybody?" And they're like, "Yeah, there is a need right there." "Okay, what kind of thing would you wish was inside that product? Awesome, cool. You know what, I'm actually go through in front of you, I'm going to design the marketing messages. I'm going to go through, let's brainstorm together what false beliefs there are about the product I'm gonna put out there." They're like, "Well if it's about funnels - I'm not a techie!" I'm like, "Oh, that's a good one community, thank you for saying that. Community, this is how I would combat that?" I go around and show them, "Well, that's a bad belief because of x, y, and z," and I retell them another story. Then I'm like, "Oh man, community, what are some of the stories you would expect somebody to be believing some of the experiences that they've gone through that's made them think they need to be a techie?" They're like well, "I saw this guy and he was an awesome funnel builder a great person online, and he was a coder. All these people were coders." I'm like "Oh that's great, that's great. Okay let me write that down, I need to break that story, I need to put a new story.” Does that make sense?
I'm going in, and I'm using the very people who are buying the product to help create the marketing message, and I'm doing it live in front of them. What does that do?
So I just did this for Affiliate Outrage - it's a free program. I took the time to go do it because I wanted to, number one, go through and show... there's a there's a sense of... I'm trying to display that I know what the heck I'm talking about. How do you say that word, I don't know what that word is?
...But I'm trying to say "Look, I'm not a fake. Watch me do it live. Watch me build and construct the thing in front of you."
I did for Affiliate Outrage, and now I'm doing for another paid product. I'm literally building in front of the very people that I hope will buy it. That's the strategy - and I hope you all use it in your businesses.
The strategy is if you are selling an info product or you're writing a book or you are in retail or if you're in B2B. Take those products and deconstruct them in front of a customer, and put it back together, and say, "Here you go." That increases your sales like crazy.
Six months into working at ClickFunnels, Russell Voxed me, and he said, "Hey, dude, we're going to start a show called Funnel Fridays." "Like cool, what's that?"
A lot of you guys know me from Funnel Fridays. Every Friday, Russell gets on with Jim Edwards, fantastic copywriting expert, and Russell, obviously a funnel building expert... They take somebody's product, whether it's somebody from the audience or something else that they're doing at that time, and they build an entire funnel live in front of people in 30 minutes.
Now, do they always finish? No, hardly ever, that's not the point though. What that does... think about it... Russell CEO of Click Funnels and Jim Edwards creator, the seller of Funnel Scripts coming together and using the product in front of the customer. Doing exactly what their product sells - using the products in the live build.
Sometimes there'd be two, three, 400 people live watching live, giving feedback and asking questions. "Why did you do it this way... why did you do it that way?" Guys that's selling!
Does it feel like a sales script? “No!” The whole point I'm trying to make here is that if you are going, "Hey, I want to go build this product..." do everything you can to, number one, roll it out in front of your audience. Include them in your rollout strategy. Include them in the build. You'll create these true believers.
Let's say you're building software; your potential customers will remember the story of you going through and teaching them why this button exists. They'll remember everything that went on to create that feature. Now they’ll have an affinity for that feature. Whereas before it was just a crappy little feature.
When you're building the little pieces inside of your product, you're putting things together, it's incredibly important for you to document the journey of its creation. That's the point of today's episode.
If you document the journey of the creation of your product - what you end up doing is pre-selling people for the day that you open the doors.
That is what I did not understand when I launched my first info product. I did not understand for quite some time.
It's kind of like Hollywood right? Hollywood goes out six months before a movie goes out, they start getting people ready. They start creating curiosity, they start building pressure.
A marketer builds pressure over time towards an event - a purchasing event. That's really what a campaign is. It's building pressure towards a purchasing event.
There's a campaign and they're building, building, building, building, building pressure. They're building pressure - six months out - or even a year sometimes, right?
There's a preview for a movie -it's only two minutes long - but it's a teaser. Six months out there's another one, three months out there's another one. A week ahead of time, "Holy crap, oh my gosh, this is the launch date. Get your premiere tickets; pay extra to see the first showing of it in your area." Does that make sense? They make an event out of the rollout of the product.
The issue that I find, more often than not, is that there's been no pressure, no talk, nothing about a product before it launches.
The problem with that is that you're gonna rely on ads and influencer name drops. And that's fine; I would use those strategies. I do those strategies myself. However, if you're not building the pressure ahead of time...
There are really two ways that you can build the pressure:
#1 Build the pressure ahead of the product launch
#2 Then you can build pressure after the product launch by doing things like ads, closing the cart strategically, doing lots of stuff like that.
So anyway, I hope that this has made sense? I kind of dove deep with it a little bit. I agree with what the book Positioning was talking about, but not just from a positioning standpoint, but from a rollout strategy. That's very very huge.
For you to think through how to actually put your product out the door. So if you want to see an example of that in action, go to thescienceofselling.online.
I'm saving the live product and funnel builds in that group so you guys can go back and watch them. It's been really cool.
If you wanna see the Affiliate Outrage one in there, you'll see how I designed the marketing, meaning the actual messaging, the sales message. There's a format, there's a template I used for that. Going out and then choosing the funnel to build. There's a format there's a template. 90% of this is just a big 'ol formula. People just convolute it.
Then when I'm actually building the funnel, there's a format, there's a formula that I follow to get that out the door quickly. As I'm doing it live, I'm showing my prospective customers how I'm gonna be selling 'em. There's nothing wrong with that; this is a huge extra value add. Now they're like, "Oh man, I didn't know this is why you did that. I didn't realize Stephen that this belief I have is actually a false belief. Oh cool, you're going to put that feature in. Huh, Interesting."
What's beautiful beautiful beautiful about this whole thing is I'm going out and I'm showing them what they're getting without them getting it. So that makes the curiosity higher. When they've invested that amount of time with me on the internet, (they're engaging for free), if they don't get the product, the itch is not scratched entirely. So they have a massive incentive to buy.
Anyway, I just hope that you take that seriously. What I've been doing the last little bit here, is re-creating certain parts of the product after products are rolled out. I'll re-create certain parts of that product live in order to push more people in. The first time the product goes out, I'll make a whole bunch of it in front of the people. Sometimes not all of it, but key parts I know they'll be really interested in. Anyway, lots of fun stuff.
The whole point is to take the customer with you on the creation of the product (or certain parts of it.) It will create a massive affinity which leads to true believers.
Rather than go and find true believers, you create true believers - which is very powerful.
Alright guys, hopefully, this has been a helpful episode for you today! Thank you so much to all of you who've been reviewing the podcast on iTunes, it means a lot to me. Please keep doing that, and I'll see you guys on the next episode. Bye.
Boom. Just try to tell me you didn't like that. Hey, whoever controls content, controls the game. Wanna interview me or get interviewed yourself? Grab a time now at stevejlarsen.com
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| 13 Nov 2018 | SFR 191: My Coaching Contract Pt.1... | 00:24:00 | |
Boom, what's going on everyone?
It's Stephen Larsen. This is Sales Funnels Radio.
Today, I'm gonna teach you guys about my coaching contract.
I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.
The real question is, how will I do it without VC funding or debt completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer.
Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business. Using only today's best internet sales funnels.
My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.
What's up, guys? I'm super excited about this. I've actually been looking forward to this quite a bit...
So I am knees deep in the One Funnel Away Challenge at ClickFunnels right now. I have the complete honor and privilege of being the guy to literally daily basically go in and hold people's feet to the fire.
It was like two or three days before I actually started the challenge, I started thinking about every other scenario where I was coaching people.
I've coached well over 1,800 people through this process now.
Many have become millionaires, many have made hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a ton of people made money for the first time in their entire life ever as an entrepreneur. And I'm very proud of that when I say that.
And what's interesting, and what's been really cool about this is that I've been able to go through and figure out more about the patterns of why it worked, or why it didn't... And not just from a funnel perspective.
I've been really, I don't know if introspective is the right word? You guys know I'm a kinda introspective individual in general, but I've been able to go through and look, not just from a marketing standpoint...
Meaning not just from a sales message, or an offer, or this is what this guy did in this funnel that's why he made the million, but I've been able to step back and look more deeply into the individual, and look at some of the attitudes some of these people would of have about what I was teaching them.
So I thought it would be kinda neat in this episode to go through and teach you guys some of the rules that I've created as I continue to do more coaching. And if they don't abide by these rules, I don't wanna coach them. It's so cut and dry...
So, I just wanna teach you guys what those are, so you understand the mentality that I'm coming from, and why I have patience in some areas, and why I have absolutely zero, unapologetic, no patience at all in other areas. And so, I thought it would be kinda neat to go through and do this.
Now when I first started, this was like two or three years ago, that was the original 2 Comma Club Coaching program - which is coming up on two years. Holy crap! That's crazy.
Anyway, so I went, and I started looking at all the different patterns of how that got started. I remember when I first started as that coach we were coming up with the 2 Comma Club Coaching program, I was like, "This is so cool. Who's gonna do this?" And then I was like, "Oh my gosh, I'm built for this man. Let me do this. This would be so cool".
And what was interesting, first of all, I was so excited, I was so stoked, I was so shocked to be the original 2 Comma Club Coach and get put in those roles, and it's just a bunch of fun. I really enjoyed it.
I guess it was an episode ago that I talked about the way a customer comes into your product often determines if they're successful with it afterward.
It's not just a pre-frame. You can pre-frame somebody for a sales message, that's not what I'm talking about at all. I'm talking about pre-frame for your actual product success. So, it's almost the exact same kind of thing. So, this has become a pre-frame. I have them written down in front of me here... these are some of the pre frames.
Like I said a second ago, when I first was that 2 Comma Club Coach, I went in, I remember I was so stoked. I was very nervous. I remember the first coaching session came up. If you guys watch, it was a three-day launch that we did - it was called The Seven Day Launch - but it was three days on stage.
I got on stage with Russell doing a part of it, and it was really fun to go and drop out these different questions and back and forth, back and forth, and then suddenly realize there are 600 students, and I'm the only coach. Whoa, right?
I was like "Holy crap! How I'm gonna do this? Alright here we go!" And I was starting to get all pumped up, and I was trying to get jazzed about it.
And what was fascinating about that is I remember that I went in with the belief and the expectation that I would be coaching simply on marketing. I thought that I was gonna go on and I was gonna teach funnels, sales messages:
"Here's how create the offer. Here's great places to get traffic. Here's how you create a publishing or content machine. Here's how you become the attractive character. Here's how you have a cause and a new opportunity." All of these pieces, I thought that that was what I would be mostly coaching on.
And it wasn't until a while later that I realized that that's not actually what happened.
A few weeks into the program somebody asked me a question that wasn't on one of these areas. There are these live Q and A's that I do for four straight hours every Friday. Four straight hours, live Q and A with the person in front of the rest of the group. I would be diving into their stuff with them. Diving in, diving in, diving in, diving in.
And what was interesting was a few weeks in, I started getting questions about, "Well Stephen, I'm a little bit scared to do that?" And I was like, "Uh alright, that doesn't mean you still shouldn't, alright?" "Well, Stephen, I don't know what to say?" Or "I'm not actually that good on a camera yet?”... And what's funny is a lot of the questions... they weren't about marketing!
I think that's the thing that was most shocked me about what happened when I started doing this stuff.
Most of the questions had nothing to do with marketing. They had everything to do with beliefs. They had everything to do with mindset. (I hate the word mindset, we'll call it attitude.) It had everything to do with attitude. I think the term mindset is overused - people just make it fluffy.
Anyway, they had everything to do with the way the individual was approaching the task, rather than the task itself: Here's marketing, rather than here's how you actually how you attack it. Here's how to actually do it and pull off what it is I'm teaching.
And so what's interesting, what's been cool, is that I went in thinking and studying and geeking out and obsessing over the marketing because that's what was I was gonna go teach...
But in reality, about half the question that I still get today, have nothing to do with marketing. They had everything to do with the individual's beliefs.
So I've made it a goal in my coaching to teach people to do to themselves what I'm trying to teach them to do to their customers.
Meaning, if I can get an individual to look at their customer base and go, "You know what, these are like three or four or five or six or seven false beliefs that all these customers have about me and my product and what we're doing." If I can get someone to identify that, the rest of that is cake.
Now, we can start structuring belief shifts. Basically, I'm gonna change the way the individual believes. (There's some serious freaking power in the marketing game you gotta be careful with it, okay?)
But, if they're doing that to the customer - what if I could teach them to do that to themselves? Now that's hard to do... Because let me ask you a question real quick. "Hey you, right now, listening or watching this. What are your false beliefs?" You don't have false beliefs! There's no such thing as a false belief? You believe it, right?
"Hey, what are your false beliefs?" "I don't have any. They're my beliefs!" Right? So, it's a little bit harder to do.
I teach how to find false beliefs. I teach them how to break and rebuild and shift belief patterns for their customers, but I also help the student identify their own belief patterns, false belief patterns. The objections and complaints of the student themselves.
I help them come to understand, "Look! Check it out. You have a false belief in this area about what I'm teaching. You don't think it's gonna work, you are fighting me on it. You're either complaining, or you've thrown up an objection. You don't wanna do it anymore... you're throwing in the towel."
If I get an individual to point out to themselves the false beliefs they have about the game that they're in... Guys, their progress goes through the freaking roof. It's insane.
They learn how to self-doctor. They learn how to self-medicate (not the right word). They learn how to self-assess... there we go. They learn how to self-assess, "What's actually the barriers and the obstacles that have been keeping them where they are?"
This is huge to understand. This is a massive, massive concept.
So, some of the things that I do now... Like, part of the reason I have that mannequin... You guys have seen me bring in that mannequin? If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's a few episodes ago...
But, I have a mannequin, and it's a punching bag in the shape of a guy. And on that mannequin, I started writing down things that people are afraid of. But it ended up being me writing the things that I'm afraid of or me writing down the things that freak me out, or me writing down the things that are telling me about me that aren't true.
I have things on there like: "Shame. Guilt. Not good enough. Fear. Imposter. Dummy." I got "Loser" on the front of it. I've got all these things that are negative that are constantly pushing in on me.
I don't want you to ever look at somebody who's on stage, somebody super successful, or an entrepreneur, and think, "Man, they got it all together." No! If they look like that, they've just gone through a long disgusting road full of mud that has been through this incredible, massive, self-altering, self-discovery, that you haven't gone through yet. That's all it is.
Yes, they made a lot of cash on the way, but first, they had to qualify to make that cash. So that's what I've been learning how to do in the past especially year is go in and help a student identify their own crap.
"Look, let me help you call yourself out on your own BS here. You got some crappy beliefs. That's a false belief! That's a false belief! That's a false belief, and it's not right. It's not true. It's not real. What story have you been telling yourself that's been keeping that belief alive?"
We go through, and they'll write it down, and they're like, "Here's all my fears and here's how I'm gonna overcome it." That's actually the very first day on the One Funnel Way Challenge. They go in, and they write down all their fears, how they're gonna overcome the things... and don't make a big old laundry list that'll stress you out.
It's so funny guys, my business has grown to the extent that I have.
That's been my biggest realization in the past six months. Like, "Holy crap!" The game's been even more fun for me because I've noticed that as I get more discipline, as I add positive restraint, (positive constraint in my body, in my mind, in my behaviors, in my habits), I actually become more wealthy or I bring in more cash, or I can help more customers. It's the weirdest relationship ever.
And so, with all that preface in mind, I what to read my rules to you. That's why I take this so seriously. I am not a friend to my students. I let them know first, that that is the rule: "I am first your coach. I'm not your friend.”
I'm not here to make it fluffy. If you're wrong, I'm gonna tell you that you're wrong.
If I can see you can handle more, I will push you, and I will make it uncomfortable.
That's all about what I believe as a strategic hardship - because of what it crafts the person to be, and what it crafts the individual to become and do. And so that's why I'm going through this right now.
What I've noticed is that when somebody follows these rules, I'm allowed to come in with my side of what I will give to them. If they follow the rule I will award them with more of me. And so these are some of the rules that I created for the One Funnel Way Challenge as well. But, if they do this, then I will do this. I call it my coaching contract, and we released it to everybody.
I just want you guys to know what some of these things are so that you're able to go in and see like "Oh, my gosh, that's why it worked when I worked with Stephen. That's why it didn't work when I worked with Stephen." Or "That's why it's never worked yet in general regardless of who I've gone to."
And please know it comes from a place of love. I'm just a product of the product that I'm trying to teach you guys about. I had to get honest with myself. I had to look at myself and go, "Stephen, you're dumb." I had to get honest, I had to be open, I had to be real.
I was 35% body fat in high school, I was a big kid: "Stephen, you're fat," and be open about that and be honest. "Okay, I accept that. That's okay, my self-worth is not based on that." I own where I am and bask in the reality of where I am? That is one of the biggest keys.
So, as you go through here and you understand, I'm very intense as a coach, and it's because I believe this changes peoples lives. And that's part of what motivates me to do it, and it's part of why I don't care if I offend your attitude a little bit. If it's truth, it's truth okay? If it offends you, it means it's probably ultra true.
So anyways, guys, I'm just gonna walk you guys through this right here real fast okay?
This is the sub-headline: I am first your coach (like I was just saying), I am not your friend. Man, this is such a big one. People get offended by that, but I don't really care.
Rule Number One: "If you will do the work then I will show what work matters."
I hate fluffy work. I hate busy work, I will never give you any. I will show you the path. I will show you exactly what it is that you need to be doing and what you should not do.
Number Two: "If you will show up hungry, then I will match your hunger. I will NOT push harder than you do."
If you guys went to Funnel Hacking Live 2017, (I hope you guys are all coming this next year because it's going to be ridiculous. Oh my gosh.) Sean Stevenson gave a speech in 2017, and he talked about the motto of the Coast Guard.The Coast Guard has this interesting motto. Here's the scenario:
A helicopter goes up into the ocean, there's a sea full, there are fifty people in the ocean, and the helicopter can only save like 16. Who do you save? That's a tough question. That's a tough question.
And I'm not trying to be all Debbie Downer here when you think about this, but I just want you to know what do you do? So their motto, and what they do, part of their motto, is they say that they "Only save those that are swimming to them, who are actually making an attempt."
You can't save somebody, you are not a savior to your customer, you're not. You can only help those who are willing to help themselves.
The biggest thing that I cannot teach an individual, I have tried to find ways, I can't figure it out. I cannot teach somebody to be hungry. I can't. If they don't want it, there's nothing I can do. It's not about going 50/50, it's about goin’ 100/100. 50/50 sucks, that's a stupid rule! I need all of their devotion, and I will match the level of their devotion.
Part of the reason why some people will be like, "Well, I don't know, Stephen.. did he fulfill for me?" I'm like, "Well, you never did anything that I told you to do on day one." I'm just being open, I'm gonna be real and real honest with you. If it offends ya, okay! Does that make sense?
Someone's like, "Well, this ClickFunnels game... Sales... in general. I don't know if this really works?" Like "No! You're just not working, okay?"
Number two, the rule is, "If you just are willing to show up hungry, then I will match your hunger." Because I can't teach hunger, I cannot teach somebody to be hungry.
The difference for any employee, or any entrepreneur, the difference in attitude in any area of life, is if they show up hungry, more doors open for them. If they don't, doors close. And that's exactly how it happens in every opportunity in your life. Opportunities don't stick around. They get passed onto the next person. If you're not hungry, they don't stick around to you.
That's rule number two. Show up hungry, then I will match your hunger.
Rule Number Three: "If you will NOT use your current or past situation as an excuse...
This is a heavy one. You guys like these? These are not normal rules - every one of them has a lesson behind them...
"You are not allowed to use your current or your past situation as an excuse, and when you do, I will help you call you out on your BS."
I need you to understand this one - it's a huge one.
Too many times I've noticed people will be like, "Well, my situations a little different..." No, it freaking isn't. It's different to you, but it's not different than the hardships, or the level of intensity that somebody else is in who is doing it.
"Well, my situation is a little bit different now, I don't have the time." Bull Crap, okay! I don't believe that one EVER! That one drives me nuts.
"I don't have the time." Or "I don't have the money." Yeah? Garbage! Stupid! I don't believe you! Prove it?
Go in, show me a time study of what you're doing in your life? I don't believe you, and I will NOT believe you.
If you ever walk up to a mic and you ask a Q and A like that, "Well, I just don't have time to pull this off." I will publicly make fun of you. That one drives me up the wall. No one's even saying this to me right now, but it's clearly a nerve. That one drives me nuts!
I was in college, fourteen credits baby. Almost getting straight A's every semester. I was in the army - Holy crap, that is a huge time commitment. Married, kids, doing my own funnels on the side, that's where I freaking learned funnels with two to three hours a day. That's all I could squeeze out - that's it.
Those were the most productive, ferocious three hours of my day. I made sure to give my best self.
I'm not talking family, time or things like that. But, every other thing that I had to go do. My best self was given to me learning funnels. I knew it was the way out.
So anyway, you're not allowed to use your current or your past situation as an excuse. Drives me up the wall! Absolutely not. It is a catalyst, NOT a hindrance.
If you do that, then I will help you call you out on your own BS.
What's nice about that is that a second set of eyes can help you better. That's what my role is, to go in and help you see look, you got this belief pattern that I think is really hindering you.
And sometimes we're so close to our thing, I'm the same way. Guys I have spent $75,000 this year on coaching, okay? And it's for that reason. It's so that somebody else can help call me out on the BS I can't even see myself 'cause I'm so freaking close to it. That's the benefit of it.
So sometimes people are like, "Wait, if I don't use my current or past situations as an excuse, you will help me call me out on my own BS? How is that?" I was like "It's actually a blessing." Anyway, that's number three.
Number Four: "If you will NOT make someone else responsible for your results, then I will promise I will NOT do any of this for you."
Now, that one might sound a little weird. Let me just explain that one:
If you will not make someone else responsible for your results - which means you own every success and every failure. Every time you did not do what you were suppose to that day. Does that make sense? I need people to understand this one. You are responsible for everything that happens in your life - even if you actually weren't responsible for it. Even if it wasn't a responsibility of yours to bear.
I can't remember, there was some situation that happened here at our home. Was it my responsibility in the first place? No, but I took responsibility. I was trying to take responsibility for anything: "No, yeah, that's totally my bad." Yeah, oh we had to cancel pictures 'cause it was raining, that wasn't it, but I'm just thinking... "Oh man, that sucks. Yeah, I should have looked at the weather." Wasn't my fault freaking rain came out. But, it's extreme ownership.
There's a good book called Extreme Ownership, it talks about this kind of concept, and if you come in with extreme ownership, I promise to NOT do it for you. That's a huge one.
Most of the time I see a lot of the coaches just so that they can help get results for the individual, they will actually go and start doing the task for the student. And the problem with that is that when the coach leaves, the student has not learned how to go through that mental jog on their own.
So, anyways, Number four, it's actually a big blessing as well.
Number Five: "If you'll be polite to your naysayers, then I agree to make a safe house for you."
I'm not here to belittle people. I'm not here to just shove down, "Man, you suck, you suck." I hate that, that's not my style at all. I'm real. I'm honest, I'm open, but I'm also a safe haven.
And so that's part of what I come to people's relationships with when I start doing coaching for them (or any kind of consulting). I should say coaching/ consulting contract, not just coaching. Anyway...
Okay, naysayers are actually a catalyst for you, NOT a hindrance.
When they come in, they're a natural byproduct of anyone who's actually in motion. Naysayers are a natural byproduct of anybody who's in motion. And so WHEN they come to you... "WHEN," NOT "IF"...
When they come to you, and they start saying things like, "I don't think you can do that. Isn't that risky? Why don't you just get a job?"
I've heard that one a ton: "Why don't you just get a job?"
You just go to them, and you just pat their little heads, and you say "Ah, bless you, my small minded person." And just walk on.
It’s a test when somebody says that to you, and you do not go nuts on them.
I did that, and I made that mistake for a while. At the beginning of this game, too much of my personal value was hindered on what I thought other people thought of me - and that was not correct.
Number Six: "If you will only compare you to you, then I will only compare you to you."
This is a fascinating one.
One of the biggest reasons I see that people fail in any kind of game ever that they go play. Meaning, in business, entrepreneurship or anything, is that they start comparing themselves to somebody else.
Now, you can use the results of an individual to motivate you. But do NOT ever base your self-worth on the results of somebody else.
When you start to do that, you are actually basing your self-worth on a ideals. And the issue with that is that ideals change with every moment. Every blink of the eye, the ideal has changed.
So, it's like pop culture. You can't define what it is to be cool in pop culture, because it changes every single freaking minute. And then when someone says "Well, I'm not cool..."
The problem with it is that there's no way to measure progress because it changes all the time. So there's no way to measure progress.
Instead, if the person just measures themselves against themselves - their history - their past - and where they've come from - it's an accelerant. It's an accelerant and they go nuts. They sprint forward like crazy.
They can look up, they can look up, and they can see, "Oh crap! Check it out. Oh, that's so cool. That guy's done that. I wanna do that." And then they put their head down, and they only compare them to them - and where they were yesterday. That's the only competition you really have. It's YOU against YOU "yesterday."
It's YOU "today" versus YOU "yesterday" - that's the only competition that's really there.
And when you base your sense of self-worth on that rather than where somebody else is, "Oh man," I've noticed that really speeds people along in the process in general.
Hey, wish you could geek out with other real funnel builders, and even ask questions while I build funnels live?
Oh oh, wish granted...
Watch and learn funnel building as I document my process in my funnel strategy group. It's free, just go to the scienceofsellingonline and join now.
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| 14 Jul 2022 | How to Use YouTube to Drive Daily Hot Leads | 00:13:13 | |
Organic content is NOT "slower" or "lesser than" paid ads. But only if you create your organic content with a focus on lead-gen from the start. Otherwise, it's easy to fall into the "content for the sake of publishing" trap. Did your last YouTube video produce a lead or a sale? If it did not, then it wasn't marketing; it was just content publishing. Marketing is measured with leads and sales, not views, subscribers, or other vanity metrics. As a marketer, always keep this in mind. Most people never consider YouTube as a lead source, but I will reveal to you today that it's one of the biggest ways we get daily leads here at our company. In this episode, I show you exactly how we do it and the pitfalls to watch out for. Tune in! Key Takeaways - Marketing is leads and sales (01:02) - Ask for the lead (02:15) - Sell the hole, not the drill (04:03) - Seek leads out of YouTube (04:57 - YouTube videos are assets to overcome sale objections (08:14) - The YouTube pie is so big… (08:25) - Go where your customer is (10:40) Additional Resources Learn more about: --- Download Season 1 episodes here -- Sales Funnels Radio is a podcast for all passionate digital marketing pros looking to up their game and stay ahead. | |||
| 05 Aug 2024 | Recession: How Marketing SHOULD Respond | 00:23:06 | |
These are the tweaks I make to my marketing when there's a noticable pull-back to buying stuff, due to a recession... | |||
| 29 Mar 2019 | SFR 229: Just-In-Time Learning... | 00:26:30 | |
This is how to remove noise in your head and keep high momentum in your business…
A few days before Funnel Hacking Live, Russell reached out and said, "Hey do you wanna speak for another 5- 10 minutes on one of the last days?”
He said, “I want you to talk about your concept, what do you call it, where you just learn a just little bit at a time?" I was like, “Oh, I know what you're talkin' about…”
So I'm gonna walk you through my 5 STEP PROCESS that I use to stay focused and achieve my goals.
HOW TO STAY FOCUSED WHEN YOUR HEAD HAS OTHER IDEAS
First of all, you have to understand that my head moves very quickly and I have a hard time turning it off to go to sleep.
Sometimes, I have a hard time focusing on things, and when I do focus it’s a hyper-insane focus.
A lot the time, I pop music on 'cause it quiets my head, and then I get crazy focused with a magnifying glass kind of energy on the one task I'm doing.
About six-seven years ago, when I started trying to be an entrepreneur, one of the things that I had a really hard time with head noise.
You get noise coming from all different angles:
But then, there's all this external noise too:
Even if it’s only a handful of people, that noise can cause more head noise than everything else.
So there's noise, noise, noise, noise, noise all over the place, and it’s frustrating sometimes... and sometimes it's hard to move forward.
So to deal with my frustration and all the head noise, I developed 5 questions that I use to keep me on track.
I wanna teach you the process that I go through on a regular basis to reduce the noise in my head, gain insane clarity, and keep momentum high inside of my business.
It's an exercise that I encourage you to run through at least once every three to six months.
Some of it I do pretty much every day... but part of it, I make sure I come back to it every three to six months.
LEARNING LOOPS
This whole process actually started when I started beating myself up for still being broke
I remember I was riding my bike home from college one day. I still had a lot to learn, but I was saying things in my head like:
… but, I was the guy who's broke; how hilarious is that!
So…
I started asking myself:
I spent a long time trying to answer these questions... and a few things happened.
Number one, what I realized (right there on that bike) was that I was stuck in these learning loops.
I was actively learning, seeking and studying. I was learning A LOT, and I truly did feel like I knew what to go do in ‘someone else's business’ to increase their sales…
But I was still broke because...
I was learning, reading, and studying for the sake of feeling the semblance of motion, but NOT actually moving.
I was stuck in learning loops.
TIME TO BREAK FREE
The questions that scared me the MOST when I first started were:
It was scary when people asked me that question, 'cause it felt so final.
I didn't want to say what I wanted... and only have stick to that! I wanted to have some flexibility. I wanted to be able to develop different things that I had interests in… Do you know what I mean?
... and so it scared me. It was a false belief, I had to overcome... and it was challenging.
I didn’t just have a whole bunch of false beliefs about money; I had to recreate my relationship with money.
The fact that you're an entrepreneur means that you CAN do different things. There's something to focus and getting something done, but that doesn't mean that you can't go build other things as well.
(And we'll talk about that in just a little bit…)
I’ve got MORE done in the last six, seven, eight months... far more than in the first three, four, five months that I was out on my own.
Even though I was hustlin' like crazy...
I was barely sleeping. I was just getting the product out the door. I was selling to make sure that we weren't gonna die in a gutter.
It was SCARY for a while.
We were like, “Crap no one really bought off the webinar that time. Is this gonna work? Crap, crap, crap!”
So these where are 5 Steps I used to reduce the noise in your head and massively increase the momentum in my business (and these are in order ):
STEP #1: DECLARE YOUR GOAL
You have to declare what you want. If you don't know what you want nobody else knows how to support you.
It’s funny how the moment you start declaring what you want in your life things begin to conspire for your sake.
People finally know what it is that you're doing, and they start coming to your aid to help you build your stuff.
However, nobody can do that if they don't know what you're going to build in the first place.
The scary question people have about this is: “Stephen, does that mean, that everything I do is final and I can't change ever?”
No, it doesn’t mean that at all.
In fact, the next blog will be about focus and when it's okay to bring on something else.
So anyway, back to Step #1...
You have to be able to declare what is it you want.
Every year, I declare my public goal. Every January I drop out a podcast episode declaring my goal, and it's one of the scariest things I do.
BUT…
You have to declare what you want and where you're going if you want to get there!
STEP #2: BRUTAL HONESTY ABOUT WHERE YOU ARE
You have to have brutal honesty about where you are in relation to where you want to go.
That's why I get so fiery when someone goes to rent a Lamborghini to take a picture in front of so they can increase their status because of a picture.
That’s NOT what causes success in business. That crap drives me nuts. It’s not helpful at all.
I'm not saying that having a Lambo’s a bad thing. I'm sayin' when you feel like you need to be somebody else, that's a BAD thing.
The internet lets you be *YOU* louder. That's what's so awesome and beautiful about this space.
You need clarity and MASSIVE honesty about your current position. Honesty in your current spot…
...which also means where you are NOT.
When I realized: “Oh my gosh, Stephen you're broke.”
I didn't say to myself: “You're not that broke.”
When I got kicked out of my first semester at college because I failed out. I got honest with myself: “Larsen, you're dumb.” I didn’t say: “Well, you're not that dumb…” No, man... I was stupid. I didn't know how to learn.
I was 35% body fat in high school. I had a double chin and I was working on a triple (a very obvious one)... I was only 5'6"... (I grew six inches later on that year, I sprouted like crazy)...
But when I realized that I needed to lose some weight, I didn't sit back and say: “Oh yeah, you're not that fat.”
NO!
I was like:
Be honest about it. Stop trying to sugarcoat it.
If you’re bad at building funnels or you suck at traffic own it. I suck at traffic. That's why I say that. It's Truth. I don't try to get good at it.
Somethings you have to address in your life in order to move forward and other things you can outsource.
After I got kicked out of college, I went back four years later and had to reapply... I almost got straight A’s for the rest of college…. BUT I worked my face off to try and learn how to learn.
It was an active pursuit of mine. That's not gonna happen by accident.
I had to learn how to learn, and it was challenging. It was one of the hardest periods of my entire life. It was really rough.
It NOT a pity party where you constantly beat yourself up for the sake of honesty. I'm not sayin' that at all…
YOU JUST NEED TO GET HONEST!
If you’re NOT brutally honest about where you are you won’t be able to move onto the next step.
STEP #3 JUST IN TIME LEARNING
Just-In-Time Learning is when you learn only what you need just in time for when you need it.
If I don't need to know anything about SEO, I am NOT going to learn it.
Imagine this on a graph:
#1: The goals at the top.
#2: I've gotten brutally honest in where I am, and I'm like, “Oh crap, I'm actually down here at the bottom…”
#3: I'm NOT gonna solve problems that are halfway up the graph. I solve the next problem that's directly in front of me.
*SOLVE THE PROBLEM THAT’S DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF YOU*
I'm gonna be annoying here so you remember it. This is the way entrepreneurship works; it’s a faith-based game:
I see the peak, I do not see the path.
The path doesn't really matter because you CAN’T see it anyway.
The ONLY thing you can see is the first one, two, three steps in front of you. Everything in the middle is dark; you can't see it. It's NOT even existent yet. You just know it's kind of there.
So one someone says to me:
I'm like, “You're not gonna win!”
A little papa bear moment here:
You're not gonna win. You will not make it in this game if you need to know ALL the pieces before you get started. Welcome to entrepreneurship. You are in the business of solving problems.
I’m so tired of the saying that: “A CEO reads a book a week." Great! You aren't a CEO! So cut that crap out.
A CEO is NOT in the same business that an entrepreneur is in. A CEO is in the business of systems.
A CEO is in the business of building and tweaking systems. An entrepreneur is in the business of problem-solving. Which means you shouldn't be all over the place just studying for the sake of it.
Here’s another saying that sucks: “Knowledge is power.”
NO, IT’S NOT! Doing something with knowledge is power.
...and so what you do is you learn for the one step in front of you:
You won’t know EVERYTHING, but you will know just enough to place your foot on the ground Boom! Then the next step will appear…
If you’re like, “CRAP, I don't know how to take this next step!”
Now it’s time to:
...because you need to hunt an answer.
Don’t learn for the sake of it. I'm not learning just because it's interesting. I'm learning to place my foot in the next step.
This is 100% how it's done.
You gotta stop learning for the sake of it.
I'm not making fun of SEO. I'm not making fun of traffic. But I'm telling you it is NOT on the path that I need to know. It's not on the path! It's NOT my role.
I'm in the business of solving problems, and the problem that I'm solving has nothing to do with SEO. The problem that I'm solving has nothing to do with a logo... in order to create cash.
I'm sorry, it's just not on the path. I don't need it.
I made a ton of money without having a logo.
An official color scheme and palette. No, I don't need any of that stuff.
At any time, any time, anybody can ask me, "Stephen, what's the problem "you're trying to solve right now?" And I can tell you what it is.
I can tell you exactly what it is... because it's the next thing that's always on my mind. I'm not looking any further.
I might spot check every once in a while to look at the model of the industry that I'm following:
“Okay, yeah, I'm doin' the right thing. Okay next, okay boom. Boom, then head back down. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.”
..and then doing the work.
My speed is dictated a lot of times by how well I can quantify the next question that I'm tryin' to solve. It's not to offend anybody, but so many people are just studying and learning, reading and consuming.
No wonder you feel like your wheels are spinning.
If you don't know these first two anchor points, you can’t know the next step! You can't!
STEP #4: KNOW THE MODEL
I'm talking about the industry model that you’re following.
For Example:
If you're selling E-com, you have to ask yourself:
“Are there other people largely selling what I'm selling?”
The answer for every person reading this is, yes. Yes, there are.
If you're shipping a product, other people have proved how to ship products and create a business model.
I’m NOT just talking about funnels...I’m talking BUSINESS MODELS around how to ship stuff successfully, etc
Other people have already done that successfully before you.
If you're selling supplements, ( and I don't care if you're selling a brand new supplement), other people are also selling supplements. So take one step back and look to see what the industry has proven to sell.
I'm in the info-product model space, so I follow the info-product model... which means a lot of my decisions are already made for me.
Funnily enough, in the last month, there's been many people who've reached out and said, "Stephen I'm concerned that it looks like you're working maybe a bit too hard."
...and first of all, I wanna slap 'em...
Secondly, though, the ghost’s in the machine, man. There are so many decisions that are already made because I’m following a proven model.
That's why my speed is so fast.
Another way to think of it is the value ladder.
What's the info-product traditional value ladder that exists out there?
Sweet!
Well, I'm gonna go start here in the course area, and once I prove out that concept, I don't have to ask myself the question of what product should I launch next? No!
Everyone in the info-product space makes a book next. So guess what I'm doing, I’m writing a book.
Everyone in the info-product space is publishing, 'cause it's info. So guess what, I've got a podcast.
Watch what's coming next…
I'm just following the freakin' model that's been proven forever in that space.
This is HOW you navigate that dark middle space where there’s no path!
I can hear people saying, "Well I'm different." No, you're not.
What you need to do is go back to see how people in your space have proved the best way to sell the thing that you’re selling.
Whether it’s:
...there's a model that tells you how to best to make sales happen on the internet …
Do you know it?
No wonder you feel like you're spinning!
Do you know what it is?
No wonder you feel like you don't know the next step.
I'm like, “Dang man, I'm NOT in your industry. So I'm NOT gonna know the answer to that... And I'm NOT even the one buying your thing.”
Stop asking me. Go drop it out to your dream customers.
...which leads to STEP #5
STEP #5: HOW CAN I INCREASE MY SPEED?
Once every three to six months I like to ask myself the question: “How can I increase my speed?”
Money loves speed. Money likes speed A LOT. I'm just one guy, so how can I increase my speed?
Shortly after I left my employment, I was on a flight back from pitching an audience. I sold 20% of the room which was great. I was a celebrating for sure.
