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11 episodes with stevejlarsen
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Welcome to another episode of the Content Capitalists, featuring Steve J Larsen, the "Offer King" and a pivotal figure in the marketing world. Known for his expertise in funnel building and offer creation, Steve shares his journey from working alongside Russell Brunson at ClickFunnels to establishing his own successful business.Steve explores the critical aspects of marketing that many overlook, such as the psychological elements that drive consumer decisions and the importance of crafting compelling copy. He provides listeners with a glimpse into his strategic process for building marketing machines that have propelled both his and his clients' businesses to impressive heights. Tune in as Steve provides actionable advice on creating effective marketing funnels that engage and convert, and learn how to apply these principles to your own business for exponential growth. Find Steve J Larsen at: https://www.instagram.com/stevelarsenhq https://www.youtube.com/c/SteveJLarsen/videos https://www.facebook.com/stephenlarsen1/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/larsenstephen/ https://stevejlarsen.com/stay-present https://www.facebook.com/stevelarsenHQ/Follow Ken Okazaki at: https://www.instagram.com/kenokazaki/ https://www.youtube.com/c/KenOkazaki https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-content-capitalists-with-ken-okazaki/id1634328251 https://open.spotify.com/show/09IzKghscecbI7jPDVBJTwContent Capitalists YouTube
You can build the business and the life you want! For two years, Steve Larsen was the Lead Funnel Builder at ClickFunnels for Russell Brunson, and put over 500 sales funnels under his belt, eventually earning a "Two Comma Club" award (a funnel that made over $1,000,000). I recently launched my funnel, www.ShawnMYesner.com/BecomeDebtFree after taking the One Funnel Away Challenge (this is my affiliate link) with Steve as one of our coaches. Thanks to all of you who supported the funnel, we're helping people to get out of debt and I've hit the "One Comma Club" (over $1,000 generated from the funnel). In today's episode, I interview Steve and his energy is infectious! How did he feel using funnels to "bootstrap" his way to the event that introduced him to Russell? What is it like to get that first subscriber, first sale? What about the 1,000th? Learn the tips that Steve uses to discover his strengths and how he determines the next funnel or project. You can find Steve at www.SteveJLarsen.com, and listen to his new Launch For Profit Podcast. Finally, what would you do if you knew that you could not work after the next 90 days and you had to make one final offer to sustain your business moving forward? That is Steve's Your Final Offer course, which you can find at www.YourFinalOffer.com
In today’s episode, Tyler talks to the King of Offer Creation and creator of salesfunnelbroker.com, Steve Larsen. Steve teaches people marketing strategies to grow their online businesses using today’s best internet sales funnels. Steve has worked side by side with Russell Brunson at Click Funnels and is the founder of Secret MLM Hacks. Key Topics Discussed: The backstory on Steve Larsen (01:15) Fire in the gut to get into entrepreneurship (03:43) Building the first funnels for companies (05:49) The biggest takeaway from being the funnel guy at Click Funnels (07:32) Irresistible offer versus product for sale (08:44) Following the yellow brick road and then making a new brick (10:54) Implementing continuous innovation (14:20) Real effective marketing (18:33) Getting better at storytelling (21:18) Vulnerable means being honest in your current position (26:42) Learn more about the content discussed in this episode: Stevejlarsen.com You can find the transcripts and more at http://bizninjaradio.com Be sure to follow me on Instagram @bizninja Subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, YouTube or anywhere else you listen to your podcasts. If you haven't already, please rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts!
In today’s episode, Tyler talks to the King of Offer Creation and creator of salesfunnelbroker.com, Steve Larsen. Steve teaches people marketing strategies to grow their online businesses using today’s best internet sales funnels. Steve has worked side by side with Russell Brunson at Click Funnels and is the founder of Secret MLM Hacks. Key Topics Discussed: The backstory on Steve Larsen (01:15) Fire in the gut to get into entrepreneurship (03:43) Building the first funnels for companies (05:49) The biggest takeaway from being the funnel guy at Click Funnels (07:32) Irresistible offer versus product for sale (08:44) Following the yellow brick road and then making a new brick (10:54) Implementing continuous innovation (14:20) Real effective marketing (18:33) Getting better at storytelling (21:18) Vulnerable means being honest in your current position (26:42) Learn more about the content discussed in this episode: Stevejlarsen.com You can find the transcripts and more at http://bizninjaradio.com Be sure to follow me on Instagram @bizninja Subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, YouTube or anywhere else you listen to your podcasts. If you haven't already, please rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts!
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. They had exits in their headers all over the place. Exits the middle. You had to scroll down to the bottom to even opt into anything and move forward in the funnel they'd created. 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: I've focused on building a lot of stuff and linking it together. There have been little launch campaigns together to get noise around them. I've been working on fulfillment and systems for fulfillment. I've quietly launched some stuff to hyper-users just to see what would happen. Other stuff has made loud entrances with big old launch campaigns behind them. … 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: Our marketplace WordPress developers Digital marketers 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: An agency of the traditional sort. A funnel business. An expert business. 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 didn't see your ad. They didn't get to your landing page. They didn’t see your videos that kind of explain everything. ...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: Are people confused about what you offer? They might think of you as the Sales Funnel Radio guy, but do they know that you have an event? Do they know about these other things? If you get the same questions over and over again, (especially easy ones like support questions). That's a key indicator. If there are things that you're trying to communicate to people that you just can't seem to get them to understand. If you feel like you're kind of shouting at a wall as a producer of this content. 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 Russell, being a trailblazer that he is, at Funnel Hacking Live, what did he do? He did two things: #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: How to live in his world. How to buy from him. How to associate ourselves with what he has to offer. ...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: Future-based cause Manifesto Value ladder False beliefs … 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: This is the right one This is what I'm standing for This is who I'm throwing rocks at … 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: They want to know who you are and what you stand for, and that's like one of the reasons we the manifesto that you've adopted here letting people know what you stand for. In programs, we've published your value ladder with this cool little graphic to help people see what steps someone can move through… being able to click on these things. 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? One thing that I keep on hearing people say as it relates to their own website is they just call it 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: What you do What you stand for 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: Being in the Inner Circle Building our own funnels Having an agency that's done this for 16 years. 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.
