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WHY I get so excited for Funnel Hacking Live... Hey, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Oh yeah. 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 am so freaking excited for Funnel Hacking LIVE. It is coming up. Just to be clear, I've had a lot of people reach out and say, "Oh, Steve, now that you're leaving ClickFunnels, are you gonna keep podcasting and publishing and doing their podcast?" Please understand that this is my own show and it's not affiliated at all with ClickFunnels. I just happen to be a ridiculous fanboy of everyone over there, what they do. They're changing the world, and so that's why I talk about it so much. Also, besides the fact that I've worked there. It's just a lot of part of my history, and I have massive, ridiculous respect and love for Russell and what he does. And, frankly, when you've made the kind of money he has, he obviously very easily could kind of drift off into the night, and he doesn't choose to do that. He decides to continue to go out and change stuff. So, anyways, I'm excited for Funnel Hacking LIVE. If you are not going, please find a way to get there, okay? I'm not being paid to say that. I am trying to help you understand and get to the spot that changed my life. It changed my life for me when I got there, and it was amazing. It changed everything. To be around the right people, to be around the right information, to be around the most cutting-edge stuff ... Anyways, there's my pitch for you. Hey, I have for the last several episodes been teasing you guys with this idea that I've got something special for you who are coming, and I do. I'm sure we're gonna meet anyways, but I really want to meet you guys if you're listening to this, okay? And so, I've got something special for you. I went out and I grabbed these sweet little flash drives and these flash drives ... What I'm gonna put on them is pretty incredible. I have been going out ... And if you haven't been noticing, I've been building a bunch of funnels live lately. It's been a lot of fun. I've built, maybe, nine of them and each one of them is about five hours long. I build them from scratch and I record myself doing it, and I do it in front of a live audience. And I've been doing that for the last, I don't know, four months, five months, something like that. And it's been fun. I've really, really enjoyed going through and doing that. It's a ton of work, oh my gosh. But I teach for the first fourth, the first third, something like that, and then I build from the ground up and everyone asks questions while I go. So it's extremely in-depth. Every single thing I place on there is on purpose. Everything has a purpose, and it's all part of the strategy. Anyways, I hope if you've been able to watch those, it's been kind of awesome... Well, when ... It's probably, like, what, three years ago? I built this funnel. It was probably the fourth or fifth funnel I'd ever built. The first funnel I'd ever built was, I told you guys, it was a smartphone insurance funnel. It went well. It was kind of a break-even business. If I had known more at that time, I would've kept it going and sold something more expensive on the back end because we were getting customers. Break even, which is awesome. That was our first funnel, first attempt, which is pretty cool when you think about it. It's awesome. But, shortly after I started building all these funnels for all these other companies. I was ... A lot of you guys know, I am actually just barely leaving the Army right now. Paperwork in the government takes a long time to do what it's supposed to, I guess, and get the final signature. I don't know what it does. It must just sit somewhere and have a four or five month timer on it, and then someone walks up, signs the last thing, and hands it back. I don't know, but everything's out of my hands. I'm in the middle of leaving the Army right now. As soon as the last signature happens, I am completely out of the military. Anyways, so I enlisted first, and I went through basic training and I loved it. It was hard. It wasn't impossible, though. I was actually hoping it'd be a little bit harder, but there were some challenging moments. There was some challenging aspects to it. I didn't eat that much. I still actually slept pretty well for the most part. We didn't really eat, though, that much, which was ... I lost 15 pounds, and I went in weighing, like, 170. I was really skinny when I came out of basic. It was crazy. So that part was challenging, and there were some challenging aspects along the way. So I get out, and I was officially in the military at that time, and when I get in college and start building these funnels, build the smartphone insurance funnel, build all these other things. And what ends up happening is ... I was in a program called ROTC, and I became an officer when I graduated. However, we wanted to put on a fundraiser. We wanted to put on a mud run. So what we did, was we put together this track. It was a 5K mud run, you know what I mean? Like, there was mud everywhere, obstacle courses all over the place. We had cool fire pits you had to jump over. We had spots where ... We made it military style, you know what I mean? You ran with M16s through all the stuff while we had simulated explosions going on around them. It was really, really cool. And we put this awesome course together and they're like, "Hey, how are we gonna get people?" I was like, "I've got it. I've been learning about this thing called ClickFunnels. I know none of you know what it is. I'm gonna go build it, I'll be right back." And I spent probably 40 hours. I didn't totally know what I was doing at the time. I was just kind of figuring it out as I went, and I was talking to Support pretty much every single day. A couple times, actually. I became "that guy," you know what I mean, to Support, probably. Which is fine. I was learning. And I went through and I was building all this stuff and I put together this event funnel. And it was the first time I ever did anything like that. Well, from that event funnel, I went out and we started promoting it, and we got it on the news. We got it in newspapers. We got it on our school ... And we went, basically, the equivalent of what a Dream 100 would be. We ended up getting 650 people to my first time ever building a live event funnel. 