But on the flight back, I started panicking a little bit because I realized that I could not even fulfill on the 20% orders to a level that I wanted to and it freaked me. I got nervous.
How on earth could I scale to a business where I'm selling millions of dollars?
So I had to ask what systems from the info product model that I was following would be required in my business in order for me to pull that off?
I asked: How can I increase my speed?
...and we're still doing that.
We go back and forth between the marketing and the systems dance. Marketing, systems, marketing, systems, marketing, systems.
But I need you to understand this, this is a huge principle:
Every time I ask the question, ‘How can I increase my speed?,’ typically, (and maybe it's just 'cause I'm a funnel builder), the answer has little to do with me getting more sales.
Typically, it has a lot for me to do with building out systems to handle more sales.
Getting more sales isn’t the hard part, (especially if you do what I'm talkin' about and you actually publishing and do all the things).
Systems are, (usually for me), the thing that can increase my speed the most.
I recently asked myself this question on the way back from Funnel Hacking LIVE, and as a result of that, we hired another person to increase my speed with a product.
Every time I ask myself that question, it's ALWAYS uncomfortable because something in my business structure usually has to change, and I have to be more malleable.
THE 5 QUESTIONS
Answering these 5 Questions will drastically reduce the noise in your head, because when :
It gets really easy to figure out the next single greatest problem that you should be solving in your business.
Does that make sense?
You might already know the answer. It's not that it has to take three, four, five, ten months, whatever... it could be an afternoon or an hour just to set up a system and then move onto the next step.
It's easy when you have a blueprint. It's a loose guide along the path. You’re not gonna know all the details, but you’ll know enough to move forward. It's kind of a 30,000-foot view.
I don't really believe in shortcuts. I do believe though you can increase your speed on the path.
I feel like people look for shortcuts too long, and instead, they could have just done the actual work. It would have been faster.
That's it, my friends!
Gain clarity on where you're going because your audience can't follow you if you don't know the answers to these questions.
It's hard for you to raise a banner and to know what you stand for, and for people to come and support you.
It's hard for everything around you to start to conspire for your sake if you don't know the answer to these five simple questions.
I challenge you to write these questions down and put them on your wall:
Hopefully, that's helpful my friends... and to finish, I want to share my new tagline and the theme for OfferMind which is:
Get Rich & Do Good.
Alright, my friend. See you later.
BOOM!
If you're just starting out you're probably studying a lot. That's good. You're probably geeking out on all the strategies, right? That's also good.
But the hardest part is figuring out what the market wants to buy and how you should sell it to them, right?
That's what I struggled with for a while until I learned the formula.
So I created a special Mastermind called an OfferMind to get you on track with the right offer, and more importantly the right sales script to get it off the ground and sell it.
Wanna come?
There are small groups on purpose, so I can answer your direct questions in person for two straight days.
You can hold your spot by going to OfferMind.com.
Again, that's OfferMind.com. | |||
| 25 Apr 2018 | SFR 140: Value Isn't the Offer... | 00:19:26 | |
Let's dive into WHAT gets you paid. It's not the offer!...
Hey. What's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen. You're listening to probably one of my favorite episodes of Sales Funnel Radio so far. I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. Now, I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business. The real question is, how will I do it without VC funding or debt? Completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learn, apply and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels. My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio... What's up, guys? Hey, I know probably every episode is my favorite episode when I'm doing it. Anyway, this is one of the core reasons and ways to actually make more money... What? Hopefully, that's an exciting topic for you. Hey. Next to me to my right right now, it's a chest. I've got a bunch of random stuff in there. Some guns in there. Frankly, it's extremely very thin, brittle chest. It's slightly painted green. There's these little latches on it that are all rusted out. Frankly, it looks like a piece of junk. It does. For right now in today's value, you probably wouldn't get much for this, which is interesting. How many guys want to buy it? I would love to maybe ship it out to you if you guys want to buy it. Anyway, that'd be really, really awesome if you guys want to purchase it. You're like, "What, Steve? Are you kidding me?" All right. Let me shift it up for you now. Let me tell you that this chest belonged to Captain Wayne Kartchner, an ancestor of mine.
This thing is old, guys. This is an heirloom. It's next to me. it's rusted out. I do keep a few things in it but it's next to me here. Captain Wayne Kartchner. I've got several military members that have been in my bloodline, which is part of why I went into as well for myself. Interesting. How many guys want to buy it now? Would you be shocked if the price that I sold this for after telling you that story would be a little bit higher? No. It wouldn't shock you, would it? It would not shock you at all that I'd actually charge more money for that. Hey. I've got some pieces of dead tree over here. It's awesome. There's some blank ink on them. It's a book. Anyway, how many guys want it? Sweet. Sweet. Cool. You know, I'm going to sell it for 100 bucks. If you guys want it, just message me right now. Is that cool? All right. What if I was to tell you that this one book has made me a butt ton of money and has actually given me the life that I have been wanting really, really bad? Cool. Is it worth 795? You guys get what I'm getting at? Hopefully, you are. One of the questions I've been getting a lot lately... Some guy wrote out and he said, "Hey. This is one of the topics I've been pounding on a lot lately for my coaching students." I wanted to be able to go in and I wanted to teach you guys the same thing. This is important. This is very important... What I want you to know is we're about offer creation. Offer creation and storytelling. Those are the only two things that I really care about anymore. Okay? Those are the two most lucrative skillsets I can even think of.
That's really it... I don't have to be an amazing, creative individual with Photoshop. I like Photoshop. I don't have to be an amazing, creative individual with ... I don't have to know how to code. There's a lot of people that know how to do this. Okay. I can outsource all that stuff but the thing that I cannot outsource very well is this whole storytelling offer creation piece. Why? Why?.. Let me tell you a story real quick. A man walks down the street. It's actually an alley. He walks down the street. He's creeping. He gets shot and dies. Okay? Let me switch it up for you though and give you some context. It's a war zone and he's a soldier. Okay? Huh? Right? In one second, you might think that someone was murdered. In another, you might think that they were just killed in the battle zone. Fascinating context. Context is everything. Context is what actually delivers value. Okay? Offers is not where value is created... I want you to know that. That's what I'm trying to tell you. I'm trying to help you guys. Look around at these objects that are around you. One of my favorite stories is a story of this violin. I don't know if it's true or not. It's a movie. You guys might know it. This movie where this violin is being shown. It's at an auction. They're auctioning off this super old violin. Somebody's like, "Yeah. I don't remember the price once were but it was super low." Everyone's like, "Really?" The auctioneer's like, "You only paid that much for it and no one would go any higher." Suddenly, this old gentleman just starts walking up to the front of the room. He takes the violin. In front of everybody, he starts to clean it.
He cleans the violin. He polishes it. He tunes it. He plays the most incredible song and just hands it back to the auctioneers and goes and sits back down. The offers for the violin go through the roof. Why? Context, guys. Story. A story creates context for things. Okay? When we're thinking about offer creation and products and value and how to make more money, you have to understand. Your offer is not what creates value. Offers do not create value. They deliver it. They don't make it. Okay. They deliver it... They scratch the edge but they don't make value. What makes value is the sales message. Okay? For example, a lot of you guys know that I'm religious. Here's a biblical example. There's a woman. She goes and she pays tithing. She gives away just two pieces of coin, whatever it was. I can't remember how much. Some rich people next to her make fun of her because she only gave just a little. Okay? Now, from a monetary standpoint, she gave just a little bit. These other people give a ton because they have a lot of money. Christ, he's sitting on the side. He says, "Who gave more?" Everyone said, "Well, the rich people." Actually, let's get some context here. That was almost all of her money. How much more worth were those coins that she gave?
Think about it in those kinds of terms. Think about it. Okay? There's a lot of things, objects, heirlooms you may be even given. For example, I go over to Cache Valley every once in a while. I've got family over there. I had no idea that one of my ancestors in I think, Sweden or Denmark. I can't remember now... I could say this if I wasn't recording an episode right now. One of my ancestors got on a ship and lived on a ship going back and forth between. This is in the mid 1800s. Going back and forth between America and England until he had enough money to get off the ship and he walked across America seven times helping people from the East Coast all the way over to the West Coast. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. He did it seven times... The guy was so intense and such a leader but a humble leader. No one else really knew. Anyway, they wanted him to settle in this area, Cache Valley. They wanted him to be the mayor. He said no. He did not want to be the mayor. They went in and they literally voted him to be the mayor without him wanting to be the mayor. They made him the mayor. Okay?... They called him to be the leadership and he did not want to be in it. He constantly fought back. The only way is because by public vote, they just chose him to be and they decided to be. He ran from it. He didn't want to be. Now that I go into Cache Valley, that place means more to me. That means more to me. He settled part of that area over there. He helped create the towns and everything. When I go in there, it means more to me now. I know the story now. I went and I saw his gravestone. That guy was a crazy entrepreneur. I had no idea until I learned that. That gravestone means a lot more to me now because I know the story. I know the context. Value is created in story...
Story changes context. Context is what creates value. When I sit back and I say, "Hey. Go get this thing called ClickFunnels. Go get this product over here. I've got this cool product over here called Secret MLM Hacks. It's killing it. It's awesome. We have a lot of cool success stories. People are doing great in it." If I just go say that, you'd be like, "Oh, sweet. An opportunity for Steven to take my money." Right?... If I start telling my actual story though, if I develop a sales message, if I use some frameworks that's meant to change the way that the people see the world, that people see the product, value is created in a sales message, not an offer. It's the reason I laugh so hard. People are like, "Well, I would go selling it but I'm not done creating the offer. I don't think anybody will pay for the offer yet." I'm always like, "My gosh. That is not how value is created." Okay? Value is not created through the offer. It is delivered through it but it's not created in it. It's created inside the sales message. Because the sales message delivers context. The sales message changes frames. It changes the blueprint of how we see the world, of how we see the object, of how we see the offer. Okay? Get good at developing those stories. Get good at telling those stories. That's the whole reason why I keep trying to preach that just a little bit. I know I've pounded it hard in the past little bit but it's the reason why, too. I was telling them to go publish. Publish, publish, publish. I know I'm a broken record with the publishing thing. Okay? I know I am but it's because when you publish, people see you differently. You are changing the context that they're looking at you with. How many of you guys when you first saw me, you're like, "Oh, yeah. That's the lead funnel brother ClickFunnels." Without listening to this podcast, how many of you guys ... You guys didn't know much about me. You didn't have affinity for my brand and what I'm doing. You didn't. That's fine. I know that. I knew that. Therefore, I publish. Does that make sense? Now, when I say, "Hey. I'm out at an event. Hey. I'm out on a mastermind. Hey. This is a sweet book." By the way, I'm writing a book right now about all the lessons I learned next to the desk of Russell Brunson. Okay? It's freaking awesome. Okay? I'm so excited. My gosh, it's so good. It's 300 pages. It's really, really good. Anyway, you guys don't care about that though until I deliver context. Until I deliver context. I need you to know that. I'm just trying to help you understand that.
When you are developing your offers, when you're coming up with something new to sell, that's the reason why first, you start with the sales message piece... You're going to have to figure out on a very rough draft 30,000 foot view level of what your offer is or an idea of what it's going to be. They don't make the thing until you know that actually turns money. It's not the offer that's turning money, okay? You don't get paid because of an offer. You don't. Okay? You get paid because of a sales message, because of a sales letter. That's what gets you paid. That's the thing to obsess over. If there's any skillset I can beg you guys to go learn and be obsessive over, it is the skillset of telling stories. Okay? It is the skillset of selling stuff. It's the skillset. Thankfully, one more step back on that ladder is becoming a good marketer. Because being a good marketer, you don't have to sell as hard, which is awesome.
At the core of marketing, it's storytelling. It's educating. It's educating with the intent that they go and purchase something. Okay? That's what marketing is. You're changing belief patterns. How do you do that? You're changing context. You're adding context. You're taking away context. You're adding things to it so they look differently at an object that might otherwise be four pieces of thin wood next to me on the side, right here on the floor. You know what I mean? There's context with it now. I know that there's a story behind it. I know that there is a story... People will pay more because now, they know the story. They know the context. They see the value. It's four pieces of wood that's pretty destroyed. You know what I mean? Did the monetary actual value of this chest right next to me changed when I told you that story? Not really. No, it did. It's the same pieces of wood. It's not like it's an appreciating asset. It's this piece of wood right here. Why does it have a lot of value? Because of the context, because of the story that you now know. When you're developing your offers, please know that that's not where you get paid. You get paid because of story, which ultimately is your sales message. Anyway, that's the whole point I'm trying to help you guys. The products and offers, it's not where the value is created. It's in the sales message. The product and offer just delivers. It delivers on the value but that's not where the value is created. If you're having a hard time selling your stuff, number one, yeah, definitely. Look at your offer. Maybe there's certain things in there that ... I don't know. It just sucks. The reality is, is that you could go in and have a crappy offer with a fantastic sales message. It's a classic example when you go and buy something on the internet and it shows up and it's pure garbage. Why did that work? It worked because the sales message was amazing. It was incredible. The actual product itself was terrible. Okay? That's a two-step method of getting paid more. Just number one, bring it from a product and turn it into an offer. Don't sell products. Sell offers. Number two. Man, make this incredible story. Make an amazing sales message because that's really what assigns value. I will never get rid of my ClickFunnels account. Never. Ever. Why? Not just because of the money that comes from it, because of all the story. The stories that Russell tells where he goes out and he says, "Hey, look." I even saw it. When people, they had never used their ClickFunnels account ever. They just like the t-shirt because they liked the culture that's behind it.
They've got t-shirts. They've got the context behind why that t-shirt matters. Does that make sense? I'm trying to close you, guys. You guys getting this? Anyway, I hope that that is hitting home for you. This is such a huge topic and I'm trying to hit it straight between the eyes. Because there's a lot of people who've been saying this stuff to me lately. They're saying this to me lately. All right?... "Hey. I'm not done with my offer yet. Therefore, I cannot sell anything." It's like, "Well, that's not how things are sold. Yes, you can." All right? Someone reached out to me today and I can't remember who said it. Snippy is not the right word. They're very forward though. How would somebody purchase something that's not created yet? When I say, "Hey. Go create a sales message and start selling before the actual offer and products are created." Somebody's like, "Who would do that?" Like, "Well, a lot of people do that that's why I've launched everything." When we launched Funnel Builder Secrets, that whole offer went out there. Incredible offer. The offer wasn't made yet. We knew what it was but it wasn't created. We actually didn't put it together yet.
It wasn't a Two Comma Club before the thing was even done. Why? Because the value was already assigned. Now, the value was assigned, people were paying for it because the value was higher in perceived value than they were actually paying for it. Then I could go in and I could just create it. I literally created it one week ahead of them. Who does that? A lot of people. I just listened to a sweet interview with Ezra Firestone and Ryan Moran. Actually, Russell sent it over to me. He was saying this exact type of thing. Ezra Firestone does the same exact thing. He creates this cool sales message, makes sure that it sells. He sells to his Beta users for $1,000. The future people have to purchase it for $1500. That first Beta group helps him create the product that they purchased. That makes sense? Anyway, I think I said that, does that make sense too many times. I got to start breaking up more trial closes. Anyway, I hope though that like I said, that's hitting home. That you guys are getting it. Okay? The ability to develop a marketing and sales message is so powerful. That is where value is created. That is where value is assigned because it's where context is delivered. Okay? It's where context is given. We see the blueprint of the object differently. Even though this water bottle in front of me, I used to backpack a lot growing up. There was this Nalgene water bottle that I had. That thing went with me everywhere. I took that water bottle. I don't know how many hundreds of miles I backpacked with that water bottle. I would never get rid of it... There was this value I had assigned to it. When we were backpacking to different areas, we ran out of water. We had to ration water and be a little bit scary actually. Different creek. That's the water bottle. For some reason, I don't know why. I won't get rid of that water bottle. I can't find it now.
That was a lot of years ago. Okay? For a long time, that was it. It was not just a piece of plastic to me. There was a story, lots of them behind that very water bottle. Does that make sense? Sounds cheesy. Totally true though. Completely accurate and applies to every object that you're selling. Okay? Find ways to deliver new context. Another way to say that. Find ways to break and rebuild belief patterns. That's what that is. Anyway, all right. For fear of saying the same thing over and over again, just probably in this episode. All right, guys. You're all awesome. Appreciate you. Go forth ahead and tell them a profitable story. Bye. Hey. Thanks for listening. Hey, look. Can't decide what funnel you need or need more in-depth training on how to use your current funnel, find out which funnel you need at salesfunnelbroker.com and get your premium pre-built funnels and training today. | |||
| 13 Jul 2018 | SFR 156: Crowd Creating Products... | 00:23:22 | |
I have a FaceBook group called The Science of Selling Online - I hang out there daily (it’s a FREE group). I do live funnel builds - and walkthroughs of my latest projects where sharing the reasons for what I'm doing. You can ask me questions, and I’ll answer them live.
One of my latest projects is a program called Affiliate Outrage. It's an amazing course. The cherry on the top is that I’ve managed to pull together some outstanding experts to share their skills in each module.
Last week, during one of my live funnel builds in The Science of Selling Online, someone asked me, "Steve, how did you build a product and get so many experts to contribute to it... How do you crowd-create a product?”
So in this blog, I'm going to answer that question and reveal a skill that I see many Entrepreneurs utilize - that you may not be aware of.
I'm also going to share some of the secret self-improvement skills that have influenced me profoundly over the last few years. Stay with me; this is going to be juicy!
DODGEBALL - AND BEING AN ENTREPRENEUR
There was this one time in my life, where every Monday for months; a group of us would show up turn tables over in a gym and hurl tennis balls at each other as hard as we could.
There was about 30 of us, all in our late teens and early twenties - playing dodgeball and using tables as barriers.
People got hurt - this was hardcore.
I remember one particular time - I was super excited to play that week. I tried to get everyone to start. Man, I wanted to play so bad. I kept trying to get people ready, but nobody was taking any notice of me.
After about 10 - 15 minutes, I got frustrated and went over to this other guy. He goes, "Oh, you're trying to start?" Then he lifts his head, and says, "Hey, guys, we're getting ready to start."
With that one sentence, everyone turned their heads, stopped their conversations, and started listening.
I watched the room in dismay. I couldn’t believe it, "Are you kidding me? - I've been trying ‘forever’ to get these people to do what I want!"
I remember right there, at that moment, I realized that I didn't need to be good at everything - in fact, it was better if I wasn’t.
I realized that it was better for me to be an orchestrator rather than try to learn how to play every instrument...
That an entrepreneur is someone who has a vision and brings is to life. An entrepreneur is a maestro.
MY LITTLE BLACK BOOK
For years, I kept a little black book in my pocket. Every time I had a business idea or an insight, I would write it down in that black book. It was chock full ideas - some great, and some dumb - but I carried it around with me at all times.
When I realized that I didn’t need to be “good at everything” to be an entrepreneur, I wrote it down in that book.
Even though I was in my early 20’s when I wrote that thought down - it was one of the hardest lessons for me to learn as an entrepreneur.
When I was at ClickFunnels, Russell drilled this lesson into me for eight solid months before it finally sunk in
Multiple times, I'd be, "Dude, I'm gonna go learn more CSS." Russell would look at me and say "Why? We have someone for that." He'd be dead serious.
I’d say, “Well, my major before marketing was CIT. I know I could understand it.” Again, Russell would look at me and say, "Oh, yeah, but who cares? We’ve got someone for that. Don't learn that."
I struggled to take it on board because I’m curious and I like to know how thing work. However, when it finally sunk in, it was one of the best lessons EVER!
If you’re like me, it may not be an easy lesson to learn, but please learn it. Here it is:
Just because you know how to do something doesn't mean you should do it
Sure, I can pop open Photoshop, use Illustrator, do my video editing, write copy, film videos, build funnels. However, to scale and get the highest leverage for my business - I need to concentrate on doing the things that only I can do. It's hard, I get it - but it’s soooo worth it
DON’T BE A RENAISSANCE (WO)MAN
The reason I started affiliate marketing was to get the cash so that I could hire people to do all the things that I shouldn't be doing. I also learned to develop another skill that I see many successful entrepreneurs use get stuff done.
About 3 months ago, I had a brilliant person tell me,"Figure out how to hire people you can't afford." It's changed everything in my business!
If you’re reading this, then you’re an A-player - a weird breed of person with both vision and ability
You can bring your vision to life. However, the worst mistake you can make is to be a renaissance man or woman and do “all the things” yourself. It’ll slow you down and burn you out.
So what do you do instead?
SHARING YOUR VISION
There’s one skill that I alluded to at the start of this article. A skill that I see so many successful entrepreneurs use to their advantage. A skill that can help you stay focused on your highest value tasks and get results at the same time. That skill is Influence.
If you have a vision and the ability to share that vision in a way that connects with people on an emotional level, then people will follow you and support you - even when the path is rocky or unchartered.
Let’s face it, as an entrepreneur; it’s likely that you’ll be laying a path rather than following one. So it’s vital that you can communicate your vision and tell your story effectively so that people will follow you.
USING INFLUENCE
Influence is what I’ve used to help bring my incredible content machine together. The caliber of people on my team would normally cost me 40 or 50 grand a month, but because they believe in the vision of where I'm taking the ship, it's way less than that. It's only 30 grand a month!
Granted, it's still 30 grand a month - but in hindsight, I'm getting a huge discount because everyone involved believes in what I'm doing.
Yes, I know, 30 grand a month is still a shed load of money, but if you don't have the cash, don’t panic…
You still have a story.
A great story is one of your most valuable assets.
If you get good at telling stories, your vision will help you hire the people that you can't afford.
It’ll stop you from getting stuck trying to learn everything. It’ll help you bring in the experts you need to grow your business. I see way to many entrepreneurs stunting their growth because they try to do EVERYTHING.
The highest leverage thing you can ever to learn is marketing, and how to change belief
If you want to change someone's belief - tell them a great story. Get REAL good at telling stories that connect emotionally with people. If you can tell amazing stories, it will negate 99% of your need to learn scripts. Just tell a story and then make an offer.
When I started approaching all these experts - calling them in to help me, that's exactly what I was practicing - communicating my vision with a story.
Show people how coming along with your mission will benefit their business too, and you’re on to a winner.
I used this strategy to create my content machine - and to get all the amazing experts to contribute to Affiliate Outrage - which is where this blog post started…
However, before I round up this blog, I want to say a few words about “Vision and Purpose.” Along with trying to “learn all the things,” - the other place I see people getting stuck is on trying to find their “vision and purpose.”
THE PURPOSE QUESTION
Recently, I was hanging out at an Inner Circle member's house with Russell. We were chatting away when he asks me, "How's it going, man? What are you struggling with? Gimme the deets, brutha."
I thought for a minute, and then I replied, "Dude, I'm trying "to figure out what my purpose is." Immediately Russell starts laughing. Myron Golden was standing next to us, and laughing, Russell interrupts Myron:
Dude, Stephen just asked the purpose question. He's trying to figure out what his purpose is."
Myron laughed, "Man, are you kiddin' me? I just found out my purpose 3 months ago."
Russell grinned and said, "Dude, I only found my purpose 3 years ago when I started ClickFunnels, and this whole thing blew up."
Right there I decided, "Alright, I'm not gonna freak out my purpose anymore." Russell said, "Yeah, don't worry about it… Just help people make money, it'll be great." So, that's my purpose for now.
You don’t need to have a grand vision or purpose for things to workout - Just make some money, solve problems for people and your purpose will develop in its own time
My vision right now is to develop something that's freakin' cool. I want to help a whole bunch of people who probably haven’t made their first dollar online yet. I want to teach people how to do what I've done.
TAKE ACTION
THE OBSTACLE IS THE WAY
I have this coin on my desk. It reminds me to lean into any challenge I have. I'm sending these coins out with a lot of my new products because I freakin' love this concept.
On one side it says: “The Obstacle is the Way.” On the other side it has the message:
The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way"
At the last Funnel Hacking Live, the countdown clock for the Two Comma Club coaching program is dropping down. There are 4 minutes to go, and someone comes to me and says: Hey, we're gonna go get in the program, but we figured if we split the program, it'll be half the cost - and we'll take turns going to the events."
My answer was, “ Well, you could do that… but I believe that if you seek a discount, you will find a discount. If you ask how can I afford this program, and you really believe you can do it, you will answer that question instead.”
Questions invite revelation - so it crucial to pick your questions carefully.
Don't worry if you don't have a solid vision yet. Be fine with the fact that you have unanswered questions. Just be careful of what your questions are.
For example: When I asked the question, “How do I become a Russell Brunson?” One of the answers I got was, “Publish your journey along the way.” That's why I publish like an animal. It's because I'm NOT a Russell Brunson yet. Most people use their lack of status as an excuse not to publish.
Don't worry that you don't have any followers yet. No one's listening for a while.
As you start publishing, you’ll begin to create an attractive character, and you start gaining expertise. You’ll become a figure.
If you wait to begin publishing until you're “a figure,” no one's gonna believe you. People only believe you when they see the trail you’ve left - when they can see your history.
I asked a much more useful question than asking “How to get a discount.” That question has brought me to a much cooler place than finding out how to get a discount ever could.
ADVICE TO MY PAST SELF
If there's any advice I could give myself looking back, it would be to ask different questions
For a long time, until I became cognizant of the principle that “questions invite revelation,” I asked some stupid questions, and it slowed me down - A LOT.
So if you take anything away from the blog, I hope it’s a commitment to ask better questions.
So let’s round up, and finish of with the steps I took to “crowd create” my products. They are so powerful, that you can use them to move forward with any project you’re working on… Here we go:
HOW TO CROWD CREATE A PRODUCT
These are the step I’d follow:
Until next time - Go CRUSH IT - and, Keep Upgrading Those Questions!
Hey, wish you could geek out with other real funnel builders and even ask questions while I build funnels live? Wish granted!
Watch and learn funnel building as I document my process in my funnel strategy group. It's free! Just go to my FaceBook Group, The Science of Selling Online and join now.
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| 10 Aug 2018 | SFR 164: Are Webinars Dead? | 00:17:07 | |
What's going on everyone? It's Steve Larson, and this is Sales Funnel Radio! And today, we are gonna talk about webinars.
I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.
The real question is how will I do it without VC funding or debt completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer.
Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business. Using only today's best internet sales funnels.
My name is Steve Larson and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.
What's up guys, hey, okay first of all... I know I got a rubber fish in my hand. We'll get to that in a second... this is called a hook ;-)
Hey, I’m tired of the question, and I think this has been a bit of scare that has happened across the internet, as you guys know, (or if you haven't known), Google Chrome no longer allows auto-playing videos on page load.
What that means is that for everyone who's like, "Hey are auto webinars dead?" I wanna address that question today, 'cause I'm getting it from a lot of my personal students, for coaching that I get from other people that I fulfill on - I get it a lot of places. I even see other gurus saying things like "Hey, webinars might be dying."
Let's talk about this, okay...
So two things here:
#1: the answer's "no!"
#2: I actually wanna drop in and I screenshotted my stats from our webinar over the last month. I grabbed it from the last month - simply so you can see what's been going on for us because the Chrome update has been out longer than a month.
So what I'm gonna do is share with you guys.
We just barely turned on ads for this funnel, we re-turned them on three weeks ago.
Now if you don't know, I have several strategies for how I get traffic inside that funnel:
The first way I get traffic is, I do a lot of Dream 100 stuff and that's actually where this fish is coming in - we've got 100 of these, it's a full-size fish, a full-size trout and we're shipping them out to people in the next two weeks or three weeks.
What we're gonna do is we're inviting them to “fish-slap the crap out of the old ways!” Ha-ha get it? It's talkable, it's not expensive. Please do Dream 100. Anyway, so Dream 100, that's the first way.
The second way is with affiliates. I treat Dream 100 and affiliate stuff in two separate strategies - they are not the same strategies.
With Dream 100, they're existing influencers, they have big lists already, right. I go in, and I'm like "let's do a joint venture together, I'll split 50/50 with you."
With affiliates, they may not have a big list yet, but they're willing to go promote, they're willing to push it out there, right, and I give them a percentage for going out and selling.
To get the affiliate thing off the ground, I launched a program recently called affiliate outrage. It is a free program that teaches people how to make money as an affiliate, selling anybody's products, but all the examples I use in the training are for my products - so hopefully inadvertently they actually go and start promoting my products.
I had about 15 or 16 other massive, massive experts come in and teach courses that were for free - normally you'd have to pay tens of thousands of dollars for this.
For our Dream 100 strategy and we had like 20 or 30 people reach out to us a few weeks back and we've got our JVs setting up. We're doing all that now - it's a lot of fun.
We also have the affiliate traffic, that's coming in.
The third way I do it is publishing; I have a podcast show dedicated to my major products.
So there's a podcast show for this very webinar funnel that I'm gonna share with you guys right now.
Then number four is ads.
Do you see how many things I went through before I got to ads!
Ads are usually the thing that people run into first. I'm not saying not to - I'm just saying there are other ways to do it, okay.
So what I'm gonna do is go in and show you guys exactly what we've been doing - and when I say "show," I mean I'm gonna talk about it.
For those of you guys who are in iTunes right now, just know that I'm holding a 12-inch massive rubber fish!
For those of you guys on youtube, you guys can see it.
Anyway, awesome stuff okay.
I have my phone here, I just took a picture of my screen about three minutes ago before I started this, and these are the actual live stats. Here's the thing you have to understand about webinars right now; "yes, chrome shut down the auto video playing thing," but did they really?
The answer is "no," okay! That's gonna be maybe controversial depending on who you ask, but the reason for my answer is:
In Clickfunnels there is a feature in the native video element where I can still have the video autoplay - I just can't have the sound autoplay. So the page can load and start playing the video - all they did was put a film over top of it that says, "Turns On The Sound."
So I still have audio playing videos in my webinar funnel. My auto webinar funnel is still autoplaying - you just click "Yes" when it asks "Would you like to autoplay?" If you block pause - the video starts playing on page load - they can't pause it.
However, what we've done is change the text on the film they've put on top of the video. The film is kind of dark and slightly transparent, so they can see the video playing in the background, but I have the text say, "Click to join live session in progress."
When they click- the sound turns on and the film goes away, and it picks up right from where it is right there. So if they don't click, they're not seeing it from the beginning of the webinar - which is awesome.
I've actually been using it to my advantage; I put things on the actual page that say, "Hurry! Click above to join session in progress." I have an arrow down below saying the exact same thing. I pre-frame.
You can also pre-frame in the confirmation email, you can pre-frame them in the actual page ahead of time by saying, "look, you're gonna join a session that's actually going live, you're gonna join a session that's starting right in the next few minutes - it will autoplay."
I don't know what the big scare has been about because we're still doing it and it's been awesome.
So let me share with you guys actual stats, that sound good?
I might offend a few people when I say that sort of thing, 'cause they're like "Ah, but it's not true autoplay." WHATEVER! I actually like it. It's a micro-engagement before they actually go and actually watch it. It's been amazing actually.
I've actually really enjoyed this whole feature. We're actually using it to our advantage. I'm not gonna fight it, "let's just go with the flow and use it to our advantage." Instead of fighting it, there are these little micro-engagements before the page loads.
I'm like, "Hey, once you get in there make sure you click soon because it will be playing and you wanna be able to turn your sound on and make sure everything's set up."
It's just one extra step of micro-engagement, and we seem to have more attentive attendees.
Alright so I got my stats here. I'm gonna walk through my stats real quick. This is from June 21st through July 23rd, 2018, so just over a month starting from today just about a month in the history.
We have about $3.35 earnings per click. Not bad! Remember that we turned ads back on about three weeks ago.
Let me run through our page in the last month:
The registration page has 1798 unique page views. 1800 people have seen that page uniquely in the last month.
63% have opted in. A 63% opt-in rate on an auto webinar funnel, you guys, I can barely even get that on a live webinar funnel!
Usually, when you go from live webinars to auto webinars, you get a drop in conversion rates. Mine went up!
We also are selling it harder, we've put a whole bunch of testimonials on it recently, and it's just really boosted a bunch of stuff.
Anyway, so 63% opt in rate, that's pretty huge.
So 1100 people have opted in. For those of you guys again who are listening I'm looking on my phone right now. So we're just reading the stats right here.
A 63% opt-in rate, that's ridiculous! From that, we have on the auto webinar funnel - I get about an 8% purchase rate.
So from those who actually register, there's a drop off from those who register. Right after they register, they get sent to a self-liquidating offer, and that's actually selling quite well.
Only 10% of people actually see it. It's a little over 10%, maybe like 15%, about 15% of the people actually see the self-liquidating offer, actually click over to the actual order page, but it's a 35% purchase rate.
It's pretty crazy, so overall when compared with the other, it's maybe more like 10% purchase rate from the actual traffic coming on in, which is pretty great for a self-liquidating offer.
If you guys don't know what that is, it's self-liquidating, meaning, we have spent about $2000 in ads, just testing stuff - we're turning things back on slowly.
We spent about two grand in ads in the last month, we have made about $1700 in sales on that self-liquidating offer. So we are literally right now just about breaking even on all of our ads spent for that funnel. That's crazy, okay, that's crazy.
We don't have all of the targeting ads turned on. We haven't even really started making new ads. I mean these are all great signs of a fantastic webinar, it's been awesome, and we had great successes with them too.
I've loaded just tons of awesome case studies and testimonials from that product just in the last like three weeks, and that's really helped a lot as well, anyway.
So again, we only turned ads on about three weeks ago, so this is over the last, so for about a week there, there was not much going on in that funnel for I don't know, like a month.
There was lots of other stuff that was going on; I was building, putting things together.
We had 17 sales from $2000 in ad spend, but that ad spend was also liquidated; so we're putting a dollar in ads, guys, and we're getting three or four back out. It's more like, the four, yeah, about four dollars back out, but we're also liquidating on the dollar, almost. Isn't that crazy!
Remember we're keeping it tiny, this is not like huge, overall, the funnel's done about 19 grand in sales. And the average cart value is...
We're getting another $114 per purchase because of the self-liquidating offer. Which means for about every two people who buy the self-liquidating offer, one of those people, or the third one, is buying the actual full program. That's nuts!
Anyway, so are webinars dead?
Oh my gosh, let me just take this fish and just help you guys. "No! They are not dead, let me fish slap the crap out of that belief."
People are like, "Webinars are dead, they're dying, "do you think it's gonna happen?" No I don't, I don't think they're gonna die. I think you're gonna have to adapt.
I think you'll have to add one extra little step here and there, but I actually think it gets a better purchaser.
What I've been noticing is that the people coming in are buying. They've taken one extra little micro-commitment before they actually see the webinar, and they're actually better buyers, and it's been awesome. So none of this has been a detriment to us.
At first I was freaking out too, I was right along with everyone else. I was like, "but you know what, maybe..." And so we started looking at it, and so yes, we have auto webinars running to Facebook ads.
Again we got the Dream 100 stuff going, which we're about to do a ton of joint venture webinars with people on this product.
Affiliate outrage, that's going awesome, and that really hasn't even started turning on yet, as the time of me filming. Meaning, about the first week of that program, I just teach people how to set stuff up and kinda get things running inside their accounts to get things going, and then we get into actual promo strategies.
So as the time of me filming, that part has not actually turned on yet, so affiliate's not even touching it yet.
I also publish like an animal which has helped tremendously - a lot of buyers come from that.
And then we have the ads we've got running.
Those are like my four major traffic strategies that I just always fill slots in for them.
So hopefully that's helpful, so that's some of our stats. So we're still doing great on the opt-ins, still doing great on the purchases.
On a live webinar funnel, you're doing pretty good if you get a 25% show up rate to the webinar.
On an auto webinar funnel, because it's starting in the next ten minutes, right, the actual show up rate is significantly higher. We have about a 50% show up rate, which is awesome.
And then several people come back in for the actual webinar replay, and that's where a lot of purchases come through as well, so anyway we're doing a lot of little cool things like that.
I just wanted to show you guys and walk through that a little bit, and answer that question 'cause my strong opinion is absolutely not, they're actually not dying, but it does mean that you as a marketer, just add one extra little step in there.
It's already native to Clickfunnels. Just go turn on the button, okay. That's all you gotta do. Maybe go inside the actual email or the first page, registration page and say, "make sure you check your sound, click to turn on your sound so you can actually hear the session in progress," you know stuff like that, that's totally fine.
Another thing that's really helped a lot; we just put in this really cool chat element so people can chat with cool people that are in there. We're adding in live closers to the thing. Things that we'd do anyway, regardless if Chrome stopped it or not.
So it's my strong opinion that the answer to this question is, "Absolutely Not! Webinars are NOT dying!"
If you think they are, at least take the webinar script and use it in other places.
We're taking that webinar script, one of the things we're gonna be doing here in the next month is grab the webinar script and repurpose it.
I don't always wanna buy through a webinar. Personally, I don't like always buying through webinars. I actually like buying through a product launch funnel - that's one of my favorite ways to purchase something on the internet... or I just go to the order page and buy it.
If I know it's a great product, I'm just gonna buy it. I've done that many times. Some of you guys have done that with my stuff as well.
So webinar, right that's one way, product launch funnel, same script, different delivery.
I can take that same script, and I can go and make it a blog post.
I can make that same script into an audio program and have people listen to it.
Dean Holland actually takes his webinar script, and he turns it into a free plus shipping book. That script is gold!
So if someone's like, "ah, webinars, they're dying!" First of all, "no, I don't agree with that at all."
Number two, figure out other ways to deliver that exact same script - it doesn't have to go through a funnel. The funnel isn't the script. Does that make sense?
The funnel's not the reason that they do the buying. The funnel does the closing on the actual internet. So just deliver the same material differently. That's one of the things we're doing.
I'm very cognizant of the fact that there's a lot of people who will buy through webinar, but then you take the same script and just repurpose that crap.
Go around and put it in other places. Understand that there are other ways people prefer to purchase.
So, are webinars dying? No! First of all, number two, just take the same thing and blast it all over the place. I am super passionate about this. “Whoa, Papa Larsen's coming out a little bit here!”
You can take the webinar script on stage. Every time I've done that thing on stage we make money, and we close fantastically well - usually like, anywhere 20-30% of the room, which is pretty average, depending on the room, 'cause some people in the room are kinda crazy.
But most of the time I can usually close 20-35, 25-30%, it's in that range whenever I get on stage with it.
Russell Brunson usually does 40-50%! He closes half that room, baby. We'll get there soon.
So those are my answers to that:
#1: Webinars are not dying #2: If you really feel that way, just start taking the same script and deliver it in different ways.