Boom! What's goin' on everyone? It's Steve Larsen. This is Sales Funnel Radio, and today I'm gonna teach you guys about cash causing frameworks. 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. Whazzup, guys? I'm excited for today. This is an episode I ripped from a Facebook live. I did it off the whim, but it ended up really, really awesome. I was just doing it to the group, The Science of Selling Online - if you're not part of that group, it's a free group. It's where I just kind of can geek out a lot of times. If you like this stuff, there's more of that on that group. So, anyway, I went live, I wanted people to understand...A lot of people ask me things like, "Well, Stephen, how do you know this is gonna work?" Or "Stephen, it seems you're able to know a little bit, (not that you can predict the future, and I'm never, you know) like you understand what the numbers would mostly be and where kind of success will kind of come out of before you go do it?" And I'm like, "Well, yea, it's 'cause I'm just following the framework." And so, what I wanna do is just riff a little bit here, so you guys understand. I made the decision early on. I remember kind of where I was... There was a lot of colleagues of mine in college that were studying different areas, you know, like, "I'm gonna study marketing or study this, or study that, or study supply chain or systems, or whatever." And I remember thinking to myself, I wrote this down guys, this was an actual goal of mine five, six years ago. I wanted to learn how to be a consultant to small businesses. I wanted to start businesses and sell businesses. Guys, it is hilarious to be that I'm doing that now, which is crazy. And I realized though that the talent and the skill that I wanted to learn was I wanted to learn how to make it rain in a company. And that's what this episode is about. That's what this episode is gonna teach you. There's a very specific method that I have used to do that, okay. And I know what it is. It has not been an accident, okay. I did a lot of making accidents and mistakes in areas - it's not that I don't anymore, but, man, I know why it's working. This episode will teach you why that is. It's one of the biggest gifts I can give you. Thank you so much for being a follower. Let's cut over to that now. If you guys did like it, again, please rate and subscribe. That really means a lot to me. I love reading those ratings. It actually makes my day. It means a lot. Anyways, guys, thanks so much. Hopefully, you'll enjoy this episode. This is life-changing stuff right here, and I hope that you do what I did, take it seriously and write down what it is you wanna do. I wanted to learn how to make it rain in a company. I wrote it down, and you have to do that part of it. Anyways, this is how it all happened. Thanks, let's cut over. What's up, my friends, how you guys doin'? If you guys are just barely gettin' on, I haven't done Facebook live in the group here for a little bit. We have grown since I last went on from like 2,200 members, we're almost at 4,000. It's crazy. So, welcome and real quick, I just wanna teach you guys some cool stuff on why my stuff works so well and why I can see other people's doesn't. I'm just gonna be honest about it, okay. That's cool? Give me a little hashtag replay though if you guys are brand new in here and you guys are just barely getting in. If you guys are live though, welcome, welcome. What's up? Just chillin' to this song again, many I freakin' love it. Alright, here we go. Hey guys so I just, I've been doing a lot of, been doing a lot of Facebook lives. I've been doing a lot of training in general. Yesterday I did two back to back webinars. It was two back to back webinars in ClickFunnels - which is a ton of energy... If you've never done that; it's hard to just one, and if you do them right, I'm not gonna lie, it's gonna sound gross, but I'm like sweating, I'm exhausted, with just on one. Two of them back to back is murder. Absolute murder. I was talkin' to one of my friends, Dave Lindenbaum. It's funny, he's like, "Yeah, two suck." He's like, "I've done three, but I would not wish that on my worst enemy. You are so wrecked by the end." I did two back to back webinars yesterday, and the one Funnel Away challenge. I was spent. I was absolutely spent by the time I went to sleep. It was like 1 a.m. Anyway, so I, guys real quick I just wanted to walk through a principle here, and I know it's the reason why I'm succeeding in this stuff. And this might sound weird for me to say that, might sound weird for me to go ahead and teach it, but anyway... Is it cool if I go through that a little bit? We all got thick skin here. I can just say what needs to be said. Is that alright? You guys cool with that? Cause I, I wanna teach a few things here. There's a few patterns for why I know my stuff is working and working very, very well. And I think there's a few ways, a few reasons. Some of it comes from the internal, and the way I approach myself on this stuff. First of all, can you guys hear me okay? You guys got me alright here? Yeah, okay, Dan said "Cool. Okay just say it." Alright, there's a few things for how I approach things individually in my own mentality and my mindset with this stuff. However, there's a few things though that for the way I approach the business. I look at myself, and I look at the business as two separate things. I mean really, we're very similar. Who's that rapper that said, "I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man." Who? I can't remember who the rapper is that said that. But I look at myself that way a little bit. Like, I am the business, man, rather than a businessman. (It's gonna kill me. I can't remember who that was.)In my business, I compete on a lot of differences. I compete on differences. I compete with strengths. Personally, when it comes to me though, as the attractive character, I compete with mostly just differences, not so much strengths. Someone's always better, faster, stronger, than me personally. Someone's always quicker. Someone's always a better writer. So I don't compete with strengths when it comes to my personality, I really compete with differences. When it comes to the business though, it really is mostly just strengths. When it comes to offers, it's back to differences though. I don't know if that makes any sense at all what I'm saying there, but there's a relationship there though, you guys gotta get used to. One of the reasons why my stuff does well and one of the reasons why my stuff has accelerated so quickly is because there's a few different principles that I follow: Guys, I'm the worst cook ever, but if I'm gonna bake a cake, how do you bake a cake? Just tell me right now, what are some of the things that you use to go bake a cake? How do you go do that? What are some of the things that I do? What's the process? How do I bake the actual cake? How do I put it together? Someone said it's, someone said Jay-Z, someone said Kayne, so I don't know, it's one of those two. Right, how do I bake a cake? I'm gonna get flour, I'm gonna get sugar, I'm gonna get eggs, that's as far as I know. There's probably some chocolate in there somewhere... I really have no idea how to bake a cake, but there's a way to do it, right. There's a process to baking a cake. There's a process of putting it in the oven for how long it's gonna be in there. There's a process behind that. How am I gonna get good at a sport? I'm looking at Brazilian jiu-jitsu right now. I really wanna fight Russell. He and I wanna roll, and I'm stoked about it. So I'm gonna go take jiu-jitsu for the next year, and then I'm gonna try and choke him out... and he's gonna try and choke me out. It'll be fun. But there's a process for that. There's a process to learn that kind of sport and discipline. There's a process for me to go learn how to freakin' walk. There's a process for me to learn how to be on the internet. And when you understand that! People are like "Oh yeah, I get it." But that's not the way people act.When I look on the internet, and I see what people are doing on the internet, most the time they're just doing stuff, and that's better than doing nothing, but they're not adhering to any kind of framework. There's no pattern in what they're following. There's not a frame, and there's no system, there's no format or formula. They're just kinda doing stuff. Because of that, it's really easy for me to look at and be like, "Oh yeah, that's why you're failing."I don't mean that in a negative way. That's not negative at all; it's just the truth. Frameworks are what save you in this game. Frameworks are what save you in anything in life. Funny enough, I call it art versus science - there's more science to this game then there is art - which should be very relieving for you to hear. There is more science