650 people to a live event. We ended up raising ... We collected $7,000. We raffled off an AR-15. If you don't know what that is, it's like an M16, but the civilian version. And we went out and we raised all this money and donated it to the Fisher House Foundation. Which, the Fisher House Foundation is the ... It's pretty awesome. When a soldier gets wounded and they get flown to a hospital, the Fisher House Foundation funds the expenses for the family to fly out to whatever hospital the soldier is being taken care of in. So they can actually go see their loved ones while they're in the hospital getting better. So we were able to make a good donation there, which is awesome. It was a really, really cool experience. So, it's very fascinating, though, because very shortly after that funnel ... No joke, meaning, the event happened ... A lot of people don't know this. The event happened and the next week I was at my first Funnel Hacking LIVE event. When I bootstrapped my way to that event. That was all literally a week after we ran that mud run, which was the funnel that I built to get people to it. I was like, "This is working. Holy crap!" And I was building it for other people. And I was like, "What if I did this for this event and it worked?" And we ended up straight cash, and I bootstrapped my way building more funnels for other businesses to get to that Funnel Hacking LIVE event. Well, lo and behold when I got hired, time came for Funnel Hacking LIVE again, 2017. And I had the complete, ridiculous, insane honor of helping build, obviously, like every other funnel that I was there for ... Helping build the funnel for Funnel Hacking LIVE 2017. Guess what? Same process, okay? I literally funnel hacked, basically, Russell's 2015 event funnel for my mud run funnel, and then I went through, and I was at the 2016 one. And when the 2017 event came along, I was like, "Sweet. We're gonna build this funnel." And guess what? Obviously, the page looked different. Obviously there was better sales copy than I ever wrote, that first time I ever built that mud run event funnel, that 5K ... We called it the 5K Warrior Mud Run. Obviously, it was to a higher quality, but it was the same funnel. And I went through, and I was like, "This is so sweet. Holy crap!" And I went through and I got the extreme, ridiculous honor of building this thing and putting it altogether for the 2017 Funnel Hacking LIVE. Well, I am extremely ecstatic. In just a few weeks here, like, one week to be exact. I get the honor of going again to Funnel Hacking LIVE and meeting those of you guys who are also coming, and guess what I want to give you? I went through, and I've been building these funnels live. Let me go full circle with this, okay? You're like, "Man, Steve, you're going all over the place." Just follow me for a second, okay? I've been building ... When I left working there, which crushed my insides. I just felt like it's something I had to do. It crushed my insides when I left that job. I was like, "I've gotta go put in stone a lot of these very specific lessons and tactics and tricks that are very funnel-specific. I've gotta go put those down in stone." So that's why I've been building live a lot of funnels. There's been a group of about 40-50 people that have been joining me for the majority of these funnel builds for the last five months, and I have the recordings of all of them. I have the share funnels. I have the email sequences. I have how it works in each industry. I have other ridiculous stuff that I put inside of it... And my plan is to sell those ... A lot of people have asked me, "What are you doing with these, Steven?" Well, number one, I've been putting them in my product for my webinar. A lot of you guys have been going out and buying that product just so you can get the funnels, which is awesome. There's like, eight, of those recordings in there. Almost literally every single one of them's in that product... But a lot of you guys, though ... Like, the ones that ... There are others that I've been obviously not including that did not apply to the product that I've been selling. So, anyways, my plan is to be able to give you some of those funnels, as well as the five hour recording of me, first of all training you on that funnel. When to use it, when not to use it, the order in which to use it, the best scenarios to use it in. And then me actually building it. But then also, the share funnel itself. The email sequences with it. The pdf map that shows you how the whole thing works from a top level view, 50,000-foot view. And I want to give the event funnel to you. Now, obviously it's not the Funnel Hacking LIVE event funnel; however, it is the same funnel. Does that make sense? I went through and I built it ... I don't know when that was. It was recent, and that was one of my favorite ones ever. I want to give it to you guys for free. It's my future plan, though, to sell them individually anywhere for $400-$500 a piece because they're freaking awesome and they're worth more than that. I don't start building funnels for somebody until the $50,000-$100,000 range with royalties in the back. They're definitely worth $500, okay? Anyways, I want to make them $1,000 each, but I wanted to make them more available. So, it's the training, it's the funnel, it's the email sequences/other sequences that come along with it. It's the pdf map, and it's when I went and did a full training on the event funnel itself. It's like five hours. It's a live Q and A in front of a huge group, which is awesome. Anyways, so I wanted to give that to you. I'm gonna put that on the flash drives, and I've got like 60-70 flash drives, and it says Steve Larsen on them. And I want to be able to give them to you, though, at the event. Here's what I'm asking for in return. Yes, I am a marketer, so what I'm gonna ask is that when you come up to me, you say a little magic phrase so that I know that you are one of the people who are listening to this show. And here's what I ask from you. That we take a picture together, and you post it on your Facebook profile. That's it. Say, "Hey, I'm with this good looking champ right here," of whatever. Does that sound good? That's all I'm asking for in return. This is me pitching. Sounds good? I told a story to break and rebuild your belief about the importance of an event funnel and what it can do. And then what I do, is now this is me putting the offer out. Sound good? And what I'm doing, is this is call to action. You're gonna walk up to me, and this is what you're gonna say. First of all I'm gonna say it. Actually, you know what? I'm not gonna say it. I need to tell a story to help explain it. So what I'm gonna do, is ... When I was in the Army in basic training, I went in the middle of winter. And winter was rough, guys. Winter was rough. It was a stupid decision to go to basic training in the winter because the drill sergeants totally took advantage of it. There were ice storms all the time, and just out of a mental toughening factor, they'd leave us out in the ice storms in shorts and a t-shirt for hours. And you'd just be sitting there at the position of attention, which means you can't move. The only thing you can do is move your eyes, but even then you're just supposed to look straight forward. So you're staying completely still, just freezing your butt off, and there's these ice storms going off. And you're just, "Ah!" And one day, we were practicing taking over areas. Like, "How do we enter in an area and take over that position?" There's 200 of us. Can you imagine handing over a bunch of 17 and 18 year olds M16s? There's