Don’t blame Google Chrome.
Google Chrome is not gonna stand in the way of me delivering my sales message to people who do actually want to purchase my products. So take that thing and just repurpose it.
Hey guys, hopefully that's helpful. Again this is my invitation to “fish slap the crap out of that question and move forward with confidence.”
It’s my opinion from my own results on just one of our webinars. We have a second one launching here soon for another product.
They're doing fantastic, so I don't know what the big scare has been.
So anyway, that's my answer. Maybe it's a little spicy for some people, but whatever ... Those are our stats - those are our numbers. We've been making money.
Alright guys, thanks so much, I'll talk to you guys later.
If you guys have enjoyed this, please share it, comment, tell me if you agree, and I'll see you guys in the next episode, bye.
Aw yeah! Hey, wish you could geek out with other real funnel builders, and even ask questions while I build funnels live?
Wish granted! Watch and learn funnel building as I document my process in my funnel strategy group. It's FREE - just go to thescienceofselling.online and join now
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| 20 Sep 2017 | SFR 75: Hurry UP - Money Loves Speed! | 00:21:39 | |
Click above to listen in iTunes... The two most common lies I see people struggle with are also what slows them down...
Hey, do you guys remember that time I was hooked up to a lie detector machine in front of an FBI agent? Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. I was with the army at basic training, it was 10 weeks longs, we were doing all the things you see in Hollywood. We were running around, we were shooting, we were throwing grenades, we were shooting machine guns, we were really up early, up really late, hardly any sleep, hardly any food. You know what I mean? The whole works... I was one of the only guys who was there over the age of 20. I was definitely one of the only guys there who was married and I was definitely, definitely one of the only guys of the entire 200 in my company who actually had kids, also. I went into the army at an age that most people do not go into at. I'm about to get out, which is awesome.
Some of that's true, some of that isn't. They're like, "Hey, Larsen, we know that you have a pretty clean record. You need to go do that with them." I was like, "Okay. Dang, all right." They send me over to this building, which happens to be the national polygraph testing center. We're marching over there, it's early morning, the sun's not even up yet and you're marching over there. Everyone's holding their gun and stuff and we're walking over. We get inside there and we sit down in this room and it was kind of dramatic. This lady walks in and she goes, "Hey, by the way, just want you to know this is an actual polygraph. If we find anything inside your actual record, or anything comes up, or we uncover anything we will kick you out of the army and there's a chance you could go to jail." We were like, "What? Holy crap." It's funny because some people started opting out of it. They were like, "Oh, I feel sick. There's no way I could do this." I was like, "Sweet, this is cool." They were like, "By the way, also, if it doesn't go well or if we feel like you're lying we're going to take you to this room and we're going to interrogate you." I was like, "No way. I have got to get interrogated." They're like, "Sir, you're not supposed to want to get interrogated." I was like, "Come on. That was would be so fun." I was like, "Is there a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling and you guys are going to hit it, and yell in my face, and fire a gun somewhere? I don't know, interrogate me!" They're like, "You're not supposed to want that." Anyway, so they take me over to this room. We literally waited all day. They take me over to this room and we sit down in this chair. It's just me. The room is totally quiet. There's just a desk, this random lady sitting there I think as an agent from some agency. I don't know. It could have been Jason Bourne, I don't know. No, but we were sitting there and it was just this lady and I in this closed room. It was quiet. I just remember how quiet it was. It was extremely, extremely quiet. The kind of quiet where you can hear your own breathing, where you can ... It's like your thoughts are almost loud. You know what I mean? It's that kind of room. Super, super, super quiet. Can't hear anything out, can't hear barely anything in because the agent wasn't saying anything. I was sitting there and they start hooking me up to this machine. It was like I was in a dentist chair almost. I sat back and I laid back in this thing. They were wrapping straps around my chest, and around my arms, and at my fingertips. Polygraphs were a lot easier to beat way back in the day. They're pretty good now, though. What's funny about lying, this is what they taught us, is that any time you tell or hear a lie, anytime you especially tell a lie, you have a physiological response to that lie. The same response happens as if a disease entered your body. That's why they're able to tell and see if you lied because whether or not you want to there's this reaction inside your body that is harmful whenever you lie. I was like, "Whoa, that's really cool. I've got to remember that." Obviously, I did... What they're doing is they're looking for all these different spikes in your body; blood pressure, pupil dilating thing, all these different things. The pupil dilating this is, I guess, an easy way to not see it so they don't do that as much. Anyway, it was fascinating though. I'm hooked up to this machine and they start asking these questions just to see where my normal response is. "Is your name Steven Larsen?" "Yes." "Are you a man?" "Yes." They ask all these super false things, "Are we in Mexico?" "No." You know what I mean? Really, really it's exactly like you hear in the movies. Pretty soon ... What we were instructed to do was at some point, because this was a training exercise for the agent, we had to lie. They told us we had to lie sometime in there. They were like, "Don't tell us where. Don't tell us when. Don't tell us the question that you're going to lie about. Nothing. You tell the truth the whole way through because it's a real polygraph and at some point in there you need to lie." We were like, "Crap, okay. Okay, sounds good." I had this place. I was like, "I'm going to lie here. Here is where I'm going to lie." Mentally, you know it's coming up. The polygraph is going great. That spot started coming up and I was trying to keep myself cool knowing that I'm about to lie to an actual ... I think she either CIA or FBI ... An actual agent. I was like, "Crap, here it comes and I've got to be good at this." The lie comes up and it was something ridiculous like, "Are you affiliated with a terrorist organization?" Or, "Do you supply and create mass illegal drugs?" Or some ridiculous thing and I lied on it. The agent leans in, kind of like this slow breath, leans back out a little bit, squints, and then she asks the same question again, and I lied. She goes ... Then, she just moves on right next to the next question. I was like, "Oh my gosh, I just beat a polygraph machine. I just beat a polygraph machine. That's ridiculous." She believed it. What was funny was that she almost caught me. She almost got me. I'm a little sad that she didn't because it meant that I could go get interrogated and I was good enough that they never picked it up. I was like, "Crap, I want to go to the interrogation room. Come on, make it hard, coach." That happened. We walk out and I started thinking through because I went back to the rest of the people they brought with us. There was like 50 of us, 40 or 50 of us, something like that. There was only like one other person, two other people who actually beat it. Everybody else was caught. I was thinking like, "How interesting of all those tests, why did we beat it?" There's two reasons why... Number one, I realized that I had to put myself in the state of absolute apathy. There needed to be ... I literally had to care about nothing in the world. I literally had to care about nothing but myself. It was the weirdest feeling and sensation, almost out of body experience ever. Number one, I had to get in a state of apathy. No decision mattered, nothing matter. Number two, this was the hardest part and I almost messed it up; I had to believe the lie. I had to believe the lie... The first time she asked, I almost didn't make it. She almost caught me. I was like, "Crap, I have to actually believe that what I'm telling you right now is true." There was like this moment ... I only had a few seconds between each question each time she asked where I had to really dig down and actually believe the lie. I will tell you that that is one of the major reasons people are not successful. You're like, "Steven, what the heck does that have to do anything with it?" I'm telling you right now, or business in general, is most of the time is what ends up happening is there's really two sets of lies that go on inside a person's head. We just finished another FHAT event, as we call it, Funnel Hack-A-Thon, that's F-H-A-T, the F-Hat. Funnel Hack-A-Thon. It's three days, it's intense, there's now hundreds of hundreds of people that have gone through it that I've been able to take through, which has been a lot of fun. There's always two sets of lies that I always need to overcome in the person's brain. Even though they paid to be there. Even though they have some of the best information. Even though there's some of the greatest advantages, stuff I've never had. Huge stepping stones in their favor towards their success. This is true for anything you go do, anything that you go out and you try. Whenever you're trying to make money, whenever you're trying to go try a new sport, anything; there's always two sets of lies the individual has to over come inside their head. I've noticed it over, and over, and over, and over. It's the same things.
The lie basically says, "I can't. I am unable. I won't be able to. This something that won't work for me. It's great that it worked for you, it's not going to work for me." It's a set of internal "I can'ts", personal lies about the individual. It's limiting about your own self, about your own abilities, your own skills. You've got to understand that everybody feels that way. There's not reason to go and say, "Oh my gosh, there's no way I can get this done." Everybody felt like that at one time. I'm not saying you should not feel that. Those are feelings of inadequacy that can come to any person no matter how good you are. Even Madonna talks about a lot of the ... I actually really don't like her at all. I think she's dumb. I hate Madonna. What I think is fascinating is there is an article I heard about where she talks about the incredible, incredible self doubt that she goes through even before she's about to hit stage now when she's already successful. You know what I'm saying? I'm not telling you that limiting beliefs and lies about yourself are not going to happen. They're going to happen at every stage. It's going to happen. It doesn't matter how confident you act... It doesn't matter how sincere you act, how cool, and calm, and collected you are on the outside. Every person fights with a level of internal, "Hey, can I actually do this? Is this actually something inside of me that I'm able to accomplish?" Every person. There's no reason to be excluding because you feel that way. Every person goes through it. It's funny to watch. I'll always see ... We'll get through a big principle at the Funnel Hack-A-Thon event, right? Three days are going through and we've been on stage, we've been going for 18 hours, just on day two alone. It's an intense event. It's a lot of fun. We get a lot of things done with it. The two comma coaching events. I can always tell who's about to have that belief. I always need to crush it immediately. I'm not telling you to get into this motivated, "Blah, blah, blah," like la la land stuff. I'm telling you to expect that you will have those and understand that when you are, you've got to be self aware enough to realize that when you're experiencing that belief. Does that make sense? When you're experiencing the belief that there's no way I, personally, can get this done. "Steven, what does that have to do with business?" Everything. It has everything to do with business. Russell Bronson says there's a place now where the question and the problem is, "Who the heck to we funnel hack?" He's so far ahead of every person who's out there. The issue now is, who do we funnel hack? We don't know. The list is getting small because he is in the forefront. Who the heck are you modeling after now? You talk about internal beliefs he's got to completely battle and go over. I know that. We've got to go and say, "Hey, I'm at the forefront of this." This is something that no one's ever done and completely be able to take the risk that you could be dead wrong. You've got to be totally fine with that. You've got to be fine with that. That's the secret to getting over that lie.
There's some level of success that happens inside and you've got to learn to look at it and go, "Hey, look, I was successful here. I was successful there. This has been great because of x, y, and z." If you can learn to look at the good, it's not that you're shunning or acting like the bad doesn't exist or like the failure didn't happen. Know that it did. Learn from the failure. Also know that if you sit and you stew on it and you go, "Look, I'm not good at this. I'm not good at that. I'm not good at blah, blah, blah," you're never going to make it. It's that strong of a requirement. In order to be successful with any kind of business, anything. You guys know how freaked out I was just to launch this podcast, let alone the funnels put out in the world. It's a freaky experience sometimes. You're like, "Crap, this could go and fall dead on its face." I'm not telling you to go totally numb and be like, "Well, I don't care about anything." I'm not telling you to do what I did and go into a total state of apathy. That's not the right answer. You should care. You should be really freaking passionate. But to go and say, "Oh my gosh, it doesn't exist," or whatever, learn from the mistake. That's fine. There's so many times I see people, especially when I'm on stage, and it's coaching or whatever it is. Chatting with people, it's all about, "Oh, I don't want to mess up." You're gonna. "I don't want to fail." You're gonna. "I don't want to this. I don't want to that." Guess what? We all fell flat on our face. Do you know how many times we fail at click funnels? A lot and it's totally fine. We've all hit this place where we're like, "You know what? We're going to give it our best shot round one." When you launch your course, or when you launch your funnel, when you go and launch whatever it is you've got to be willing to be able to fail. That's how the success comes. You've got to be able to look at the failure and be like, "Okay, that's fine." You know what, it's not that I'm expecting it. I'm hoping it doesn't happen, but when it does, that's okay because I'll recover quickly. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I'll recover fast and do my next reiteration and launch it immediately again. Boom, launch again, launch again, launch again, launch again, launch again, fail, launch again, fail, launch again, fail, boom. You go, and you go, and you go. The problem is that a lot of times the tying between each failure is so freaking long because we're trying to recover or we're trying to make sure it doesn't happen again or whatever. Who cares?
The market knows. You'll never know unless you launch something. Anyway, that's limiting belief number one. That was totally a rant. I hope that that makes sense. This is number two, though. Number one, the lie that people always experience when they're about to do anything business-wise is number one, is an internal based lie. "I can't. I won't be able to. I am unable." It's all about the ability of the individual. "I can't." The second kind of lie that I see that people will hit against is, it's external. "That can't work. That won't work. That isn't proven. That system's not correct. That funnel isn't good enough. That funnel isn't ... That business model. That product." You know what I mean? They make it external. What ends up happening is it becomes an excuse for them to anchor the fact that they haven't launched on those things. They go, "You know, I haven't launched yet. I haven't put those things out because of that. The market is bad." That was one of mine... My first time in real estate, I went around I put signs up all over the place. I got 300 people to call me in a single month, which is awesome. I was not a realtor. I was in the middle of college, like my second year. I had no idea what I was doing. All I was doing was trying to match sellers with buyers and take a cut in the middle. I was doing a double escrow close. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it. I got seven contracts. Guess what? None of them closed. I got two multi-million dollar contracts, commercial real estate listings, and I knew how to get the deals at the time, but I had no idea how to close them though. For the longest time I blamed the market. Realizing, though, eventually that actually I wasn't good enough at selling the contracts that I was getting. I could get the contracts. I was good at that, but I was not good enough yet. One of the issues with ... The funny part about these two different lies is one is internal about the individual. The other is an external form. What's funny is usually the external lie is usually to cover up an internal insecurity. Does that make sense? "Hey, the market's not good." No, Steven was just really bad at selling the contracts he was getting. You know what I mean? He didn't know enough at that time. That sucks. That was really embarrassing. That actually was a very painful experience for me, professionally, to fail that hard after so many months of doing it. Finally, I just dropped all the contracts and I was done. I was like, "Ugh." Anyways, guys, those are two different kinds of lies. One of things that you can do best to hamper yourself is to believe lies. You've got to understand that those two different types of lies are really, really prominent and they will never stop. They're going to be something that pops up ... You know what's funny? I don't know if you guys watch the Funnel Hacker TV episodes, but there was one about me and my pump up songs. I was sitting in our sound booth. I'm about ready to get on a four hour coaching call and I got on these coaching calls, right? Before I do it though, holy crap, you guys. I take a little caffeine and I turn up the ... I turn up really heavy rock music and I have jam session every single time to get me jazzed up because I need to always make sure I'm in state so that I'm not ... It's like a repellent against any kind of lies. Especially, two kinds of lies. "I won't be able to do this coaching call well enough." That's not true. Number two, "What if this system fails?" Usually there's like seminars or something like that. Do you see what I'm saying? They will always pop up. Always. They're constantly there. Because they're constantly there, the noise that it creates often causes the individual to believe that it's true. It's not true at all. There's just opposition in everything. If you're doing great stuff, also understand that you're going to have crappy stuff that comes up at the same time. Equal intensities, equal strengths the whole way. That's okay. Expect it. Anyway, hopefully that's been helpful. Don't believe the lies. Believe that you can do it even though you might not know enough, that doesn't mean it's not possible. It's possible. It's possible. It's possible for me to go be amazing at this stuff. It's possible for me to go be successful. It's possible for the system that I'm building to work. It's possible for that funnel. It's possible for that market to want it. Does that makes sense? That kind of hope you build your whole foundation and business on is huge.
Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your pre-billed sales funnel today. | |||
| 15 Apr 2017 | SFR 45: Stage, Stage, Stage! | 00:15:12 | |
Click above to listen in iTunes... Trust Comes In 2 Forms. One Builds And The Other Kills...
Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now here's your host, Steven Larsen. Ho-ho, isn't that cool? Hey, big shout out to Robert Phillips, he is a listener to this podcast. He reached out to me and he said, "Hey, I am known as the rock and roll speaker. He stands up and he speaks and he's totally awesome. He's like, "What's one of your favorite songs, I'm going to go learn that on guitar and give it to you." I was like, "Okay cool." I'm a huge fan of Foo Fighters and Audio Slave, and Muse, and so I gave him an Audio Slave so one of my favorites. Anyway, I thought I'd give it to you. I actually super, super enjoy stage. Anyway, when I saw what he did I was like, "Dude, I'm going to put that as a podcast intro man, that's so cool, I appreciate that, that's so cool." I play drums and I play piano and I sing a lot and, but I didn't ever play many strings instruments. Play the ukulele right now, that's about it, that's because my little three year old does it so ... Big shout out to Robert Phillips, the rock and roll speaker, you're the man. He just came out with a book, it's actually pretty awesome. Anyway, speaking of stage I'm super excited you guys because I'm trying to figure out, there's two things I wanted to tell you. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. I am speaking on two people's stages and I am really, really pumped about it. The first one I'm speaking at is called Ad Comm and it's Dan Henry's event. I don't know how many hundreds are going to be there but it's a lot now and I'm excited about it, it's going to be great. It's like two weeks out from now. He reached out about two months ago. He said, "Hey, if I actually did this would you, I'd love you to come speak." I said, "Sure, it'd be awesome." He is having me speak I believe on eCommerce. I need to actually finish writing the actual presentation itself and I think he wants me to do two presentations so I might need to ... Anyway, it's time for me to dive in. You guys know me, I don't like to start something until it's getting a little bit close so it's fresh in my brain. I actually do it on purpose despite others thinking it's procrastination, it's actually not. Anyway, so I'm really excited about that though. I get to go speak on his stage and it's going to be awesome.
I'd love to know if you're going to be, if anyone listening that's actually going to be at that. I'd love to meet you in person, it'd be great. Then the second one, right after I got that speaking gig, I got the second one over in Vegas and I think it's at the Bellagio but I can't remember, or the Paris, I can't remember. Anyway, but it's LCT, it's Local Client Takeover. These guys have a gigantic following and I think they're planning on over 500, less than 1,000, somewhere in that range, people to come. I am so, so excited to do that. They were going to pair me up with Frank Kern's Funnel Builder and we were going to go back-to-back on stage and teach some cool ways to get local clients. I was like, "Sweet man, I'd love to do that." It's been kind of fun to do all this stuff. I had one with Russell, because it's given me really intense depth on so many areas of business... I've built funnels from anything to supplements to toilet paper, it's nuts how much ... I mean, Sales Funnels has to do with anything, you guys know that. I'm really, really pumped about that so the second one, like I said, will be I think it's the first weekend in May. That one'll be yeah, local client takeover, talking specifically on ... I only have like an hour on that one, I don't have a full 90 minute presentation which kind of stinks but there's a lot of speakers at this one, it's going to be awesome. Anthony Crawley, got ... I mean, it's a lot of big speakers. I'm super honored to be doing that and it's awesome. If you guys want me to speak on your stage let me know. I'm just kidding, kind of. I actually really love it and it's just a ton of fun to do that. I love movies and movies are great and it's fun because of special effects and you can see someone's face. You can get up close and personal. There's music, then it's really intense sometimes and you can kind of delve into motion harder but I have a really strong appreciation for stage because there's no second take. It's all, it's very raw, it's very authentic. Anyway, very, very excited though to go do that and show some of the things that I know have been working that we've been doing. Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. I told Russell and he was like, "What's up, that's awesome man." I've spoken on stages a couple times now and, I spoke at that Dekko one, that was really fun. It was like 2,000 kids there, high school kids and I taught them how to automate their fund raising. It's so funny because there's all these MBAs who were their advisers who didn't want them to pull off what I was teaching them because they're like, "Oh, we'll have them learn real stuff." It's like, "Okay, well I guarantee that your MBAs are not making you much money. How about we compare money?" Not like a cocky way but let's just actually see what's actually come of your MBA? I'm not going against MBAs just so you guys know, I've actually really considered going and getting one. It's just when people hide behind it like that is what creates the money I'm like, "Okay, you are so off the ball it makes me want to throw up."
I'm running what we're calling the FHAT Event for Hack-a-thon and Secrets Master Class and all these other projects, it's been a lot of fun, it's been cool but it's just been really intense. I ran into a guy recently and he was, here's a little long here and I'll probably end with this, this is a shorter podcast. His whole job, he gets hired by companies and hospitals a lot actually too which is cool. His whole job, he goes into places and he teaches them a lot of organizational effectiveness. It's super cool, and he was teaching me about trust. He was teaching me and it's so cool because while he was saying it I was like, "Oh, I've totally seen what you're telling me right now." Anyway, so I knew what he was saying was true and real, it was really awesome. He said, "There's really two kinds of trust. One is a predictive kind of trust." For example, Russell sends me to go to, I went to ASW in Vegas. We went and we were, it was a small group of us we went and we were presenting on Click Funnels to a bunch of affiliate people, people who their only job is they are affiliates for other people and they make a good living like that which is really cool. He trusts me, he trusts me to go on and do a good job there... That's a kind of trust... I trust you to go forward and to say the right thing and not be an idiot, and not make Click Funnels look dumb. That's a predictive, futuristic based type of trust and that's the first kind. Everybody thinks that that is actually the most important kind of trust but the they're wrong, it's not. What is more important and what is more foundational to any kind of organization is a trust called vulnerability trust. Vulnerability trust is, for example let's say I'm going through some sales funnels for Russell or for somebody else and I'm looking in there and I'm saying, "Oh my gosh. I see that what we are doing here is wrong." I have so much ... Russell has so much faith in me to come to him and show that. There's an environment in the business space that allows for me to go up to him and say, "I think what we're doing is wrong," which I've done before and he's done before on my stuff and I've done on his stuff. Which is cool, we have that kind of trust, it's a vulnerability trust. It's the ability to be completely vulnerable with another human being, is very hard to get, very hard to get because people don't want to be vulnerable. They want stature and they want status... They want to be, all to be important and, "Oh you should when you hear my name go oh, it's going to be Steve Larsen, oh." People want that. What's funny is the more you crave that the less you get it. You gain status by not seeking it, by the way, that's the best way to do it. I've had some cool talks about that with others, especially Russell. Anyway, I thought it was really, really powerful and I was thinking how cool it is that these people who are saying, "Hey, would you come speak on our stage?" It is a ... What the people who have asked me to come speak on their stages are doing is they are giving, it's a predictive style trust but the people who attend are counting me being the vulnerable kind of trust. They trust that I'm going to come and be vulnerable and be real with them, actually show the raw stuff, how it actually works. Little tricks to increase conversion, little things that we'll do ... Great ways to create continuity and things that ... There's this certain kind of trust, especially in teaching environments where you expect the teacher to be vulnerable and show that stuff. As a teacher if you're ever in a room of people who are not willing to be vulnerable and try the things you're teaching it sucks because they're not willing to do anything you're saying and you feel no progress.
I was like, "Hey, this is super cool, like yeah. I've been a part of other organizations before working for Click Funnels on other people and this sucks, I did not have the kind of trust with the boss at the time or the entrepreneur who I was working with or whatever it was or whoever I was building for. Where I did not feel the kind of trust where I could go be vulnerable about their own business and say, "Hey look, I understand this is your baby but you're too in love with it and you're going to run it into the ground and here's three reasons why. Here's three places I can see that it's wrong." If you aren't willing to be wrong in your own business about that you're going to kill your business. I'm not even going to sugarcoat that. You will kill your business if you do not allow people to show you faults in it because it's not perfect. You're not perfect so why should your business be? If it's your baby and it came from you it's not going to be perfect, you're not perfect. You know what I mean? That's just the whole point. Take all these things, and I know I talked about duct tape marketing the last podcast but this totally ties into it... Be vulnerable, have the kind of trust in both yourself and others around you and the kind of environment that allows people to come to you and say, "Hey, you know what? Mr. Russell Brunson I know you got a lot of status, you don't seek it but you really boss a lot of people lives. He comes to me and says, "Hey, check it out man. There's a few things, I know you really like this product you've put together and you spent a lot of time on it but I actually think it's wrong. I think this is wrong or the message as a whole is wrong." It's hard to get that environment. I remember I said that once about a sales video we had created. I said it probably a little bit more forward and harsh than I should have. It wasn't harsh it was just ... I probably could have said it softer than I did. I was like, "I don't think this is going to sell. I actually think this is a completely wrong angle and I think that what we've done here is not going to be effective or successful." We were ... We had to try and remember to be in a place of vulnerability. I know the way I said it was probably a little too forward. I'd rather just say what I mean and not sugarcoat stuff. I said it in a way that ... He was a little bit put off by it which is fine. I was like, "Oh dang it, I shouldn't have said it the way I did but I still agree with that." Then he came back and said, "Okay, I get it, I see what you're saying, it makes sense." Cultivating an environment like that is not easy or it will require you to get out of your comfort zone like crazy. In order for you to have a culture of vulnerability, being able to accept things about your business, you too need to be vulnerable. It's not comfortable and it sucks... I've had a lot of ... I know there's things wrong with Sales Funnel Broker, I know there's things wrong with stevejlarsen.com, I know this. Eventually you guys are going to launch stuff, you know I mean? It may not move forward but you got to have trust and you've got to accept people's feedback. That's where you get the duct tape marketing, you know what I mean? That's where you get all this stuff moving forward. That's how you figure out, "Hey, I suck at this, let me hire out for that," you know what I mean? You got to be able to have that kind of stuff. Anyway, it's just been running through my head. Anyway, super excited to speak on those stages... Guys, please let me know if you're going to be in them, in the audiences, I would love to meet you. I had so much fun meeting so many of you guys at Funnel Acting Live, it was awesome. A lot of you guys asked why I wasn't on that one, I wasn't speaking at that one. Maybe not, maybe next year I can convince that to happen but I don't know, it would be fun.
Anyways guys, talk to you later. Bye.
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| 06 Jan 2018 | SFR 101: Create Constraint… | 00:15:49 | |
Click above to listen in iTunes... What I realized I need to change 15 minutes after finishing my first webinar…
What's going on everyone, this is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now, here's your host Steve Larsen. You guys, this is literally episode I think 101 and just so you know here on out, like what I'm going to do is from episode 101 on, is all about me documenting the journey of my entrepreneurial life now. You know what I mean? I'm on my own, I work for myself, which is both awesome and completely terrifying. What I want to do is, I'm just going to be, I want to walk you guys through what it is that I'm doing and why I felt okay to do what I'm doing and take the leap. I know a lot of you guys want to, and I know a lot of you guys are and already have, which is great. Also, a lot of you guys that are listening are trying to. I've had a lot of messages from you lately, especially from that last episode I put out about my goals, reach out and say, "Hey, Stephen that's awesome. I want to do X, Y and Z." I'm like, "Hey, that's awesome, like keep going at it, keep crashing it." Get public about the goal. I always love doing that episode, look forward to it every year. I've got to wait another 362 days to be able to do it again, 61 days.
I don't care what it is that you do, I recommend in some way, finding some way to charge $1,000 in whatever industry you are and sale it on a webinar routinely, repeatedly. That seems like the thing over and over again that people seem to make the money, the fastest money with $1,000 product on a webinar. Okay? What's one thing that you can go out sell for $1,000, okay? That's what I did, is I followed this step, this formula, which is day number one on Monday, I built the registration process. People would go in, and they could register, so there was a registration page. There was a confirmation page, and then an indoctrination page, okay, where they go through and there's an indoctrination series that people got put on. Then I like Zoom. I use Zoom with Zapier. If you don't know what I'm talking about, that's totally fine, but I just use Zoom, it's a webinar platform, and I love Zoom. Anyway, so what I've done is, day one was the registration process. Day number two, which pretty much took the entire day, because I am a funnel perfectionist, I want to make it look awesome. I probably didn't need to, but really takes a long time day one is coming up with the headline and the three secrets. Once that happens then I can move on to the next phase, which is building up the actual registration process. Then that was, so that was day number one. Day number two I started focusing mostly on the script and like getting the first parts of those things done. There was a lot I had to think through with the script, specifically the first thing you have to come up with the script is the offer, so I started coming up with the offer, how to make a sexy offer for a thousand bucks. On day number three, which was yesterday, I built the membership area and put just something in it, the awesome stuff, totally amazing things. I built the membership area and the order process, so people go through that. There's a way for me to actually get and collect money from people. I also put inside the members area several ask campaigns. I love the book 'Ask' by Ryan Levesque, that is a fantastic book and Russell obviously talks about the ask method as well in a little bit of different light in the book 'Expert Secrets'. Anyway, there's a lot of other people that talk about that principle, how your success, the things that you want to go do, the things you want to accomplish you don't currently have the creativity inside of you to actually become successful and actually how to make the money that you want to. Get used to asking people in the market what they want and get used to making that, instead of your own thoughts and ideas right? I created several ask campaigns inside of the members area, so that while they go through and they're consuming the kind of training that I have in there, they also could put certain questions in there they have. Like, "Hey, I'm struggling with X, Y and Z." Now I have a map for the things that I need to go create. Then they're telling me what they want me to make for them. The reason that's such a big deal is because there's so many times in the past I have way overshot, way overshot the expectation of the customer. There's nothing wrong with that, but if you do that little every time and do it in such massive extents, you actually can cause overwhelm. I'm excited to see what they say, because that's currently running right now. I went to sleep, sick actually, I had the fever chills, which sucks. You know like the shakes, I hate that, oh my gosh. I had it all day yesterday, and I was trying to work on the webinar and stuff and that was awful. It slowed me down a lot, but I was ... Then I slept few hours, and I got up and I worked on my script on the slides, the actual present, the perfect webinar script. I worked on it and I finished the first half, the three secrets about one and a half hours before the actual webinar. Which means I had an hour and a half to create an entire stack. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go read the book 'Expert Secrets' or go to I think it's perfectwebinarsecrets.com. You can download a super amazingly valuable $7 thing that can totally change your life. Anyway, so the stacks amazing, but I had an hour and a half to create a stack, which really I think it was like an hour. Actually, no, no, wait, it was 45 minutes, because there was an hour and a half from it that I was like kind of dying a little bit. Anyway, yeah, okay, cool. I had 45 minutes to create the full stack. I did not create the kind of stack that I want to have ultimately out there, but I still made one and it was there and it worked. I had 170 people register, so I just want to, I'm not bragging, I just want you guys to know what I'm doing and I'm documenting the journey along the way, so you can follow it. You guys can see what you might do and get ideas on how to move forward also. Please notice that I did not have the things ready in order to actually sell to get started. I just set the date, I started promoting it. There's 170 people that registered just for my hot list, which is in a different audience, it's a lot smaller.
Now, as I was giving the presentation, I could tell and I could feel the sticking points. I'm going to go back and I'm going to adjust those sticking points. I'm going to adjust all the different pieces there, and I'm excited to make those adjustments. There's one massive thing that is missing from the webinar I just did, constraint. This is one of the biggest lessons that I ever learned sitting next to the desk of Mr. Russell Brunson. I know I talk about him a lot, I hope that's fine with you guys, but I just spent the last two years there, how can I not talk about it a little bit? This is one of biggest lessons though and it's one of the things that I've got to go add in, because I could feel that there was a lack of constraint. If you go look at the funnel hacks presentation, that webinar did $40 million, $40 million dollars in what? Like two years. $40 million in like two years, two and half years something like that, that's crazy you guys. That's ridiculous. $40 million, so I think we can learn from it a little bit. One of the things that he, I heard him say once was that one of the reasons it does so well is because of constraint. At the beginning of the webinar he talks about ClickFunnels and he talks about the cost of ClickFunnels, how people are paying $97 a month or even up to $297 a month. The reason he does that is to introduce a limit and then as the webinar goes and he's going on, he's going on, he's going towards the very, very last part of the entire webinar. Because he's introduced the limit at the beginning, he can now release the limit for the people willing to take action now. I think, I'm not near you, but I think I'm seeing a light part above you. There's, yup, there's a halo there, yeah, and definitely choirs of angels. I'm sorry angels of choirs, however that Christmas theme says it. Does that make sense though? You introduce a limit with the purpose of being able to remove it later on for the people who take action. That's a huge, huge secret right there, massive secret and I hope that you understand what I just said there. I am creating a software. I'm creating, it's amazing, it's brilliant. Oh my gosh, it's something that I want, something that I need. I'm putting a software together that I already need, I already want it. I know it's going to be amazing. It's something that I want anyways, but what's cool about it is that it's going to allow me to introduce a constraint, because I'll probably sell it for $27 a month, $30 a month. I want it to be kind of lower on the price amount, so that lot of people can get it. It's less about me making money. It has more to do with me being able to introduce constraints on my webinar. No joke, okay, so think through... Software is one of the easiest ways you can increase perceived value, that and physical stuff right, there's a whole episode I did a little while ago about that, about how to increase the perceived value of things, very easily. If you're selling electricity or you're selling air, you really got to build that up. Anyway, so I am very, very excited to build the go and create this thing, because I want to introduce constraints. As you're thinking through your product, there's something to, not something to it, is the tool of marketers scarcity and urgency. Find ways to introduce it. If you feel no natural scarcity and urgency in your own offer, create it, make it. Find out how to have it, because people won't take action unless you help them do it, so unless you help them. Unless you actually put things out there where they're like, "Oh man, I have to act now." Yeah, humans are naturally lazy, so you've got to do things, you've gotten things you're offering, you've gotten things to your business whatever it is so that there's scarcity and urgency with it. If you're like, "Oh Stephen and I sell pretty well, but it's not like amazingly," or even if you do, start looking through and start dissecting what scarcity and urgency does somebody have to actually take action with your business now? Is there any? Have you crafted it? There's probably some natural scarcity and urgency, right, you can't spend time with everybody, so you have to choose someone. There's just some natural stuff, but how do you make people go a little crazy for it? You introduce actual scarcity and urgency. In Funnel Hacking Live, right, anyone of you guys have been to the last Funnel Hacking Live events or any events in general where someone's selling, watch what they do really carefully. There are elements of limits that they put on top of their pitch so that they can release them later on, and so that's exactly what I'm going to be doing here shortly. I'm excited to do that, so I'm going to get going on this. I've got to wire frame it still. I want it to be an app mixed with like a desktop, like in browser or software as well. You could do it off your phone or off of the computer browser, and I'm excited.
That's what I'm doing, that's what I'm thinking about, that's my stuff for the webinar, That's all I really want to tell you guys is, as you are and that's what exactly I just did. I just barely, actually just as a recording episode, the replay just finished. The replay's done, so what I'm going to do now is go create a replay series for all the people who weren't able to get on. Someone said they got on late, they thought it was at another time. Someone said they got on, they watched, but they couldn't get, the couldn't actually buy it because they were in the car driving and they were listening to the whole thing. Anyways, I'm going to do a replay series out to all these people, which I'm very, very excited about. I should close at least another 10 people, which is awesome, but that will more than fund the software that I will use to sell everyone else in the future, so there's actual real scarcity and urgency. I mean constraint in order to create scarcity and urgency, but I want to introduce more constraint and I want to introduce more, "Hey, seriously take action now, because I'm not going to be here forever," kind of feeling. Anyway, there's a whole bunch of more stuff coming up that I'm going to be building and tossing in there. I just thought I'd kind of ... That's the whole purpose of like the next 100 episodes or however long is, well from 101 and on is to for me to document this journey. For me to go through and say, "Look, this is what I'm doing," and it's not just so that you can put me in your ears, which however much I love that. It's so that you can take action on it, and I would love to know what you've done with the things you've learned from this podcast. I love reading the reviews on iTunes. I'm I asking you blatantly to go and put an iTunes review on there? Yes, I am. Do you guys know there is four to 500 downloads per day of this podcast now, there's a lot of us out here and I would love to know what you guys are thinking about this with complete honesty. I would love it if it was a five star review, but still though even if not, I would love to know what it is that you guys are thinking about this, what things you'd like to hear, what things you'd like to know and let me know.
Anyway, go to iTunes, let me know, but then stay tuned as well, because I'm going to be documenting the journey of all the things that I'm doing and creating, so you guys can follow along and use it in your own business. All right guys, I will talk to you later. Go get them, bye. Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free, go to Sales Funnel Broker.com/freefunnels to download your pre-built sales funnel today. | |||
| 22 Sep 2017 | SFR 76: WHY Russell Brunson Can Launch A "Viral Video" | 00:21:29 | |
Too many times I see people learning to solve a problem that is UNRELATED to where they actually are...