than art. Which means I don't need to be as much of a creative genius as much as I do just learning some of the frameworks that make success happen. And I'm not just talking mentality stuff. I have a hard time with that sometimes. When I say mindset training, that's such an overused term. It gets fluffy, and I don't like it. But like, learn the framework. Learn the process, learn how to go and actually...If I'm gonna do a webinar, if I'm gonna make an eBook, if I'm gonna write something, if I'm gonna do that, if I'm gonna be an Olympic skier, if I'm gonna go and I'm gonna learn how to ride a bike... anything in life has a pattern for success. It's like 80% framework, 20% art - which is awesome. It was so relieving when I finally realized and understood that. So what I'm looking for when I go funnel hack somebody, what I'm looking for when I go and I'm looking at an influencer and I'm seeing how they're behaving. I can close my eyes and I see. This is why I can speak without notes, because in my mind, in my brain, I can close my eyes and I can follow a framework inside of my head, and I know the next step. Which means the decision making power of "What do I say next?" is kind of gone. I just know that now I need to be talking about this next thing and now what's coming up. I know, "Now I need some testimonials, I've told enough stories.Let me just dig back into my bag of stories. Which story would fit as a testimonial for that scenario best? Bam, that one! Insert here.”Now, what's next? "Okay, let's go call to action, let's go here." In my head, I'm just following frameworks. That's the secret. When I'm building a funnel, it's the same process every freaking time regardless of product, price, industry. It doesn't matter, it's the same process, and that's what people get stuck up on. I do a lot of coaching. I've already coached today for three hours I think. Yeah, I do a lot coaching, and I'm about to go on for another hour and a half here, soon. Probably about 20 minutes. And what's frustrating for me is when somebody thinks that they are an exception to that rule. YOU ARE NOT! You are not! Okay? And what happens when somebody believes they're an exception to the rule, what I've noticed, is that they don't believe that it's 80% framework, 20% art. That's why this is the Science of Selling Online - I explicitly took out the term Art - because it's more science than art. It's a little bit of creativity and your own flare but it's not the majority. And when somebody thinks it's the majority, that's when they fail. 'When I'm funnel hacking somebody, I'm not just funnel hacking what products are they selling and how are they selling them? I'm looking to see the framework that they introduced the product to the market with. I'm looking for the framework: What's the pattern? What's the formula? What's the step by step by step? Do this, then this, then this, then this - then add a little bit of flare of your own at the end. It's so relieving to understand that and it's so relieving to feel and know and understand that because it means I don't have to be what college was trying to teach me to be. It's the exact opposite. I don't need to be a creative genius to have a lifestyle and success off of the internet or any business in general. I don't need to be a creative genius. I don't need to make something brand new, completely prolific, something that nobody's ever seen before to make money. That's not true. That's the biggest fallacy ever in the game, and that's been the weirdest thing for me to realize. Hindsight's 20 20, right? But forever, as I looked backwards, I'd be like "Oh man, and I'm starting to see those patterns." Forever the issue was, I walked around for years, my friends, trying to answer the question, "What product should I sell?" - When all along the market was trying to tell me what it wanted me to sell it. That's all I'm tryna figure out all the time. So when I'm funnel hacking somebody and I'm lookin' at that red ocean, I'm steppin' back and sayin' "Oh, interesting." What I'm doing is I'm trying to see what product the market wants me to give it. I don't even have to have that answer. I don't even have to know what the product is. I don't even have to know. Guys, I was the number one affiliate for this book, and a lot of it was because of that offer that I gave you guys. I didn't know what the offer was gonna be when I started selling it. You all gave me the answer. Did you just hear what I said? I sold 375 books, you all gave me the answer. We decided together what it is that you wanted to include in the offer when you bought this book through my link. I just gave it back to you. The same principle is true for your own products, not just affiliate stuff, not just for your coach, not just for your info products, I don't care. There is such a smaller amount of art and creative genius in this game than people realize. So what you need to get good at is learning to be attentive and see the patterns. The reason I got to be a good funnel builder and so fast at ClickFunnels is because I can close my eyes, and in my head, I see the framework for the perfect webinar funnel. I see all the elements in a perfect webinar script. In my head, I can see the framework of an awesome, epic upsell video. I know the framework in that script. It's a framework. I don't have to come up with what to say, I just know I need to have elements that talk about that, that, that, that, that, that, that... Plug it in, play, bam, done! You guys gettin' this? It's not just to trial close, I'm actually asking. 'Cause what I want you to understand is that it is the Science of Selling Online - which is the name of the group - and it's the name for a reason:It was gonna be The Science and Art of Selling Online, but I took out Art because the game's easier than you might be thinking it is. It is easier than you think it is!It took me like three years, and 17 business tries to understand that - because everybody in college, all the books, all these gurus, and all the people around, a lot of them... Not all of them, there were one or two particularly who were not, and they were teaching me the correct way to do it and when they were teaching me to use the market to gather the data on what to sell rather than tryin' to come up with it on my own... There was nothing like, "No input, zero, zero, zero, zero." Like I could not come up with something. I was like "I'm not really a creative genius kinda guy." Which might shock a lot of you guys. Like "Hey Stephen, you totally are. You're this crazy creative guy." I'm not! I'm following a pattern, that's it. So I know that there's a few products coming out here soon that I'm excited to get out to you guys. There's a few products coming out that I haven't announced yet that I'm really pumped about... but I am using the market and I'm asking things in a way to start slowly pulling out and harvesting, "that's what they want, that's what they want, that's what they want" and you are literally building the very offer that I hope to give back to you. Now I'm gonna go make the product obviously, and the product's gonna be freaking epic, but as far as what it is, you should not be doing a lot of that deep dive work on your own. In fact, it's better if you don't. It's way better if you don't. It's far better if you don't. And the reason is, is because you don't fill your own wallet. I've said that multiple times, but like your opinion doesn't matter. You're not the one buying your thing. So if you're like, "Oh Stephen I don't know if I like that product yet?" You're not the one buying it! You don't fill your own wallet. So you gotta get outta your head and be like, "Alright, fine, what do they want? What does the market want? What is it that they're asking? Give that - learn what that is? What are they asking? What are they telling me that they want?” Guys, the game gets so easy when you realize that it's just about learning the frameworks. So if there's some piece of advise I could give, besides that, it would be this: Choose frameworks, choose models to go learn that result in cash as a rule not an exception. Did you hear what I just said? I am not interested in learning and this is the other reason why I've been doing so well with stuff is because I don't want to learn frameworks and rules and science of things where I am an exception to the rule and that's what causes money. It's the reason why I don't go learn Facebook ads, guys. Because for me to learn the framework to make a successful Facebook ad, I could go learn it, I know I could, I know I could be really good at it, okay. But I don't go study that personally, and yeah it might be your thing, which is great, but I don't because there are sometimes these little tricks I feel like I have to go play in order to make it work super well, I don't wanna learn