gonna be some coordination. There's gonna be a plan. So we were practicing taking over, and I was significantly older than most of the rest of the people there. I was in college. That made me very different. I was married. That made me very different. I had a kid. That made me very different. I was a very different scenario. I was running side businesses. That made me very different. I was a very different kid than the person that was already there. But anyways, we were practicing taking over these areas, and we get to this field, and the field is flooded. It had been raining/ice falling. Not snowing, it was either ice or rain. It was sleeting for the last several days. And I went and they were like, "Hey, we're gonna practice taking over these areas." And we were kind of walking through the scenario, so it wasn't run at full speed. We're all doing it half-speed. And they're like, "Okay, Larsen. You're gonna run out here, and you and this guy, you're gonna dive on the ground and you're gonna interlock your feet. And you wiggle your foot, and that's how you would talk back and forth to each other. So you don't have to actually speak with your mouth. Your feet are interlocked. Just one of the foots of the guy next to you. Does that make sense? So I went out and I go out there and they're like, "Okay, get down right here." And where they pointed was this, probably, like, six inches of water. It was a lot of water. It was a full out puddle, and the drill sergeant knew that, and they were smiling at me. And they wanted to make it crappy, and I was like, "Okay." And if you've ever seen the movie Unbroken, this is nothing like that intensity, but please understand that's what I was trying to do. I was trying to say, "Alright. Bring it. I can take it." So I laid down, and what happens when you get in cold ... It's 33 degrees outside. It was not quite cold enough yet to freeze, but it was so cold that ... It was almost ice. Guys, I'm laying in six inches of water, 33 degrees. Freezing. Massive wind coming in. Nonstop wind. And I'm laying in water. It's now almost completely covering my entire body, and I'm laying in it completely still in the prone holding my weapon with our feet interlocked. And my first thought was, "Oh my gosh." What happens when you get in water that's that cold ... If anyone's ever taken an ice bath before or if you've ever had the luxury of Russell throwing you in the middle of his Cryosauna, your body starts to shake. And what's happening is, when you start shaking, the capillaries are cinching up and the blood is sucking out of your capillaries and rushing to your organs. And that shaking feeling is kind of your body trying to get warm, but also after a while your body just kind of sucks the blood out of it. That's why your fingers start to turn a little bit blue, it's because the blood's taking out of your extremities towards your organs to keep them warm. And when you stop shaking, you know that you are starting to head towards a dangerous area... So, I was shaking. I was like, "Oh my gosh," and I just started yelling. I was like, "Whoa, yeah." I'm gonna react to this well. I'm gonna react to the scenario well. I cannot control what is happening to me. I can control my reaction to it. So I'm going to change the way I view this. And I'm going to start yelling, and I'm going to get excited. And I'm gonna be bigger than this situation because we did not go back for a long time. I stayed wet for a long time. My feet were gray, I don't think they're supposed to be that color, when I finally took my boots off. But I was like, "I'm gonna react well. I am going to choose how this happens. I'm gonna choose the outcome of this scenario." And it was the first time ... It's not the first time, but that was a very vivid time that I was like, "You know what? This is an important opportunity for me to learn something if I choose to." So this is what I did. I stood up when the drill sergeants weren't looking. I stood up and I started running. I started running and I started jumping in the puddles of water next to all the other soldiers. And I started playing with them. Does that make sense? I started making it this thing ... We were in a slow speed, kind of, environment. This was not like ... We weren't running this at full space. We weren't being ... Anyway, we're all holding real weapons, but we were jumping around. We were being safe, but we were jumping around, we're splashing water. And I was like, "Woo! Yeah!" Jumping around. And people were like, "Larsen! Shut up! Shut up! I hate you!" And they're swearing on my unborn, future children at the time. They're like yelling at you. They're like, "Oh, I'm gonna kill you. You're dead tonight. You're dead. We're putting soaps in our socks and hitting you." They're threatening me with all this stuff, and I'm jumping around, and I was just doing what I could to react appropriately to the crappy scenario I had no control over. And I started saying this phrase, and it sounds stupid, but it's what I want you to say to get the flash drive. Okay? Don't mess it up. There is a vernacular to it. It sounds very simple, okay? I started going ... And what I would do is I would start saying in my mind, "H!H! OO BAYBAY!" and I would start yelling that. I would start yelling it. "H!H! OO BAYBAY!" Don't jack it up. This is how you do it. This is how it's spelled. It's h ... This is all in caps. If you're writing it, it's all in caps. Massive 72-point font. Bold. It's H!H! OO BAYBAY. It's baybay. Not baby. You're not, "Oh baby." No. None of that weak crap. You're gonna reach down. You're gonna grab your boot strings, and you're gonna go "H!H! OO BAYBAY!" And you're gonna scream it. And when I see you, that's the phrase. Because you're probably gonna be tired at Funnel Hacking LIVE. You are probably ... There's probably so many things gonna be lodging into your brain that you've never considered. New connections, new ideas, new things to take your business to the next level, that often a lot of times what will happen is if you are not in the correct state of mind, you will miss it. And I don't want you to. This is all about self-state control, and you've gotta get good at it. I believe in it, and it's the reason Russell and I were able to build funnels at the speed we were. We didn't always feel like it. We're tired most of the time. But by choosing my state ... Yes, even on the internet when I'm sitting in my office by myself and there's no other person around me to cultivate that energy, I choose the outcome. I choose the scenario. I'm sorry, I don't choose the scenario. I choose the way I react to it. Which, that is what determines the outcome, funny enough. Not the scenario. How many people have you ever heard of who were super poor, terrible with life scenarios, and then they turn it all around? Why? Life didn't dish them up this amazing card deck. It's the way they reacted to it that determines the outcome. I use that phrase in so many ... Guys, when we were ... Later