Woohoo. What's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen. You're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels, and now he's your host Steve Larsen. Hey, guys. I hope you're doing great. It is a very rainy day outside right now. It's been freezing. Holy crap. Hey, we just barely had our viral video launched at ClickFunnels which has been a ton of fun. I really, really enjoyed that. As marketers, you always try to make events out of everything, right? You sit back and you're like, "Hey, we got this cool video coming out. How can we make an event out of that? Well, we could just put it on YouTube and publish it. That's not very exciting. What if we had this cool event where we had people show up and we all have a big launch party together? Cool. You know what? What if we had Gary V. show up? Oh, my gosh. Gary Vaynerchuk. Let's have him show up and he'll talk to us a little bit more about social media and virality. Cool. Awesome. Let's do that. You know what would be awesome? What if we had the actual people, Harmon Brothers, who made the launch, the actual video itself? Let's have them come teach more about the formula they used to make videos go viral? Cool. Awesome." Guys, ideas evolve like this over and over and over again... It's so fun. They're so fluid and they're all over the place. There's no idea that's ... Well, no. There's definitely such a thing as a stupid idea. But, then you continue to evolve and grow and, oh, my gosh, what if we had the top YouTubers out there since they got huge reach on video and obviously it's a video? What if we had them? Oh, my gosh. Let's have them come to the party and we'll literally teach them how to share our video with their audience of millions of millions of millions and go like, "Well, it's Idaho. It's Boise." I don't know. We're like, "Well, we got to have some cool thing. What can we do? How can we make them look like rock stars for coming to Boise, Idaho?" Dave Woodward, he's the man, was like, "Hey. Oh, my gosh. What if we broke a world record? We're there. Let's rent out the Boise state stadium. We'll hold an event in the top box, suite area." I don't know what to call that area. "Then we'll go down on the football field afterwards and we'll play bubble soccer." Then he's like, "Oh, my gosh. I'll be right back." He came back in. It was so cool. Dave is amazing. I've watched him work his magic. He's like, "Oh, my gosh. What if we broke a world record on the stadium?" He's like, "I'll be right back." Guys, I remember when I was riding my bike home one day and I've mentioned this story before. I was riding a bike home one day. This was years ago and I had almost no money. We're living on loans and I was trying to make this whole thing work. What happened is I was riding home and I was like, "Oh, my gosh. I can't. Why is this not working? How come I'm not making money?" I have the stark slap in the face realization. It's because you're not even asking anybody for their credit card anywhere. There's no place for people to give you money. Crap. I was like, "Dang it. That's totally the reason why." A lot of people who listen to this show are very successful and a lot of people who listen to the show have yet to launch something but you're learning this problem set of information. You're learning this information to solve a problem set that you're not on yet. Russell can go out and he can spend lots of money or he can spend lots of time getting people out to promote his thing because he has a thing. Does that make sense? That was my big realization when I was riding home that day. I was like, "Oh, my gosh. I don't even have a thing." I'm learning... Yeah, I know exactly what I would do to 2X this company. Crap. I don't have one myself yet. You know what I mean? That was my realization years ago when I was riding back home. It was freezing. We didn't have money for a second car even. You understand what I'm saying? I didn't have a thing. There was no business for me to be applying to these marketing principles to. It's fun to watch when you do have a thing. Right now, obviously, I have several things. I keep it on the low count as far as how many things I have going up. Russell, obviously, he's got quite the amazing thing, ClickFunnels, right? A total market disruptor. Amazing software. Once you have your actual core business created, it's super fun because the problem set changes. You're able to turn around and you're able to say, "Okay. Now that I have a business, now that I actually have a product, what are all these fun marketing games I can apply things to to actually become successful with this?" Does that make sense? We're at the viral video launch and it goes amazing. We show up there and I got asked to stand at the front and greet people and help them get their tags and all that kind of stuff. I had a ton of fun doing it. We had about 400 people show up. They're showing up and they're showing up. It was so fun, so fun. These massive influencers are there. I got to meet and talk with and chat with Billy Gene, Billy Gene Is Marketing, JP Sears and a ton of people who are a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the entire experience. This tells you how much I know politics which is a little bit embarrassing. Maybe I should not even start saying this. But, the guy running for governor showed up. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. We had a lot of big people there and we gave them a reason to show up, bubble soccer, viral video launch. We needed to answer the question: how can we improve their status by showing up? Does that make sense? It's not in a negative light like, oh, look at the status and look at how high and mighty you are. That's not at all what I'm talking about. But when you're doing these Dream 100 strategies, when you actually finally have a thing, when you have a business, when you have an idea, when you got cash flow, the name of the game, especially when you're doing JV stuff whether it's for your customers or for it's people you're doing joint venture things with, the question near there to answer is how do I make those guys look like rock stars? How do I make them look like rock stars? How do I increase their status through my brand? When you can answer that question, it becomes a lot easier to say, "Hey, let's do something together." Then it's not just about money and availability and like, "Hey, we'll split 50/50." Yeah, that's cool. That works. When you can really answer the question: what can I do to make you look like a complete genius to your own audience? What can I do to make you look like a rockstar to your own audience, increase your status in their eyes? Not that it's all about status or being high and mighty but subconsciously that's what's happening. We had to answer that question. When we did, that's when all this came together. That make sense? We brought that up specifically. How can we give these guys a story so that when they show up to little Boise, Idaho, potatoes are all over the place which I've actually never seen a potato on the side of the road, but how can we make them look like a rockstar, or increase their status, or give them things that can protect their status at the same time? Totally asymmetric gain on their side. No status lost. Total status gain. How do we make that happen? That was the question we had to answer. Anyways, we had the event and Russell spoke for a while and showed how we got this amazing ... If you guys haven't watched it, I think almost all of it is on YouTube. Gary V. got up and he spoke and it was awesome, too. It was really, really cool actually. Personally, I'll just tell you I've never really listened to Gary V. that much but I'll probably start after hearing him. He definitely had some great stuff. Half of you guys are probably like, "Well, duh. It's Gary V." There's so much content out there. Sometimes it's more about content choosing than taking in everything. Then we went and we played bubble soccer down on the field. It's a ton of fun, lots and lots of fun. I was in one in this little bubble things and we were just messing around before game started. I didn't get a chance to actually do the actual world record part of it. There wasn't enough spots so they asked the employees to pull out. I was in one though before the game started and I went hit a guy. We're wearing these name tags that had this sharp metal edges on it. It totally popped up and cut my forehead. Anyway, it was a lot of fun... Anyways, there's really two different problem sets that the individual has to solve. If you don't even have a business yet, it's obviously going to be hard for you to pull off stuff like that. If you don't have an actual business, if there's no product or service that you put out to the market, if you're not actively asking for people's credit cards or money, it's going to be really challenging for you to go create or do a Dream 100 strategy. It's always shocking to myself, to Russell, to anyone in the actual ClickFunnels staff, it's shocking how few people actually do Dream 100 stuff, actually make a list of the top 100 people they wish they would be working with. I've got one. I actually send packages to them all the time personally on my own, non-ClickFunnels related stuff. I'm getting the relationships. I'm sending out the packages, letters. I'm doing this and it's fun, how awesome those things work. That Dream 100 strategy, that was insane. I think one of the reasons why we see so few people do it is, number one, there's some confusion on how to do it. Then, number two, some of the people who either listen to this podcast or who are still trying to figure things out, they're still trying to figure out the core of their business so they've not actually started the Dream 100 strategy.
Half of the people we invited to this viral video launch, they'd never really been on our list before but they're on our list now and we had to lead with value. Hey, come on out to this viral video launch. Come out to this bubble soccer thing. Come out to this and we'll give you awesome content to shoot and film. We'll do this and this, this and that for you. By the way, if you want to take 15 seconds, we'll show you real quick how to share our video with your audience. You know what I mean? That's after the fact. We didn't lead with that. That was second. Anyway, there's always two different problem sets that pop up and they alternate back and forth. It's fun to watch both of these problem sets. They appear in every single launch that we do. It's always two different things. Number one, there's always a problem set that always has to do with personal development or personal flaw. You know what I mean? There's always something that pops up. Oh, my gosh. I can't do this. I have a hard time doing X, Y, and Z. The second one that always pops up is a business development or business flaw meaning your system or whatever it is you've built is not set up to handle where you're trying to go or you're, as an individual, not set up for where you're trying to go. You know what I mean? If you can't get up at a decent hour, you're going to suck at business. You know what I mean? Depending on what it is you choose to do... Whatever vehicle, whatever business you've chosen to go be successful at, just know that those two things back and forth will alternate back and forth. They pop up all the time. They pop up in the viral video launch. They pop up. They're not uncommon. But it seems like some people get shocked and they're like, "Wait a second. I have to address my personal flaws in order to be successful in business? This is business, not a personal development conference." Guys, I've had more personal development through business than any other personal development course because I had to. I literally was unable to progress. My cash was actually unable to increase without me addressing personal character flaws. Hey, Steven. You're a little bit shy. That's true. I had the nicest kid award growing up. You're a little bit shy. You're having a hard time with talking to people. Internally, I wasn't shy though. I was a ticked off kid who was mad at everybody. I just wasn't confident enough to say stuff. You know what I mean? I had to get over that. I had to overcome that quickly. I remember how I did. One of the ways I overcame that is, you guys are going to laugh about this, but I needed to train myself and I knew that that was a ... I was too nice. My resting state was nice guy and there's nothing wrong with that. But, when it came to business, I was piss-poor at making decisions. Does that make sense? I have no problem admitting it. That's how it was. I would stand in front of the mirror knowing that one day I wanted to be on stages, knowing that one day I wanted to go and I wanted to be able to speak. I wanted to be able to add value that way. For whatever reason, I've always wanted to speak on stages which is so cool because it happens all the time now. It's a lot of fun. I'm speaking on stages at keynote and I'm super pumped. In January, it's going to be awesome. I'll tell you more about that later. How I got over it, that fear, was I will go stand in front of the bathroom mirror. I would take videos of guys like Russell Brunson. I would mute the video and I would stand in front of the mirror watching guys like Russell or Russell himself and I would mirror everything that they would do physically. I'd move my hands the way they would... I would move my body the way they would and I'd get exciting and my facial expressions the way they would. It gave me ammo, so to speak, on how to deal with people on a one-on-one basis. This is going to shock a lot of you guys and be like, "What the heck? There's no way this is actually true." This is totally true. I got voted the nicest kid in my graduating class in high school, 600 people. It was not because I was the nicest kid. It's because I was freaking shy. You know what I'm saying? Anyway, number one, again, super fun to see all these problem sets. They happen to every single thing we launch. We're no different. We just expect them to happen. Does that make sense? Number one, like I said, there's always a personal development or a characteristic flaw episode that happens. Hey, you're not good enough at this or your weaknesses are this. In order for you to progress, we need to either address that or solve it somehow. Then money can be made. Number two, there's always a business development/business character flaw meaning your system may not be good enough to handle what it is you're trying to go do. The other day, actually it was a few weeks ago, we crashed another company's server because we sent too much traffic to them even though they said they could handle it. That's a freaking business flaw. You know what I mean? That's an actual business systems flaw... That's the reason why funnels are so freaking cool. A lot of times when I go out, there's been many times where I build a funnel for somebody whose business cannot handle that funnel, that strong of a marketing arm. I have been close to bankrupting them on how fast they've sold without being able to get more inventory as quick. You know what I mean? You guys understand what I'm saying? I get asked all the time to build funnels for people. One of the biggest things I have to ask people is, number one, what traffic are you getting and what traffic are you already getting right now? Number two, what's the backend of your company like because you may not be able to handle, which is a funny problem set that most people never have to deal with but that's the power of these funnels. Does that make sense? We had to go out and we had to beef up ClickFunnels. There's a new onboarding system. We have this cookbook now. There's a system that vets out the different funnel types for you so that you can go get a prebuilt funnel every time you build a new one in ClickFunnels now. There's now this gamified thing that pulls you through and trains how to use all of ClickFunnels, get everything set up for you. Does that make sense? We knew that we had a flaw that way so we went and we created a new system. We went and we created a brand new business development of a different style, not relationship-wise, although that might be the problem, but it had more to do with us. It had more to do with our systems and how we put things together. Does that make sense what I'm trying to convey? What was fun, just this whole viral video launch, it's fun to watch it from where I sit and the fact that I sit where I do and fun to watch all the problems being addressed. There's always character flaws that pop up in every single one of us when the stress gets high and myself included, everybody. It's interesting to watch. There's different breaking points. That just happens. It's okay. It can be a stressful thing. Number two, there's always business flaws that pop up. Maybe your system, the actual business model isn't strong enough to handle what you're trying to do or maybe it's too strong and you're selling to the wrong people. You know what I mean? Whatever it might be.
Then, number two, what is wrong with the business that you're in right now? Where is the flaw? You got to look at this thing like it's an infant all the time and that it's always broken and that there's something that's messed up with. You can't marry it. It's all about these iterations. How fast can you get feedback from the market, fix it and go back? How fast can you get feedback from the market, fix it and go back over and over and over? Money loves speed and your ability to make those iterations is highly dependent on you understanding what the flaw is and the money follows pretty quickly after that when you figure out where your business really doesn't have a sell stuff and where those flaws are. It's always funny. I watch it every time now. I've been here for a year and a half. I've built almost 300 sales funnels now in pretty much every single industry. I don't know an industry I haven't built in now or a funnel that wouldn't work in every one of them. Every time these are always the thing that happens. It doesn't matter if a person is a celebrity we're working with and they're already successful. There's always a personal development flaw whether it's an understanding flaw meaning they don't understand as an individual what the heck we're doing and a business flaw. If you're trying to get to the next level, which I hate that phrase ... I'm trying to get to the next level. What the heck does that mean? That's fluffy and fictitious. I have no idea. Let's say you're trying to make more money, that's more concrete, just know that those are two things that are going to pop up: business flaw, personal flaw. Just watch for them. Don't be ashamed when they pop up because they're going to. Every single time they always do... That happens to us every time. Just know that it's going to and expect them. When they pop up, you got to think of it like you're in the ring with this thing. You're an octagon. As soon as it pops up, boom. I'm going to hit it. I'm going to solve it. As fast as I can get it done, that's as fast as I'll be able to be successful with this. Anyway, I hope that's helpful. Viral video launch was a huge success, totally amazing. Rockstar of the entire event was definitely Dave Woodward. The guy just freaking killed it. Oh, my gosh. I can't believe everything he did for that.
Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today. | |||
| 26 Sep 2017 | SFR 77: Watch Me Build My Next Funnels LIVE... | 00:10:15 | |
Russell Brunson and Gary V have both said it's better to "Document and Sell", rather than simply just "Create and Sell"... SO! Watch me build my next personal webinar funnel LIVE...
What's up everyone? This is Steve Larsen. You're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. And now here's your host, Steve Larsen. All right, all right. Hey, it's gonna be a fast episode. It's more of an announcement styled episode. Hey, a few episodes ago I finished a six part series where I went through each of the industry's, basically six different categories of businesses, that are using ClickFunnels. And honestly, pretty much every business that I know of fits in them. And it was fun because I went through each one of those categories, and went and I found a rock star that's killing it in each one of those areas. Now my whole ... I believe in a level of business karma. And I know that there are people out there who may not be in love with sales funnels the way I am, and that's totally fine. It's my thing. And you have a thing. I'm not asking you to take on my thing. All right? It's your peak. You stay at your peak. You be the best in the world. Stay on that peak. It's the reason I won't go learn Facebook ads. One day, Facebook won't be the hot shot stuff. You know what I mean? One day, there will be a new traffic source that's massive. Now it may not happen for a really long time. I don't know.
Well so, I got these six different categories, and I've been thinking to myself how cool would it be if I went and I live built a funnel, that works really well in each of those six different categories? And so what I thought was now I don't know how long this will take. I don't know the timeline. If it's gonna be really, it's gonna be all over the place. But I'm going to ... Anyway, I believe that if I just keep pumping value into the marketplace, value always comes back. And every time I've ever done that, it's always true. And so I thought how cool would it be ... What if I was to build a Webinar Funnel live for everyone? You know? And I probably wouldn't give the funnel away for free because every time I build them, they take a solid ten hours. You know? I'm not just gonna give that for free. I'd charge for it. But it wouldn't be a lot. It'd just be a little bit. But how cool would it be if I went and I built an application style funnel the way that I know they work? How cool would it be if I went and I built an E-commerce funnel the way that I know that they work? MLM the way I know that they work? You know what I mean? Each one of the industries, go through it. Retail. Back and forth, and back and forth, and I actually built live. And you guys could come join me and watch, and ask questions, and stuff. That's freakin' awesome. That would be a lot of fun. Anyway. So that's what I'm thinking. And I'm thinking it'd be a lot of fun. And so I guess the, I don't know if you want this kind of lesson or whatever with this. If you can include people in the act of your own craft. Whatever your specialty is, if you can include people in that, you're really ... You guys know it was in the movie, "Hitch." Right? In the movie, "Hitch," there's that scene where Will Smith goes and he makes dinner with the chef. You know what I mean? With his date and his date's boss. Right? And he goes, and he's there, and he's cooking the food with him. The chef is including them in the process of making the food. That's why they're there for the process. The more you can do that, and unveil, and show behind the curtains of what it is that you actually do, and peel back the curtain, and show like hey, this is how I do what I do. People fall in love with you like that. And so I guess that's me just being vulnerable just telling you that's my goal is to help you see exactly what I do, and why I do it. And so what I'm thinking is I ... Anyway, I think the way I'm gonna do this ... I had this idea just a few days ago. And I think I'm gonna do it. Where I think we'll have it where if you go to salesfunnelbroker.com/live, salesfunnelbroker.com/live. I used to have it all building, or I'd build live on a different platform, but I kinda want to keep it all in the Sales Funnel Broker platform, that I've already got there. By the way, there's the equivalent of thousands, and thousands, and thousands, and thousands of opt-ins. There's so many people, that have downloaded free funnels off of that site, which is awesome. But that's the reason I built is just to give tons of value away. But I kinda need to revamp it. I built that over a year ago now, and I need to get that a little bit more. I need to update it. So I thought how cool would it be if I actually included you in the update. And if I go rebuild kind of the bank of funnels that's there as well as all of the stuff that is given. So I'm gonna start with a Webinar Funnel. And I'm gonna do it I think on September 30th, this Saturday. And I'll get up, and so right now by the time you hear this episode, this will be up. Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/live. And what I want you to do is you can opt in. And what you're opting in for is basically I'm gonna make that page basically a webinar registration page. And what you're gonna do is you're gonna be able to register for a live funnel build with me, and with whoever else wants to watch.
I love what I do. But just know that I'm doing it for a specific purpose, for specific reasons. And I thought hey, how cool would it be if I just, I don't know, if you want to join. So, and then what I thought would be kinda cool was if I posted the replays underneath. And you can get the full replay when, and the funnel that I built. You know? And I'll charge. But it's not gonna be a ton. But these will be prebuilt funnels based on how I know that it works. So I've built almost 300 sales funnels now for ClickFunnels in the last year and a half. I built a crap ton of funnels. I literally have dreamt in the Editor, the ClickFunnels Editor. You know what I mean? Anyway. So this is kinda a fast episode, but I thought I'd give that announcement, that this could be kinda neat. That if you want go to ... And I'll always, I'll have you opt in so for the purpose of me being able to go and announce when the next funnel building live session is. So the first one will start with the Webinar Funnel. But then we'll go on to the next one. Right? Be an E-commerce funnel. Then we might go onto the next on. It might be a ... You know what I'm saying? And I thought how freakin' cool would that be to include you guys in that process. You can see, number one what I'm doing. Number two though, I actually give you the funnel, that you were watching me build. Like that's freakin' awesome. With all the little tricks, and all the little things that I do, and all the little ninja stuff, that we know works. And I mean that's freakin' cool. So anyway, whenever you're ... Think about your own business right now. What can you do to include your customers, and your prospective customers, or your following, or whoever. In the process of your craft include them in your craft. It's your art. You know what I mean? And don't be afraid if people are gonna steal your art. That's not at all what this is. So I wouldn't be too nervous about that. So all right guys, number one let me know if that's sweet 'cause I think it's, I think it'd be awesome. Just know that it's gonna be a several month project. It's not like it's gonna be I'll drip this out as I have time to, which is very limited. But I'm gonna start with the Webinar Funnel, and I'm gonna do it on September 30th. If you're gonna ... If you hear this episode afterward, it's probably already up. So you can probably go check it out. Again that's salesfunnelbroker.com/live. I'm gonna revamp that entire thing. But for right now, that's how we're gonna do it. So yeah, I think that's how we'll do it. All right guys, cool. That's all this episode is. Just a little fast. A little invitation announcement. And the reason that I'm doing it is because we've learned that when you actually show people what it is behind the scenes that you're doing, you're sales go up like crazy because you're answering all these beliefs inside their head, that might have been false. You're rebuilding belief patterns without them even asking. For example, Funnel Fridays. Right? Funnel Fridays is something that Russell puts together with Jim Edwards who's the creator of Funnel Scripts. Last year that made millions, and millions of dollars. Several multi-millions by doing nothing else other than showing how Funnel Scripts works in those 30 minute little funnel building segments. You see what I'm saying? That's exactly why I'm doing it. So I'm gonna go through and I'm gonna show you guys what I do. That's my skill. That's my art, and my craft, and the thing that I love doing. And so I thought hey, might as well show you what I'm actually doing. And I've got another 200 funnels to build in the next few weeks here, which is ridiculous. I don't know if I'm gonna make it. But it kinda stresses me out to be honest.
So be prepared for a five, six hour build. Okay. It's gonna be long. And we'll have the whole thing ... I'll have the whole thing recorded for you for your pleasure. So all right guys, I'll talk to you later. Again, go to salesfunnelbroker.com/live. | |||
| 28 May 2019 | SFR 246: How To Choose Your Market... | 00:25:05 | |
One of the most frustrating things for me at the beginning of this whole game was that I didn't know what a market was... and there wasn't anybody who could really define it for me...
SALES STRATEGY SHORTCUTS?
Usually, I don't believe in shortcuts, but if you know your market, a lot of stuff just gets answered for you… and it’s much easier to pin down…
Existing companies I work with like this a lot because it helps them position themselves in relation to their competition
New people want this because it actually fills in a lot of the questions that get asked along the way.
For Example:
Choosing the right market is one of the major things that help to shortcut the game for real.
HERE’S THE PROBLEM…
There are some things that it's obvious that I need to teach; I can see everyone's struggling with X, Y, and Z…
However, there’s an area in my brain that I've NOT quite uncovered yet and I keep trying to reach to it.
A few days ago, I woke up at five, 5:30 and spent three hours trying to figure out what question I should be asking…
I believe that questions invite revelation; therefore, I must be careful of the questions that I ask.
I always consider the questions and ask… and who I’m asking those questions to.
For example:
Am I asking broke people questions... or am I asking rich people questions?
In fact, I have a whiteboard where I list out the major questions that I feel I should start asking. I'm NOT trying to answer them, I'm just logging that I have that question.
Then when I get a little more clarity on what I need to be asking, I go to my bookshelves…
I buy a lot of books.
… and it's because I'm trying to create clarity on what question I'm hunting the answer for, so I don't get stuck in learning loops…
I just hunt the answer.
… and I've been hunting answers a lot lately.
Half of what I do is teach people, “Hey, this is X, Y, and Z - I see a lot of people are struggling with this.”
The other half of what I do is in a discovery realm that’s super fun mentally, but exhausting.
And there's something that I’m trying to grasp, and I'm NOT quite there yet…
HOW TO GET MORE CUSTOMERS
I used to believe that in order to have success, you needed a good funnel.
Now before anyone poops a brick, let me explain...
Originally, I’d build a funnel and then I build an offer contingent with the funnel that I’d hacked... NOT based on what the customer needs...
Then I’d build a sales message.
Eventually, I realized that I needed to be doing the exact opposite…
Instead, I need to create the…
...and I started teaching it that way.
However, I quickly realized that wasn’t where I needed to start
I was like, “Wait a second, I’ve gotta go even further back; way before the sales message and get to know the Red Ocean a little bit more.”
...and that's when I started creating my Red Ocean Analytics Checklist.
It’s a living, breathing checklist of my actual findings; I'm not taking that from anywhere, it’s my stuff.
Red Ocean Analytics, Baby!
So before I’d create an offer, I'd go through the Red Ocean Checklist…
But then I was like, “Crap, no! We can't start at the Red Ocean, we have to go back even further because there are other oceans and other markets…”
… I have to go back even further.
The further I've gone back, the more I see that when people just follow the framework, (and not even well), the chances of their success goes way up.
The challenge is that I can tell that there's another stage before friggin' market selection that’s starting to pop out.
But I can't tell yet if it's a pre-market selection or something that’s in it…
Sometimes I feel like it's ‘The Beautiful Mind’ kind of thing, “Y'all here?”
It's like schizophrenia, “Aah, pictures, patterns everywhere...”
That's my unique ability. I'm not very good at many other things besides this.
ART VERSUS SCIENCE
It seems funny for me to say, (cause I'm the “offer guy’), but I'm at a spot now where I believe you can't even make a good offer until you know…
I can't sell something to a customer that they’ve already gone through - and that's what I mean by a ghost market.
It's the ghost of “marketing past.’
The ghost of the ‘vehicle past’ that they've already gone through.
It’s interesting to start looking at the journey the customer is on…
You have to understand that piece…
Market selection is still an art right now 'cause I'm still learning how to describe it as a science.
I'm trying to pull the pattern out so that it's not an art.
*I HATE ART*
I'm NOT saying that “I hate actual art…” I'm saying, “I hate depending on art because art is hard to calculate.”
I like science. I like patterns because I can say, “When I do A plus B, I get C.”
I'm still learning to pull out the science piece of market selection.
… and I've gotten a lot better at it.
ACTS OF MARKETING
A lot of people have already created success with what I taught - that's why OfferMind is such a big deal.
I'm not just teaching fluffy junk you’ve already heard.
https://media.giphy.com/media/lwQjQawxKVrUc/giphy.gif
So let’s talk about market selection…
Market selection fuels acts of marketing Stick with me while I explain this…
There's market selection and then there are acts of marketing.
So what are the acts of marketing?
I spent three hours going through all my books…
I wrote down the question I'm trying to answer right now and I asked, “Could this book answer that question?”
… just from face value and kinda flipping through, I’d literally throw books in different piles in the corner.
I cleared out a bookshelf and labeled the shelves:
..and those are the things that I'm deep diving into to answer the questions.
...'cause they’re NOT the same thing.
This is where people get screwed when it comes to marketing.
They say, “I'm gonna go do marketing, so I'm gonna go post stuff on Facebook…”
To that, I say, “Grrgh, tell me some context otherwise, that's NOT marketing…”
So what are acts of marketing?
An act of marketing is things like:
Let me explain what I mean a little bit more…
MARKETING DESIGN
Let's say that you're gonna go do a launch campaign…
You all just saw me do that with my OfferMind funnel, (we already have 200 seats sold, which is crazy).
Let's talk about what market selection means…
(Maybe I should call it marketing design? I don't know... it's actually a good way to describe it.)
'Cause we're all very familiar with this world, let’s take ClickFunnels as an example…
Anyway, if you look at ClickFunnels…
ClickFunnels is selling wealth.
When they went straight to selling wealth, it didn't sell….
That's when ClickFunnels almost became an abandoned project.
Russell had to try and figure out how to sell ClickFunnels to the right market
…. that's a very natural thing for anything that you build. You're trying to learn how to sell it, right?
Check this out…
When ClickFunnels said, “We're not gonna sell the general wealth category, we're gonna sell to people who’re convinced that websites are the way to get wealth and become anti-Red in our messaging...”
… that's when ClickFunnels became ‘ClickFunnels.’
ClickFunnels talked about the death of the website.
ClickFunnels began to sell to the Red ocean of people who are convinced that building a website is what will give them wealth…
How big is that market? It's friggin' huge, right!
And when ClickFunnels became the anti-Red in their messaging…
Who did it talk to?
It talked to the sliver of people who were using the websites as the way to get wealth, but who weren't having success.
These were the easiest people to sell to; you don't have to convince them there's a problem, because they already know there's a problem.
Watch the way ClickFunnels grew from this…
EXPANDING YOUR TARGET MARKET
Eventually, someone would say: “Well I'm in affiliate marketing, could this work for me?”
Well, of course, it could... so we'd be like, “Let’s add affiliate marketing to the pot,’ and then that would become part of the expansion...
… and that's one of the ways to grow.
Russell didn’t try to sell EVERYBODY, he sold to people who were in affiliate marketing and already experiencing pain…
That's very different to somebody who says,”Yeah, I'm interested,” but they never pull out their wallet.
These people are:
They're not having all the success they want.
This is a HUGE deal to understand.
Then after we’d added the dissatisfied affiliate marketers to the ClickFunnels customer base, we went to…
...'cause they were also asking, “Can this work for me?”
We used the same strategy and sliver by sliver, we grew the ClickFunnels customer base.
And what's fascinating to understand is that it’s a mistake to try to target tons of markets at once.
You have to have one market that acts like a big ol' anchor…
Anti-Website positioning is one of the major anchors for ClickFunnels.
And this is the reason why most people fail, (right at the get-go), before they even get to:
One of the BIGGEST reasons why they fail is because they don't know what market they're selling to...
*You're selling to the Red Ocean*
WHERE TO FIND YOUR TARGET MARKET
If I wake up one day and I say, “Hey, I'm gonna go sell my stuff,” and I put my stuff in a little cart, where am I gonna push my cart to? ANSWER: To where everybody else already is.
I’m gonna go to where there are people, i.e., the Red Ocean.
The Blue Oceans don't exist by definition, they're not there. It takes a long time to grow an actual Blue Ocean.
So then, acts of marketing are things that you do in *that* market…
Does that make sense?
COMPLEMENTARY NOT COMPETITIVE
I know who my market is... for me, it's ClickFunnels.
However, I'm not anti-ClickFunnels in my messaging:
You peel back that heart you're gonna see gears and the ClickFunnels' logo tattooed there.
I'm the offer guy, and if you want success with ClickFunnels, you should probably learn how to build an offer, right? That's how I’ve positioned myself…
I'm complimentary, NOT competitive
...this is very key.
So for market selection a.k.a market design - (that's really what I call this piece)...
First of all, you identify the market and you somehow position yourself to become either the…
… you need to figure out which you want.
This is all stuff I’ve discovered on my journey PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER
There are not a lot of books out there on this subject, and that's why I'm writing a book.
That's also why I have almost an entire bookshelf full of books around this subject, I’ve had to piece it together.
There are a few books that have gotten close or really helped close a few gaps.
But most marketing books out there have been written, how my marketing degree was created - for corporate and big massive analysts.
I didn’t learn any kind of direct response marketing material in college. That's not what you learn in a marketing degree… I didn’t know that.
What you learn in a marketing degree is marketing analytics.
You learn a lot of quantitative marketing research, (I hated that class), and qualitative marketing research.
I learned a lot of market research, but nothing that I actually use now…
So most of the material that's out there is about that.
There's NOT a lot of material out there that is about direct response marketers or specifically about offer creation like I talk about.
What I'm talking about is very much stuff I've discovered while I've been en route.
That’s a lot of what OfferMind was about last year:
Just think about it…
I'm over here positioning…
Everything is in relation to the market that I’ve chosen... and if that market leaves, I’ve lost my business.
That's why a lot of people fail…
They build a product with no thought on the market that they’re selling into and where they go to market…
...and so they just friggin' wander the village and trying to follow the veins of gold…
In my honest opinion, that's very dangerous, and it's one of the reasons why people fail!
The offer, the sales letter, the funnel… all that crap gets waaay easy when you understand this...
MY MARKET
I've helped a lot of people make a million dollars.
I’ve helped a lot of people make hundreds of thousands... and thousands of people have made their first money online, (or offline), EVER.
There were a few signals that told me that ClickFunnels is a mature enough market to sell into.
I'm selling into the ClickFunnels space, but I’ve positioned myself as an accelerant to the vehicle.
...and I've done that on purpose and a lot of design, (and I told Russell that)... I was in his office probably like two or three months ago, and I said: “Hey, You're not just the CEO and CMO of an insanely massive and very valuable SaaS software company that’s explosive and almost worth a billion dollars…”
( It definitely will be at some time, you know what I mean! It's amazing.)
“ … AND you're also running a massive coaching program. My goal is to take the burden off of you in terms of ‘nerd out coachingism’.”
And he's like, “Oh cool, sounds good.”
That's why… that's how I positioned myself in the way I have...
I'm an accelerant to the vehicle.
I'm not the anti-Red, that'd be dumb. I love ClickFunnels, you all know that.
(I think it's crazy when someone doesn’t I have a ClickFunnels trial. You can get a trial at freecftrial.com.)
MARKET DESIGN NOT BRANDING
Usually, when I say ‘market design’ most people think logos: “No, no, no, bad! That's branding.”
Branding comes second
... and when I say branding comes second, I mean it comes at no. 5,000 down the line...
Branding means absolutely zero in terms of how money is already flowing...
I’m like,” Hey ClickFunnels people:
That's a pretty powerful position.
If someone's like, “Well Stephen, I can't be successful like you 'cause I don't have status.”
Yeah, you're friggin' right! It's powerful. Go earn your own path.
I got a few people with poopy-pants syndrome who reach out to me like, “Stephen, but I can't do that...”
Well, you're right…
You haven't worked your face off for the last six years with obsessive sacrifice to figure it out.
...but you've probably done something that I haven't, and if you haven't, it's time to cut out some things in your life...
Alright… ;-)
So there is market selection and then there are acts of marketing.
Acts of marketing are…
Let's go create:
Most people NEVER do any market selection, and that’s why they're NOT making money… (and that's a lot of what OfferMind teaches).
Until Next Time: Make Money, Do Good!
BOOM! If you're just starting out you're probably studying a lot. That's good. You're probably geeking out on all the strategies, right? That's also good.
But the hardest part is figuring out what the market wants to buy and how you should sell it to them, right?
That's what I struggled with for a while until I learned the formula.
So I created a special Mastermind called an OfferMind to get you on track with the right offer, and more importantly the right sales script to get it off the ground and sell it.
Wanna come?
There are small groups on purpose, so I can answer your direct questions in person for two straight days. You can hold your spot by going to OfferMind.com.
| |||
| 29 Aug 2017 | SFR 72: Coaching Funnels! Special Interview with Akbar Sheikh... | 01:10:40 | |
Living in a supply closet to multi-millionaire in a few years... Learn the incredible story (and coaching funnel) of the impressive Akbar Sheikh...
Steve Larsen: What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen. You're listening to another fantastic episode of Sales Funnel Radio. This episode, we've got a special guest on here for you, his name is Akbar Sheikh. He's going to be representing the author/speaker/coach/consultant category of funnels. Now, this is actually the biggest category of ... probably people online actually in general, who are entrepreneurs. So, this represents a lot of you guys. Now, as we start going through this, I want you to know before I introduce the guest, before we start the episode ... Akbar has made many millions, and he is more than qualified to be on this podcast thing and teach us. What you'll notice though in this interview is, how much he doesn't focus on the funnel. Meaning ... the funnel is important, the funnel is there. You have to have it, there's elements ... every single piece he has thought through action by action, piece by piece of what he has inside of his funnel. It's very important obviously, and he's going to go through those things with you. But you'll notice as I go through the interview, more importantly, is his mindset. I'm not going to lie, when I first started going through reading marketing books, and business books, I kind of thought that that was a little bit of a frilly thing like, "Ah, you've got to have a great mindset, mindset, mindset," but it's the way that he approaches it that is so key I think to his success with this. It's fantastic, probably one of the most humbling stories and beginnings I've ever heard in my life. So anyways, sit back and enjoy the episode, but take key awareness of what it is that he's teaching you to do with your brain, very different look at this. Honestly, probably a more developed theology on what it takes as far as the right mindset than most entrepreneurs out there. Anyways, I hope that you guys enjoy the episode, and let's get right into it. Announcer: Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now, here's your host Steve Larsen. Steve Larsen: All right. Hey, today we have a very special guest on ... Frankly, I'm excited that you're all here and I got to hit the actual record button, because I actually want to talk to him probably more than anyone right now. I'm really excited for what he's going to share. This is going to be the author/speaker/coach/consultant segment. This is part of the six part series we have going on right now, and there's no one else I can think of who is probably more of an expert, but also extremely hard to find to be honest. He's very very humble, he's a bestselling author as of late, which is awesome, has multiple "Two Comma Club" awards, if not physically in hand and well deserved. I'm very excited for you guys to all hear ... His name is Akbar Sheik, how are you doing my friend? Akbar Sheikh: What's up Steve? Doing great, phenomenal, how about you? Steve Larsen: Oh, doing so good, living the dream. Thanks for getting up early and do this. Akbar Sheikh: My pleasure. Steve Larsen: A crazy schedule, that's for sure. Hey, I first heard your story ... You're part of the "Two Comma Club" coaching program, right? Akbar Sheikh: I am a "Two Comma Club" member, yeah. Steve Larsen: That's right. So, you're actually a member itself. I see your award all over the place, which is awesome, really exciting. But, I heard your backstory, and how you got to where you are now, and it was frankly extremely humbling. A huge reminder to myself, and I think for everyone else who's going to listen to this. You can do this, it's really not rocket science. I love the story, and without me kind of botching it up or anything else, do you mind sharing some of that story? Akbar Sheikh: Yeah no, I'd love to Steve. It's a wild story actually, and I'll kind of just try give you the highlights. The reality is, as a human being, I ... Okay here's what I believe: I believe that everyone is consisted of several orbs. I believe you have your physical health, your mental health, your spiritual health, and your big "Why?" These are the four magic orbs I believe that create a human being... With me, right? A few years ago, all these orbs were pulverized. In other words, I was 60 pounds overweight, I was a fast food junkie, they'd have my name on the parking spots at Burger King, Wendy's, all these places. Steve Larsen: I would have no idea, 60 pounds overweight, no way. Akbar Sheikh: Yeah, I was 60 pounds overweight. Mentally I was ... Actually, I don't really talk about this too much, but I had crippling anxiety. Steve Larsen: Sure. Akbar Sheikh:
Steve Larsen: Right. Akbar Sheikh: All of this combined, and I wasn't very spiritual, and stuff like that. I didn't pray or meditate. All of this combined broke me as a person. I literally ended up in the hospital half dead. I literally ended up in the hospital half dead from frankly, partying too much. I was just a party animal to be honest with you, and I should have died. But, I truly believe God saves me, okay? I took advantage, I took advantage of this second chance at life, and I overnight dropped all my bad habits cold turkey, by the way. I lost 60 pounds, and I did it all the clean way. I took my name off the parking stickers at McDonald's, I stopped going to fast food, stopped drinking sodas, I just started eating clean bro. I just started eating organic and cleanly. If I couldn't spell it, I'm not going to eat it. If it contains more than three ingredients, I'm not going to eat it. Just some light exercise. Honestly, that's the thing. It's not complicated frankly, but it just ... I'll talk about what that one magic thing that it takes to do these things. Steve Larsen: It seems to be the thing that pushes over to the funnel area, and your personal life, and whatever it is, you've done [crosstalk 00:06:25] now. Akbar Sheikh: It is, yeah. So, I lost that weight, I got out of that toxic relationship into a healthy one, I started meditating and becoming spiritual. I started praying and stuff. So, I completely ... I just changed, and I was on the road to recovery now. My anxiety was still there, because one orb was still malfunctioning. That was my big "Why?" What am I doing here? What do I do on a day-to-day basis? Why am I here? All that. I was on the road to recovery now, I had obviously lost everything, and I didn't really have much frankly, because I hated ... You're not going to be very productive if you hate what you do, right? At this point, I migrated West to my birthplace, which is San Francisco. Steve Larsen: Okay. Akbar Sheikh: No money at all. I'm taking a tour by this lady of an office building. Now, I have no idea why I'm taking a tour of an office building, I don't even have any money for an office, but I'm just on this tour. At the end of the tour, there's this ... Honestly, I'm not trying to be dramatic, but there was this dark corner, and there was this door over there and I'm like, "What's that?" She's looking at me like I'm some weirdo and she's like, "Uh, that's the electrical room." I don't know what came into me, but it was kind of like divine intervention and I was like, "Hey, can I see that?" Again, she's looking at me like, "Okay, this dude is really weird, should I call the police?" She's like, "All right, fine whatever." She opens the door, it's an electrical room. It's the size of a big walk-in closet, and it's got no windows, there's wires and stuff, and exposed vents. I'm like, "What do you with this?" She's like, "We house phone wires for the building." I was like, "Dude," and I just told her my situation. Honestly, I just ... and listen to this, I opened up my chest, and I opened up my heart, and I didn't try any cheesy sales language, I didn't try any marketing stuff. I just looked at her in the eye, and was completely vulnerable to her, and I just told her my story. I said, "Hey look, I almost died. I'm trying to recover, I'm fixing up my life. I'm doing a good job, please help me. Let me live here." You know what? It worked. She was an old school hippy, and she had mercy on me, and she let me live there. Steve Larsen: Wow. Akbar Sheikh: I had no hot water, I had no showers, I had no windows, okay? If I wanted to shave or something, I'd have to get a pot of water, put it on my little plate heater, heat up the water, and kind of wash up. You know what I'm saying? Steve Larsen: Right. Akbar Sheikh: So, I lived like that for a while. All right cool, now I got a place. Again, where is my big "Why?" Now, everyday I am searching, everyday I'm ... everyday. You know what? Funny enough, I turned to Craigslist. Everyday I'm looking on Craigslist, I'm just looking for something, some sign, something to do, something "Why?" Something to do with my life. Everyday, everyday, everyday, past days, days, days, days. Finally, I bump into the worldwide web. I bumped into [inaudible 00:09:29] marketing, and it was like this, "Ah" moment where I saw some website that was selling ... It was informational products. It was digital products like motivational books and stuff like that. Steve Larsen: Yeah. Akbar Sheikh: Honestly dude, I felt like Neo from the Matrix. I just saw everything for the first time, and I'm like ... Everything was crystal ... This is the first time I'm exposed to this, and I just saw everything crystal clear. I'm like, "Wait a minute, I know why that call to action button is there. I know why that button is red. I know why that testimony is there. I know why they have big smiley picture there." It just all became crystal clear to me. I'm like, "This is freaking genius, this is what I'm going to do." To get involved in this business, there was obviously some seed money, some startup costs, and it was around about $2,000. I had obviously nothing to my name, I had one possession to my name, and it was some rinky dinky hoopty car, a 1986 Mercedes. It was actually banana exterior, peanut butter interior, but it ran like it shouldn't have ran. It was worth $2,000 barely on a good day, and I sold it, and people thought I was nuts. They're like, "Dude, you're homeless, you have no money, how are you going to get around to try to get a job? How are you going to go get food? What are you doing? You're cashing in your last chip." No, you know what? Yeah, I am you're right, because I'm burning the ship. This stuff works, because I see all these people's working for, why can't it work for me? It will, but I'm going all in, and I'm going to make this work. I cashed in my last chip, I bought into it, and boom. Over night, now I'm an internet business man. I was like, "Yep, here we go, homeless. I'm going to go live on my yacht pretty soon," and this and that, right? One month goes by bro, and I'm pounding the phone every day, using the internet, getting leads, trying to make sales over the phone, high ticket sales, did not make a single sale. So, I cashed in all my chips, I got no money, I got no car, I'm living in a closet, a month goes by, not a single sale. Steve Larsen: Wow. Akbar Sheikh: This is where 99% of the people quit, but I didn't. I didn't. I said, "Listen, wait a minute now," because at this point, you know what happens? Most people, "Oh, the system is stupid, this is a scam [inaudible 00:12:07], I'm going to go get my job." I'm not mocking anybody by that, we're just having some fun. Steve Larsen: Sure. Akbar Sheikh: At that point Steve, I'm on the phone every day, so the system is working, it's me that is not closing them. I tweaked my script, and when I did that ... Instead of blaming the system, I blamed myself, and I tweaked my approach, boom, first sale $500 bucks. Steve Larsen: Oh man. Akbar Sheikh: Second month total sales, 1,000 bucks. Third month, $2,000, then five, then 10, then 20, then 30, and on, and on, and on. I became a top one percent earner in that $186 billion dollar industry, and it all started from that closet. Steve Larsen: Wow, amazing. Akbar Sheikh: And the fact that I just would not give up like, "I don't care, this is happening." Steve Larsen: When did you hit to the point wherever you're like, "Hey, maybe I should go get a real place to live? Can I get one with a shower?" Akbar Sheikh: Yeah I know. When I started making money. Steve Larsen: Oh, that's so cool. That's amazing. So, you went through ... Just for everybody else listening, we were having so much fun talking before I hit the record button, and I had to stop us so that I could hit it, so we could keep going. But, you and I were just talking about the reason why you're not "doing it." Some of the reasons why you think people don't do it, or they don't get past that 30 days, and finally get to that tipping point like you found out. Could you dive in a little bit about why you think people don't get there, or the reasons why they don't do it? Akbar Sheikh: It's a couple of things Steve, in my estimation, and I talk to people regularly. It's a few things. Number one, if you want to talk about ... Remember, I lost the weight, and I went through all those transformations and I quit all my bad habits cold turkey. I lost all this weight, and we did all these things. If I was to boil it down to one word bro, it would be discipline. Steve Larsen: Okay. Akbar Sheikh: Which is funny, because I was the most ... I'm like ... My friends from yesteryear would laugh if they hear me say this right now, they'd be cracking up, because I was like the most undisciplined person in the world. I was totally free bird, hippy, party. Discipline was not my last name, you know what I mean? Steve Larsen: Sure. Akbar Sheikh: But the thing is, if you are disciplined with the way you're running your internet business, what I teach people to do is, you have to do three growth moves every single day. Basically if you do this: If you write down your goals, "Okay, my goal is to have a funnel that's making X amount of money. To have X amount of money, I need to have X amount customers. To have X amount of customers, I need to do this much marketing, have this much of a conversion rate."