the tricks. I wanna learn the rules that result in cash not exceptions to the rule that result in cash. So go learn frameworks. That's the reason why I obsess over webinars so much. As a rule, if I do this and I tell an origin story and I come up with a good hook and I got the origin story which is a great intro, then I got three secrets which attack your vehicle, internal and external related false beliefs and I go through and I have some testimonials there. Then I go through stack slide where I present the actual offer. Then I go through closes where I tell reasons why you should act now and I go through and I put that in a thing called a webinar funnel... As a rule, it typically results in cash and because of the numbers and because the way it works out, they're very easy to make profitable. When I was working at ClickFunnels, I watched Russell, I was like, "Huh..." We launched things so quickly there. I started asking the question, "That wasn't even like done yet. How come that worked? Huh, that actually didn't look visually that good yet, why did he make a million dollars in three weeks on that? Interesting. Why is it that he had 8,000 options on that page, half of it's broken, how come it still worked and it was with Facebook ads and people who probably didn't even really know who he is that much. How did that work over there?" It's because he has frameworks in his head that result in cash as a rule not an exception to a rule. I do NOT learn frameworks where I have to have an exception to a rule in order to make money. Too many times people are tryna look for the flash in the pan, the little thing that is cool... but it's fleeting and it leaves. And that's why it doesn't work ...cause you spend all this time... right. Those things work as like little tiny add-ons when you already know the base thing that causes money. Is this making sense? When you learn that rule and that framework to the rule. When you learn the system; the formula that causes cash rather than the exception to the rule that causes cash. Right, the only time where I can learn that is when I already have this base down. When I got that 80% down. Then I can go learn that little 20% real fast, right take fast and quick money off the top. Then I can take fast and quick money right off the top and then it gets super easy, super, super easy. So anyways, I'm really stoked about this. I hope you guys understand what I'm tryna get across here: Stop learning flash in the pan stuff. Stop learning things where it doesn't result in cash as a rule. I don't study things that are like, how should I say this? I study:>Becoming an attractive character. >Offer creation. >Sales itself. >The psychology of sales. The internet could die tomorrow and I know I'm gonna be okay because of the framework about sales that I know that's in my head. I know that someone could put me on a stage right now and I will over deliver and I will probably sell more than everybody else that's on there who's been selling for a long time but doesn't have a framework and hasn't been studying this. Those are bold claims and I totally get it and I understand that. You have to understand the reason why is because of the framework I'm following in my head. This One Funnel Away Challenge thing that I've been doing, right, funny enough looking back, I'm only supposed to be going like 20 to 30 minutes on them. I'm not trying to go a long time - that's not my goal... But there's so many little pieces that I'm trying to help people understand when it comes to learning these frameworks and understanding that it's more about science then it is art... It's more about understanding formulas that cause cash then it is learning exceptions to rules that cause cash... So, I've been going for like 50 minutes in 'em.I'm literally just following a script in my head. I know where I'm leading it. I know where I'm able to actually follow a little bit of a rabbit tangent, but how to bring it back in. It's only come because of the insane sickening volume, right, the amount of time just doing it. Mat time. Time on the mat. How much time have I spent on that mat? How much, right! Sometimes, I can't remember who told this story. They told a story about two different fighters or even people at the gym. I can't remember what the story exactly was, I remember the principal and what he was using an example: So take two people at the gym. Person A goes to the gym and they go to the water fountain they talk to somebody for a little while. Then they go over to the elliptical machine and they set up their settings for a while. Then they'll be on there for a few minutes kinda warming up. Then they'll go talk to somebody else for a while. Then maybe they'll go over to the restroom and the locker room for a little while. Then they'll come back over, and then they do one or two sets of this and they leave. That's person A. Person B comes in, they actually spend a little bit less time but it's so hyper-focused it's ridiculous. They're working hard, they're extremely sore. Every set they're almost dropping it. They're going to failure every single time. Who's gonna be more successful? Obviously the person who's gonna be more successful is the person who's killing it. I'm tryna get mat time. I want as many times on the mat as possible for me to just be actually swinging to hit the ball NOT prepping to hit the ball. So that's why I go do things. That's why I have these little mantras in my head. One of them is 'Mat Time.' One of the people on a webinar yesterday, they did not get as many people on as they were supposed to, which kinda sucked. I was like, I could call it off. But in my head, 'Mat time.' That's all I said to myself and no questions asked, I just stepped forward and just did it. 'Mat time' and I just did it because I need more time on the mat. I need more time moving forward on it. I am perfecting my craft. It's hours and hours and hours of doing the thing. Too many times people are like, "Well, I did it once and it didn't really work." Well, like yeah! It's 'cause you freaking did it once. How many times did it take you to learn to ride a bike? You guys gettin' this? You have to study frameworks - which is awesome, it's debunking a lot of the mystic. I hate the whole mystic and mentality that people are promoting about entrepreneurship where it's people like lookin' off in the sunset and they believe, I don't know, they're like god's gift to humanity and that they're the change to the world. Yeah, they can change the world, but frankly, they're just making value and people are paying them for that value. Learn the framework behind it. Don't be allured by the art behind it. Don't be allured by trying to become this creative thing and adding your own flare and that's actually the way to failure. Just learn from people who are doing it and have done the thing. That's it. Learn from the people who are doing it and have done the thing and have done the thing long enough that they've created their own frameworks. My wife and I were talking about this two or three nights ago. It's kinda fun, she and I are just sittin' around the kitchen table and we were talking about it. And I said, “One of the things that’s made me successful with this is that I realized that I needed to follow the person that has the biggest cheese. Who actually has been doing the thing super, super long.”When I go and I find that person and I see the people who have the biggest cheese, what I'm looking for is I'm looking for the person who has dived into yesteryear's experts... This is the reason I follow Russell... Listen to what I'm about to say! This has been one of the biggest shortcuts ever, and it's the reason why I've only been playing the game for like four years and you all know who I am. This is it right here:I became cognizant of this probably about a year and a half ago...What I did is I went and I found and I started paying attention to people who consumed yesteryear's experts like an animal. Straight up animal. Just a freaking beast and they consumed it and they learned yesteryear's experts, the frameworks that they were using. 