on, just to keep the military thing going on ... Honestly, I use it in so many areas. I still do today. We were doing gas chamber ... I don't know if I've told this story before, but we were doing gas chamber training, and I put my gas mask on. I put my gas mask on, and it's CS gas. If you don't know what CS gas is, it's not fun. It gets inside of your ... As soon as you breathe it or it starts to seep into your skin, it literally makes all of your glands and your pores start to ... The equivalent of defecate, okay? You have no control over your nose and you start to get these disgusting runny noses. Your eyes start to get all red and watery. It's pretty nasty stuff. And it's basically riot control gas. But, they really increased the dosage for my group. Because they want to teach you how to use gas masks. So we're all lining up there, and people start kind of freaking out and kind of hyperventilating. We're all standing outside of this gas chamber, and we all got these gas masks, and they all start practicing. "Gas! Gas! Gas!" And we all put our gas masks on. We have to do it within seven seconds, seal it, clear the mask of any gas that actually might have gotten in while we were putting the mask on. So, you blow air in and then you grab another valve, seal that one off, and then suck in really hard, and it seals it to your face. It's not comfortable. And they're like, "Okay, we're gonna go in," and we start going into this gas chamber, and it was a little bit freaky, I'm not gonna lie. You get in there, and it's thick, green smoke all over the place. You're like, "Crap, I really don't want to breathe this garbage. Oh my gosh, I hope I sealed my mask correctly. H!H! OO BAYBAY!" Does that make sense? All these fears, "Scared! H!H! OO BAYBAY! Let's just do it, baby, and you just jump out the plane, build the parachute while you fall." That's why I say that phrase. Does that make sense? It's crazy, though. Some girls in there started freaking out, and they had to physically grab this girl and shove her against the wall and tell her to settle down. It was a little bit ... Anyway, and then you take the mask off and you start doing exercises in there, and it was not fun. People were throwing up. That was a terrible experience. That was not fun. But that's what I'm saying, though. You don't always have control. In fact, you almost never have control over the scenarios in your life. And when you're given a little bit of rope to have control, you take that rope and you run 15 miles with it and you go as far as you can with it. Most of the time, it's about reacting appropriately to the actions that are handed to you. That's, like, 90% of why I do what I do, guys. That's, like, 90% of the reason I've been able to do what I do. It is a mentality. I hate the phrase, "Oh, it's all about ... I do mindset coaching." Like, okay, what does that mean? I don't understand that. To me, though, that is what that means. State control. That means something more important to me than mindset training. That's what I do, though. It's about how I react to the scenarios given to me. Very rarely do I ever have a great deck that is just given to me. I believe in luck, I just don't believe in chance. Does that make sense? Luck. Have you ever heard the quote, "Luck is where preparation meets opportunity?" I think that's how the phrase goes. I can't remember. "Luck is where preparations meets opportunity," or something like that. I believe in luck, I just don't believe in chance. I believe that if I work my absolute guts out, I will be ready for the opportunity that just kind of comes my way. And it will be handed to me because I've been running. I'm already in motion. Opportunity goes to those who are already in motion. It is so frustrating to try and coach individuals who are not in motion yet, and their main hurdle is for me to help them get in motion. Oh my gosh, that is a rough scenario. Oh, just be in motion. I don't even care if you're running the wrong direction. Just be moving, and you will find guidance as you move. It is so much easier to steer a moving canoe... Have you ever sat in a canoe before? I was in scouts. I got my Eagle Scout award. I went and did all this other stuff. It's a lot of fun, right? But paddling ... I've been in many canoes before where you're paddling, and if you're trying to just coast along with the river, it could be a little challenging, if you're moving at the speed of a very still river, to actually steer. It's way easier to steer when you're going somewhere. You control the speed, rather than try and drift. Drifting with the paddle is, like, worse than not having a paddle at all. You don't have a paddle. You've got ClickFunnels. You've got the best marketing out there. You've got the best of the best of the best. The only thing that's up to you is to start rowing. I don't care if you're going the wrong direction. So, the phrase is, "H!H! OO BAYBAY!" And you've got to say it like that, or I'm not handing you a flash drive. I'm excited for you to get there. I'm excited for you guys to feel the change if you want it to be there. You guys, understand that I had so much belief that if I just got in the room ... If I just got in the room, my life would change. That was my belief. It was that strong. That first event I ever got to when I did not have the discretionary income to actually pay for something like an event and I bootstrapped my way there. And because of that, it did change. And when I got hired at ClickFunnels, 20 minutes after my interview, they give a call, and they said, "Hey, you're hired. We want you to sit next to Russell," and I was like, "What?" I was trying to go for a sSupport position. I just wanted to be near where the action was. I was like, "Are you serious? Of course. You're gonna pay me to do that?" And I called my wife, and ... Years of struggling ... I was in motion. I was in motion, and that's why I feel like it came my way. I did not have all the answers, but I had enough to see the three steps in front of me. I knew where the peak was. I could not see anything in-between. And I called my wife, and I said, "Babe ..." I was trying not to cry, but I was also losing my voice because I was just yelling I was so excited. I was like, "Babe, our life just changed." I was driving the five hours back to where my family was. Less than a week later, we were living in Boise, Idaho. What I'm trying to say is ... I said, "Babe, the course of our life just changed. The outcome of where we were going to go, it's different now." If you choose it to be ... It's the reason I get so freaking pumped about Funnel Hacking LIVE. If you choose it to be, Funnel Hacking LIVE is that for you. It was for me. It is not a trite thing. It's not just another event. I will tell you from working there from my own experience that every individual who works at ClickFunnels is there to change the world. It's an active conversation. Unfortunately, that's an awkward conversation for most other places in the