Then, you kind of keep boiling it down, boiling ... "Okay, to get that what do I need? I need a landing page, I need a sales page, I need a checkout page. Okay, for that to work, I need it to be optimized. For an optimized checkout page, I need trust icons, I need a testimony, I need my support number." I need all these things to fully optimize, and to get a high conversion rate. All that stuff's out there, all that tech stuff's out there, it's just a matter of being organized, and having the discipline to every day, checking off three things. "Okay today guess what? I got a CRM system," or "Today guess what? My checkout page is optimized, I put in the trust icons, I got a testimony." Every single day, you need to doing three growth moves. What ends up happening is, people just end up being like information junkies, and they're just not doing anything with it. I got a great rule for that: Listen, read a book or listen to a podcast, or take a course, whatever. But here's the thing, if you're reading a book for example, do not pass chapter one without implementing everything you just learned. Steve Larsen: Gosh, I had the same realization that ... Because it's addicting, you fill yourself with these ideas of progress, because you're learning and you're like, "I'm getting smarter," but you're not actually doing anything. Akbar Sheikh: Right. Steve Larsen: I realized I was asking for anyone's credit card anywhere, I wasn't asking for ... I hadn't created a product, I had done anything, but I was ticked off that I wasn't being successful. It was this really introspective moment for me when I was like, "Oh my gosh, I am the guy to blame. I haven't been doing the three growth moves every day." Anyway, just massive backing that up, because that is so true. I had to literally consciously decide to stop reading books for a while. It sounds ludicrous, but that's what it took for me to actually do stuff, and stop distracting myself. Akbar Sheikh: Right. Another thing by the way, and I need ... I'll be honest with you listen, I'll be a little vulnerable with you guys, I don't mind. I need a little bit of babysitting, okay? I need someone on top of me sorting things out. For example, I'm not the world's most organized guy. So, that's a negative. What did I do? I got a solution. I hired a VA, and I literally told them in the interview I'm like, "Listen, you kind of need to babysit me a little bit. Take a look at my calendar, if you saw that I had this meeting yesterday" ... Ask me, "Hey, did you followup on that?" Make this spreadsheet, because I'm not that guy who's going to sit there ... I'll make the spreadsheet, but I'm not the guy who's going to sit there and update it, because I'll just get to busy doing other things. That's a void, but we need to fill that void... The thing is, pretty much anyone listening to this, can afford a VA. I'm not saying get them full-time. I have people like that, but start off small. Listen, just hire a VA for an hour a day for now, and have them plug whatever void it is you have. For me, it was organization, and staying on top. The thing is, this will plug your excuses for not implementing these three growth moves, if you get some accountability. Steve Larsen: Right. Oh, that's powerful. Super powerful. You know it's funny, I always thought, "Hey, hiring outside help or doing something that isn't my own, that means it's no longer my product." You know what I mean? We all fall in love with these things, and make it our baby, and we refuse to ... But the moment I did, I remember it was several year ago, it was the first time I ever outsourced anything. I remember, I was in college at the time, and I came back and my product was done. I was like, "Wow, this is crazy. I can move forward. What else can I outsource?" I got outsource happy and I was like all over the place. Anyways ... Akbar Sheikh: The thing about that, right? When I say outsource, it doesn't necessarily mean outsource it overseas. Totally do things domestically. Here's one thing I say: I truly believe that God has given all of us talents. We're all talented individuals. I say, stick to what you do best, and outsource the rest. Steve Larsen: Yep. Akbar Sheikh: Now, I'll give you an example. On the quick funnels page, I go through it and I'm like, "Dude, what are these people talking about?" I see all these posts, and these people are asking the most minute little technical details and it's like, "Hey, I just spent the past three hours trying to figure out how to do my STMP." I'm like, "Dude, why? Why? Do you have any idea how valuable that three hours was? Hire a guy to set up your STMP emails, and spend those three hours on what you specialize in, because that's what's going to take your business to that next level. By the way, that's going to deteriorate your brain, spending three hours to set up your STMP. You're going to get frustrated, because you only have" ... Our number one commodity is our time. They're not making any more of it. Time up, they're not making any more of it. The thing is, people really undervalue their time so much. It's a simple calculation, watch this. Steve Larsen: Okay. Akbar Sheikh: People think they're only valued at like $50, $100, $200 an hour, right? In reality, their value is far more, they just don't know that. So say for example, let's just use low numbers, let's just say you're valuing yourself at $100 an hour. You just spent three hours trying to figure out this tech nonsense with your gif email service, right? Now, that cost you $300. Well guess what? You could have paid someone well, some expert $20 an hour, he would have got that done in $60. Now, you need to spend your hours on the activities that you specialize in, which is going to scale your business. If you're not, then you're going to be just goofing around on the internet asking people, "Hey, how do I fix STMP for the rest of the day?" Steve Larsen: Yeah, absolutely. The first time I actually had traction with anything is, because of that very principle. I was outsourcing all the stuff that I knew wasn't the most important activities of my own expertise, and I'd get up at 4 a.m. every day, and I'd work for three hours before working came around. Then in the evening, the same thing. I'd work another two hours in the evening. I'd sleep four or five hours a night, and just hustle that way on just the activities that I knew I was really good at. The rest of it pushed out ... Anyway, very much agree with what you're saying there. That's the only way I actually got traction with it. That's fascinating. Akbar Sheikh: Yeah, sweet man, that's nice to hear. Steve Larsen: That's super cool. So, with your ... amazing backstory that you have. Akbar Sheikh: Thanks bro. Steve Larsen: You go and you hustle like crazy, you figure out how to sell the product. What kind of funnels were you using? I mean, a lot of the stuff whether in click funnels or not, whether it's a phone funnel, you know what I mean? Akbar Sheikh: Right. Steve Larsen: Regardless of whether or not you decided to, or it was on purpose, everyone has a sales funnel. Every person, whether or not they wanted to actually make one, somehow they get sales, that's their funnel. I know that you're probably far more deliberate than most people with that. Could you walk us through a little bit about how you were doing that on the phone, or what the funnel looked like, or ... I know you got recent, your coaching funnel, you've been putting up. You said on click funnels, things like that. Could you walk us through how you've been doing that? Akbar Sheikh: You know what Steve? This is the first time ... This is a breakthrough moment for me man, because this is the first time I've realized something. When I was homeless bro, my first every funnel ... Wow, is pretty much set up exactly the same way my coaching funnel is right now. Steve Larsen: Sweet, that's cool man. Akbar Sheikh: This is the funnel actually. I don't know how I didn't realized that before. Okay, I cannot do cold calling. I would rather be homeless than do cold calling, that's just not my thing. Steve Larsen: Whoa, I thought that's what you were doing in the closet? Akbar Sheikh: No, not at all. Steve Larsen: Oh really? Akbar Sheikh: No, never. Steve Larsen: Wow. Akbar Sheikh: Yeah, no I can't do it. Steve Larsen: I can't either. Akbar Sheikh: Oh God, I'll stay homeless. Being homeless is not that bad, by the way. It's all a mindset. It was terrible until I fixed my mindset. Steve Larsen: Sure. Akbar Sheikh: Listen to this: This is how really people need to do their funnels, and they don't even need the phone aspect by the way. I would send traffic to a webinar, okay? After they saw the webinar, and it was very well put together webinar that covered all what I call, "Ethical Principles of Persuasion," things as authority, scarcity, phenomenal copy, tenacity, social proof, reciprocity, likability, all these fundamental core elements that I've in my life, have identified that you need these core seven elements to have a seven figure funnel. I sent them to a webinar via traffic. After they see the webinar, the call to action is to set up an appointment to talk to me. So, I'm only talking to people who watched the webinar, and who have an interest in what I was talking about in the webinar. Steve Larsen: Oh, that's nice. Akbar Sheikh: Do you see what I'm saying?
Steve Larsen: Sure. Akbar Sheikh: Yeah. No but then I did, I sent them to a webinar, and that's what I did today. I have a funnel and check this out: It's done in the past three months ... and this is just one of the funnels, it's done six figures, it's an ugly funnel, the webinar doesn't even pause, there's no email JIP system at all ... I collect your email, but I don't email you at all. There's no automated email sequence, and I don't spend ... I haven't spent a dime marketing it. Steve Larsen: That's amazing first of all, because a lot of those things are like the reasons why ... I'm the coach for "Two Comma Club" coaching, and a lot of the reasons people get paused, or they get stopped, or the big hurdles that they hit is that, "Well, I don't have enough money for ads." Personally, I'm the same way. I never spend money on ads, there's other ways to do it, I just don't want to get into that world, I don't like that world. "I don't want to spend money on ads," or "I don't want to write emails," or ... Those are all things I think that expand you, and they can make you blow up, but at the core of it, those aren't sales. That's not how you get the sale. Akbar Sheikh: Exactly, and by the way, if I had all these things in place, if I had the emails in place, and if I tidied up the funnel and all these things, honestly the past three months, it would have done ... I honestly think I could have done ... Hold on, I could have easily over half a million, easily. Steve Larsen: Sure. They're good to have obviously, but man, don't let it hold you back. If you don't have those, just start, just launch. Akbar Sheikh: Yeah, you could totally launch and have a massively successful business, absolutely. Steve Larsen: So, you were using what I would call is, basically the high ticket coaching funnel. You got traffic going to webinar, puts us to a phone call, so you change the selling environment, that's awesome. Akbar Sheikh: Yeah, sorry? Steve Larsen: No go ahead, what price points were you selling, what was your product price point usually? Akbar Sheikh: In the beginning? Steve Larsen: Uh huh. Akbar Sheikh: There were different products ranging from $500 to $25,000. Steve Larsen: Sure. Akbar Sheikh: Yeah, just the whole spectrum really. When I first started, obviously selling a lot of the $500 stuff, but then later when you start figuring things out, [inaudible 00:27:40]. I remember my first $20,000 check. The interesting thing about that was, is that that really kind of solidified, "Okay, this year they work, this is happening." I remember when I got my second $20,000 check, it wasn't a feeling of excitement, it was just a feeling of responsibility. Honestly, I'll put it to you this way: Once you figure out ... all the technical stuff is out there, and I really want to put this out there. How do I make all this happen? How to build a nice seven figure business? All the information is out there, and we teach all that. But once you actually figure it out, and you put these simple formulas in place, and you start seeing that money coming in, with great power comes great responsibility. Steve Larsen: Sure. Akbar Sheikh: I truly believe that. We're at a point now, where honestly we can sell anything to anyone, because we've mastered the psychology of sales. We know exactly what to say to the person to tap deep into their mind, right? Steve Larsen: Right. Akbar Sheikh: But the thing is, you have to use these powers for good. Now, there's a lot of companies who have these powers, but they use it for bad like, when the cigarette companies were marketing towards kids, or today, the soda companies are targeting children, the high sugary extraordinarily unhealthy sodas, and it's working like crazy. I reject Steve, a lot of money man on a monthly basis ... Because of the way I have my funnel set up, and the psychology behind it, people come to me and they're ready to buy. I reject a lot of people who have a lot of cash in hand and I say, "No listen, your idea is no good. This business idea that you want to launch, it's not good. You should not be launching." Either that, or it's some unethical ... Not unethical, but something that I feel is not going to make the world a better place. I feel that everyone has X amount of hours a day, why not spend that towards something good? Steve Larsen: Right. Akbar Sheikh: I've had some people lately just trying to ... I've had a lot of them, must be some fad or something. A lot of people are trying to get me to build a funnel for them for the steaming service, where they can get HBO and all these things for free, and apparently it's totally legal. I'm like, "Okay, how is that helping the world be a better place?" That just sounds like some Napster fad, you know what I mean? Steve Larsen: Yeah. Akbar Sheikh: Back to that hour thing, right? Only X amount of hours a day. You and I have the same amount of hours in a day as Elon Musk, as Bill Gates, as Richard Branson, as all these guys, as Russel Branson, as Steve Larsen. Steve Larsen: Yeah. Akbar Sheikh: Why not build an empire? Why are people going after the quick buck? Why not build something of longevity with a legacy that you could leave to your family? My mind has really opened up lately. I spoke to a gentleman who raised over a billion dollars for our school systems, and he really opened up my mind man. I talk to people everyday in this funnel world, and this online world, and they all say the same thing, or most of them say the same thing when I ask them, "Hey man, how much are you looking to make?" All saying the same thing, "Oh, I want to make a million dollars, I want to make seven figures, I want to make $80,000 a month, I want to make $100,000 a month," it's all pretty much the same thing. Steve Larsen: Yeah. Akbar Sheikh: What I've realized Steve is, in the spectrum of one to 100, getting to a million dollars is like really step one bro. Steve Larsen: Yeah. Akbar Sheikh: Everyone's got that as their end game, you know what I mean? The vision goes that far, "Oh the main thing? I just wanted to have a million dollars." I'm telling you from a dude who's gone from homeless to helping create several seven figure funnels, I got to tell you that it's not the end game. It's just the beginning. It's just the beginning of something special, where you can take these skills that you're acquiring, and really make a serious footprint in this world and make this world a better place. We now have the capabilities, through the skills you learn, through all my marketing, believe it or not, and the psychology of sales, and all these great things in funnels, this will empower you to make the world a better place. You will not be able to contribute to solving world hunger, to helping all the orphans out there. Do you know that 20 million people die, are dying from starvation? Have you been to a restaurant lately? Do you see how much food is being wasted? You will get to the point where you can be a fault leader, and you can change ... Honest to God, I'm telling you from a dude who lived in an electrical closet, who had to go find change in awkward places just to get enough money to go to the dollar menu for dinner, I'm telling you, you can change the world from funnels. Steve Larsen: It's amazing. I recently was talking to Russel, we use Vox a lot, and we were talking about the exact same thing. I was telling him that ... He was telling me, "Hey man, thanks so much for what you do, and being here and all that," and I was like, "Man, I gotta tell you that" ... I was talking back to him and I was like, "Hey man, I gotta tell you, I truly believe in what we are doing. It goes way beyond a software company. It goes way beyond any kind of marketing thing, far beyond any kind of dollar amount. It changed people's lives." I've seen it many times now, and a lot of my own students that's done that for the now, and it's like, when you see that in another person, it is so rewarding. It's beyond any other dollar amount you could put up to it, it's very rewarding. When I walk into click funnels, guys wherever you are and you walk into your zone, and you get into the space where you're going to try and produce and being an awesome producer, and put value out in the marketplace, think of it as hallowed ground, I do. Because what you're about to go do, can have direct impact generationally for people all around the world. Anyway, firmly believe that, very much to my core even, and it's one of the things ... Several people ask, "How do you guys not sleep so much? How is it that you guys can go as fast as you can?" Well, it's because our "why" is huge. My "why" is gigantic. You feel a little pain with sleep like, "Man, I dare you to feel a little bit of pain if that's what it takes for you to go start getting into really deep why and fix yourself." Anyway, 100% completely agree with everything you're saying on that, it's so huge. You recently, right before we started the call too, you were talking about how ... I'm so glad you brought this up, because this has been something big on my mind lately also. You said, you go and you start building this funnel. Obviously, probably the term funnel hacking may not have been a big thing yet, or whatever but you said, "Funnel hacking is pretty misunderstood." Do you mind diving into that a little bit? Akbar Sheikh: Yeah, no I will. Just to add to what you were just saying before I get into that real quick is, what I've realized is that yeah, for the first time in my life I've had this "why," and it truly unlocks you as a person. What I've realized is, every person I talk to, if you boil it down to everybody no matter how much money they're making already, no matter what success level they're at, they only want two things: They want time and financial freedom. I have to tell you, when you make it, you really get a true sense of freedom, because you're truly liberated. True freedom is when you don't care that you just made $20,000 today. It doesn't matter to you, because it's about a bigger purpose. You're working towards something that's much bigger than you. For the first time in my life, I've really attained true freedom, and that's only when I put other people's needs before mine. I'm with you 100%, and it's so nice to hear that Steve. But yeah, funnel hacking ... Every time that word "Funnel hacking," I wish there was an asterisk, and a little disclaimer, honestly. People got it so wrong. Okay, people think funnel hacking is just going to some successful funnel, copying and pasting. Steve Larsen: Yeah, right. Akbar Sheikh: That couldn't be any further from the truth. So, there's this great saying I always used to tell people, "Don't listen to what they are saying, see what they're doing." Steve Larsen: Yeah, it's not about the pages. Akbar Sheikh: Right. It's about the formulas. There's certain formulas that work, yes. Take a look at that, but understand something: You are you, everyone has their own unique fingerprint, and everyone has their own unique brand. So for example, if you're copying Dan Henry for example, right? Dan Henry who's got a great funnel by the way, but he's got his own crowd. He's got his own product, he's got his own brand, and it's geared towards that. Now, you can take some of these successful formulas, right? Dan's a really nice guy by the way. You can take these formulas, but you get melt your fingerprint into it. You need to melt your brand into it, and personalize it towards your audience to talk into your people, your prospects. You see, so it's not copy/paste. This copy and paste is so bad, that I've seen people copy and paste emails, and the emails at the end will say, "All right love you from, Steve." Steve Larsen: Yeah. Akbar Sheikh: They copy and paste it, and their name is Brian, and they didn't even realize, and they're email says, "Hey love you, Steve." Steve Larsen: Yeah no seriously, I had a guy do that to me the other day. He totally jacked my emails and everything, and then left my support email address in, because he was too lazy ... I was getting ... all the support people were all mad. Yeah, anyway. Akbar Sheikh: Take a look at the logic of it though, Steve. The thing is, is it's that simple. "This dude is making a million dollars, if I just copy his funnel." If it was that simple, then it would work, but it doesn't work like that does it? Steve Larsen: No, it doesn't. Oh my gosh. I got to hold myself back, because I'm about to go off and say things that I'm going to regret, and this is being recorded, so I can't do that. Anyway. Akbar Sheikh: We'll talk. Steve Larsen: Yeah. Akbar Sheikh: When you read an email, read it through a different lens. Read it and see, what are they really saying? Read in between the lines, "Oh okay, over here when he says" ... For example, and I got to get this off of my head, but ... For example, "It's not your fault that you haven't succeeded before with Facebook ads. It's not your fault, you were just trying the wrong thing." When you read that, understand the psychology behind that. What they're doing is, they're aligning with you. They know you've had some sort of failures, and they're going on your side. They're saying, "Hey, it's not your fault, the program was bad." Then, people by nature, they don't want to be blunt and say, "You know what? You're right, Steve, it's not my fault, it's their fault, I'm with you 100%."
Steve Larsen: Yeah, and your own thing. I love that you said melt your own finger into it. Akbar Sheikh: Yeah. Steve Larsen: Very powerful, it sounds like a t-shirt. Yeah, that is a good t-shirt. It has nothing to do with ... There comes down to a point after a while where it's like, "Okay yeah, maybe a green button is better than a red button," or I don't know, but from the very deep foundation level, it has nothing to do with that. It has nothing to do with pages, it's all about offer structure and the marketing behind it, and it's more than just, "Hey, where are they getting their traffic? I'll get it from there too." It's so much on a deeper level than that. I'm glad you brought that up though. Akbar Sheikh: Yeah. Steve Larsen: I wanted to ask just a few other questions here about the funnel itself. Is this the same funnel type and strategy that you're continuing to use as you did back when you were living in the closet? Akbar Sheikh: Sure. Yeah. Steve Larsen: Profit, webinar, phone? You push them to a ... Akbar Sheikh: Now it's a little different. Now, I'm not even pushing ... Yeah, I used to send traffic funny enough via Craigslist. So, I'd have an ad on Craigslist, it would send them to the website, and then they would call me after the webinar. Steve Larsen: Wow. Akbar Sheikh: Now, people go directly to my webinar, if they like it they schedule a call with me. Now here's the interesting part, I'm not actually even sending traffic. All my traffic is organic. People when they hear this they're like, "Well okay cool, what does that mean?" It's so funny ... It's funny, I want to talk to you like I'm an 80 year old man right now, and I'm in my 30's. Facebook is the most powerful platform I've ever seen in my entire life... It's funny I say that, because I literally just got on Facebook several months ago. I never really had it before, but for social reasons. My friends were old school, they were not on Facebook, so I was never into it. I just got onto it a little while ago, so I'm discovering all these things. I'm like, "Man, this is awesome. This is so powerful." You know they say you're only using five percent of your brain? Steve Larsen: Right. Akbar Sheikh: People are only using one percent of the power of Facebook, and funnels by the way. People are only using five percent of the power of funnels, and really, people are not taking advantage ... What do I mean by organic traffic? Let me be very straight forward and clear about this, and I really get into this, and I'm hosting a mastermind and I'll tell you about that, but I really ... The whole point of the mastermind is to really delve into this topic right here. When you click on someone's profile on Facebook, all these people who are in this internet marketing space, it gives you a little description about them. You read this, "Hey, I'm a Facebook ad expert," right? Steve Larsen: Right. Akbar Sheikh: People have the dumbest things in the world on their profile. When you click on, "Hey, serial entrepreneur. Enthusiast hardcore photographer." Steve Larsen: I know. "Seeking new opportunities," I hate that one. Akbar Sheikh: "Thrill seeking mom. Serial entrepreneur. Author, coach, foodie." I'm just like, "What are you doing? Go to mine. You have no idea ... That is your own billboard in Time Square, and you're putting some goofball picture of yourself saying, "Hey, I'm a foodie." Like, "What are you doing? No you're not a foodie, you're a number one top five percent Facebook ad generator, or whatever you are." If you click on me, what does it say? It says ... I'll actually go look, but it says something like, "I build wildly profitable funnels." Steve Larsen: It caught my eye. When I saw it, and I was looking at it, I love that headline. Akbar Sheikh: Yeah, and it's true. I build wildly ... The thing is ... People say, "I'm new to this." Well listen, you think you're new, what about me? I started off in a closet. Everybody starts somewhere. Every single person that you see that's at seven figures, eight figures, whatever it is, they started off exactly where you are. Steve Larsen: Yeah. Akbar Sheikh: Nobody came ... If you don't have any results, I hate that ... I hate that excuse by the way. If you don't have any results, go get some quickly, and immediately. If you can't ... and offer your services for free to people, your product or whatever, and get those testimonies. If you can't do that very quickly, then honestly, you're in the wrong ... You need to switch business, because you're not good at that. Do you see what I'm saying? Steve Larsen: Yeah, and it's a hard pill to swallow for some people I think, but I am glad that you brought that up. I was coaching somebody one time, and he could not figure out how to turn Skype on. I was like, "Uh man, you might to switch. If you can't even open your computer up," and I was like, "Oh man." Akbar Sheikh: Yeah exactly. No but the thing is, that I truly believe that you ... People say I'm not a marketer, I'm not a salesman, and I really hate that language too. By the way, I use the word "hate," I don't actually hate anything, because I'm not of that mindset, I'm just being frank with you guys. Steve Larsen: Sure. Akbar Sheikh: Understand this: You don't hate sales, you hate the negative connotation. You think of some cheesy used car salesman, but understand this, this is powerful: If sales did not exist, society would crumble fast. Fast, immediately, over night. The economy? Crumble... Society, culture? Crumble. Why? Listen to this, you have a significant other, right? Steve, are you married or single? Steve Larsen: Yes sir, two kids. Akbar Sheikh: Awesome man, me too. Listen, take a look at this concept of marriage for a second. Some person you did not know for the majority of your life, some person who lived somewhere else, different upbringing, not a part of your circle, some stranger really. That stranger you now share your life with them, you live with them, you trust them with everything, your children, your finances, your everything, you're in the same room with them, you spend nights with them, and how does that happen? It happens by developing ... You had to convince that person that you are trustworthy to live with, that you are responsible, that you are capable of taking care of her, okay? What do you think that's called? That's sales. Steve Larsen: Yeah, there's a lot of selling going on on my side [inaudible 00:46:38]? Akbar Sheikh: You did such a good job. Let me tell you what a great salesman you are. You're so good at it, that you convinced someone to drop their life and live with you. Okay, you all have a job, right? Hopefully not, hopefully you all have a nice business, but at some point you all had a job, right? Well guess what? Someone's paying you to spend your time doing the work that's very important to them. You created some sort of resume, you went for an interview, you showed them that, "Yes, hey look, you can trust me. I'm capable of doing this work. I will do a great job at it. I will take your company forward." That's a great selling job right there, and you won. You got that job. Understand this: Sales is not that cheesy, used car salesman stuff. Selling is simply good communication. Steve Larsen: Yeah, it is. It's the transfer of belief, that's how I've heard it described. Transfer of belief... Akbar Sheikh: Yeah. By the way, if you improve that ... Some people are not that good at communicating, but if you improve that ... and there's simple ways to do that, your whole ... Not only will your business scale bro, but all aspects of your life, your marriage, your relationships will be better, your health will be better, your business ... Your whole life will be better. Steve Larsen: Right, absolutely. So, inside the Facebook page, you're trying to, "Oh, I'm going to soft sell right off the bat," you're just at least selling the opt in for the webinar I'm assuming, right? That's what you said about billboard. Akbar Sheikh: I have my website right there, and I present my big point. All of you have some big point, what you do, right? For me it's, "I build wildly successful funnels." I put it right then and there, and I said, "Hey by the way, do you want to see how we've built several seven figure funnels recently? Click here, sort of thing. Check out my few master class." Who doesn't want that? We're just educating people. You need to tell people, "Hey, do you want this?" You need to know your audience very well. Most people don't take the time and research their audience, but you really need to know, what do they want badly, and give them what they want. Steve Larsen: It can't be that simple. Akbar Sheikh: It is. I'm telling you ... Steve Larsen: I know it is, it's awesome. Akbar Sheikh: Steve, you know what I hate bro? Again, you see that on a lot of these pages, people talking such hardcore tech like, "Oh, I'm going split test between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. Does the color green is better than red in the morning?" I'm like, "Dude, cut. Stop. Cut that out." I don't test any of that stuff. Steve Larsen: It's either honestly. Akbar Sheikh: Okay, so coming from you man, that means a lot, because I know that you guys are pretty thorough. Steve Larsen: What we split test like offer structure like crazy, but green button, blue button, that stuff, we really don't. We don't do that often. Akbar Sheikh:
This is good news for people, this is good news. A lot of people are very successful offline, they want to go online, and they're kind of nervous. A lot of people are not trying to make it online, and they're struggling. This is a great breakthrough for these people listening to understand that, it's not as complicated as some people might make it seem. Steve Larsen: No, it's really not. Have a good offer, know what people want, provide value, you'll make money. Akbar Sheikh: Don't give up. Steve Larsen: Don't give up, just be a little gutless with it and ... Could you through the remainder of what your actual funnel is now today? Akbar Sheikh: One of my funnels, which is like my coaching funnel is super simple man. It's just you go directly to an opt in, and the opt in convert is really well, but I think it's like ... I have to check, I don't even check funny enough, but it's like 65 plus percent opt in, 65, 75% opt in. Steve Larsen: Wow. Akbar Sheikh: What it is, it's very simple ... Actually here, I'm on a computer, I can pull it up just to give you ... just so I can walk you through, we want to give people like a crash lesson, and how to have a good opt in page. Basically, you pull in ... Okay so, I have a picture ... Again, it goes back to audience research. What does mine say? It says, "I help business scale to seven figures by ethically injecting principles of persuasion into their funnels. See the exact steps recently taken to help create three seven figure funnels, watch the free master class." I have a picture of me on the left, and it's really a picture of authority. I'm wearing a nice suit, I have a nice watch on. Right now if you look at me, I'm wearing a click funnels t-shirt, and flip flops, right? That's me. But, I have a nice blue suit on, I got a nice tie, I got my hair done, and my eyes are looking at that text. Steve Larsen: Okay. Akbar Sheikh: I'm holding what people want, which is my "Two Comma Club" award. Okay. So now a dude dressed up, looking at the words, because that's just a psychology thing, you're going to look where I'm looking. I've seen funnels where people have pictures looking to the right, and all their text is to the left. That's kind of funny. That messes up it all by the way. Steve Larsen: It does, we actually do follow that exact same thing you're saying right now. We do that personally. Akbar Sheikh: Yeah, awesome. Then, "I help X do X by X." It's a simple formula. That's it, and just fill in whatever it is your business is doing, right? Then, watch the free master class, and I have a nice ... That's another thing by the way, a lot of people say webinars and stuff like that, I say master class. Here's another thing: You know what's kind of played out? Here's a great little practical tip that you all can do right away, and I honestly feel you'll see better conversions: I think everyone's got this 30 day guarantee, right? Steve Larsen: Yeah. Akbar Sheikh: I just play it out. I discovered something that works a lot better. I don't even know if I should be sharing this secret. I actually don't believe in competition. No, and I don't mind sharing any secrets honestly, because I don't believe in competition. I feel the internet is infinite, and I feel that competition is irrelevant. That's my mindset. Check this out: Take out your guarantee, because everyone and their uncle is using that. Put in for example Steve, put in the Steve Larsen promise. The Steve Larsen promise, and go to your graphic designer, go to Fiverr, or whatever and get a nice badge made out of it. A badge, not some icon, a nice badge, and put the Steve Larsen promise. What this is, from a psychologist sales point of view is, you know what's really powerful when you're selling to someone in person? If you can look someone in the eye, put your left hand on their shoulder, and take your right hand and shake their hand nice and firmly and look them in the eye and say, "Hey listen, I promise I am going to treat your business like it's my own, and we're going to help you out." That exchange right there is extremely powerful. Now, we're online. How are we going to do that? This promise can do that, this promise is our version of that. This is our virtual version of that strong handshake, and looking someone in the eye. The promise says ... It'll have your picture, and your signature and say, "Hey, I promise" ... For example, I recently did a probiotic funnel, "I promise that we are using the highest quality ingredients. We promise that we give this to our own families, and we consider you our family. We consider you our family, and so we keep that in mind. We promise that these probiotics will help your digestive tract within 48 hours." It's just promising what you're delivering, and you're using the word promise. You have your picture there, right? You have your signature there, and now you're building real trust, you're building relationships. Now listen, whatever you're promising, make sure you're delivering on that, okay? Steve Larsen: Right. Akbar Sheikh: Because I'll tell you something about that, and I'm going on a little bit of a rant here, but the past 30 hours I've made over $20,000. You want to know how? Steve Larsen: Yeah. Akbar Sheikh: Through this concept of relationships. I treat people good, right? I treat people right just because it's the right thing to do. But what happens is, I give a ton of value for free. Now ... Check this out, you all said you don't like sales, right? You remember you said, "Oh, I don't like sales, I can't do sales." Guess what? Here's a little hack. I've created ... and I don't even pay for this guys, I've created a massive sales team. Let me explain, I have all these loyal fans, followers, because they love my content, because I open up my heart, and I tell them my secrets, because I don't believe in competition, and I truly in my heart want them to succeed. So, I give them content, I give them value. Now, recently on one of these Facebook pages, someone was saying, "Hey, I don't have a six figure business, I need help to scale to seven figures. Who can help me?" There's posts like this all the time, and no matter what business or industry you are in, there's posts like that. Say for example, your Facebook dude is like, "Hey, I need a Facebook guy," or "I need a CEO guy," or "Anyone know anyone good for probiotics or supplements?" There's always someone calling your name out there. Check this out: Because I've given so much value to people, when that person asks for recommendation, their inbox got lit up by people saying, "Go check out Akbar, go check out Akbar." When I first started I had to say, "Me me me, pick me, pick me." I had to go there, "Hey pick me, me, me, me." Now, I don't do that at all, because I have my sales team who I don't pay just from the basic core fundamental of reciprocity, because I give them value, they go out there they're like, "No, no check out this guy, check Akbar, check out Akbar," and that's the value of keeping your promise. Steve Larsen: That's seriously, that one principle you just said is the reason that I have ... One of my little side hustle site businesses runs. That exact same thing just pumps so much value out there, solved so many legitimate problems really quickly. I think one of the reasons people sometimes aren't is, because they kind of remain in this fake zone, where they right off the bat too quickly expect a dollar for what they're doing. They expect to be compensated ... It doesn't work that way. Akbar Sheikh: There's such a scarcity mindset, right? I reset that book, and thank God it did well. Listen, there was a point in my life I couldn't afford a paper and a crayon for me to draw a book cover. Now, we can thank God by the grace of God, we can afford any graphic artist in the world. But the thing is, I wanted my people to be involved, and I wanted my people to prosper with me. I put out a contest and said, "Hey guys," I assume that there was some graphic designers in there. I said, "Hey guys, I'm doing a book cover contest. Submit your cover on this thread, and the winner gets to be my cover. I'll choose and I'll use it as my cover." Of course you had one hater, right? There's always a hater, "Oh, smart man. Getting everybody to do, getting a book cover for free, want all of us to do the work for you." I'm like, "Dude, I don't care." By the way, I'm not cheap and actually, I have a legitimate spending problem, which I've gotten a coach for so I no longer have it, but bro let me explain something to you. I did this to empower people, because guess what? I pick the winner, and I gave him a shout out to all of my followers and I said, "This guy is awesome." Now, for the rest of this guys lif, for the rest of his life he could say, "I have a cover on a number one international bestselling book." Steve Larsen: Yeah. Akbar Sheikh:
Steve Larsen: Yeah, you just paid him massively. Akbar Sheikh: I just paid him massively. I'm empowering people, because what I've really realized through this journey guys is, if you put other people's needs before your own, meaning your customers, right? You're going to win 100, you're going to get so much more money. Don't try to get a quick buck. I recently had a guy, he wanted me to build him a probiotic funnel, and there was this one upsell where it's like ... It was just like, "Add this bottle for a dollar," and then he's like ... Then I was reading the fine print, which was super fine, and it was like, "When you click this button by the way, we're going to send you a bottle every month for $9.99." I was like, "Dude, what are you doing? This is not obvious at all, people think that they're just paying a dollar for an extra bottle. What is this?" If you want to do that, I got to put it clearly, "Hey, this is a monthly subscription." He's like, "Well you know, that's just what they do." I'm like, "I don't care if that's what they do, this is not how you build an empire. You're going to get so many charge backs, people are going to lose trust in you, you're going to lose this customer. This is just a quick buck." The thing is, if you treat them right, and you give them value, and you keep your work and your promise ... The toughest thing to do is, to get someone to pull out their credit card and buy from you, but the easiest thing in the world to do is to get that person to pull out their credit card again and buy from you again, if you've provided them value and a positive experience. Steve Larsen: Right. Akbar Sheikh: Do you see what I'm saying? Steve Larsen: Oh absolutely, yeah. There's no longevity, there's no sustainability in that kind of model, just be honest [crosstalk 01:01:28]. Tell people what's really going on, yeah. We've been going for a bit, and I honestly could talk to you all day. I love ... I had no idea you and I are so similar. Akbar Sheikh: Oh yeah, that's cool man. Steve Larsen: Our mindsets I think, and anyway just kind of pull it full circle and to be the author/speaker/coach/consultant category, you ... Just to kind of wrap up with this funnel, you've got the Facebook and other organic traffic strategies running, that's going to a squeeze page, which is amazing. I've seen it you say, "I help blank do blank by blank," which is amazing, watch the free master class. You have your own guarantee in there, which is the Akbar promise with your own badge, which is amazing also. Then after that it pushes to, is it a webinar, then coaching call? Which I'm assuming now you have other people you've trained to help do that, and field those as well? Akbar Sheikh: It's just that exactly. It goes right to my calendar, and you can book a call. Yeah absolutely, you can get salesmen. Then, my closing rate, because ... I need to work on my filtration system, because people who ... My closing rate right now is 50%, which is low frankly, because ... Put it this way, it's actually a lot higher for qualified people. It's actually a lot higher. Steve Larsen: Sure. Akbar Sheikh: Probably 80, or 90%. For some reason, some people who are not even supposed to be on that call, they slip through the filtration somehow, but yeah no. The point is, when you have ... I always say, "Set up a good filtration system. Don't talk to anyone unless they're a hot lead if you're in this kind of space, in the high ticket space, because it's not about cold calling, it's about talking to the right people at the right time." Steve Larsen: Oh, that's amazing. That's amazing. That's really interesting though that you have that realization too ... It really is as far as steps and like you said, the seven elements you have of the ethical persuasion, and those things. It really is very similar funnel to what you were using when you were living in a closet, which is so cool that it works that way. Akbar Sheikh: Yeah no, that's crazy that we came together on this show man, it's true. So yeah, I guess gosh, I guess it started with that when I had nothing. That kind of eliminates all excuses for everyone man. Steve Larsen: Yeah, that's so cool. Well Akbar, I want to thank you so much. Where can people find out more about you? By the way, just for everyone, in case you haven't caught it in between the lines, I just want to pull it out there, Akbar has put a best selling book out there. That's insane. That's not easy to do, could you tell them what the name of the book is, and where they can find out more about you? Akbar Sheikh: Yeah no, so we were blessed it was an international best seller in six countries including America. Steve Larsen: Oh man. Akbar Sheikh:
Steve Larsen: I laughed when I read the title. I was immediately intrigued. You're doing your job as a marketer. I was like, "I have to read that book." Akbar Sheikh: My editor had a half hour conversation, be like begging me to change the title I'm like, "Nope, nope, nope, not doing it. Not doing it. If we're going to do it, we're going to do it my way." Steve Larsen: Oh that's awesome. Akbar Sheikh: Yeah, but no listen, we're hosting ... I talked about how we generated ... I really want to break down for people how I've done all this stuff. I gave people a lot of great gems I think in this podcast, but to really break it down, I need a full weekend, which is why we're hosting a mastermind in actually just a couple of weeks here in Dallas. I really invite you guys to join us, it's actually going to be me, Rachel Peterson, who's the queen of social media. We're actually having implementation bootcamp, mastermind weekend here in Dallas, where you are going to come in with your business that's going to be in a certain type of shape, and it's going to leave in a totally different ... You're going to actually leave that weekend with a totally different business. That's what I love about internet marketing is, that instant gratification. Steve Larsen: Yeah. Akbar Sheikh: I just love it, because you can make some changes and see benefits right away. That's what we're going to be doing guys, that's on my website, and that's where all of my stuff is. If you just go to my name dot come, which is akbarsheikh.com, A-K-B-A-R-S-H-E-I-K-H dot com, that's where you can find out more about me, and hopefully see us on the mastermind and we can ... If your product or service is out there to make the world a better place, I'm with you 100%, and I'm more than happy to help you scale to seven figures. Steve Larsen: I appreciate that so much. You had mentioned before too, honestly an insanely generous gift that ... Akbar Sheikh: Yeah. Steve Larsen: I just want to make sure that they get it, because it's so cool. I'm so excited for everyone here. Akbar Sheikh: Yeah no, it's my pleasure. I think Steve does a great job, I think he's a great guy, and I think that you guys ... Every honest ... I truly believe that every honest, hard working person deserves a thriving online business. It's life changing, and I truly do want to make the world a better place. One of my offers is to contribute to that is this book, which is $47 on Amazon right now if you take a look. However, for you guys it'd be my honor to give you guys a free copy... Steve Larsen: Oh. Akbar Sheikh: Yeah. If you just go to my name dot com slash Steve, S-T-E-V-E, it would be my privilege and honor to give you guys a free copy. Steve Larsen: That's so generous of you, thank you very much Akbar, that's huge. Everyone go get that, and that's very exciting. Check out the mastermind also, he'll be hosting soon with Rachel Peterson, and Andrew, and obviously it's going to be fantastic. I hope I can be there, that would be cool, but ... Akbar Sheikh: Yeah, would love to have you man. Steve Larsen: Anyway, thanks so much Akbar, and thanks for all the value. Guys, go get the results first, provide actual value for people, and the business, and all the tech stuff gets a lot easier too as you move down. Akbar Sheikh: Oh yeah. Steve Larsen: Hey, thanks so much. Anything else you want to add? Akbar Sheikh: I'll add one last thing guys, one of my big secrets to success and it really has nothing to do with funnels is that ... I hope you don't mind Steve, me adding this one last thing, but ... I'm just telling you, I'm not preaching, but I'm just telling you what I'd do is, give ... The more, more that this figure to this out, the more, more money you're going to make. But whatever you're making, I give 10% away to charity. I find it to be one of my biggest secrets of success. I find that you get a lot more in return, a lot more. Find your passion, what you're passionate about. Are you passionate about helping starving people? Are you passionate about orphans? Those are the two things that I'm passionate about, but you may be passionate about animal cruelty, or other things. Donate to these causes, at least 10%, and by the way, if you're at the point where you cannot afford it, that's fine. But then, donate your time. Donate your time to these causes. Now, if you don't have the time, then at least call up your mom or a relative, or someone and just make them smile. Steve Larsen: Right. Akbar Sheikh: Even when you're going to go get your coffee, or you're going to go ... Just deal with people. Just look at them and smile and say, "Thank you," and ask them about their day. That's charity too by the way, if you don't do those sorts of things. You'll see when you do that by the way ... God wants you to smile you know why? Because when you smile, natural endorphins are released into you and you actually have a better day, this is scientifically proven. Guys, I really recommend to give as much as you can. It's really done wonders for me, and so so many people. I'd love to leave you on that note. Steve Larsen: I appreciate that. Anyway, I do that also. I strongly believe that that's actually ... The 10% thing, I do that also. Akbar Sheikh: Oh cool man. Steve Larsen: Anyway, thanks so much Akbar, appreciate it. Guys, go check out akbarsheikh.com/steve for a copy of your free book, "Seven Figure Funnels." Go check out the mastermind, he's going to be putting up here soon also. Thanks so much Akbar, appreciate it. Akbar Sheikh:
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/3funnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today.