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!I'm not just looking for somebody who understands that 10 or 20 years ago this is how it was happening. I don't care if it's business or some skill you're learning or a hobby. I'm looking for somebody to go follow and learn from who has been in the game so long or has consumed the game so much that they are literally producing their own frameworks that have equaled success because it's a shortcut to having to learn yesteryear's experts and the frameworks that have come through. I was talking to my wife about this and I was teaching her this. I was like, "That's where the big secret has been." So, I wanna go learn Brazilian jiu-jitsu, I wanna go learn and fight. I wanna do that. And so what I did is I went and I found somebody, right. I talked to Russell. Russell's huge into that sphere. I talked to somebody who knows that area and my question to him is: "Who has the biggest cheese?” That's actually what I asked him and he knew what I was talking about 'cause he knows that's how I run. And he goes, "There's a guy you need to go learn from and he said who ya lookin' at?" And I said "This person, this person, this person." He said, "They're good. That person's great over there too, but you need to go learn from this guy because he's been in the game so freaking long." I understood immediately what he was talking about. You're tryna find the freaking Yodas. You're trying to find the ninjas. You're trying to find the individuals and the people who are like, they've been in it so, so, so long that they've been producing their own frameworks successfully.That's the reason why there's stick figures in Russell's books and that was the sign to me that I knew I needed to follow him like crazy. He has distilled down, literally dozens of experts, down to his own stuff and then is producing his own frameworks. So now when it comes to marketing and funnel education, my coach, I only listen to Russell. That's it. When it comes down to listening to, actual like hardcore like sales scripts and sales tactics, I only listen to Grant Cardone. Why? Cause that dudes got mat time, holy crap. When it comes to building systems in my business that make things run on autopilot, I only listen to Alex Charfen. Why? Because that dude has got mat time and he has followed other experts and he has his own frameworks that he's developed. The framework is what not only makes you cash but it's also a symbol that the individual typically knows what the heck they're talking about. Why do you guys like following me? It's because I like to do those funnel drawings. A lot of you guys found me that way. I like to go in and distill down, listening to all these people and seeing it and coaching over 1,800 people personally in this process for two or three years. That's a lot of mat time. And so I see the patterns that cause success. I see the patterns that cause failure.The ones that routinely cause failure are the art ones and the ones that routinely cause success is the people who take their emotions out of it, realize that they are not are not their feelings, get past their feelings and they just do the science of it: They're like, "You know I didn't wanna publish, but I'm freaking doing it 'cause he said to." And they're just doing that. And they're just following the people who have their own frameworks. They're just doing the success and science-based ones. You guys gettin' this? Cool. Rock on. Go watch what I'm doing because that's how I execute. We'll see you guys later, 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
Boom! What's going on everyone? It's Steve Larsen, and this is Sales Funnel Radio. Today, I'm gonna teach you guys some of the most common mistakes when it comes to opt-in pages. 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 today. I'm excited for this. I actually, I've been looking forward to this one. I created recently a whole course about opt-ins - it's a free course! If you go to freeoptincourse.com, there you go. There's the golden nugget of the entire episode. Freeoptincourse.com takes you through a live funnel build that I did to teach people how to get an opt-in. Now you might laugh at that a little bit. You know, it's like, "Hey this is sales funnel radio." The whole thing starts with the opt-in though - this is a give and take relationship. I remember in college I wrote an e-book, actually two of them. I was so excited. I went and got this e-book written. I got it back from the ghostwriter, and I didn't like it - so I rewrote the whole thing. I was so pumped about it. This was pre-ClickFunnels, I was using WordPress to build essentially a funnel. I didn't know how to do that though, so I was like hacking out (with the little coding knowledge that I know) WordPress. It was so finicky, it was terrible. It was another one of those experiences for me where I was spending inordinate amounts of time putting together this funnel. It was crappy, and I kind of knew that. And I was like, "Ah, maybe it'll still work though." I patched together a payment processor. I patched together an email autoresponder. It was really hard. I was so stoked about this thing. This was back in the day when I believed that a sale happens because of the product. If you guys have been following me at all, you know that's not true. The sale happens because of a sales message, not the product. Those are two very different things. No one buys because of the product. They buy because of the message. Well, this was before I knew that. This was before I knew any of that stuff. I was so stoked. This e-book was targeted at students, which was first of all stupid because they're all broke. I spent all this time putting this thing together. I think it took me two days just to create the sales letter to just to get people to opt-in or whatever. Guys, I launched this thing, and nobody even opted in. I had so many failures with this stuff way back in the day. I was excited guys. I was proud. I was like, "Yeah, check this out. This is my product". I knew it was really good - it was the reasons why I was doing so well in school. I was putting awesome knowledge in this thing. Honestly really really awesome. But I was so convinced that the product is the reason you opt-in. I was so convinced that the product is the reason somebody buys. So what I wanna do real quick is I wanna walk through the more common mistakes that I see when it comes to creating opt-ins. If you can't get opt-ins, you're already dead in the water. Especially when it comes to putting a sales funnel on the internet - you're already dead in the water. If you can't even get somebody to opt-into your free thing, how you're gonna get them to buy? So what I wanted to do is I wanted to walk through... I wrote a little list here, so you'll see me look up and down here a few times, but I wrote a little list here just thinking through like, "Yeah, these are the most common things that I see as mishaps for why people opt-in or not opt-in." A little while ago, somebody sent me a message, "Hey will you critique my funnel?" So just so you guys know, I'm always willing to critique somebody's funnel. If you guys want me to do that, you can go to stevejlarsen.com. Stevejlarsen.com is where I can critique your funnel. I sell one-on-one hour coaching sessions. We can dive through whatever you want to. ...So there was a guy that I was doing it for, and it was a bunch of fun. I really enjoyed it. I love these guys. They were so cool. Mad, mad admiration for them. It was some guys over in Hollywood. And it was really really fun. And they worked with a lot of actors. Any, anyways it was really cool. So they sent me out this squeeze page. And I start looking through this squeeze page and their funnel. And the very first thing that I noticed was how many places I could click. And I started looking through the page. (And, you know, I'm not gonna say who it was or whatever) I was looking through it, and there were so many places that I could click. There were so many places that I could exit. That's one of the defining differences between what a funnel versus a website. Let's think about this. If I have a squeeze page; the goal of the squeeze page is to get someone's contact information so that you can continue to market to them, upsell them, serve them, and add value. If you're not adding value they're gonna unsubscribe anyway. So make sure you're always adding value. However, you're gonna go in, and you're gonna grab somebody's email. Well, the thing is, if I go and I get on a page, and you can look at your squeeze pages now. You can look at your opt-in page. And if you guys don't know what I'm talking about, a squeeze page, an opt-in page, landing page, those are all kind of synonymous terms. Reverse squeeze page/ landing page. There are subtle differences between all of them, but the main premise, the main idea is you're going to get somebody to give you their email address, or some contact info to start the marketing relationship. That's really all it is. Well, I was looking at this guy's squeeze page, and the problem was that it wasn't a squeeze page - it was a classic website that happened to have an opt-in box on it, and they were treating it like a squeeze page. They were driving a lot of traffic. These guys were spending a ton of money driving traffic to this page. Off the bat, I immediately knew what the problem was. I was looking at their conversions rates, and I was looking at all this traffic coming in. I was looking at their numbers. And the numbers