world. It is an active ... "How can we change the world?" Like, "What? Who talks like that?" Those in the ... Just like Steve Jobs said, "Those who are actually gonna try and change the world are the ones that actually do." And they are. It's the reason I get so pumped about it. They changed my world. They're changing everyone else's world. They're changing industries. That's why I get so pumped about it. People are like, "Man, you're a freak show about Funnel Hacking LIVE." Yeah I am. I get more pumped about it than Christmas, every other holiday. It literally is ... And it's because of what it can do for you. To be in a room with that many other millionaires, to be in a room with that amount of mental ... Top of the line stuff, you guys. And software. How often do you get the marketing education and technology blend in the same sitting? That's so freakishly rare it's ridiculous. You get both at Funnel Hacking LIVE. The top of the top, the best of the best. The who's who are all there. And if you're like, "Steve, I still don't have my ticket." Well, you've got, like, a week. Find a way and get there, and know that it has the power to change your life and put the course of your life on a different outcome based on how you react. So you come up to me. I've got ... There's two things on them. Number one, I'm gonna give you guys the event funnel. Some sweet training on there. I'm gonna give you guys ... There's a whole bunch of other stuff that I'm not gonna advertise, okay, that's really, really cool. I've got some extra little Easter eggs in there for you. But you walk up to me, and you give me the most interactive, "H!H! OO BAYBAY!," I will give one right back, so long as my voice is not completely gone, and let's take a picture. You post that up there. I will give you a flash drive. On your Facebook profile, and I will hand it off to you. Sound good? Alright guys, that is the prepare for Funnel Hacking LIVE plan. I would start going through. I would re-listen to any ... If you've got a Funnel Hacking LIVE ticket ... I know because I built the Members' Area, okay? When you got a Funnel Hacking LIVE ticket, you also got access to the 2015, 2016, and 2017 replays. I have been ... I'm almost done listening to all the replays again. Yes, I do listen to them all the time. I just reread 108 Split Tests. I am re-listening to tons of stuff. That's how I'm preparing, guys. Prepare. Put yourself in a state-control. Choose. Decide the outcome. Decide the outcome before you actually start the event. How crazy of an idea is that? That's what you can do with this. So, go out and start preparing. Re-listen to the past episodes. They came with your ticket this year, which is awesome. Go and actually start re-reading Expert Secrets. Re-read [inaudible 00:30:00] Secrets. Re-read 108 Split Tests. Go through the Funnel Hacker Cookbook. Go through those things, and start consuming that stuff. Get yourself in a state to receive. Most of you guys are coming to my Mastermind the day before. I'm very excited to have you guys. It's gonna be great. It's a small group. I'm excited it is. So, very, very excited to have you, though, and I am excited to meet you. Excited to meet you guys over there. Give a high five, brotherly hug, whatever. Give me a little state-controlled shout out. A little, "H!H! OO BAYBAY!" And we'll take a picture. You post it up there, and my thank you is a flash drive with the event funnel. The event funnel, as well as a whole bunch of other goodies that I'm just gonna toss on there for fun. I've only got, like 60 or 70 of them, so ... Anyways, thanks guys. I appreciate it. I know this was kind of a different styled episode, but you need to know why I get so pumped about it. Someone was laughing at me. They were like, "You get that excited about it?" I'm like, "Okay, let me tell you why. It's because I chose it to be and it's because I knew ... I believed that Russell knew how to get me to the next spot." Half of you guys are still trying to decide if this stuff works. Get past that freakishly stupid doubt, and go and just believe it. Take a chance. They're not paying me for this. They don't even know I'm doing it. I just know it works. Before I knew it worked, I had to believe that it worked. There's nothing that's gonna happen. I'm not gonna actually act unless there's just this little inkling that it could possibly actually work. You've gotta get there. Drop the other doubts. Choose the outcome before the event starts by your state-controlling self. Prepare like crazy. I've got some cool goodies for you. Come give a little state-controlled shout out, "H!H! OO BAYBAY!" And come on out and say hi. Let's take a picture, and I'll give you guys some sweet stuff as a thank you. And hopefully you guys can get out there and start crushing, as well. Alright guys, thanks so much. And I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. I certainly did. We'll talk to you later. 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.

Today’s expression and dialog:  all too much  You shouldn’t eat that, it’s not healthy. Okay… Don’t use margarine, use butter. Okay. This health stuff is all too much for me.   Please subscribe on iTunes and get this podcast EVERY DAY! Support Coach Shane by giving $1 a month! Our sponsors: Click on JOIN CLASSES and get ALL the information! (Get a free AUDIO BOOK!) Our YouTube channel:  

Welcome to another episode of All Things Agile. In this episode, we discuss the tough subject of team conflict. Whether your Agile or not, every organization is bound to encounter team conflict. We'll discuss how to resolve existing conflict as well as preventing it from even occurring.I am also very excited to announce that the next episode will feature an interview with notable Agile author, Ken Rubin.  Ken is the great mind behind Essential Scrum. I hope you enjoy this episode and make sure you subscribe to catch the upcoming interview using this link: iTunes. Reviews on iTunes are also always appreciated. Do you have a question that you would like answered in an upcoming podcast? Please send your question to: coach@agileinstructor.com.All Things Agile - Episode 010 - Resolving Team ConflictTranscript:Welcome to the All Things Agile Podcast! Your destination for tips and interviews with the leaders in the world of Agile. Don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, and please check out our sponsor: TeamXcelerator.com. And now, here’s your host: Ronnie Andrews Jr.Hello everyone and welcome to the All Things Agile Podcast! First off, I want to get started by issuing an apology for the delay in getting a new episode out. The reason why is because I have an upcoming guest and unfortunately, we are not able to get the scheduling worked out in time for this episode. But, I am pleased to announce that Ken Ruben, author of Essential Scrum, will be the honored guest in our next episode.That said, I want to go ahead and issue another episode. I don’t want to keep you waiting too long – and with