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| 12 Apr 2019 | SFR 233: It's All Just Learnable Formulas... | 00:34:09 | |
Once you get clear on what you want as an entrepreneur, the rest is a lot of learnable formulas that you DO NOT have to be pro at...
Every once in a while when an interview is just so awesome, I ask:
“ Do you mind if I repost this on Sales Funnel Radio?”
... and usually, they're very excited about that.
This interview was with Marian Esanu from the High Ticket Client Acquisition podcast.
Sometimes the right questions get me to teach something in a way that I haven't taught before.
Shout out to you, Marian, this was a great interview.
I’ve pulled out the BEST bits where Marian asks me about what I look for when I am trying to decide what to sell.
We talk about the whole red ocean analytics thing, (which by the way is a huge focus of the last OfferMind).
The next OfferMind is coming up September 2nd-3rd.
They’ll be a bunch of really cool speakers coming in and Russell's keynoting.
But back to the formulas…
Marian asks me:
You have to understand like I can close my eyes, and I can see the whole formula…
It's all a big pattern to me.
I know the formulas that cause success at each part of the value ladder. I know the formulas before we even choose or start brainstorming an offer to promote.
That should be really encouraging to everybody because that's what I teach:
The offer is part of the sales message. The sales message is part of the offer. They're separate, but they're combined in their purpose. They're equal but different.
FINDING YOUR VOICE
Marian: What's your thought on somebody starting publishing for the first time? How do you find your voice?
Do you just talk about stuff that you're good at, even if you don't know if people are gonna respond to it? What do you think about that?
Steve: That is one of the most frequent questions. It’s also one of the questions where the answer is NOT inspiring.
We created this event called the Funnel Hackathon Event. We called it the FHAT event.
Russell's inner circle was there; these people were paying 25 - 50 grand to be in the room. The room was filled with very rich, very successful, smart people.
I had gone through the previous 12 years of Russell's content to organize it.
I thought through like, “Hey, in order to know this, you really need to do that. In order to know this, you really need to do that.”
… and I put it in a digestible way... and we launched the original Two Comma Club coaching program from that.
We decided to test the material against the inner circle, so it was a BIG event for me.
Russell was gonna teach, and so I was excited to see how he was gonna do it.
I was walking to the event room side-by-side with Russell, and he turns to me and goes, “Stephen, dude, do you want to introduce me on stage?”
Immediately, I was like, “No.”
I was so scared, like... there's no way.
I'm very formula oriented, and I was like, “What's the formula dude? What's the script? How do I MC? How do I bring somebody in?”
...and Russell starts laughing. He's like, “Dude, no wait, wait. Okay, settle down.” I was freaking out, so he took me back out of the room, and we went to this little side conference room.
Russell said:
“Stephen, I got to tell you something... It’s impressive how well you model me... that's very rare, but dude, it’s time for you to find your own voice. Stop asking how would Russell Brunson introduce somebody on stage. How would YOU introduce somebody on stage?”
I focus so much on modeling success, it sounds stupid saying it, but it was the first time in my life where I found my voice.
It was the first time in my life that Steve Larsen was born on stage.
I was already podcasting... because I was listening to what he was saying... but Steve Larsen started becoming born on my podcast. Around episode 70 or 80, I felt it….
I started doing it the way I would do it.
I feel like a lot of the model's we follow will get you to 80%.
They'll jumpstart you and help shortcut decades, lots of pain and money that you otherwise would have to spend, but eventually the whole find your voice thing, in my opinion, is very unteachable.
I believe that there are things in this business that we can design, but there are other things that we have to discover... and your voice is one of them.
So you can follow some scripts and blueprints for a while, and then after a while, it's like: “Okay, how would you say it? Just okay say it that way.”
Marian: Got it. So it's more like practice, practice, practice, and then it would just come out at some point? Got it, awesome, and that's a hell of a story.
Steve: It's funny, man. It was sooo depressing for me to hear that. I was like, “Just tell me the script, dude. I want safety in the script.”
Marian: All right, awesome man. I think that will really help a lot of people that are listening to or watching this.
Now let's take it a step further, and let's say somebody has started to find their voice and find their message, and you know, model it and design it, and all that stuff…
The next part in there would be the offer, and that's where your entire expertise and all of these things come in, right?
Steve: Yeah.
THE BUSINESS OF PROBLEM SOLVING
Marian: What do you think is the next step would be, let’s say we're talking about a coach, a consultant, to design the best offer?
What do you think they lack... and how they can start looking at that process as being one of the most important?
I know you preach a lot on making sure that you work on your sales message and your sales process before you build your:
What's your process so that somebody can implement that for themselves?
Steve: That's a very good question. It's interesting...
I believe the sales message and the offer are actually one and the same. They're very separate roles, but I don't think you can have a sales message without an offer, and vice versa.
There's no offer without a sales message. They support each other, but they're very different roles.
If you're gonna go create an offer, and let's say you're a coach or a consultant, or something like that…
I'm sure you've heard the saying that CEOs read a book a week…
So for a while, I was just consuming. consuming, consuming, because that's what successful people do, therefore I will do the same…
After about two years, I started asking myself questions like:
“I'm doing what successful people do, why am I still broke?”
...and I realized several things.
#1: For the first time in my life, I started realizing the difference between marketing and sales and that they're very different.
Marketing changes people's beliefs so that they can buy something. That's what a sales message does. The act of selling is just presenting an offer and overcoming objections.
...they work in tandem, but they are very distinct things.
So if somebody's trying to come up with an offer, you shouldn't be behaving as a CEO.
If you're trying to come up with an offer for the first time, you’ve got to put on the entrepreneur hat and get rid of all the mainstream CEO junk. You're not a CEO, so stop acting like one.
I don't read a book a week. I'm NOT saying that you shouldn't learn, but…
I learn with the intent to solve problems. That's what entrepreneurs are in the business of doing.
So if you think about the way a customer is experiencing your product…
The Winter Olympics was a while ago, right. (Crap, it wasn't a while ago, it was like a year ago. Nevermind, time is going fast.)
So, for example:
If I'm gonna go be an Olympic skier, every single opportunity that's out there is guarded by a whole bunch of problems that you can't see…
My dad really wanted to go be an Olympic skier... if he’d the opportunity to be an Olympic skier, there's a whole bunch of follow-up problems that you have to solve.
Problems that you never knew you had to solve until you were given that opportunity.
Follow me for a second... I know I'm kind of going all over the place, let me tie it with a little bow in a second...
Marian: No, I get it.
Steve: Yeah, this is a HUGE deal to realize... I think most people that are in the business of selling anything, any kind of entrepreneurship, any kind of business… we forget this.
Your product is an opportunity, and there's a whole bunch of problems that you have to solve that show up after someone buys.
So, if I have the opportunity to become an Olympic skier, now that the opportunity's in front of me, I have to solve problems that weren't there before I had the opportunity:
Do you know what I mean?
Marion: Yep.
Steve: It happens to us when we buy any kind of product in our life. I'm trying to find something on my desk here. Okay, this gum...
SELLING GUM
There are follow-up problems that somebody has after they buy this gum that they did not have until they bought it. It's the same thing if you are a coach or a consultant…
When somebody buys your main product, there's a bunch of follow-up problems that you now have to solve that were NOT on your table ahead of time.
Like ClickFunnels, right?
It wasn't until I bought ClickFunnels that I realized:
...I didn't have that problem before I bought it, right? I didn't have that problem ahead of time.
You have to realize that every product you sell is a gift both to the buyer and to you.
For example:
When you sell gum, (or something else), there's a bunch of follow-up problems…
This is the easiest way to create an offer ever.
You ask: “What are the follow-up problems that my product creates for somebody after they buy it?”
Then you see what the majority are and you solve those problems with additional products. I just give those away for free when they buy the first thing.
Back to gum…
What kind of issues would somebody have?
So you could go interview oral health doctors…
… and include that interview, (which is a digital thing, takes nothing to fulfill), with the original product that you sell and all these things that you go stack on there.
That's one of the easiest ways to create an offer ever. I hope that made sense?
Marian: Oh, it does.
Steve:
I figure out what the follow-up problems are, create a product to solve them and give them away for free with the original product.
Marian: That's INSANE!
I don't think I ever thought about the whole offer creation process the way that you said it.
That can be applied to any kind of industry regardless of what you sell, as long as you charge people for something, they'll have a question that they didn't have before they bought it.
I hope everybody's taking notes.
Steve: It drives me nuts when people are like, “...but in my industry’s different.” I'm like, “No, it's not. Do you sell anything? Sweet!”
Marian: Even if you sell a commodity, people will still have questions. Even if it's a t-shirt, “How can I wash this t-shirt so it's not getting all crappy?”
Steve: Exactly, yeah. “We'll give you a cool free PDF that shows cool fashion things to wear with the shirt when you buy.”
You're like, “Oh man, you just increased value without dropping the price.”
So there are a few ways to compete in this world...
If I’ve got a bunch of other people that are selling something similar to me:
So I'm gonna bump the value up with mostly digital products that take nothing for me to fulfill, and boost the value like crazy.
Now I can sell for a premium, rather than fight to be the lowest price for what I sell.
That's terrible, it's a terrible way to do business.
Marian: That's super powerful.
I hope everybody's literally just taking this part here. This is worth a lot of money. Awesome, I love that.
CAMPAIGNS ARE DYING
So I listened to one of your episodes. I don't remember the name of it now, but you stressed a lot on this matter.
You have a different way of approaching a campaign. A campaign for you is NOT just driving traffic to a funnel, it's a whole different thing put on steroids.
Can you, can you talk about that? Because I really think that this can help a lot of our listeners.
Steve: Yeah, I think the term campaign is something that's actually dying. It's a dying art.
Before social media existed, all these marketers that were out there, how did they get such fast, big sales?
If you buy an ad on YouTube, or Facebook they call it a campaign. I think what's killing it.
From a direct response marketer's viewpoint, ads are just part of a campaign. It's NOT the campaign itself. A campaign is pressure building up to a certain point.
One of my favorite things to go do if you're podcasting or publishing... (which is one of the easiest ways to get clients for life, it's ridiculous. It will change your life if you just publish), is to create episodes that lead up to an event.
So in the episodes, I'm like, “Hey, in two months from now, this cool thing is happening, and by the way here's a whole bunch of stories that are gonna break your beliefs.”
... I'm not gonna say that, but that's what's happening.
I'm dripping out those pieces of content, and at the end of all of them, I'm saying, “Hey, go to this page and register so you guys get early bird access... on the waiting list... or whatever.”
You build up all the pressure for this date, it's kind of what Hollywood does for movies.
THE HOLLYWOOD LAUNCH
Q: How much money do you think Hollywood would make if you didn't hear about the movie until the day it’s actually released?
A: They wouldn't make that much money.
They are masters at creating pressure to a date. They create pressure, “Here it comes... on this date, oh my gosh!” right?
...and then tons of sales come in all over the place. Then they drive more ads… it's very much more like that. Ads are part of that…
A marketer, at the core, is an event thrower... meaning they build pressure to a certain date, and then using scarcity and urgency... and remove access to it after while to get a second bump in sales.
A campaign is much more, I don't even know what the word is….
Marian: Making them hungry for your product before it's launched, I guess?
Steve: Yeah, in my mind, there are two types of campaigns that I use:
#1: There's Launch Campaign for if I'm gonna introduce something to the market for the first time. There are several strategies for building pressure, noise, getting a big list and shoving them all to a certain date, so that there's lots of pressure out there.
#2: There's Evergreen Campaigns (it's my own definition), it is things like turning on Facebook ads, where I'm just gonna be tweaking the numbers, stuff like that…
You miss out on so much money if you start a funnel or a podcast.. and then just turn on ads.
Build Pressure!
...I use the two campaigns together.
That's how I launch everything. I launch with a lot of pressure and then I take that cash roll it into my ads... and now my customers are paying for my ads.
Marian: That's super smart, and I really love the way that you explained things, and the way that you put it out there to the public. It's super smart.
You are one of most in-demand funnel builders, so everything that you say, people will think, “Oh, I'll go and implement it,” but you have a complete in-depth process of things to do before you even touch your laptop to build a funnel.
Steve: Yeah.
Marian: And I think a lot of people would miss a lot of that stuff. Can you debate a little bit on that process? I know we're getting close to wrapping things up here.
Steve: That's fine. Yeah, I think the biggest issue, and I did the same thing, you know. I can't blame anybody for doing this... but when I first got ClickFunnels, the first thing I did... (and this is what I did for a while), was log in and build the funnel…
ClickFunnels makes it so easy on the tech side to do stuff, it's attractive and it's sexy, and most people jump right to that…
They say, “Hey, let me go build this sweet thing.”
So they build it, this is literally how I did it.
I remember one of the first funnels, I built a free plus shipping thing, selling a CD. I wanted to have a free plus shipping thing, so I went and I rebuilt all of Russell Brunson's Dot Com Secrets book funnel…
I said, “What should I tell them on this page?”
I went through, and I came up with something to sell on that page.
I went to the next page, what should I sell on this page? What should I sell on this page?
Then after I had all the products in there, I was like, “How should I sell this?”
...and I went and I wrote the sales message, and I put it all in there.
THAT is the exact opposite order to where you find success.
People need to get out of the mindset of testing products. You don't really test products. You test sales messages.
The role of the sales message is to cause the desire for purchase. The product just fulfills on the promise that your sales message made.
That's all the product does.
The product should be amazing, but you really don’t need to test a product. It's NOT about that.
What causes the purchase, is the sales message itself.
So, I gather all this data from my competitors in the red ocean. I want something that's crazy competitive... and then I'm gonna take all that data and craft my sales message for those people alone.
The worst thing ever is when someone walks up and they're like, “Stephen, I built this sweet thing, who should I sell it to?” I'm like, “Ah that is like square one. You jumped to 99…”
FINDING THE WHO
First, you start with the who. It's all about the who and understanding:
You understand MORE about where these people are, and that creates your sales message.
You go test that to those people specifically, and then once people are buying, then I go create the product to fulfill on.
Super safe, completely the opposite order than what college taught me. A different way of thinking about it. Completely different than mainstream entrepreneurship out there.
Marian: I get it 100%. Julie Stoian shared the same type of thing... we were talking about an online course, and she broke it down in the same exact steps. So I can see why for sure.
Now you talk a lot about the red ocean, the blue ocean, and then you created something in the middle, the purple ocean.
I know, a lot of people will say, “Well, my industry's too crowded. I got to compete on price. I don't know how to build an offer, whatever… How are they starting?”
Let's say they do what you say, they start publishing, they find their voice, they create an offer, they create a sales message, all together. Are they testing that offer to the red ocean... and then they try to build their own type of blue ocean out of that? What's the best way to do that?
Steve: That's a lot of strategies involved in that.
Marian: Just the big picture.
THE BLOODY RED OCEAN
Steve: So this red ocean concept. You think back in the day where Al Gore created the internet, he didn't. He did NOT create the internet. But he claims he did.
...but you think about when the internet became publicly available for everybody in 1991…
There was one internet service provider, that's it. You know? Straight up monopoly. You couldn't get the internet anywhere else.
Then suddenly, all these other tech companies say: “Look at that, and they're like we could be an internet provider,”
...and someone else comes in, somebody else comes in, somebody else comes in.
They start driving the price down because of competition.
We actually want that. I want to have the most ridiculous red highly competitive, bloody ocean that is out there. I want it to be very bloody. I want it to be soooo competitive…
Because when it is competitive, it's actual security. If the market of internet service providers is lasting long enough, what's cool about that is that in order for the market to survive, they have to start learning how to create new customers.
They have to make customers out of people who are not planning on being customers. That is not easy, and most markets don't survive that.
Most of us would not go into the beanie babies accessories market. You know or Pogs or Kmart or Sears, all these things that are dying….they didn't learn how to make customers out of people who were NOT planning to be customers.
It's easy when a new thing comes out, they collect the easy people off the top who’d buy just because they're looking to buy something.
It’s hard after those people have dried up, for a market to move from customer collection to customer creation. That is challenging. Most markets die because of that.
I actually want a highly red ocean.
I want a lot of competition... because it's a sign that the market is surviving and growing.
Not all markets are red. I want one that's red.
I want to be able to go in, (hopefully, this isn't too deep), and look at this really, really, really red, red ocean, and learn how to take a step out of it, and build a sales message that goes directly back into it.
...because they figured out how to create customers.
It means I don't have to learn how to create customers. I just sell to those people and my sales message pulls people over to me.
I don't have to create customers, I just have to collect them. It's very, it's kind of a different way of thinking. I don't know. Hopefully, it makes sense but like,
Marian: It does.
Steve: I've coached 10x of thousands of people in this now, and the thing that's scary is they go do all this work, they create all these funnels, they make all the sales messages, they're making all the things that we tell them to go do…
BUT…
They go and they plug them into a market that's dying, and when the market leaves, they now have to go back to square one... the who.
“Crap, my who dried up. I don't know where they went.”
The market left. The market died... and so they have to find a NEW who and go back to square one to create a new sales message and make sure that offers something that's sexy and fulfills…
...and make sure the funnel is something that is attractive for that market... and it's terrible, it sucks!
It's where the entrepreneur in this game, (especially online), feel like their wheels are spinning... it's because they chose the wrong who.
So I go in and say:
I'm NOT gonna talk to somebody in there and try to sell them if they're like a massive diehard, right. They're like, “I believe this stuff, this is my thing,” right?
That's like watching the Superbowl with opposing fans in the same room: “Well, this team's better, no that team's better.” No one wins, right! It's that exact same thing…
99% of sales copy that's written out there by somebody that's brand new, they're speaking to somebody in the red ocean who's a die hard. It's a dumb argument.
I don't speak to them at all. I find a market that's really, really, really red, and then I only talk to those people in there who are feeling pain and hate the market they're in. They just don't know anything different...
That’s a very easy person they go sell.
Marion: That's something that a lot of people just don't talk about…
You hear everybody being like, “Oh, I'm afraid to get into that market because it's so crowded. I'm not gonna be able to survive,” but no, you just said the opposite:
“No, go there because you don't need to create customers.. all of them are over there, and it's so much easier for you to get them out.”
Awesome man, you’re literally just spitting fire here.
Last question before we wrap things up in here…
You're one of the few people that I know, (especially in this online game), that has two completely different audiences. You manage both of them so well in a way that you never like…
I don't know I mean like correct me if I'm wrong, but it's very rare when you cross-promote between the two... maybe I'm wrong, I don't know?
But I just, I'm so amazed by the fact that... I don't know how big both of them are, I know this one that I'm in, it's pretty large.
Steve: A little big.
Marian: Yeah. So then how do you manage to keep them you know not necessarily from a technical standpoint, but because you have to create offers for both of them.
You have to publish to both of them. How do you manage your time and your strategy behind that?
Steve: First of all I would just caveat everything right there by just saying please don't try that. It actually was NOT on purpose, but it worked for a few specific reasons…
So one of them is the MLM space, and when you think about that, the reason I went into that is because of the exact same principal I was just talking about. Like, that's an insanely red competitive ocean.
There was a lot of opinions around that industry, which is good. I actually want that. I don't want anything that's too blue. I want a lot of red... because then what I did, (and this is the reason why it sells so well, and why I don't actually have to manage it that much)...
This is one of the easiest ways to create a sales message, create hooks, create podcast content, is you become the anti-red in your messaging.
...and my headlines in that space are:
How I'm auto recruiting a downline of big producers without my friends and family even knowing I'm in MLM.
... and they're like what?
The whole industry is built around attacking your friends and family, and so when they read that headline, it is the anti-red... and because of that, it's talkable.
We drive ads, but on the ClickFunnels page, when everyone's like, “Who does MLM funnels?” Like, everyone says my stuff. I'm not doing any of that, and the reason is that I'm so strongly anti-red.
I'm like, “Yeah, do the MLM thing, but don't you dare do it in the way they're teaching you...” and who does that speak to?
It speaks to people who are doing it, who are in pain and hate it.
They just don't know another way.
Exactly as I was just saying. So it's talkable, and they do a lot of my selling for me because it's word of mouth.
It's very easy... because no one's doing that, and then they can go, “Oh my gosh, have you seen this guy?”
I'm very careful about what I sell, NOT based on the product... I'm careful based on the sales message and how abrupt it is in the red ocean.
That's one of the biggest keys and one of the biggest misconceptions.
For years, I walked around asking myself the question, “What should I sell? What should I sell?”
… it's like paralysis.
If you're listening or watching this now, and you're like, “I don't know what to sell... I don't know what to do?” … the reason's that you're starting with the wrong question.
Instead of asking, “What do I sell?” … You ask, “Who should I sell?” And “Who do I want to sell? Who’s my dream customer?”... what should I sell gets really easy... because you just solve their problems and become the anti-red in your sales message.
It’s waaay easier after you do a little research like that.
Thanks so much for listening. Please remember to rate and subscribe.
Hey,
I know this game can take a few tries to get the money flowing, especially the first time, right? And that can suck.
I also know from experience how frustrating it can be to know your business is just a few tweaks away from your next big payday, but you don't know what tweaks to make.
I've felt completely paralyzed by that in the past, and it sucks.
I've been blessed to work with thousands of new and successful businesses over the last three years, and two things have really shocked me.
#1: I began noticing the pattern to success is vastly the same, but everyone's spot on the path is obviously different.
#2: I've been shocked and overwhelmed by the number of people asking for my help, my systems, and funnels in their business.
Well, until now I've never had a system or product in my own business to help you build yours.
Now, I'm finally able to be public about all this...
If you'd like my help to build your offer or sales message funnel and even your content machine, go to myofferlab.com.
The path to online and offline success is 80 percent the same regardless of the product, price point or industry, and it works if you're new or already a killer in business.
You can get more details on how to get my personal attention and frameworks in your own business by going to myofferlab.com
In-person classes are limited to 60 people each, and frankly, I can only do about two of these a year. Get more details, and even jump on the phone with us for free at myofferlab.com | |||
| 23 Mar 2018 | SFR 122: My New Auto Webinar Stats… | 00:21:16 | |
Click above to listen in iTunes... Yup, I just changed up the whole funnel. Here’s what happened
What's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now, I've left my 9-5 to take the plunge and build my million dollar business. The real question is, "How will I do it without VC funding or debt? Completely from scratch?" This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels. My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. What's up guys? I hope you like my new intro. Just had several of you guys reach out actually and say that you like it. And so, it means a lot. I take a long time to write those kinds of scripts when I know that I'm gonna hear them a billion times probably. But, I wanted to create more of a journey. More of a ... Anyway, I've talked about that a little bit in the past. I wanted to share with you a little bit more about my webinar and what I've been doing to it. I did a lot of stuff this week. It's been a crazy week. There were two days this week where I almost stayed up a full 24 hours just getting stuff done and working on it and the different aspects that I needed to crank out. It was ridiculous. And, I do not recommend that. In fact, I always think it's kind of weird when people are like, "Yeah, hashtag the hustle." You know? And, they stay up 24 hours all the time. But, it just wrecks your next day anyway. So, that never makes sense to me. Be smart with your health. Don't do that too often. Hey, what I want to share with you though is more about the webinar and the actual stats. I automated it. I already automated it. I know that a lot of people will probably ask me, "Steven, you always say to do it for seven months." Well, here's the thing. Before I actually launched the webinar, I tested it like crazy. I knew the messages were gonna work. I knew the offer was gonna work. It was all already tested before I actually pushed the button. You know what I mean? And so, I didn't start from complete scratch when I started to do my live webinars. I did it maybe 12 times and I still, that final time, I was still using the original script. And so, here's the thing guys. You gotta understand this. This is how I look at the webinar. This is the three phases of launching any product. The three phases... And, I didn't realize that this is what I do or even that Russell, that this is what he does, but this is what it is. We first ... This is three spots. We first figure out a sales message. Understand that I said, "Sales Message". I did not say, "Offer". I did not say, "Funnel".
So, this is how I did my webinar. My webinar. Phase number one is all about creating the sales message. I don't give a crap about the actual product or the offer until I know that I can sell the thing. Right? Does that make sense? And, I know a lot of people say, "Well, duh, Steven." Well, most of us don't do that though. We actually turn around and we're like, "Hey, what am I gonna sell?" Wrong question. The question is, "How will I sell it?" And, the problem is that when you start with an offer, when you actually start with the offer, the problem is that you become tethered by the offer when you're creating the sales message. Does that make sense? You create restrictions. You're not free. You're not liquid... You're not fluid to create whatever sales message you want... So, what I have been doing for a solid probably year before I actually launched my webinar, what I did is I actually went and I started testing the sales message. I created an entire second podcast show about it. And, I just started dropping out the stories. And, the ones that really resonated, I kind of took note of that. Oh, that's interesting. That's the story that did it over here. Interesting. Oh, wow. They really like this one and they hated that one." And, I started testing sales message. Also, my story. And, when we actually get the story down, when we get the sales message down, whatever it is that gets people's butts out of their chairs and their wallets, and credit card in your hand, then you create an offer that fulfills the promises that you made in the sales message. Does that make sense? When you actually find the sales message that gets somebody off their butt and gets their wallet in your hand then you create the offer that fulfills whatever that sales message promised... When you do it the other way and you create an offer, and then the sales message, and then the sales thing, you are tethered in your mind. And, you have this thing where, "Well, my product doesn't do this." Okay, well stop thinking about that. Figure out what it is that gets people into action. People are inherently lazy. What is the thing? And, if you found out, "Oh my gosh. This is the thing that gets people into action, sweet. Then you create. Does that make sense? So, step number one, sales message. Step number two is then the offer. And, both of them stem off of belief. Both of them stem off of belief. At the very, very bottom. Or, sorry. The very, very last one, that's when I start building a funnel. And, that's when I build the delivery mechanism that will serve up those two things. Funny enough though, people usually do the exact opposite. They build a funnel and be like, "Hey, I want an... funnel." And, they think of it in terms of funnels. That's not how it works. You think of it in terms of what are you trying to deliver? And, you go and you put together a funnel. If you do that first, then you build them out an offer, then you figure out how to actually sell the thing, super scary. Super scary. Right?... And, so you guys know I'm already automating it, but it's because of the three steps that I take. You do it the other way around and you say, "Hey, what's the sales message?" And, as part of that, you're figuring out where the traffic is. With step number one, what's the sales message? What gets people off the butt? It's like ... I know I bring up this example a lot, but it's because it's true. Before Tim Ferriss even finished writing a book he was out there testing headlines and titles for the book. And, he would test tons of headlines and he would spend a little money, like 20 bucks on tons of different ... Like, "Hey, 20 bucks for this headline. 20 bucks for this title. 20 bucks for this title." And, he would go test it. And, whatever one they liked, that's what he named it. And, there wasn't even a book written half the time. He was just seeing what people clicked on.
Sales message number one. Offer number two. And then, you create the funnel. And then, as soon as I've done that, I go back to sales message. Then I go back to offer, tweak that. And then, I go back to funnel and I tweak that. Then I start all the way back over again, a sales message. So, the reason why guys is because I've been following my process. And, my process is first figure out the sales message, which I did. And, since the beginning of the year, we had like 50 grand and hot traffic sales. People were just super hungry for it. So, the first month, we did 100 grand. The second month we did like 25. And, it was mostly because I didn't focus on selling it that much. I was just building the offer that I knew was selling. My numbers were looking great. Everything was looking fantastic. And then, the first two weeks here, I actually haven't really been selling it that much and the reason is because I had it down for like two weeks 'cause I was going and automating everything. First, I was talking about the sales message. Then I built the offer. Now, I've been tweaking the funnel. And, it's almost been like month, by month, by month. I woke up at 2:30 hardly being able to sleep. I'm so excited. I'm that much of a nerd, yes. And, I will admit it. But, anyway. It will probably be really April before we actually start to get real traffic turned on towards it. But, what I'm excited about is this guys. I'm so pumped. I went and I actually turned on a little bit of traffic and my numbers are holding true... Meaning, I was nervous that automating the webinar would drop some numbers. 'Cause people can sense that it's not live. The products are freaking awesome. That's never usually the issue. It's usually not that, "Hey, can we make something that's sexy?" It usually does not have anything to do with the actual offer. It's a formula. The way you get to the offer is a formula. And, you follow that formula, you get to the offer, great. You might tweak it a little bit here and there, but the real thing that you are trying to figure out and the real place that people will struggle and suck it up on is the actual message part. It's the belief part. It's the part that ... And, how to not number one just create it, but how to glean it from the sub-market they're trying to sell to. And so, when I figured out, "Oh, my gosh. I've nailed the beliefs. I know I've nailed the beliefs." That's one of the reasons I've sold so well. And, I was selling that puppy before it was actually even ready. And, they knew that. There was no slight of hand thing going on there. They knew that. They were getting beta access to certain other bonuses that I had in there.