were telling the story. I mean they were having like maybe 1%- 2%, of people opt-in for the free thing. That's like, "Something is wrong." You should be getting at least 30% in my mind for a good squeeze page. I was looking at Affiliate Outrage. It's a free program. Is it a squeeze page? It is. You might be like, "Well Steven you have a full course you're offering on the back." Yeah, but it's still a squeeze page. I just looked, 71% opt-in rates just in the last week! It's been launched for a while - so it's very exciting to have those kinds of numbers. A lot of my other squeeze pages right now are getting around 62% opt-in rate. I have another one right now; it's like a content funnel. Anyways, it's different. But it's got, it's got a 40 something percent opt-in rate. Which is crazy you guys. Super cool. There are principles behind this. And the first principle I want you guys to know about is that one of the biggest mistakes people make, classic mistake, is: "It's not a squeeze page." They build a website page. Meaning, I go on the page, and if you have links at the top, that's not a squeeze page. You just built a website with a funnel editor. You can totally build a website in something like ClickFunnels. I've done it, I've done it a couple times now. If you have more than one exit from the page, meaning; they should either have to put in their email address, and press submit - or literally close the tab. That is a landing page. Squeeze page. I'm gonna call them "squeeze pages." Kind of synonymous though. That's like the classic classic blunder though. At the bottom, when it comes to all the legal terms and stuff, I literally put terms and privacy. That's it. And a copyright. That's it. You know. A business address. I put the legal crap on there. But besides terms and privacy, I don't put anything else on the bottom. I definitely don't have anything on the top of the page. The only way to move forward is to give their email, or whatever contact you're asking for. That's how a squeeze page works. It's the definition of it - it squeezes. Give me some info, and I'll give you some sweet value. That's like the classic number one blunder. Now if you've been a funnel builder at all, you're like, "Duh, Steven I get that." Number two, the one that I see people mess up the most is there's literally just no curiosity. That's it. I look; there's no curiosity. The headline, you've not asked any open loops. The headline is not giving any kind of alluring promise. There's no alluring promise to it. The headline is like the most important aspect. The first time I ever build a squeeze page was with my buddy in college. He and I were doing an affiliate marketing thing. We decided we were gonna leave a class and never come back 'cause it was so boring. We spent probably three hours just on the headline. It almost got to a frustrating pace. It was like, "Come on; we gotta move along faster." But like we really wanted this thing to work. At ClickFunnels we spend two to three days just on the headline It's that important. So if you're just writing 'em on a whim, that's typically the biggest reason I see that people's squeeze pages don't work. They might just have one exit - which is great, it's what you should have - but there's no curiosity on the page. You've literally have answered every one of the questions that you brought up on the same page, therefore why should I opt-in? You wanna increase your conversions? You wanna double conversions? The easiest thing to do is to go in and make open looped statements where they're like, "Hey, what is the answer to that?" It calls out the right person, so they have to opt-in. It's like, "Yes, show me more!" Or "Yes, I wanna know." Or "Yes, give me that free report." Or "Yes, I want the free course." Does that make sense? It's the curiosity. Curiosity drives the human brain nuts. We have to have closed loops. It drives us crazy. In western culture, everything down to our music and our melodic tones resolve - because we need that closure. A lot of eastern music doesn't. It's totally western culture to have closure. We need closure. Even if it's not real. Even if it's fake. In our lives, people seek closure. Man, that's human psychology. You can use that. So I create curiosity in my squeeze pages, primarily through the headline. Open it up, and say like, "Are you getting the most out of blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank? Click down below for the free report. Click right here to take the quiz. Oh, here's your quiz results. Do you want the quiz results? Email/ button!" As soon as I stop the camera right here that's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to finish a sweet quiz we're putting in front of one of our funnels now. And that's how I know it will work is because I ask an open-ended question and people can't handle but to actually try to pursue the answer. That lets me get their stuff. That lets me start pushing through the funnel and begin the marketing relationship. Curiosity. Stop telling all of your stuff on the squeeze page. That's not the reason it exists. Remember the function that it exists for. A squeeze page only exists to start the relationship. Not for you to teach all your stuff or make you look like a rockstar. Number three, this is a classic blunder, it kind of ties into the second one. Too much info. Just too much info. Way too much information. You're telling all kinds of stuff throughout it. You're literally bathing them in information. There's selling the opt-in, but then there's just like, telling stuff. If you wanna go see some good examples, again, these are free courses, but if you go to affiliateoutrage.com, watch how hard I'm selling the opt-in. It's a big page. I know it's a big page. But you can see I'm selling, it's a squeeze page. I'm telling a little bit more information than I would normally ask somebody to do, but watch what I'm doing. I present an offer: There's actually a full offer on that page - for something that's free. There is social proof up the butt. There's so much! There are testimonials. There are video introductions to all of the course creators, and all of the people who are in there. BUT... it's very open-ended. I'm not actually resolving any of the questions that I bring up in there. I'll ask questions like: "Well, Steven, how much is this?" "It's free, click here to get it." "Well, Steven, how long is this available?" "Don't really know. Just kind of testing it out. People have really gotten a lot of results from this. Until then, make sure you get it, so I don't close it out." And it goes back, goes back, goes back, goes back. Opt-in, opt-in, opt-in, opt-in. Here's the issue; so many people instead of continuing to create open loops throughout the page, they start teaching on the squeeze page, and then they wonder nobody's opted in. I t's all about scarcity and urgency. It's all about creating that curiosity. The easiest ways to do that? "Man, don't tell them too much. Don't tell them too much." I had the incredible opportunity to go hang with Trey Lewellen for a little while. Trey, I and his awesome girlfriend were all hanging out. And we were working on his webinar funnel. And he had an incredible squeeze page. It was extremely short. It was literally a headline, an opt-in, and a button. That was it. The headline, an input field, and a button. That's all he had on that front page. And it was cool to see how high his numbers were. And that works really really well when you're talking to a hot audience. When people know who you are. And it works really well, it can work in general, like it depends on what you're doing. Like I don't wanna just say like this big blanket statement; "Oh, small squeeze pages that don't work very well." Or "They do work well." I'm not gonna make a blanket statement. Every scenario is different. But by simply going in and adding in a few testimonials or adding in the Facebook comments element so people can comment straight on there and it stays on there for all the future users who will visit that page - that's all native in ClickFunnels. That's really really powerful. He showed me some screenshots back, and they had like a 50% increase in opt-ins because of it. It was crazy. I can't remember the exact number but it was outrageous. It was a huge increase in the opt-ins. And, anyway, so I want you to know like, there was hardly anything on the page. He opened the loop. There was an input field and a button. That's it. That's like the classic squeeze page. The next thing I already alluded to it, is social proof. Guys, there's been some very fascinating launches in history where somebody will go in, and they'll sell a course with this massive sales letter with all the sales material. And they'll make tons of money. And it's like, "Wow! cool." And they'll close out the