that, I hope you accept my apologies for the delay in getting this episode out to you. Now, before we begin, a quick reminder that this podcast is for informational purposes only and accepts no legal liability. So the topic for today will be ‘Resolving Team Conflict’. Virtually any team you will be working on is going to have some degree of conflict. It’s just part of human nature. You can’t all agree 100% of the time, even though Agile encourages more of a democratic approach to what the team is working on and the approaches that they use, there’s bound to be some degree of conflict on any team that you work on.Now, before we dive into solutions to resolving team conflict, let’s first identify the different types of conflict. One type I think is just general healthy conflict and what really we’re referring to is debate. Using the word ‘conflict’ is probably inappropriate in this particular case. An example of debate, you may have people that share different ideas and solutions and what type of technologies should be used, or different coding practices, whatever. That’s fine. Having those healthy debates, discussing ideas, is actually a good thing. In this case, it allows you to have differing points of opinion which can be discussed, evaluated and reach an ultimate decision on. And that’s fine. That’s a healthy form of debate or conflict, if you will. And, if you have a little bit of that on your team, that’s fine and I wouldn’t worry about it.What we’re really going to be focusing on in this particular episode, is unhealthy debate. And I would describe unhealthy conflict or debate as a case where it’s really impacting the team. Where it’s creating what I like to call a toxic environment. You can definitely tell it when you’re part of a team that’s having this because it just brings everybody down. It brings the morale down, and it just feels like the team has been poisoned, if you will. And you’re going to see evidence of that not only in the morale, but the conversation, the level of communication and collaboration are going to go down. You are going to see people that are going to be engaging in using a lot of inappropriate language. You’re going to have a lot of people getting into some sort of personal battles with each other or one-upmanship, and it just really destroys the overall team morale and ultimately, the productivity. And you’ll actually begin to see this long-term in the metrics where you’ll start to see a team that was doing really well, and then they start to perhaps have their velocity dip down and more and more of their stories are being accepted late, etc. So that definitely has an impact. I would definitely classify unhealthy conflict as conflict which is really bringing down the team. It may be disrespectful, and it’s simply just not in the long-term viability of the team. So that’s kind of how I would probably classify the two main types of conflict that I see, either healthy, just discussion of topics and technologies versus some things more personal and toxic. And so we’re going to talk about the latter and how do you resolve it?Now, I have personally seen these cases come up numerous times in my career, and if you are particularly in a situation – your team or teams that you’re coaching or another team in your company that you’ve seen this kind of just not quite right environment, just a little bit toxic, that’s not uncommon. First off, it’s bound to occur on average. So that said, even though it’s a common experience within a company, you certainly don’t want to maintain that toxic environment. Because here is an interesting point that I have seen personally which is if one team is currently experiencing a level of poison, if you will – not only does that team’s morale drop and their productivity drop – it can spread to the other teams. It’s true. You can have a team that is doing really well, but if their neighboring team is engaging in disrespectful behavior and yelling at each other, cursing at each other, it’s going to impact the neighboring team. They are not going to want to come in to work that day. Their morale starts to drop and then their performance starts to drop. So another reason why you want to deal with unhealthy teams head-on is because not only do you want to help that team, but you also want to ensure that the degree of poison really doesn’t spread to the other teams and disrupt them as well.Alright, so let’s talk about some practical tips that I’ve personally implemented in the past and found beneficial. Again, every company’s unique, every team’s unique – you’re responsible for your own actions, but something that has worked well for me is to focus on the present and the future. Often times when you’re trying to resolve team conflict or coaching the teams through conflict situations, the team members may get too focused on the past and the things that happened. And, what I mean by this is that I’ve certainly seen cases where people get into paper trail battles. You know what I’m talking about? Where you have someone who has an email that they sent 6 months ago, and they bring it out. ‘Six months ago you said blah blah and now you’re saying this!’So you have these people that hold on to every little piece of communication, every little email and their real honest reason why they do so is so that they can spit it back out later. And candidly, that’s not healthy. And when you really analyze it, those persons, those individuals are focusing their attention on things that occurred in the past, right? ‘Two weeks ago you said this; last year you did that’ and so they can get into a lot of negative debate, a lot of disrespectful behavior sometimes because they’re so focused on past hurt. And they’re not really learning to forgive and let it be water under the bridge. And they’re just holding on to that pain, and they’re then letting that disagreement, anger, and pain, poison the waters in the present and then going forward towards the future. And you don’t want that.One of the first things I like to focus on when trying to coach a team is to – sort of phrase of the idea is: keep the water under the bridge and keep it there. Okay? Don’t say ‘Oh well, yeah, okay we can move forward’ and then the next week later ‘Again, I told you 4 months ago that this is the way we’re supposed to do it’, etc. And again, that leads to that negative behavior if you’re always bringing up the past. And so whenever I’m sort of involved in trying to coach a team, I try to think about staying present, right? Think about: never mind the past, whatever happened in the past has already happened – we can’t get back into the DeLorean and go back in time and try to fix it. So in that case, what can we do right here, right now? Stay focused and present. And if you’re speaking with them and they start going ‘Well, what about that 3 months…?’ just say Stop! Stop. That was in the past, we can’t change it – what we can change is the present, let’s focus on that. And it’s not easy to do, but try to hold a hard line on that. Just say ‘That’s in the past, let’s learn to forgive and put that behind us and carry on for the present and the future.’Now, if you can work on that and allow the team to avoid getting into those negative conversations about the past, then I’d say the next step is to focus on what actions or changes they can make here in the present to avoid future pains. So, for example, if part of the past pain was say, for example, some of the defect procedures were not being followed, as an example, and people were complaining about it with each other about whose fault it was – this person didn’t follow procedure and they should have, and someone has a paper trail from 6 months ago. To avoid that situation, I would say: Identify what changes could prevent that problem from happening again. So, for example, you might do six sigma root cause analysis, if you will and say ‘Okay, what really happened? Why was the process really not being followed?’ Well, maybe one reason is because the tool being involved wasn’t adequate enough. Maybe you just need to upgrade your toolset, maybe there’s some other procedures that can be added. Maybe someone needs to go through some additional training or maybe involvement with another team can be changed or improved. Or another team member’s schedules can be altered to allow them greater flexibility in the work schedule. Whatever the case may be, but the point is this: don’t dwell in the past, it’s already happened, okay? And then, for being able to resolve the team conflict, identify actions or steps that can be processed right here, right now and able to prevent that future pain.In terms of where it’s a little bit more personal – that does happen sometimes, where you have teams that for whatever reason, people harbor personal grudges towards each other, and even if all of your policies and tools and procedures are all well and good, some people may, simply put, just not like each other. It certainly can happen. Again, most of the time, teams will be okay with just changes in their practices. But, there will be cases where people just simply have personality clashes and where I’ve seen that in the past – if it’s really that strong, I would say it can be sometimes worthwhile to go ahead and switch some team members around. There can be cases where, for whatever reason, those overlapping personalities just bump up against each other just a little too strong, but you can take that individual and perhaps shift him to another team, and he’ll work perfectly well there! Because at the end of the day, all team members are not equal. We each bring our own level of skill and personality and really, you don’t want everybody on the team to have an exact mirror copy of each other, in terms of skillset and personality. You need that diversity because it helps produce a more well-rounded and ultimately balanced team.If one person, for example, is a little bit more thorough and another person is a little bit more sort of quick to act, actually having them on a team together can sometimes help because the person who’s more thorough will help balance the other individual out and ultimately, you can end up with a sort of a middle ground which is actually pretty well and functional. However, if you have those personality clashes where perhaps you have two individuals that are for example overly thorough and they may be bumping heads with each other, maybe that person belongs on another team and maybe there’s another team out there who needs that type of personality and skillset and they may actually be a welcome addition.Now, it is kind of like a last resort to implement team member changes to shift the morale, but it is certainly better to do that than to let the team continue in unresolved conflict. And I know it takes a little bit of guts to go ahead and to talk to people and say ‘You know, I think we need to move you to another team' but you got to think about the overall team and the overall organization with the other teams. And again, if you let this team remain unhealthy or toxic, it’s going to spread to the other teams and you certainly don’t want to do that and that’s not fair to the other teams, to have that happen. So, again – I always start first by avoiding getting into the past trauma state, focus on the present, evaluate what options can occur in the present, changes and practices, etc; they can be implemented to prevent future pain and if it is a situation where it’s kind of a deep personality clash more so than the practices, there need to be team member changes. And that’s okay, and that does happen – I have certainly seen it happen in other teams as well as my own teams before. And that’s okay – in a larger organization, it’s bound to happen sometime.I would say, kind of like an ultra-last resort, I really hate to see situations where a team member is removed from the company. That has happened, I have seen it happen, but that is such a last resort action and I would certainly encourage any Agile professional that’s trying to help a team experiencing conflict, that they truly keep that as an absolute last effort action. And the reason why it’s because it’s my belief that it’s easier to coach and maintain than it is to replace. Whenever you replace a person in your organization, you’re incurring cost not only with recruitment, but also with the interview process – people have to take time out of their days just to interview the guy or girl – but you also have to consume time with training and getting them up to speed and having them learn the culture and the ins and outs of the team, team practices or they may be new to Agile and you have to train them with that. So all that process can easily take a couple of months. And in doing so, the team’s velocity is already impacted. So I personally recommend, whenever possible, try to coach through the situation and reach a solution, rather than simply just throwing in new bodies. That’s my experience and that’s my belief. So, again – this is sort of a fourth option there, kind of last resort.But those are the strategies that I’ve employed to try and resolve team conflict and that’s a conflict once it’s already occurred. And I’d actually like to take a moment and cover a different topic which I honestly think many Agile professionals don't even consider, and I haven’t seen it mentioned too much in articles or books, and that is preventing team conflicts. The material I just covered a second ago is in relation to resolving team conflict once it’s already occurred. But, the old adage is that an ounce prevention is worth a pound of cure. So you might ask yourself: how can we prevent team conflict from ever even occurring?I’ll offer, I’d say about 4 suggestions that I believe, if you can implement them, they may help you. I’ve certainly seen them help teams in the past. The first is co-location. When you’re able to bring the team together physically, like they’re actually physically sitting next to each other, it often times