I could do it if everything else in my business was set up, but it's not and I'm the only guy running it. I'm excited just to barely have my first employee to come on over. He's swinging on over and he's handling support. And, he's kind of my assistant. He's also handling a lot of front line relationships. And, he's wearing a lot of hats, which he's pumped about and I'm pumped about. But, he's not gonna be over for another month. I was like, "I gotta automate this thing." So, anyways. The reason I automated it was because my registration rates were about 52%, which is really, really awesome. And, even went to up to probably 62% for a while. 62% opt-in rate on a webinar page. And, I think on how I did it. It was really, really cool. I had many engagement things all over. My show up rates were 7-13%. Really low. Right? Really low. And, I've talked about in previous episodes how I believe it's because the time in front of my webinar was way too long. Meaning, I did a webinar ... Especially, for who I was selling to, I can barely remember three days out what ... I don't remember what I did three days ago. And, if I'm asking someone to register for a webinar three days ago and it's not till tomorrow, I'm gonna forget. You know what I mean? It needs to be sooner than that. So, I'm shrinking the time from when they register to the time the webinar actually happens. Right? I did that for a while and it really helped. And, I was like, "Whoa." And then, on that backend, my cart close sequence it was usually three days. I was like, that seems way too long. So, I went down to 24 hours. And, there was a big spike in sales. I didn't change anything else. I was like, "What the heck?" Just because there was a little bit more pressure. But, it was almost a little bit too fast. Some people didn't really have a chance to go watch the replay that they wanted to, so then I'm out to a 36 hour replay sequence now... That part I could keep. But, what I decided to do ... So, I was getting anywhere from 15-25% close rate, which is freaking huge, guys. That's awesome. Freaking huge. 15-25% close rate is a multi-million dollar webinar, which I know it will be. And, it's already shown signs that it's going to be, which is awesome. So, the one number that I needed to chance, which I know I've gone through before is that show up rate. Well, when we automate webinars, the average show up rate is like 85%. It's like 90% because it's happening in the next few minutes. That's how they work. That's why they work. You know? Next webinar happening in the next 15 minutes. What? So, I made a top of the every 15 minute webinar. So, every 15 minutes, that webinar starts over again and it's really, really awesome. So, I'm super pumped guys 'cause yesterday I really had the first time to really turn it on. Got traffic sent to it... And, my registration rate, I'm so pumped, was 46%. So, it only dropped like 10%. But, the show up rate was like, it was almost 100%. It was freaking huge. And, I was like, "Oh, my gosh." And, I was so stoked. And then, we made sales at a close rate of 14.62%. Guys, that's huge. That means I can now drive tons of traffic. It means the rest of the numbers are working. It means that I can celebrate as if I've made a million bucks already 'cause it means it will. You know? Unless I really, really jack it up and I've got some awesome silver bolts up my sleeve that I actually can't tell you about. Some cool things for traffic that I'm very, very pumped about. Getting hooked up in several ways. Working that Dream 100, which I am, which we are, which we do. I will never stop doing that system. And, that's what's been going on. So, anyway, I just wanted to give you guys a little bit of accounting before I see a lot of you guys. There's so many things in my mind I want to share with you guys that have happened this last little bit. Things that I'm learning. More clarity, the things that I've been understanding. And, teach you how I've been ... Why did I feel comfortable leaving a job when I really had no business set up? You know what I mean? Like, that was ridiculous. That sounds so crazy. I don't ... That's mere madness almost, honestly. To go out and do that. But, it's because of these certain things that I knew, and I learned, and I saw the patterns that saved my emotional sanity and said, "Yes, you can go ahead and leave your job and it's gonna be fine because of these signals and signs." Number one, it was testing the sales message because people were knocking my door down. I mean, I think I have probably close to ... It's several hundred Facebook message requests asking about my MLM product. And, I barely have gotten to a spot where I can even respond to them and say, "Hey, let's get over here and you can check it out here." When I saw that. When I saw the ... Frankly, the other podcast audience is far more interactive with me than this one is. When I saw that ... When I saw ... When I even just talked about ... There were certain buzz phrases I learned that they liked. And, when I would say it, they would go nuts, and they'd look for a product that was the one I was saying and there wasn't one out there. And, I was like, "Sweet. I can totally do that." Does that makes sense? So, all these little signals and signs. And, I had a beta group that I brought through. I didn't even have the actual product. I was just teaching them the concepts. And, they were going nuts. I had a beta product overall. Not just group. Like, that I launched about a year prior to. And, I saw the ridiculous response from it. It was insane. And, I took that off once I saw all the issues with it, which is great. So then, I knew more of actually what to ... You know what I mean? There was a lot of stuff that I did. A lot of ground work. It was not just like I pulled the ... I jumped out the airplane and build the parachute while I was falling, but I still had all the materials laid out before I jumped. You know? Does that make sense? The groundwork was still there. And, funny enough, the ground never really comes when you jump out of the plane. Usually not. When you jump out of the plane without a parachute in that metaphor. Please don't do that in real life. I woke up at 2:30 this morning, like I said, just super excited. I had a hard time going back to sleep. I got a mastermind that we're running tomorrow with a bunch of you. Very excited. I still gotta figure out more of what I'm gonna teach there. But, at those, I feel like highest level stuff is too ... I'll teach my cool stuff, but I love doing one on one Q&A and taking people's businesses a little bit further. If I could do that the rest of my career I would do that, I think, mixed with one or two other product styles that I know I want to go after. So, anyways guys. Gosh. I'm so excited. When you get to Funnel Hacking Live, take notes. I could not believe the first time I went. I bootstrapped my whole way there. I gave more to get there than the majority of the people who were there. And, I sacrificed my face off. I took 52 pages of notes. Very detailed notes. I still have them. They're right next to me. And, that last night when I didn't have a place to stay, I stayed up. After I applied to Click Funnels, I stayed up and I started going piece by piece through the entire, all the notes that I took, because I wanted to solidify them in my brain. I should go through those. There's some good stuff in there. Take notes. I was appalled how many people left their notebooks that they gave them on the chairs. I was like, "What? Do you know what I just learned? Did you just sleep through all of that? That was ridiculous. I just finished my marketing degree." That's where I was at the time. I'm finishing my marketing degree and that was better than all of it. The first day. The first session. I was like, "What? Take notes." Anyway. Something that happens when you write it.
Or, I should say, it's good to read it on a broad spectrum from lots of different ... And, learn from lots of different gurus, lots of different people that are out there... However, I found that just really deep diving with only one or two people and you study what they done deeply, very successful individuals. Obviously, the one that I'm going after is Russell. Obviously. I go through, I study him very deeply. And, all of the study, all of the strategies, all of the pitch strategies, all the things that ... And, figure out who that is for you. Study that person and their work very deeply. And, stick with them. Don't just go so broad. Broad is good, but choose a few characters particularly and go deep with them. And, when you do that you, you learn a lot more of the patterns inside that's ... I mean, it's just like I share on this podcast. The only reason I can do that is because I've studied the heck out of the scripts. I know his scripts. So, when I see him change it up, I'm like wait, what did he do? And then, I see the connection and I see the pieces. And, I'm like, "Oh. Did anyone else see it?" And, lots of times, no. Because we're all studying this guy and this guy, and this guy ... Okay, that's great, but especially at first. Like, to really super advance your progression in this game, just go deep with one or two people. You know what I mean? And, really get to know them. Really get to know their mind. Not just their works. And, their materials that they've put out. Anyway. Great stuff guys. Super excited. I'm writing a book. That's awesome. We made the outline already and it's freaking incredible. If I say so myself. We just barely launched the affiliate program, which by the way, if you are interested at all, would love to have you. We're gonna have a lot of sweet affiliate contests here in about two weeks. It's so cool. Basically, I figured out the math to basically buy anyone a new iMac. And, a new iPhone. And, a new ... Basically all the Apple products 'cause I like Steve Jobs. Rest his soul. And, anyway, there's a lot of stuff that's been going on guys that I've just had a ton of fun with it. And, anyway, excited to see you guys. Remember the secret phrase. I filmed the special stuff yesterday for those of you guys who remember the secret phrase and walk up to me. Anyways, you guys. Thanks so much. That's kind of been a counting of the last two months of my webinar and me automating it and why. And, I will certainly continue to do live webinars for sure, but as I finish this funnel side ... Now, I'm now gonna go back step number one and it's time for me to tweak my slides. And, I know what to change. And, I've got some cool other things that I'm doing Anyways, guys, thank you so much. And, go crush it. Bye. Whoa, thanks for listening. Please remember to write and subscribe. Hey, you want me to speak at your next event or mastermind? Let me know what I can share that would be most valuable by going to SteveJLarsen.com and book my time now. | |||
| 06 Nov 2018 | SFR 189: How I Built My RSVP Funnel... | 00:26:15 | |
Boom, what's goin' on everyone. It's Steve Larsen, and this is Sale Funnel Radio.
Today, I'm gonna teach you guys about my RSVP funnel.
I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.
The real question is, how will I do it without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer.
Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels.
My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.
Alright guys, hey!
Now technically there's not really an RSVP funnel that exists. But what I wanted to do, is I wanna walk you guys through the process that I went through to actually grab all these people who are coming to my event, The OfferMind and actually get them to RSVP, get a ticket, and the process behind it.
So what I decided to do, when we were doing that 30-day book series or the 30-day book launch, alright, (you still can get it 30days.com/stephen)
During a certain amount of time, if you got the book I gave you a free ticket to my OfferMind which is coming up very soon. I'm super excited about all of it, holy crap.
I'm deep in the woods right now doing the 30-day challenge with Russell. It's been fun to see you guys in there, and I really appreciate you guys being inside of that.
But in the midst of everything that's going on I've also been preparing for OfferMind.
Right now we have over 150 people who are coming - which is very, very exciting. So we've been creating this event in the middle of me doing this stuff with Russell and the One Funnel Away Challenge, and it's been a bunch of fun.
So anyway, I wanna cut over to a Facebook Live where I showed the strategy behind creating this little RSVP funnel. Basically how I built it; so I draw it out and then actually show the actual pages and kinda go back and forth to the audience a little bit with some questions.
I think it'll be really helpful because this funnel doesn't exist. I'm not funnel hacking an RSVP funnel from somebody else. The game is far more malleable than people might think it is. As soon as you understand the big Lego blocks, as soon as you understand the pieces...
I've always imagined funnel building as like adult Legos. And I can take a piece out. I can move it and put it over there, and as long as these pieces are compatible, boom, I can sink it on and it'll be awesome. I kind of made up a funnel for the purpose that I needed it for and what I wanted to do.
What's kind of unique about this episode is, I wanted to show ya that I do this a lot, but I've never really shown that. I never really realized I've never shown that. So anyways, it's not a sales funnel. This is more of a fulfillment funnel, right. And so, there are still sales that are collected in there, but it's not the purpose of it.
And so I wanna show you guys how I kind of created the funnel for the purpose that I needed something for. So anyway, I think it'll be great, I think it'll be a lot of fun for you to see how I did that. We'll cut on over, I think the first thing in there, I'm being a goofball listening to music but anyway, watch how I draw it out.
First thing I do is a write down exactly what I'm trying to figure out. And then I put pages together to be able to map out a funnel and that's what I built and that's what you'll see.
So anyways, guys thanks so much. If you guys go to OfferMind.com, it is not what you are about to see in this video - since then I’ve changed it into a sales funnel to sell event tickets.
So anyway, guys thanks so much. We'll cut on over there, I hope you enjoy it, bye.
♪ Bam-Ba-Lam Whoa, Black Betty ♪ ♪ Bam-Ba-Lam Whoa, Black Betty ♪ Alright, we were listening to a different song a second ago and it's the wrong song to go live to, you know what I'm sayin. So anyway, gotta look at the camera over here.
Hey, what's up guys, I'm super excited. I get to actually tell you guys a little bit about The OfferMind and how to make sure you get your ticket. This is good stuff right here.
(Answering FB Comments)“What's up, Amy Farmer, wow, how's it goin?” “Christopher Voss, which by the way, I just opened your package which is absolutely hilarious. Check this thing out everyone, this is hilarious. That thing is huge. It's massive. I have every shape and size I could ever hope for with it too. That's funny. I'm gonna save that. I'm gonna save that and. I don't know I think I might put that in the actual OfferMind room. I guess I'll put it on the doors. We're gonna put it on the doors, Christopher Voss, that's awesome.”
What's up! Okay, I am super excited for this, I was supposed to get this out yesterday. I worked on it the second half of the day, and then my wife came in and started knocking and she was like, “Hey, you're supposed to be at the dentist.” And I was like “Oh, crap!” So I ran to the dentist. The receptionist acted like she had to go check to see if there was space for me and then when the dental hygienist walked around the corner to take me back she was like, “Uh yeah, this is super slow, you coulda walked in at any time.” And basically, the receptionist was being kind of a jerk to my wife. Anyways kind of a funny story, anyway.
Hey, so it didn't get out yesterday. So I just finished it. Now one thing, I just wanna teach you guys somethin' real quick here, okay. Before I actually dive in and show you guys how to get your free ticket. For those of you guys who bought your book through my link. An absolute unanatomical butt ton of you have been reaching out, (that's a technical term), asking if you can buy a ticket and the answer is “No, not right now.”
Let me get my whiteboard. We went and we rented this room, We rented this room that was a 150 person space room and I was like, “This is super cool, I bet we'll have maybe 50, maybe 100 people.” Okay, I sold 375 books. That's a lot of tickets!
I was like, “We gotta double the size of the room.” And then 'cause I know some of you guys are International and you don't want to make the trip over (and I totally get it) I said I'd give you guys the recordings.
(Goes to Whiteboard) Okay, now the funnel that I just built is not in the Funnel Hacker Cookbook. The Funnel Hacker Cookbook is fantastic. This is a fantastic book. It’ll shortcut a lot of the learning time on what funnels work in what scenarios. However, you have to understand that when I say that I build 500 funnels when I worked at ClickFunnels, that's true - but only maybe 100 of those were actual revenue funnels. A lot of them were more what I call fulfillment funnels.
A fulfillment funnel is something that can be used internally. It's kind of like what I just created right now. So when I create a funnel that doesn't exist, there are not many people I can funnel hack. You have to think of this scenario that I'm in right now. I created an event funnel, but it's not actually a standard event funnel. This is the hard part.
Yesterday, I had to think through how to actually design this thing. When you think 'em through, you think through what the main objective is. In this case, I need people to RSVP. That's the main objective. I need people to RSVP because we are negotiating back and forth with the actual event person to extend the actual size of the room. Ya know what I'm sayin'? It's been a bunch of fun. Anyway, it's been a bunch of fun.
It's not necessarily to sell tickets, I just need people to RSVP. Holy crap guys, tons of people have been asking to buy tickets. Lot of people at ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels execs, which is really fun. There might be several surprise ClickFunnels people there which is very, very cool. They've been asking, “Hey maybe I could swing in.” I was like, “Absolutely!” I'm not gonna charge 'em, relationship-wise why would I? I'm just, “Yeah, dude, come on by.” Right, you know what I'm sayin’!
Anyway, there are two things I need to do here…
Some of you guys want extra time with me, so there's the option to do that. On the second night, there's gonna be a private VIP dinner where we can just hang out and network, and you guys can ask any question that you want, little more of an intimate setting - that'll be cool.
There is the, oh, did you guys see, I haven't shown you guys the shirts yet, the Capitalist Pig shirts I went and got created - super stoked for those. So many fun things are going on.
So two things that I'm trying to get done here. There are two objectives.
#Number one if you got a ticket, if you got the book through my link, I need you to RSVP in general.
#Second thing though, is if you want to upgrade to a VIP, so you can sit close.
(Phone Rings:) “Stupid phone calls, I freakin' hate 'em.” I never answer my phone! Don't ever try and call me, I don't answer for anybody except my wife. Even then she and I Vox.
Anyway, so of course, I'm the offer creation guy. There's a specific offer around becoming a VIP in general. But think about what I'm trying to do with this. The funnel that I'm creating… Good funnels have one objective, that's the reason a funnel works. Each page has its own specific focus. Each page, just one thing.
The thing that makes something turn from a funnel back into a website is when you have multiple exits from a page. A funnel works because it’s a funnel - there's only one way to progress forward. There's only one way to move on.
So what I created was kind of a hybrid between a website and a funnel at the same time. Does that make sense?
So think about this for a second... And this is one of the reasons why so many people whose funnel will not do well... They will create too many exits inside of their funnels.
Here I have two objectives:
#Number one: I need everybody to come through and RSVP.
#Number two: Then some of you guys, if you want more of my time while you're here, you can upgrade to a VIP ticket. So there needs to be some kind of a breakout.
Does that make sense?
So when I go through this and I'm actually creating and designing something that hasn't existed before, what's I'll do is I'll take elements inside of the Funnel Hacker Cookbook - I helped to write a lot of this, but I don't open this up anymore... but what I'll do is I'll go through and I'll think through, “Okay I need a page to do this... I need a page to do that... I need a page for this…” and I will design and I will make up a funnel as I go. I've done this many times.
So the first page, what I did is I created a page that said, “Hey, check it out, you got two options here. Number one you could just straight up RSVP, or number two you can upgrade to VIP.”
There are two buttons below the video. The first button says, “Hey, Stephen I don't want to upgrade, just give me my RSVP ticket.” I'm like, it's totally fine, understand that you're not going to sit towards the front, that's okay....
When you RSVP through this funnel, I encourage you to RSVP slowly so you can see what I did with this. I did not just slap together a page. This is a full funnel that I've built in the last 36 hours.
So this is the first page, and I built it as a sales page. That means ClickFunnels is not looking for data on it. Does that make sense? If it's opt-in page, and there's not an email form on the page, sometimes that can trip out of the ClickFunnels editor.
So I build it as a sales page because there's no requirement. It's literally a shell. I can put whatever I want in there, and I can direct people wherever I want to. Does that make sense?
So this first page is just a “sales page” page type. It's a sales page.
I'm gonna walk you guys through the actual funnel here in just a second here. So stick with me for just a second.
The next page, here's the VIP upgrade - this is an order form page type. Now that means that ClickFunnels is gonna look for credit card details. It's gonna look for email contacts.
All profiles inside of ClickFunnels are email based. All contacts are email based inside of ClickFunnels. If there's not an email, the contact profile does not exist so I have to make sure that it has those kinds of things in there so it's like, “Sweet.”
Then after that, there's a thank you page, just merely to confirm the fact that the purchase has gone through. It always makes me a little nervous whenever it skips those pages. You can do it without it, but I always like to.
Anyway, right, here is the order confirmation page. And then after that is the RSVP page. So what I did is I said, “Check this out, if you want to upgrade to VIP, all you do is you click here” and it will shoot you straight over to this page right here. You'll just go right over.
If you click this button though, it’ll sidestep the actual payment step and shoot you right over here. When you do upgrade though, there's an email that gets sent out. Again pushes ya right back to the RSVP page. All roads lead to this RSVP form.
And then I was like, you know what, I could use a software like Eventbrite. I could integrate with that. Eventbrite or EventDay, they are great software for events - especially when they get kind of biggish like this one. But instead, let's just use Zapier. So what I did is I set up a Zap so that there are two different Zap inputs.
I'm just telling you guys the structure of how I built this so you can guys can see more of how I pulled it off.
So if this Google Sheets, there's two Sheets that are goin' on. The first Sheet is I need to be able to collect and separate out just those who upgraded to VIP. So there's a Zap, a Zapier. And whenever you upgrade on this page right here, it goes into a specific tab.
There are two different tabs - so it's the same Google Sheet, one tab is the VIP people, and one tab is the standard RSVP people. So one side, upgrades right there. And it shows all the data right there. That's awesome because I am making you guys t-shirts.
I'm making you swag. We're getting lots of crazy cool stuff. I hate crappy swag, I hate cheap swag.
That's one spot. So this one tab inside right here that's just VIP. That's comin' right over here from this upgrade piece.
There's a second tab though. I'll put it on this side of here just so you guys can, so you guys can see better. “All funnel building is with crappy drawings on a whiteboard. And very imperfect boxes.”
The second one though is from this - it's a Wufoo form. Honestly, I didn't need the Wufoo form. I could use something else. I just made it because it's super fast. You can use the standard input fields inside of ClickFunnels, but there are a few things that I really like about Woo-fu. It's so fast, so anyway.
So what I did is as soon as you fill out this RSVP form, and I tell you, “Look, I'm gonna ask your t-shirt size.” That also sends to the same Google Sheet, but just on a different tab. Does that make sense? That way I have gone Google Sheet where I can look up everybody's information, their name, their email, when they bought, what time they bought - meaning the book. Have they been verified? Meaning did I verify the fact that they actually did get a book through my 30-day link, or are they trying to be sneaky and get on in... We're gonna not allow that obviously.
This event is pretty packed already. So anyways, if somebody shows up without a ticket, we can't accept you. You'll get turned away at the door.
But anyway, it's exciting, very very exciting. She's like, “Well I think we can extend the room to maybe like 300.” I was like, “Lady, there are 386 confirmed tickets.” Alright, this is big, right, it's huge. I just barely got Russell's AV team, the same one that sets up the 2 Comma Club Coaching events and the Funnel Hacking Live events - you know like the stage.
Man, when you walk into a stage at an event room, you need to go to a different place. It should transport you mentally to a different state the moment you walk in. I hate crappy event setups.
So if you guys have been listening and paying attention to me at all, I always teach with affiliate cash that's straight affiliate cash. Never take profit from it. I take all affiliate cash and I dump it right into something else so the asset creates an asset.
So this is a lot of cash that this affiliate thing pulled in, which is awesome. It means I can afford to hire the really really expensive extremely nice stage setup, very nice AV, incredible videographers. And this is exactly what I'm goin' for. So I'm excited to have you guys.
So if you are interested in it at all, I'm excited, I'd love to have you guys if you wanna upgrade to VIP. I just want to show you guys how the whole thing works.
So now I'm actually gonna move over to my computer here…
And because we're at Funnel Hackers and I teach you guys how to funnel hack, I did take a piece of paper and tape it to the top of the URL so you don't try and sneak on there ;-)
Shortly, like immediately after this video ends, I'm gonna email all you guys who bought the books through my link. I'll send you guys this RSVP funnel. It's basically an RSVP funnel. It's not necessarily an event funnel, but I have all the details in there. It'll have all the pieces that you guys need. It'll have where it is, the times, the dates. At the bottom, there's always an FAQ section.
Anyway, what I wanna do real quick is let me flip the camera and I'm gonna walk you guys through the actual funnel so you guys can see it.
Now that you saw the layout, now you saw the draw out of it on that whiteboard of what it looks like and what's happening and what's going on. Now you guys actually can see the funnel. Check this out. Alright cool. This is the OfferMind.
You guys like that with a piece of paper on the top? I know you... Because you're like me! ;-)
(Replying to FB Comments) “Alright. What does that weigh? The same as a crap ton? Yeah, an anatomical butt ton is about the same amount as a crap ton. Exactly right, Dan.”
Alright, so this first video is incredible. Anyways super cool. “Discover what offer and sales message your market has been asking to pay you for.” This is a different way to think about this whole game. This stuff I'm gonna share with you guys, no one teaches it. It's not in like, it's not in a book. Someone was asking me like, “Stephen where'd you learn all your stuff for your offer stuff?” I was like, “Well I've coached 18,000 people in the process, built 500 funnels and tons of millionaires have been created because of it.” You see what I'm sayin'? I'll just stand in front of a anyway. I don't know a book. That's why I'm writing a book.
Anyway, this video is fantastic. I encourage you to watch it. (Video on the 1st page)
Reading The Copy: “Thank you for buying the 30 Days book through my link. You have a limited time to RSVP.”
It's because we need time to get your swag. You have to RSVP by the end of Sunday at midnight or I can't keep your free ticket. You understand? Does that make sense?
Meaning I'm saying, I'll be forced to just send you the recordings. I encourage you to come to the event. There's something about being in a room that has changed my life. I love going to events.
Here's all the details, “who, what, where, when, why, how, where it is.”
Here's those two buttons I'm talkin' about. Look I don't wanna upgrade. You're like, alright. Or you're like hey yeah, I do wanna upgrade. I'll there in a second. What's your gonna get. Of course, I'm gonna make this. I am the Offer Creation guy. It's VIP has its own, anyway. It's got its own offer. What you get:
Guys, there's gonna be like three or four hundred people there. And I want you to be there. I'm really excited to have you, anyway. I'm pumped to have you. If you're VIP though, I can guarantee that we'll be able to take pictures and spend some extra time together.
If you're not, I can't guarantee it. I'm not saying I won't, but it's just a lot, it's a lot of people.
It's only me on stage for two days. I'm used to doing them okay. The FHAT event was three days, pretty much just with me the entire time. I'm not nervous about the energy output - usually, the audience gets tired before I do.
But anyway, to upgrade it's 197. There are only 60 VIP places available. That's how the room is going to be set up. It's not a hoax. There are 60 spots. And anyway, a little bit more on why I'm doing what I am.
And then I've got a whole bunch of testimonials in here.
Now people ask me a lot of times, they're like, “Stephen, what if I'm launching something that I've never done before and I don't have any testimonials.” I get it, have I done an OfferMind before? No, I haven't.
FB COMMENT: “Can I have the link to this funnel?” No, I will email those people who bought the book through my link. They are the ones who are getting this funnel. We're not opening up public purchases for tickets because there's literally no space.
It depends on how many people who bought the book don't RSVP. So that's why you have to RSVP by the end of this Sunday night because every messaging platform is exploding right now, “Stephen, I didn't buy it, can I still get the ticket? Can I still come to the event, can I still come to the event?” Like, “No, it's a spacing issue. Literally, it's a fire marshal issue at this point.” It's gonna be super fun, I'm so excited about it.
I'm naturally an introvert. Events for some reason with people like you guys, I get excited about. But anyway, this will be a bunch of fun, so anyways. So no I can't give you the link, I'm not gonna, that's why the paper's there so you can't find the link.
But some people have asked me like, “Stephen, what do you do when when you are selling something that you don't have specific testimonials for?” What you do is you switch the question. And the question is, “What is it like to work with Stephen?” Or “What is it like to learn from him on other courses?” And that, you can get testimonials around.
Check this out. Alright, so these are all videos, each one of these specifically, just super cool...
Hey, I need more women testimonials. Look these are all guys! That's why I put the one up here. She, this is amazing, oh my gosh, the one from Angela, this is absolutely incredible. I kinda have a lot of guys in here which is awesome. Fellas, you're looking great - but the women tend to sell that a little bit more.
FB COMMENT: “No. You're definitely not an introvert!” Not in front of you. In front of everyone else, I definitely am.
Still not convinced? So some of us like to go consume testimonials, not through video. This is awesome. “Highest gratitude, Steve Larsen.”
Check this out, this guy, he went and he got, anyway, this guy did 30 grand his first shot with it.
FB COMMENT: “I found the secret link, Steve. Sorry, but I'll keep the secret, not gonna give it away.” Cool. We're gonna verify everything because it's not fair that people actually did get my the book through my link if someone sneaks in, you know what I mean.
So anyway... HEADLINE: “What Are You Most Excited For?” Then I pulled in other comments people are excited about.
And down at the bottom, I took a page from the lesson and the book of Funnel Hacking Live, and I went and I grabbed both FAQ topics from Funnel Hacking Live to make sure I hit all the topics that they use.
And then all the topics from Dana Derricks, tons of them, you know what I mean.
So anyway, cool. Sweet, so that's it. So that's the first page. So you're gonna come up here, and any one of these like, “Yeah I wanna upgrade” or whatever. Right, it shoots you back up here to the top, one of these.
So you say, “Hey, let me upgrade.” Right if you go, let me go upgrade, it will come right here. And you come in and like the 60 spots available. I'm gonna shut that off afterward.
Any way you fill it out, it's super simple, especially an event funnel guys, it's like the FAQ section is important to have on the bottom of literally every single page. That's a super, super key thing there.
Anyway, here's the next page afterward. “Boom! Welcome to OfferMind VIP.” Now, these are simple pages. The first page is always the hardest one to create. It's the one I spent literally an entire day on. Here's RSVP form, check that out. Yeah, there's the Capitalist Pig shirts!
When you guys show up, I will give you guys the Capitalist Pig shirt which I'm super stoked about it. I went and I got one created. It's actually Russell's designer that got it all set up which is super cool. He designed it and put it all together and I've got the same printer that ClickFunnels uses for their shirts as well which is awesome.
So anyway. It's cool! I bought capitalistpigshirts.com. In the future, I'll sell 'em like out there and stuff and we'll do swag drops and stuff like that. But for right now I'm not gonna be able to do that. And then if you're VIP I'm giving you guys an “It's Monday Baby!” shirt which we're designing right now which look so cool - so anyway. That's just for VIPs though. Anyways, guys, there's a bunch of other stuff as well…
I just wanted to deep dive real fast, or shallow dive I guess, into what I'm doing on there.
So when you go in and start looking at the page, make sure you look at, I want you to see like what I did.
Does an RSVP funnel exist? Not really, but what I'm trying to say is that this game is far more fluid when you understand the marketing behind what makes things work.
I was very afraid to do anything outside the mold of funnel building when I first started funnels.
Three or four years ago I was like, “Well that's, this page here, didn't exist before. Or over here, this element is different than the one they had. It's not gonna work.” Like “No, No, No, No!” We need to understand what's really happening behind it. This game's far more fluid than you might expect.
Boom! f you're just starting out, you're probably studying a lot. That's good. You're probably geeking out on all the strategies also, right. That's also good.
But the hardest part is figuring out what the market wants to buy and how you should sell it to them. That's what I struggled with for a while until I learned the formula.
So I created a special mastermind called an OfferMind to get you on track with the right offer and more importantly the right sales script to get it off the ground and sell it. Wanna come?
The small groups are on purpose so I can answer your direct questions in person for two straight days. You can hold your spot by going to offermind.com. Again that's offermind.com.
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| 25 Aug 2022 | What Had To Happen While Creating The Book Outline For Dramatic Demonstrations With Russell Brunson | 00:29:40 | |
This is a cool moment for me. I'm excited to be Co-Authoring a book with the man himself. This is what had to happen over the last 2 weeks so we could find the book outline for Dramatic Demonstrations. Have you ever been working on a project, thinking it will be one thing, but once you start getting into the weeds, you start finding some epiphanies along the way, new directions keep coming up, and the path becomes clearer? That happens to many of my projects, including this new book we are working on. The best way to move forward is just to start doing anything related to what you are working on. Once you get in motion, the path begins to open up. Planning too much or waiting till you have everything in place will only hold you back. Tune in to this episode to learn about this new project we are working on and some important principles you can apply to your entrepreneur journey! Key Takeaways - The order of the hands raised (02:45) - All about the Dramatic Demonstrations book (12:33) - The internet is only a tool to deliver marketing (13:01) - Battling imposter syndrome (14:43) - The fallacies of planning too much (18:14) - The path opens up while you are in motion (19:44) Additional Resources 5 Day Content for leads challenge --- Download Season 1 episodes here -- Sales Funnels Radio is a podcast for all passionate digital marketing pros looking to up their game and stay ahead. | |||
| 30 Nov 2018 | SFR 196: Cash-Causing Models... | 00:28:51 | |
Boom! What's goin' on everyone?
And what happened is when they consumed them and they became an expert, they got so good at the yesteryear's experts and their frameworks, that they started creating their own versions of the framework. That's what you're looking for!
Hey, whoever controls content controls the game. Wanna interview me or get interviewed yourself? Grab a time now at SteveJLarsen.com
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| 23 Jan 2018 | SFR 107: Creating A Customer Salesforce… | 00:23:22 | |
It’s one thing to have a dedicated sales team, but it’s the big leagues if you can turn your customers into their own sales team
Hey, what's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen, and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best Internet sales funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen.
This is starting my ... Let's see, what is this? One, two, three ... This is beginning my fourth week alone of self-employment, and things have gone very, very well. We've done almost 70,000 in sales, and we haven't really even optimized stuff yet. The first few times I've done it, I haven't changed anything from one script to the next, but especially this last one, I felt it. I felt where I needed to make the changes. I felt where the lag was, so I'm excited. I'm excited to go and I'm going to start switching those things out, but it's been interesting to go through ... There's a billion things I got to get done still, I mean, obviously, who doesn't have a big to-do list?
And that's how I made the first pass of content. And then what I did though, was I came back around as I was hearing people's feedback. Then I went back through and I created all the extra courses and extra things, and extra trainings that were needed to plug the holes inside people understandings, just to make sure all the bases were covered, you know what I mean?
It's so that I can get through and see, like, they're all still struggling with X. They're all still struggling with Y, or Z, you know what I mean? And then I go back through and I do a second round of filming. I do a second round of product creation. I go plug in all the holes, and I go plug in ... And that's exactly what's been going on here.
And this guy walks up to me afterwards, and he goes, "That was fantastic, first of all." And I was, "Thank you." You know, I said, "Thanks. That's awesome." And then he goes, "I was sitting there though, and I was trying to figure out the word for you." I was like, "What did you mean?" He's like, "The word that describes you. There's something about you and I don't know what it is." And I was like, "Okay, what it is it?"
And I was like, "That's nice of you. I appreciate that." And he's like, "I'm serious though. It's refreshing because most people get up and they're either sick of what they're doing, or they just got one trick or tip and that's kind of it. It's so clear and obvious that you love what you're doing." And I was like, that actually was some really cool feedback. I'm glad that he said that. That was nice of him.
I would read this book if I was you. If I was trying to be a funnel builder. If I was trying to be an author, speaker, coach, consultant, if I was in the SaaS world, if I was definitely B2B, I would put this on your to do list. This book ... so it's a book called Behind the Cloud, by Mark Benioff and this is the story of how Salesforce pretty much went to a billion dollar company and changed the whole industry.
And I have, I don't know, call it a chip off the shoulder attitude, or chip off the shoulder thing. That industry, it's an amazing thing to go through if you're doing it correctly, if you're doing it right, and otherwise it's pretty easy to get categorized into the millions of people that just want to lose their family and friends, which is why they join one, I think.
Technically it's already done, but ... Anyway, sorry, I have like 13 thoughts going through my head and I'm trying to organize them in a way that it's going to go together. Anyway, I want to read a section from this book and then tie it back into what I was just saying and talking about. And here it is. Anyway, so this is on page 73 of the book Behind the Cloud.
Okay, that's first of all a very powerful line, "Just as we tapped into every employee as a marketing person, we believe that every customer could also serve as a salesperson. Inside every customer there's unrealized potential that by offering training and support, we could build a sales army that is not limited to a finite number of salespeople, but could scale to hundreds of thousands and one day millions of customer salespeople."
And he and I tag teamed back and forth along with John Parks, and the three of us went through and we taught this frankly, really awesome affiliate ... it's called Affiliate Bootcamp.
I'm creating an army of affiliates that know how to be an affiliate, you know what I mean? And I think that's what the next thing I'm going to do. And it might be weird that I'm telling you this strategy, because I know a lot of you guys will be the ones that go through it.
And they all know that, and that's one of the reasons why some of them got a deal on it and stuff like that, you know what I mean? Because I'm going through and I'm building it as I'm selling it, at the same time. Which is nice, because it lets me go through and do the second round of course creation to plug in all the holes, because they're making it kind of with me ... Not so much on their side, they don't really know that's what's going on there.
You guys all know them, they're on TV shows and stuff, which I'm super excited about. But I don't know if I'm allowed to, so I'm not going to yet. You'll all hear about it sometime, I'm sure, but it's not time yet, I don't think, so ... Anyway, that's the whole thing I'm trying to say with this thing, is understand that when somebody buys your course, there's really two things ... Or your program, or your product, whatever it is, whatever you're selling, your offer, there's really two things that still have to happen.
And what I do, and what I've been building out is as soon as ... Now let's think about this for a second.
If that's what's you're promising, secret number one, secret number two, secret number three, why not show exactly in your product where those answers also are. So the first thing that I do, the first of two things, the first thing I do in this consumption guide, is as soon as somebody buys my product, it doesn't matter if it's off of a webinar, it doesn't matter if it's off, like whatever ... I put out to them at least a three day series where the first email or piece of communication or whatever it is, goes and it actually shows where to get what was promised in secret number one, or the vehicle related false belief.
But they're still vehicle, internal, and external related false beliefs. So the first thing after somebody buys it I send to them is first of all, a fulfillment email. But then what I'm really doing, is sending a consumption guide, where the first email is where to find what was promised and addressed for their vehicle related false belief. Secret number one.
That's what they bought. Of course I should do that. Okay, they bought that. Just out of the ethics of it, please fulfill on what you sell people.
And then I can go back and actually collect them as testimonials and use them in the sales message also for future people. That make sense? That was a lot. Just let me high level recap real quick. So all I'm doing is whatever secret number one, two, and three are, I create a consumption series, number one, two, and three that matches secret number one, two, and three. Does that make sense? And it's all auto, it's all dripped out.
So that's the first thing that I do. Number one I train them on how to consume my thing. That's the highest level of that. I train them to consume the product. But number two, and this is what ties in. I promise this is not just like a rabbit I'm following over the place. There's a whole point to this. And the point is that the second thing is that I'm trying to train them how to promote my thing also. So number one, here's how to consume it so you're successful with it.
And so I was thinking to myself, what should I do to make this more accessible for people? And so I'm thinking through inside my affiliate area, I'm creating the guide, I'm creating the stuff that will walk them through how to be a generic affiliate, but so that they can go apply it to selling my course for me as well. Does that make sense?
And for those of them who aren't, sometimes they for need a few questions answered and so you go create an affiliate program. Go create something that helps people understand. I love Backpack. Backpack's awesome. That's what I'm using, of course. And it's been a ton of fun. And so to make it more accessible for people ... This is the last piece guys, this is like a deep strategy episode guys, hope this is okay.
I have a PO box that I declare as my business address so it's not my actual address. There has to be terms, privacy, contact, support, stuff like that. Specifically terms and privacy and support. Those are the three that should always be in there. I don't know what the current laws are on all those things, but I know that those should be in there.
But if they scroll down to the bottom, they just click on affiliates, they can get their affiliate link and promote the course, or promote whatever ... you know what I mean? That registration page, it is a registration page, but to the person who's looking it's a little bit more than a registration page, and it opens up another loop, meaning the loop is, "Hey, you can go be an affiliate. Grab your affiliate link, and here's how to promote, and here's how to promote my stuff."
Just straight up, "It's affiliates. Affiliates cost us a lot of money. We give a lot of money to affiliates." I was like, "That makes sense. That makes total sense." That's what he told me anyway about ClickFunnels that that would happen, you'd do that.
They're looking for something to give to their audience and might as well make a sweet affiliate program.
Think for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today.
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| 23 Apr 2019 | SFR 236: Examples Of Sales Messages In Each Industry... | 00:18:38 | |
These are some quick methods to create a sales message in each industry...
If you go to clickfunnels.com, (and you don’t sign in), there's a quiz that asks:
“Which of These Best Describes Your Business/Service?”
Initially, we found that there were six major industries using ClickFunnels. Once you answer the question, ie shows you the patterns that are MOST effective to help you ‘destroy it’ in your industry.
Over time, it's kinda flexed out (as you can see above) to ten categories…
During the last OfferMind, I walked through each industry to show how I would create a very simple sales message or a hook for each industry.
I didn't write the entire sales message. Instead, I showed an example of the type of origin story I’d create or tell to sell in that space.
When I talk about building a sales message, most people are like, “I can see how my industry has a sales message, I get that.”
There has to be a sales message or the industry would NOT exist.
So most people don't have a hang-up about creating a sales message, especially when it's basically just an epiphany bridge script.
(If you don’t know what an epiphany bridge script is, you need to read Dot Com Secrets… or I’m afraid we can’t be friends ;-))
However…
Offer Creation is where a lot of people start to get hung up.