cart. Then they just focus on the students that came in; getting them results and gathering testimonials. Then they'll reopen the cart with no sales letter, just the huge sickening amount of testimonials and social proof. And they'll do just as much money with that page as they did with the sales page. Social proof is massive. Massive. You guys wanna know the cool way to get social proof? Go do a free course. What I'm saying is, you could literally just go like on Facebook for two hours and teach something. Pull that video. Download that video. Boom! Now you got a course. Go to your audience, and say, "Hey, I'm gonna make that a $57 thing in the future. If you want though I could give it to you free now. I'll give you the recording. Give you also some other cool things," - make a little mini offer out of it. "So it'll be $57 or literally, just take out your phone, flip it sideways, and just tell me what that's meant to you. Tell me what value you've gotten from me in the future, or in the past. Tell me, answer the question what's it like to work with Steve?" I've done that multiple times now and gathered easily probably 50, 60 testimonials in a week. And then I just go and I'll liter 'em throughout my pages. I know my stuff is good. One of my squeeze pages on a site right now, I've brought it from 45% opt-in rate up to 65%, and it's maintained at 62%. And one of the biggest things I did was I just added a huge amount of social proof. Huge amount of social proof. And that was it. That was really one of the only major changes I actually added to the page. That was it. Social proof is massive. And it's a very easy thing to do. You don't need tons of it. But if you can get like two or three that's perfect. So you got your headline, you got an input, you got a button, some social proof. Done. And that's it. Lots of curiosity. Some scarcity and urgency. I recommend putting a countdown clock on there. Make it an evergreen countdown clock. Countdown clocks make people do crazy stuff. Just put it on there. You don't even have to explain it. You'll get more opt-ins. It's true. So anyways, I recommend also with your guys' squeeze pages that what they're opting in for is so obviously valuable that giving you an opt-in seems like child's play. And what I've noticed is when I do that it starts to increase the reciprocity they feel for me in the future. So anyways, just to run through the list again: #Number one, classic example is somebody who doesn't really understand funnels yet will come in and there's just too many exits. Way too many exits. I recommend using something like an exit pop. I don't care. "What Steven, you want exit pops?" Yeah, I don't care about bothering people one more time before they leave - I may never see them again. An exit pop. Works miracles. I love exit pops. It definitely increases my conversions by a lot. Exit pops are awesome. Too many exits. #No curiosity. You literally are telling everything. It's all about creating open loops. That's what gets them going. #Too much information. If you are gonna put a lot of stuff in there and if it is gonna be a big one, like I was saying, you can go look at affiliateoutrage.com to see this format that I follow. The more of those kinds of things I added in my conversions went up. But everything I put on the page has to do with back to the opt-in. I'm not selling the thing down the road. I'm just selling the very next step I want them to take. opt-in, rather than, "Hey, there's a course down the future that's gonna be this amount" Or "Hey, why don't you get coaching from me?" I'm not selling that crap. I'm only selling the very next step. Just like in an email. The email doesn't sell the product, it sells whatever link is in the email, and then they click on the link, and they go to the page. Then the page sells whatever the very next step is. Too many people sell the thing that's down the road rather than the next step. Easiest way to kill your crap. Don't do that. Same with the squeeze page. You're just selling the opt-in. That's it. The page sells the opt-in. The page sells getting their email address. The page sells getting and going and clicking to the very next step - not what's on the next step. It just that step. So too much information. #Having no social proof. Which is, I just let you know a cool way to go get it. # Not having a countdown clock. Those are classic very easy ways. #Videos can help, but sometimes I see the way people create a video is an actual hinder to the opt-in. I don't recommend having a video for your opt-in. If your thing requires some explaining to do, maybe, but man it's gotta high pace. It's gotta be exciting to watch. I don't recommend having videos. Affiliate Outrage is probably the only one where I have a video; it took me a while to craft it and make it feel the way it did. Anyway, it's not a normal thing for me to go do because most of the time I find that videos on squeeze pages slow down the rate of opting in. They slow down the rate of consuming, and so I'll put a video on the next page. If I'm doing a reverse squeeze page, if you don't know what that is go look at The Funnel Hacker Cookbook, then maybe you'll put a video on there. But it's not a normal play for me. It's not a normal thing that I do. So, if you're like "Hey, I can't get more opt-ins" and if you have a video, just take the video off and just try it. You know do a little split test and see what happens? You most likely will get a higher opt-in rate 'cause it won't slow the momentum down so much. Anyway, guys, hopefully, you found this list helpful? I know this was a little more of a tactical episode here, but just know that this is a pretty basic skill in the funnel building world. If you wanna be a funnel builder, get good at creating squeeze pages and list building. That's really what it is. Lists are the only asset on the internet, not the funnel, not your product, not your sales message - it's the list. The list is what will save you if the bottom falls out from under something. The list is the real asset on the internet. Not the product, not the sales message, none of that. All that stuff is transferable. You can take those other places. The list though that's the real thing that you want. So if you wanna be a funnel builder, you gotta get good at opting in. You gotta get good at getting people to opt-in. You gotta get good at delivering value up front. You gotta get good at pulling people and helping them realize, like, "Oh, logically I see what I should give you my email." Anyway, so I just hope this is helpful to you. Go back to your squeeze pages, and use the list I went through to look at your squeeze page and play devil's advocate. Like, "Man, yeah, you're right, this does suck." Make sure it's mobile-optimized. A lot of times it's harder to create a converting opt-in page than the actual order page. It's such a delicate place. It's the first time a lot of people will even see you or hear about you or know who you are. That's why I spend so much time on them. Even though, a lot of times, there are not many words on it. It's such a delicate first encounter. You have to make sure that it's awesome. So that's why I wanted to make this episode for you guys today. Make sure you go back, check this stuff out. The funnest thing to go do is start running through people's pages for them for free. Last story here, then I'll end... I can't remember who it was; it was someone related to Harmon Brothers. In the same building that they work out of. And they had this, crap I can't remember, this was a long time ago. I decide, I just wanted to start building more relationships. So I literally opened up my computer, and I started going to these different pages and funnels that I could tell were good, but not quite there yet. They weren't funnel builders, but they had a good product, and I just started recording my screen critiquing people's pages. Then I would just send their support the critique and wait to see what happens. It wasn't uncommon for me to start getting feedback from CTOs, saying "Wow, that was really helpful. Thanks so much." Like, "Oh, yeah, ain't nothin’. By the way, I'm Steven, how you doing?" And that was a really easy way for me to go in and actually create a lot of relationships. I did that a lot. I don't think I've ever told you guys that. Anyway, it's fun. Just go practice. Do it to your own stuff, do it to other people's stuff. Hopefully, you guys enjoyed the episode. Talk to you guys later. Bye. Aww, yeah! Hey, obviously a funnel's already dead if you can't get even get anyone to opt-in. So I spent four hours teaching an audience how to get high opt-ins when they work, when they don't work. If you want access to that member's area, where you can watch those replays, just go to freeoptincourse.com to create your free members account now.