helps prevent team conflict. If you have teams that are composed of a lot of full-time remote members, it can be difficult to maintain a healthy team. And the reason why is because of the bandwidth of communication. And the highest bandwidth of communication is face to face, where the person can see the other person’s gestures, the tone of voice, etc. And if they’re remote too much, then you’re doing a lot of email, a lot of IM chats, etc. and it’s so easy for the words to get misinterpreted, to get lost in translation. And so, in that case, it’s just bound to result in team conflict eventually. So if you can co-locate the teams, and I mean physically co-locate, like in the same office area, that really helps with being able to reduce the chances of team conflict ever occurring.Second way I’d highly suggest is in how you treat the team members. And what I mean by that is this: if you have a team of let’s say 7 members or whatever, and one or two of those members are always favored upon by management or leadership and always listens to those individuals and nobody else, or those individuals get included in all the important discussions and meetings and nobody else does; they’re the ones that always get promoted, that receive a healthy salary and everyone else doesn't– that’s bound to create team conflict, right? But if you can really look at the team as a team, and comprised of many different people, each bringing their own value and contribution to the team, that will significantly reduce the chances of team conflict from ever occurring. Because you’re reducing the likelihood of people feeling disenfranchised or left out. Or disrespected. So if you can prevent that – again, it’s a lot easier to prevent team conflict than it is to fix it once it’s occurred, right?I would say that another way to help resolve team conflict is through training. I’ve seen so many times where Agile teams are just thrown together and the training aspects is never really fully delivered on. Even though it costs a couple of thousand dollars, it’s far worth it to ensure that your team gets off to the right start. You want to ensure that, for example, all the Scrum Masters become, in my opinion, Certified Scrum Masters, Product Owners become Certified Product Owners – again, these are my experiences; your actions are your actions. But that’s my personal opinion – when you’re able to have those individuals be formally trained, it really does help because they learn the right practices, not just the way that the companies or organizations are currently operating. And that’s important!I also recommend having all of the team members receive some sort of Agile training. Again, it enables them to have buy-in, and enables them to better understand the changes being implemented and why, for them to really see the benefits. If you simply throw people on an Agile team without adequate training, I think you’re setting yourself and the team up for failure. Don’t do it. Even though there may be some costs involved in training, it is absolutely worth it to do so because the longer term cost of not giving them adequate training and education will be ten times worse or even more than the cost that could’ve just been handled up front through adequate training. So I definitely recommend doing that. Don’t skimp on training and coaching and that’s not some ad or something for my own benefit. I mean this sincerely that I have seen teams and organizations that did not train adequately and I’ve seen others that did. And it’s a night and day difference. And again, by doing that, you’ll help prevent the team conflict from ever even occurring, and that’s certainly something you want to do.The fourth thing that I would like to throw out there, a suggestion again to prevent the team conflict in the beginning, is how you form the teams. Who’s on the teams and in what roles or capacity? So many times I have seen team conflict occur because the team members are just thrown together. Look at a spreadsheet, get some names, throw them on a team. That’s simply just not wise. You need to really examine the skillsets and the personalities. Who’s got a strong personality? Who’s going to be the person who’s going to challenge the status quo? Who’s the person who’s going to be a negotiator? Who’s the person who’s going to help bridge different people together and help people come to a consensus?Finding out those personalities and the skillsets, including development and maybe testing skillsets, finding out those individuals and then seeing how to craft them into a functional and balanced team really pays dividends because they are far less likely to have conflict. They are going to be able to work with each other and compliment each other. If you just simply throw people together in a team, you’re just asking for conflict. And not only that – but if they’re not balanced properly, if you look at for example the work each member’s contributing during a particular sprint or iteration, you’re more likely to find that the workload isn’t very balanced and that’s usually because the team’s not balanced. They’re not properly structured. So prevent the conflict in the first place by investing time to ensure that from all the people you have across the organization, that you’re really analyzing their skillset and personalities and putting them together and positioning them to win, right? If you’re just throwing the bodies together into a team, you’re just asking for failure and conflict. If you invest the time – and really, how much time does it take, folks? A couple of days, maybe, to really take a deep look at the team members and really consider who would be great to partner up with who and if you can spend that time to partner the team members up correctly, it really will pay dividends. If you can do that, you’ll prevent a ton of team conflict down the road. So that’s four suggestions for you, in relation to preventing team conflict, on top of the other suggestions on resolving if it’s already occurred.Alright, well I think that wraps it up, regarding for how I have personally tried to resolve and prevent team conflict. I certainly am open to hearing your suggestions. If you have any, feel free to send me an email at coach@agileinstructor.com. And don’t forget to check out the AgileInstructor.com website and TeamXcelerator.com website. And as mentioned earlier, I do have a special guest coming up in the next show, which is Ken Ruben, author of Essential Scrum and I’m really looking forward to asking him some really great questions I think you’ll enjoy and find insightful. Well, I think that wraps it up for this show – thank you so much for your patience in waiting for a new episode, I apologize for the delay and looking forward to releasing a new episode with that great interview with Ken Ruben. Thank you very much! Goodbye! Thank you for listening to All Things Agile. We look forward to you subscribing to the podcast on iTunes and leaving a kind review. Thanks and God bless!