“Well, Stephen, I sell really high ticket, (we're talking multimillion dollar corporation to corporation contracts), there's no way that your Offer Creation method's gonna work for me.”
… and that's the one where I wanna slap people and jump through the window!
That’s NOT true at all.
Then…
We get to Sales Funnels... and that's where there’s the MOST kickback.
People are like, “Well, I don't think this could work for me.”
Again, I wanna go nuts on 'em.
So I'm briefly gonna show you the Sales Message Creation I’d use in each of those 10 industries.
I’m gonna walk through and show you the hook that I’d start to create if I was selling in that space.
SHAMELESS PITCH The reason I’m sharing is twofold:
This is NOT the kind stuff that you’ll find in any other place.
If you’re planning to come to OfferMind, and you haven’t got your tickets yet, Offermind.com is up.
The room only holds 1,038 people. That's not that many people. We’re literally MAXING IT OUT.
We’ve already sold hundreds of tickets… and it's not for about four months yet.
WHY OFFERMIND?
I coach pretty much every day, and I have a lot of great success stories... but there are the things that EVERYBODY struggles with.
So I asked: How do I take the things that everyone struggles with and deliver those answers? That's what OfferMind is designed to do.
It's NOT your normal event.
I teach frameworks that cause success as a rule.
What you’re gonna read next, is directly taken from OfferMind last year…
GROUNDBREAKING STUFF
Have you heard of Albert Lasker? (Yeah, all my copywriting people)
Albert Lasker was ‘The Man.’
He is often called the father of modern advertising. He lived in the late 1800s to early 1900s, and he was one of the first people to take advantage of human psychology in ads.
People thought it was the most groundbreaking thing ever, and at that time it was.
Until Lasker, most advertisers were just making noise. Lasker was like, “No, let’s consider how people think.”
...and because of that, people were like, “Whoa, who's this guy? This is amazing.”
Albert Lasker played a major role in shaping modern advertising. He was one of the forefathers of the industry.
I want you to know this because *this* is the market origin story.
Lasker was a partner in an advertising firm called Lord & Thomas.
It's not called Lord & Thomas anymore, but it's still the third largest advertising agency. They're still extremely successful.
Lasker operated at a very high energy level and they found out later that he was probably bipolar.
When I read that I was like, “Oh crap. Hmm, I should probably go get tested...”
DRINK AN ORANGE
In the early 1900s, nobody drank orange juice.
It was a weird thing. It'd be like offering mustard to somebody who was drinking hot chocolate. No one was doin' that. It was super far out.
But here’s what happened…
There was a massive orange boom in the orange harvest, and the company that's now called Sunkist was having to cut down their own trees.
There were so many oranges that they didn't know what to do with them.
So they came to Lasker and asked him to help solve the problem...
Being a brilliant marketer, Lasker turned the problem into a Massive Opportunity.
THE BIG QUESTION WAS: How can we heavily increase the consumption of oranges?
ANSWER: By making it a drinking habit.
Lasker created the campaign called ‘Drink an Orange’ from Sunkist.
Lasker knew that one glass of orange juice would most likely be two to three oranges; so he made it an offer:
This is one of the original ads from Lasker’s campaign.
...Ooh, baby, isn't that cool?
MARKETERS CHANGE THE WORLD A lot of products we use today started out with a successful marketing campaign.
… then a marketer came along.
If you’ve ever seen the movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding? You’ll remember the Grandpa who always said: "Tell me a word and I'll tell you how it's origin is Greek."
... I'm totally that for my wife now for EVERYTHING in our household!
I'm totally *that guy*... because marketers have changed the world.
Check out this quote:
The product that will not sell without advertising will not sell profitably with advertising.
A big key lesson there!
Step #1: Your sales messages gotta rock.
That's what Lasker was amazing at. He created cool sales messages and the offers around it.
So real quick, I wanna walk you through the sales messages for different industries.
THE HERO’S TWO JOURNEYS
The Hero’s has two journeys that we care about:
So I’m gonna show you how to create achievement and transformation in a sales message for the ten different industries.
Remember, transformation happens on the inside, and it's what actually makes us care about the story.
However, people also need to see the steps in a logical order to show how the transformation occurred:
INDUSTRY #1: THE FREELANCER/ AGENCY
ACHIEVEMENT: "I finally could help business owners enjoy the businesses they worked so hard to build.”
Q: If I sell people as an agency and freelancer, (if I start leading with that), what does that say to them?
A: “Oh man, yeah I love my business too. Oh yeah, I know, I know. I was finally able to help people like that, I love my business also. You should work with me.”
TRANSFORMATION: "I didn't realize that I’d learned to love their business and the results as much as they did."
INDUSTRY #2: INFO PRODUCTS
If I'm selling info products, a storyline I would use to sell my product would be something like:
ACHIEVEMENT: “My funnel leads started pitching me on taking their money. I only switched three things for that to happen."
If I'm trying to sell a funnel book, and I'm talking to people who want funnel knowledge. I'd be like, “Hey, my leads started pitchin' me, it's the craziest thing.”
Then those people will be like: “Oh I wish I had that too.”
TRANSFORMATION: "I started seeing ‘beyond’ each lead. The impact that my work was about to have as they hired me was humbling."
This is the internal transformation people want to see it in YOU, the attractive character. They wanna see YOU change.
Does that make sense?
Each of these examples is very similar, and that's the point.
Your stories are all different, and you have your own stories, but you're plugging it into an existing framework though. There’s a transformation that happens with it.
INDUSTRY #3: E-COMMERCE
Let’s say I'm selling socks. How would I sell more socks?
I choose crazy examples for a reason. Follow me on this...
ACHIEVEMENT: "I couldn't believe how awesome they were. These socks are so cool. They're breathable, low maintenance, and stylish. These are awesome socks.”
TRANSFORMATION: “Although they were on my foot for the first time, my foot felt free, holy crap.
Cheesy as it sounds, I noticed I'd make an extra effort for people to see my feet. Like a newly engaged bride-to-be flashing a ring, my socks made me a new me..."
They need to see the then and the now, and that's what you're doing in each industry. Doesn't matter what you're selling.
(I take my shoes off all the time. My shoes are dumb. Money socks, baby! Mmmm... )
Before you say, “Oh, man, that’s cheesy!” I need to remind you that you see this late at night crap in infomercials ALL THE TIME!
Don't be afraid to use the storylines that convert people. These are the storylines that make people buy.
INDUSTRY #4: FUNNEL COACHING
ACHIEVEMENT: "I didn't really think I needed help. Not because I had it all together, I just didn't think I needed it. So I went and got this funnel coaching. Once I said yes, my progress was astounding.“
TRANSFORMATION: “I had no idea to get my physical goals met, I needed to learn to like me for me."
They wanna see that, “Ahhhhh,” kind of ascent.
INDUSTRY #5: NETWORK MARKETING
ACHIEVEMENT: "It became clear to me that not everyone has the same goals, so I shouldn't pitch anybody with a heartbeat. Now I have automated leads daily."
Big problem + Big achievement: = Wow, I want that!
TRANSFORMATION: "If someone would've told me that this was gonna be ‘the best personal development course’ in existence. I would've laughed, and I did... and it was."
You don't need these long drawn out stories; that’s a freakin' epiphany bridge in those two paragraphs.
It's a little backstory, a little bit of a wall, internal/external. It doesn't always have to be big long narratives.
INDUSTRY #6: LOCAL SMALL BUSINESS ( # local restaurant)
ACHIEVEMENT: "I remember eating canned beans for four months as a single bachelor. Now you can't keep me out of the kitchen. Let me invite you to my kitchen.”
There's a backstory which you care about that local restaurant now. You know his backstory, his upbringing, and why he makes his food that way?
“Oh my gosh, he doesn't even use canned beans anymore?”
TRANSFORMATION: “I've realized I don't actually cook food. That's not why customers come. People come here to connect. I sell human connection, not food.”
That’s the elevate and the ascent...
Your customer wants that, so let them have it.
INDUSTRY #7: B2B LEAD GEN
TRANSFORMATION: "My whole childhood was filled with memories of being poor. But now there's so much money I can't see straight.
(I choose this story because a lot of people have memories of being poor, I'm just tying into the old story.)
TRANSFORMATION: "I've always dreamt of being a big bad B2Ber. Pin suit, button up, a swagger that someone noticed down the street.
But this game roughed me up, spit me out, and taught me the biggest lesson of all. It's all about the people."
People would be like, “Oh yeah!” They want that. Let 'em have it.
INDUSTRY #8: BLOGGING/ AFFILIATE (# Mommy Blog)
ACHIEVEMENT: “Each day, I wanted to spend more time with my kids. It was super hard. It was really, really challenging for me to spend time with my kids and I watch them grow.
I realized I was missing things as they were growing up. I don't like that. Now I get to choose when I work."
Here we have a:
... now let's feel the transformation.
TRANSFORMATION: "Funny enough, just BEING with my kids has taught me more about being a mom than blog ever did. I don't need to read mommy blogs as much anymore."
Interesting, huh!
INDUSTRY #9: NONPROFITS
(This is kind of an intense one, for sure.)
How many of you guys have heard of Operation Underground Railroad? They save children from sex slavery.
ACHIEVEMENT: "All I wanted to do was help children be safe. Thanks to your donation, that's happening..."
So if I’m a nonprofit, my story is the transformation and the achievement that you get by donating.
You are the story...
“Thanks for your donation. Just so you understand what's happening. I want kids to be safe, and that's happening because of your donation”
That's powerful.
… be careful with this stuff.
TRANSFORMATION: "I know my life's purpose. I found it the moment I had this idea."
We like to get behind someone with a mission like that.
Operation Underground Railroad is a nonprofit organization that’s pulled in tens of millions of dollars to actually help free children from sex slavery. Amazing, right!
...and if they can get YOU to feel that transformation as if you're the one doing the raid...
I know it feels weird to talk about it that way, (but if you understand what I'm saying from a marketers standpoint)... that's how you would create a powerful transformation in that nonprofit.
Your supporters need to experience the transformation for themselves.
INDUSTRY #10: JUST GETTING STARTED
ACHIEVEMENT: "I needed a career, but couldn't seem to get the job after college. I dedicated myself to learning the formulas of other successful people, and I found them."
People are like, “Well, what are they?” You’ve just created the achievement: “I found the formulas for how successful people work.” People are like, “What?”
...but now they want the internal to make sure that you're not a slimeball.
You potential customer wants to feel the uprising and the ascent.
TRANSFORMATION: "Mindset is money, I wasn't broke, my mind was.”
You'd be like, “Hmmmmm…” powerful right? Yeah, you felt that, didn't you? How did I know how to write that?
… because I lived the hook.
Understand, a lot of these stories are real stories from my past. It's just the way that I tell them that's effective…
... and you can do this too, regardless of your industry.
BOOM!
If you're just starting out you're probably studying a lot. That's good. You're probably geeking out on all the strategies, right? That's also good.
But the hardest part is figuring out what the market wants to buy and how you should sell it to them, right?
That's what I struggled with for a while until I learned the formula.
So I created a special Mastermind called an OfferMind to get you on track with the right offer, and more importantly the right sales script to get it off the ground and sell it.
Wanna come?
There are small groups on purpose, so I can answer your direct questions in person for two straight days.
You can hold your spot by going to OfferMind.com.
Again, that's OfferMind.com. | |||
Most people forget you can even advertise there I feel like but what is it that you're doing?
I was actually in college at the time...
I know it sounds stupidly simple but I think there’s many people out there that just like they’re trying to heighten all this traffic, all this stuff through your website.
I have had it happen before also and I never realized that that was probably it. I’m trying to be authentic on camera, you know what I mean? I’m just being myself and I have people come back and say, “Hey, you’re the man. I have this feeling when I was talking to you I should reach out to you,” and I was like, “What kind of feeling? All right, thanks.”
That what I was doing is I was really taking a look at the analytics, see what the videos that people are staying on for a long time and then just making more of those videos.
I can’t think the word. After watching the video I was like, “Hey, this guy is real. That was cool. What a good video,” and it set me up because I have to tell you when the next video started I was like, “Eh.” I don’t know but because I watched you, I was like there was a lot more trust, like a lot more stock in that video.
Dana Derricks: Oh man. So good.
Steve Larsen: Okay cool. Now before, before you were doing Dream 100 ... So I mean, first of all, how did you become an advocate of Dream 100? How did you start doing it yourself?
You know? And then it turns into, "How do I now leverage the crap out of this in what I'm doing today here and now?" Right? So what I did, just really quick, was I wrote out a list of my Dream 100 right then and there and I remember, I'll never forget, Russell was at the top of my list and I looked at it ... This was not that long ago either. This was only a couple years ago.
Like I don't want to go learn that stuff. I feel like Dream 100 is so much more long term sustainable, higher leverage sources of eyeballs than going and ... Anyway. And learning that stuff. So you mentioned real fast, you said, "Okay. I went and I ..." It's funny because Russell was number one on mine also, and I was like, "Eh, we'll see. I don't know."
They're like ... You know there's been times when ... Anyway. I don't know how else to say yes, amen, ahh, little hallelujah, lights coming down. What he's saying right now, please visualize bright shiny objects and things in the sky because that is so gold.
If you can just get that question out there, they may not have the answer immediately, but at least it gets their mind going, and number one it like tells them what your agenda is. It's not, "Hey can you do Lady Boss?" No. It's like, "Hey. We want to help each other," and that's kind of how it was for me as well with Russell is I got on his radar, and then you know it's like, "How can I help you with what you're doing? How can I help ClickFunnels?" Right?
Dana Derricks: Oh I got to get you one man. Oh my gosh. That's the best way to crush any awkward silence ever right there.
I know you have a book that has come out and is amazing. You have a lot of people ... I have a lot people who'd come and ... The book's incredible. And I'm very very excited for it. Where can people go get the book? How do they find out more about you and follow you?
And I go, "Dude, I can't handle ... It's my sole income. You know what I mean?" I'm putting my money where my mouth is and this is my sole income. And we're doing totally fine, by the way. It made more money last month than I've had in my bank account ever. We're doing great but still, the consistency of it is part of the sexiness of it. You know what I mean? And so, I was like, "What's wrong? How can I react to what the market is telling me?"
Russell did his 60 or 70 before he automated it, right?
So what I did was I figured out that in those scenarios where I physically cannot do the webinar, I will automate it. And I will deliver an automated version of the webinar. And so what I've been doing and going through and figuring out is how in a single click to turn my entire funnel from a live webinar funnel into an automated funnel.
You know, what are the false beliefs of all the people who are going to be in the room? Literally doing the same strategy of creating a new product that I would anywhere else. I went through, I was like, "What are the false beliefs of the people in the room? What are they going to be thinking? What are they going to falsely believe about my ..."
Scrap that mindset, and know instead that it's the copy that sells, it's your offer that sells. Okay, that's it.
He actually types it, he prints it, but I like to write mine on a legal pad. Anyway, plan the day the day before.
down enough that anyone can understand it.
It was in hopes that by declaring, to go publicly, several things would happen. Number one, I'd hold my own feet to the fire better. Other people did, as well. But really, the thing that I wanted to have happen, is that by me getting serious enough to actually declare, "Here is my goal!" I finally would have a goal. Does that make sense? Like, by getting specific enough on what the goals are that I have, I actually would know what my own goals are. I don't know if that makes any sense.
And so, the reason I like setting these goals publicly like this, is for the sole purpose of ... Like I said, holding my feet to the fire. But, it's fun to know what I'm going to go try and accomplish. And if I don't get it done, I'm going to be personally offended by myself about that. I'll actually get mad about it. I'll actually get mad about not hitting the goal, not reaching what it is I said I would do.
This is going to be like that. And I've had people reach out and take time out of their day to tell me that my plan is stupid. And I've had people reach out, take time out of their day to tell me that my plan is awesome. And that tells me right there that I'm heading in the right direction, as well, to get that polarity and get that split between people. So, I'm excited for this. I'm excited for it. I've worked hard towards this.
You know, so if you think about different ways to do funnel hacking it's not always just yes, go find somebody inside your industry who's killing it.
People don't ask me, "Steven, how do you podcast?" They ask that, but it's not the main topic. They ask me, "Steven, how did you build that funnel that made X number of dollars and broke records?" Or you know what I mean? That's more the type of question that I get.
Tell me what it is that you do. I'd love to get more stories and such on here. I've got already a kind of a waiting list, but it's exciting. Not even a month ago we're at 50,000 downloads. We're already past 62,000. It's only been a few weeks. I appreciate all you guys. You guys are all awesome and just go make a lot of noise, okay? Whether it's publishing or whatever it is and know that you'll get a little backlash from it, but who cares? Whatever.
$100 funnel? Not a huge fan of who that attracts. I'm not saying that everyone's that way. I am not blanket statement. I know that everyone's different.
I over deliver. I constantly try to. It is probably a - I don't know - it's a complex I have over this thing, but the customer is not always right. It is not always right. They are not. Whosever said that, this is the most false crap on the planet.
Guys, we had people like that several times who popped up in ClickFunnels sphere when I was over there. I can't talk about that stuff. I'm not going to, but man, we always had to take five. We would say a certain phrase, which is: "Some people's children." We would play some freaking Seven Nations Army. We'd dance around. We'd shake it off and we'd say, "My word. I hope that there are better people out there." There are. We know there are.
" I was trying to say like, "Somebody get to me. Somebody hire me." I was running around, I was shotgun emailing all these people and I ended up working for this company.
Guys that was like a year ago and I am just barely figuring out what my processes are when I funnel build. I obsess so much with the process of funnel building and the process of marketing itself that I follow these blueprints all over the place that I just know work. None of it's mine and what I've been doing is I've been trying to sit back and go like, "Okay, why. Why am I actually able to build it that fast? How come that happened that quick?"
Revenue, revenue, revenue, revenue. Sales, sales, sales, sales, sale.
I've been riding a motorcycle. I got a 2001 Kawasaki Vulcan. It's a cruiser. It's awesome. It's only a 500cc so it's not like ... I actually wish it was a little bit more powerful, but it's great though. It's fun for what it does and what I use it for. I only live like a mile and a half away from the ClickFunnels office. I don't need to go that far. It works fine. It's great.
If you get so many points you fail. He skipped the last cone too. He skipped a cone, that's another lot of points. He put his foot down and got tons more points. He turns around and he's doing the next part and he puts his foot down again.
I've been looking at a lot of the people who either build funnels or who own businesses or whatever it is. Here's a commonality I'm starting to notice. You guys know I'm obsessed with patterns. You guys know that about me.
About a week ago, I hired an assistant. I think I also told you about this, but she's been amazing. It's my sister. She's awesome. My sister is crazy good at ... She's a great organizer. She's very, very, very bright. She got straight As in high school while I barely passed, which is not a joke.
Those are the two things that I realize that, wow, hiring somebody has done two things. Number one, I go faster because she's taking care of awesome stuff. She's putting things together. She's incredible. She's very intuitive, solves problems without me always having to babysit her, that kind of thing, which is awesome. So, so cool.
One of the adages in this industry, if you've never heard it, is that, and I can't remember who said this, but the rule is you only hire when it hurts. That's the second part of this whole thing. Hire somebody because it forces you to do awesome stuff, but until you are just dying, don't hire somebody just because you have to ... Hiring people is what kills businesses a lot of times because they hire too fast.
Anyway, super crazy. I ended up getting really deathly sick because of it, because our hands would be all greasy. They'd come in, they'd give us this food. It's not like we'd wash our hands. I'm sure I ate car grease and oil a couple times. There's no doubt that I did.
He'd go out and he'd go to these clients and he'd figure out what they needed to built. Then he would come back and he'd orchestrate the team and they would build this crazy software solution for these high-end people, anything from watches to NASA and to the military. He did a lot of stuff software wise. The software in your car that you're driving right now, he's touched that stuff. He's created industry standards that's touched all of it.
Remember that thing about sales funnels? 50% of the time, on the first launch, they don't work. They're high risk. Then you turn around and we make three tweaks to them and they're actually not high risk at all. They'll turn around to make a butt load of money. It's just figuring out the right model on certain things.
Anyway, this kid starts almost physically getting at ... His brother was standing nearby and he started getting really close to my little girl. Suddenly, the brother is holding back this younger kid from, I don't know, hitting or tackling whatever my girl. My little girl is so funny. She's so much like me. In the face of danger whenever there's high stress or whatever, I tend to laugh and it's not always that it's a funny experience or whatever that's going on.
We're just testing it to see how it worked, right. What do you do next at this point? You do what we call the Dream 100. I don't know if you guys have ever been doing this. If you haven't been doing it and you've been actively driving ads, you are leaving so much freaking money on the table. I can't even believe it.
Anyways, he's preparing for the event. He's putting together different presentations and he's about to put together a presentation and here's how he starts it. "Gosh, I just wish I had something I could see for like $3,500." That's how he started it. Guess what came from that? The Fill Your Funnel Program.
Just emotionally, it's so nice. Holy crap. How many of those does it take to actually cover the mortgage or rent? Not many. You know what I mean? I guess it depends where you live, but still even then, not many. That could fit a really wide range of households, but I guess it's on my mind because we're in a house now.
Hey Steve, it's Matt here, hope you're well, dude. I've got a question I was hoping you could help me with. I've got an idea for a product or a company, which is teaching people how to solve the Rubik's Cube, but I don't want to be known as the Rubik's Cube guy or the puzzle guy.
Here's what I mean. So, I would use the Stack Slide from Expert Secrets, and the Stack Slide if you guys don't know what it is, it's kind of a model and a map for how to create new opportunities. So, what I would do is use that, and the very first step on the Stack Slide is, it's your main thing.
Absolutely. So, think through whatever it is. Don't think your thing is too big or too small or whatever. Let the market tell you. Take your own opinions out of it, and know that you're not the one that's gonna fill your own wallet. Doesn't work that way. So, you have no idea, you have no idea. I don't care what I sell as long as it's moral and it sells. It doesn't matter to me. I'd totally start Rubik's Cube training if I knew how to do that. I have no idea how to do it, though, so tons of power to you, Matt.
When I first graduated from college, I was so impressed by the book, "DotCom Secrets," I sent 30 of them to friends for free. I just got the books, and I sent 30 of them out. I was like, "This book literally has changed my life. It started my actual business while I was in college. It got me out the door. It got me. It got me everything."
\Every time I watch or I hear the guys that are involved with those groups, every time I see someone whose going ... I mean they all understand you have got to pay to play. Get a coach and be coach. Get a coach and be coach. Get a coach and be good. I feel I should keep saying that over and over and over again. Just burn it in your head.
He looked at me, he goes, "Why would you want to know how to do that?" And I was like, "'cause it would be so cool, like, look at all the things I could go do." And he goes, "Dude, you don't need to know how to do that, we have people for that."
But, if you go there it's in the header/footer, click on Talent Directory. What it is, it's a page of all the different things that I see are needed in order to get a successful funnel off the ground; images, video, funnel building, this, that, copyrighting. You see what I'm saying, design, traffic, fulfillment, all the stuff in the backend; a coder front end developer, a back end developer.
So, I'm being open and honest, and I'm being completely transparent to show you that is the reason why I'm doing it. I want to be able to help everyone be able to progress, be able to go forward, and push forward, and it's gonna be awesome.
When we see you as an individual, and you as a person and the things that you're doing, you just seem like the kind of person that is 100% truly genuine and there and happy. You're present in the moment, and it makes people wonder, "Who is this lady? How is she doing what she's doing and why am I not doing that?" It's really cool.
I have never been to China. I've never taken a business class, Stephen, ever.
My girls, they didn't come up with some new crazy idea. You want to know what they sold? Did I already tell you what they sold?
We actually have to go out, do the work, build those relationships. Spoil those people and be treated how we would want to be treated. I know when I get a product in the door, a package, I'm like, "Woo hoo, this is the best thing ever."
When I did my course, I set a date. Stephen, I set that date way too early but I wanted to push myself. I had stayed up for probably two weeks solid, just trying to get it done. I bought Liz Benny's course on the whole, how to set up everything for a course. Which Liz Benny, props to her, she is an amazing, amazing woman, a very wonderful teacher.
Me doing this podcast right now, whether or not I want it to be, is a form of marketing, does that make sense?
I used to do that when I did door-to-door sales, I learned a lot, I got good at it, but then one of the things I learned, is this is not the thing that I want to be doing, right? An entrepreneur does not have to be good at sales, I should say, but they do have to be good at marketing.
When I think about what is most related to an entrepreneur, it is marketers. They're so related, they're so related. What I've learned most by sitting next to the man, Mr. Russell Brunson, is that when a person takes charge of that emotionally, and they say, "Yes, I'm going to be the marketer, I'm going to try and make sales improve in this company," and they're the person who's also in charge of the company, who owns it, or runs it, or whatever? Man, great things happen.
That's it. That's the whole thing. That's the whole secret.
Back to door-to-door sales. When I started learning more about the product that I was selling at door-to-door sales, my sales plummeted, they plummeted. It's because I started logically closing people. That was it. I got really good at getting past that gatekeeper, that part of the brain.
Number one we usually take care of subconsciously, we don't even realize we're doing it most, of us, if we're socially adequate people. That's all I've got for you guys, three phases. First, get the walls down then epiphany, working on breaking and rebuilding belief patterns, and the third part is the logical close. That's "The Stack."
As you push forward business, remember that business is all about pushing out your differences and exposing your strengths. Not your weaknesses, so the temptation will be to confuse your business activities with your character flaws.
Now if you guys haven't done this in the past at all, please do in the future. I made my entire website, 
So that's been the hardest part preparing for this speech that I got to give coming up shortly to 2,500 people.
The market is what will tell you what is good or bad. Same thing with your storytelling. Same thing with your ability to adapt. You've got to use the vernacular of your market, not what you think is awesome." I've pounded that point several times with you guys. I'm just trying to make that whole idea.
Anyway, I just so love ClickFunnels and Russell, and I can tell you from being there almost two years, that ... Man, like, guys there's not another place on the planet like that. It's not that I'm just, you know, drinking the cool aid, or indoctrinated, or whatever it is, but I can tell you that everyone who's there, truly wants to change the world. It's not like it's this accidental thing.
I'm going to go ahead though, and I'm going to let you know the things that I learned, the big takeaways from Funnel Hacking Live. Now, understand that what I'm going to do here, it's not going to give justice at all for what really happened.
I saw someone post, and they were like, "I learned no actual hardcore strategy." I was like, "Man, you must not have been freaking in the room then, because you're the only person who said that. Ever." I don't even ... Everyone I've been talking to is like, "That was the best thing I've ever ... That's the best event I've ever been to, related to business, ever. Across all business, not just marketing, in general." I was like, "Yeah, it's pretty cool." We worked our butts off for it, so we're super glad that you guys liked it.
That's what I gave my closing speech on at graduation, when I graduated. Anyway. He goes through and he starts saying, "Look, as you came into this industry, whatever it is that you're in, you loved it and you started learning all the vocab from that industry." Sales funnels, auto-responders, SMTP, right? All this crap, no one know what that is if they're not in here.
Let me keep going here. Then there was a break, and then Jim Edwards came in and he taught about copy. Now, he is the creator of Funnel Scripts. If you guys have never used that software, fantastic software.
I was in college, and I was going around ... What happened was, and I've told parts of this, pieces and parts. What happened was I got married, my wife and I, we went up to college. I really hadn't had that much college done before we got married. It was only a semester or two, so I had the full brunt left. She actually had already graduated, although we're the same age. It took me ... I went on a mission for my church. I was gone for two years. I took a year off to work and get some stuff done, and put together.
Anyways, this checklist helps me see to which extent the entrepreneur or myself knows his own company. This is one of the biggest pieces on here. What I want to do is I want to go through these items with you guys real quick. It's 11 things that help you know ... What's kind of cool is let's say you're not hitting all 11 of these things. That's totally fine, use it as a gauge. Go in and start to figure this out, because here's what happened.
Number one, is their business ... I'm going to share this with the standpoint of, 'Hey, I'm looking for a client,' because I've built a lot of funnels for other people. All right, so number one, is their business already making sales? Whether offline or online, I don't care. They could seriously be going door-to-door. I don't care. Are they already selling the product they're wishing a funnel was for? Do they have repeat buyers? This is all part of number one. I wrote in here this question alone is a major barrier. If the answer is 'No,' I don't work them because they haven't built the business enough to support a full-fledged funnel. Full-fledged funnel.
I'm from Colorado. There's mountains and valleys all around us. There's rivers and dams where they put those hydroelectric generators in there to get electricity. It'd be like building a dam in the middle of a valley and then trying to find the water. That's what it's like when you're trying to build a funnel for somebody who does not already have traffic. It's very difficult.
You'll get the $10,000, and then you'll get the about another $1,000 in funnels that I use for MLM; the funnel that I used to get 650 people to a live event, which was crazy. It was in the middle of college. That was so amazing. We raised seven grand for charity. It was awesome, but I built that funnel. I'll give you that one.
This was five years ago and I was like, we were super poor. We were living paycheck to paycheck mostly on student loans. You know what I mean?
Instead you do it the other direction. Figure out, and actually figure out the sales message and actually be collecting cash. And when you are actually collecting cash, then you create the offer that fulfills whatever promise your sales message made. Does that make sense?
Anyways, that was a rant. I should've podcasted that, maybe I'll rip it out and toss it in a ... Alright guys, super excited for this. Thanks so much and let's dive into you students. Boom.
The whole event was meant to build on itself, so I would go listen to Day 1 first, and then Day 2, and then come back to this one. Really, the last one, but this is the one where Tony Robbins came in and it was so cool.
A. The worst thing you could do is give it to them for free. When you give something for free to somebody for free for too long ... Number 1: it can bring in these feeling of well you gave it to me for free, so everything you give me should be for free. And I'm not talking about your base. All the things you're putting out there for people, that's fine. But if you're giving your actual bread-and-butter product and service away for free, for too long, it jacks up the value that they see of what you've built.
Tons of people raised their hand, of course, the feeling of insecurity. He was like, "Oh man, ma'am I want you to know just how alone you are and how no one has ever experienced that ever in their entire life." We are all laughing. He was like, "Understand, you guys, that there is the mind, which is the organ in your body, in your head. Then, there is your mind. And so many thoughts of the mind control us, you know feelings of insecurity, feelings of this, or this, or that, or that, or that, or that. Realize that the mind can produce lots of stuff for the body and persuade you."
I don't know why guys, but I started thinking you know what? I've spoken on a lot of smaller stages now. I've spoken on a lot of smaller stages and smaller events, anywhere from 1 to 200 people, many times now, right, and several other events when there's supposed to be more people and there wasn't and there's a smaller amount. You roll the punches. A lot of fun, but I started to think. I'm like, "I want to see big people. Really huge influencers. I've got to see them go speak on huge stages with massive audiences and see what they do with their energy." The entire reason that I went to Grant Cardone's Growth event, right? 10X Growth event.
I don't know that I've actually told you guys this yet, I recently went and I took everyone of Russell's webinar pitches, anything from Funnel Scripts, DotComSecrets X, obviously Funnel Hacks, Funnel Builder Secrets, any of the software secrets when he did that pitch, I grabbed everyone of the pitches that I've ever seen him do.
If you've ever read the book Pitch Anything, it's one of my favorite books ever, it is definitely probably in the top probably 5 or 10 books I've ever read ever, and what it teaches and goes through is it talks about every time there's something new that comes up inside of the brain or in your life, your head runs through all these filters, right? It's always funny. My wife and I went ... I can't remember what movie we went to go see, but we went to a movie theater.
A price marinade. Now what's a price marinade? Now in a normal sales environment, it's very common for a lot of times to withhold the actual price until the end, right? What is that in Funnel Hacks? His stack, his value and his stack is $11,552. $11,552. Is this worth $11,552? Of course, it is. If all I said was this, is it $11,552? Of course, it is. Right? That's what he does. He goes through and that's what he teaches. His stack has a total value of $11,552. What typically happens is you withhold that information until the ever end. Then there's a big price drop, a public price, and then another kind of final price drop because you're special and you're on the webinar today.
If you don't know what I'm talking about at all, go read the book Expert Secrets..
So we're going out, this very first week, this very first webinar, I went out and I'm building the webinar and I'm putting the stuff together, and I did all these ask campaigns. I did six or seven ask campaigns. Right next to me, there's a whiteboard full, chock-full of false beliefs that I found, and that stemmed my marketing message, the product, the actual offer, all the way I would talk, the way I would put the script together, all of it.
So week number one I had 469 people hit my registration page, and instead of doing it this way, because it's going to be hard to listen to for me anyways, I'm just going to talk about percentages. I had a 60% opt-in rate.
At the end of the training, my company they showed up and they said, "Hey, we need some people to go over to this polygraph machine and you're going to help FBI, NSA, and CIA agents with their polygraph skills." If you don't know what that is, that's like the lie detector machine, right? They like look in your pupils and stuff like that.
Just go launch the thing. It's gonna fail. Just expect it to. Then, turn around and then you make the tweaks. Let the market tell you. You don't currently know everything that you need to to be successful.
Then the second one is, it's actually even bigger. That one will be on ... Let's see, the first one is April 22nd which is my birthday, I'm very excited, turning 29. Earth Day. It's both Earth Day and my earth day, it's going to be awesome. That's April 22nd and it's going to be in Orlando, Florida.
Anyway, really interesting. I was thinking about, I was like, "Hey, I'm super stoked, going to go do the stage presentations here soon." It's doing the time we've been moving and there's all this stuff going on with Russell launching his book.
Anyways, those are two kinds of trust and I was thinking about that.
Anyway, hey, I just wanted to share something with you guys though. I just did my first live webinar, and it was a smashing success, which is very, very exciting. I have been preparing for this webinar for specifically just working on this one thing for the last three or four days. Here's how I did it. Okay, so last Monday, nothing was built, and so what I did is on day one, I built the registration process, so I went through and I built.
Anyway, 170 people came and registered and then 100 showed up, which is actually significantly, it's pretty high, that's pretty high show up rate. 100 showed up and then 20 bought right off the bat, which is awesome. There was only about 90 people on when I actually started the actual stacks part, which is like a 20, it's a 22% conversion rate, that's pretty high. That's really high for a webinar, so I'm very, very excited about this whole thing. That's what I've been doing.
I've already found some coders that can do it. I've already found a lot of ... Anyway, it's awesome. I'm excited to do it. It's exciting and it'll be cool, but that's where my head is. I did, I sold 20 people out of 90 people are on there. It's not a bad close right, and then there's going to be, there's a lot of people who couldn't get on it with the ... I am going to close it out here very, very soon and I think I can get at least another 10 people in as well. It's awesome. I mean that's pretty awesome.
Number one, I get that. Number two, don't wait to start the Dream 100 strategy. It's all about relationships. It's all about creating relationships. You can't dig the well when you're thirsty. You got to do it before you're thirsty. You know what I'm saying? Whoever those people are, the top giants inside your industry, the people who are there who've been crushing it and start creating relationships with those guys. I can always tell when I'm someone's Dream 100 strategy because they usually buy a product of mine just to say hi. They don't want to look like they're freeloading or they'll send a package. Whatever it is. They'll start by leading with value. That's what we had to lead with.
Anyway, hopefully that's helpful. As you start thinking about what it is you're trying to put out there and launch or maybe it already is launched, what character flaw or personal development thing do you need to go through actually to get to the next level? Maybe you're not disciplined enough in a certain area. Maybe you're too disciplined in some area and you're actually leaving people out.
And you can follow through, and do the same thing that I'm doing. Now I'm not there to train each aspect of ClickFunnels, or to give massive orientation. So I'm gonna go my normal speed. And I'll play some music. And I'll explain what I'm doing as I'm doing it. And it'll be a lot of fun. Like they're just funnels I want to build anyway.
Crippling, debilitating anxiety, which took over my life. I was in a completely toxic relationship, I hated what I was doing with a passion, and I didn't have a big "Why?"
You can kind of boil it down that way...
Now, actually I remember, when I was homeless ... When I first started, it wasn't a webinar I was sending people to, I was sending people for a 10 minute ... because this was a while ago ... No actually, they were sent to a webinar, but the people were training me to send them to a 10 minute prerecorded call, which was a 20, 30 minute prerecorded call, which was the webinar before that they were webinized.
Now, there's a trust being built. Do you see what I'm saying? I'm becoming your friend now via the email. So, read in between the lines and really see what they're messages, and what emotion they're trying to evoke out of you, and then use that in your own product and your own brand, and your own email, in your own words.
And then, when I created the actual offer, now the offer is actually done, then I went and I ... Now, I'm focusing on the funnel. Okay, what's the funnel that gives me back a little bit more of my time? I'm telling you, running three webinars a week, holy smokes. That is so much work as a solo one man guy. You know? One man show going on right now. Oh, my gosh. I tried that three webinar a week thing I was talking about for just a little bit and I was like, "There's no way. There's no way."
Guys, I'm very, very excited. Please come with an open mind. And, if you're hearing this after the fact, that's totally fine. Anything you learn from any guru that you've realized that you need to study from, take notes from them. One of the things I've learned recently as well is that it's good to read deeply on a broad spectrum.
What's up, guys? Hey, I hope you're doing great. It is a Monday morning, which frankly might be kind of weird, but it's actually my favorite day and time of the week. Call me workaholic, but it's true though. So, I wake up on Mondays just a-smiling, and I jump out of bed, and I'm so eager to get started on the week, and I know that's weird, but whatever. It's true, so I thought I'd just tell you. Anyways, it's Monday morning. In about an hour and a half here, my wife and I, along with our two little girls we are going to the doctor, and we're going to find out what the gender of our new little baby is, and we're very, very excited. We have two little girls already.
I never consider myself as giddy about what I do. Maybe I choose a different word. But I am having fun with it, and it's been great. Hey, so I've been getting a lot of requests lately about ... you know what, let me get ahead and I'm just going to read this thing first. And then I'll lead into that. So I'm holding a book. This book is fantastic.
But anyway, I always cover this with them, and then there's a second piece as well, because of what Mark Benioff said. After a customer is acquired, the first thing you have to do with them is you need to help them consume it. I call it a consumption series. It's a consumption sequence, a consumption series, consumption guide.
But if then they go buy, it's like, "Hey, here's how to consume what you bought. By the way, here's also how you can promote what you ..." Anyway, so that's what I've been doing. I feel like I'm talking in circles now. I'm literally talking about loops. But I hope that makes sense what I'm talking about though.