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!
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.
If you wanna know how I've launched all my content, I ripped the audio from my presentation at Russell Brunson's Inner Circle... Hey, what's going on, everyone? It's Steve Larsen. You're listening to Sales Funnel Radio and I'm excited for this episode. What I did for this episode is I wanted to rip the audio from the presentation that I gave at the Inner Circle. We just barely had the Inner Circle, and it was packed. It was one of the bigger groups. It was a bunch of fun, just absolutely loved it. I thought I'd rip from you guys the presentation. If you don't know the way that those presentations are handled, everybody gets up and everybody speaks, but the way it is ... One of the reasons I like this Mastermind so much ... I've seen others, I've watched ... What I like is everybody's very giving, and so what we do is we stand up and everybody gives something incredible to the group; either something that's working, some cool hacks, something that's cutting edge, something that's just jaw-dropping, "Oh, my gosh! That's incredible." You know what I mean? Then, at the end of it there's an ask and you ask, "Hey, these are the things I'm struggling with. Could you guys help me with X, Y, and Z?" That combination between the two where you've given before you ask is amazing. We obviously see that in selling to our customers and selling to everybody. The more you can give, obviously, create this feeling of reciprocity, well, it's no different inside of the Inner Circle. What I did is I ripped the audio from my presentation. We only have 22 minutes, it's really, really fast, so I would love to dive more deeply into this at some point, as this is a topic that I've been obsessing over recently. Anyways, this is cool stuff, and this is how I launched my podcast. A lot of you guys continue to ask me those questions... If you have never heard the episode 60 and 61 of Sales Funnel Radio, it will walk you through my content strategy, how I handle it all, but I think you'll like from the standpoint of, as far as how I stack together my episodes when I launch my shows. This is super powerful. I've had a lot of students now who are actually in top-rankings of iTunes with their podcasts, because of the same strategy that I teach with these, so this is powerful stuff. Know that there is a lot of data behind it, there's a lot of success stories behind it. I know the strategy works, this is how I launched my own stuff. Anyway, take notes if you were thinking ... Especially, if you're going to do a blog, or a podcast or whatever, it doesn't matter if you're going to do a podcast or not. This is any type of content strategy, as far as what do you say? What are you doing? How do you call your shot? How do you become the guru on the mountain without being perceived as an idiot or a jerk or self-centered? This is how you do it, and I'm excited for this episode. Anyways, we'll cut over to the show here and this is the audio again of my presentation to the Inner Circle. Thanks for listening. I spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today, and now I've left my 9:00 to 5:00 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. Hey, I'm excited for this, though. I have waited so freaking long to be a part of this group. It's cool. I'm like a combo of really introspective moment, look back, and like, "Yeah," at the same time. That's what I feel like, anyway. It's been a long road, though. When I first saw that email come in from Russell I was walking through the basketball gym, and I started reading the email. I'm like, my face as I'm reading it goes like, "Oh, it's from Russell," and that's when my face starts going, I was like, "No!" I stopped and I responded to him that the Inner Circle is closing. I was like, "Don't close, I'm on my way! I don't have $25,000." I showed him the email like six months ago. He was like, "You know it was an autoresponder, right?" I was like, "Yeah, I know. I just needed to ..." because I didn't see that. Anyway, so it's a good email, though. [inaudible 00:04:01] I could show you some day. I want to show you my support team for how I got here. This is my support team. That's Maya. I call her Thigh master, because her thighs are like the two-year-old 12-ounce steaks. Do you know what I mean? Chewy thigh. Anyway, she's the Thigh master. That's Brnley. I call her Pack and Play, because she will randomly dive at me off of couches with no warning. Anyway, she's awesome, playful. Here's my wife. I call her Princess Babe. That's been the name in my phone since we dated, because ... well, duh. The whole thing started though when I was ... I really wanted to go to Funnel Hacking Live in 2016. I had no cash for it. I started bootstrapping my way there and I started trading funnels for plane tickets. Funnels for hotel nights. Funnels for event nights. Things like that. I remember I was riding my ... I was riding ... Do you know those city bikes in San Diego? You can rent them or whatever, slide a card in. What money I had, I did not want to go and actually spend money on a cab. We were living off loans. I had been building funnels for companies and making them successful. I just hadn't charged for stuff yet, I was just trying to make my story... I was staying on the other side of San Diego, and I had my luggage over my shoulder riding my bike over to Funnel Hacking Live through the city, around the bay. That's how I did it. As I was riding the bike over there, I was like, "I'm going to do whatever this man tells me to do, but I will never publish." That was the sentence that came out of my noggin. I was like, "I'm never, ever, ever going to do this publishing game. I do not want to be one of those publishing people. I will not become a character on Facebook Live. I'm not doing any of that. I'm not doing it." The first- Character in a comic book. Right? The first day ... Right? I know! Then the first day, and part of it was because I was voted the nicest kid in high school in my graduating class, but it was because I was shy. I had this near clinical fear of adults and massive anxiety; huge insecurities, I've dealt with a lot. Even into my early 20s. It's true. That's why I was like, "I'm never going to do that." The first thing he says is, "Everyone should start publishing a lot." I was, "Crap! It's the thing I don't want to do!" I gave a lot to get there. We take the picture. Two day later I was interviewing here, and two days after that graduated, two days after that I was sitting next to The Man. I'm seeing Russell going on the camera, "What's up everybody?" Then, he's over on podcast, "What's up everybody?" Then on blog typing, "What's up everybody?" I'm like, "There's something to this publishing thing. I've got to do this." Since then, I want to ... I didn't ... I spent three hours trying to figure out the question to ask you guys on Wednesday. I realized, sitting here, you guys already answered it. I was like, "Dang it," but I couldn't believe how many of you are not publishing, because I started with, not just with no email list, there was no list. No one knew who I was. I want to show you how I launched these two podcasts, because today we should cross 160,000 downloads. It's freaking nuts. It's the content strategy behind it. I'm going to show you guys real quick the strategy behind it. I just want you to know that it works. Here is, as of six weeks ago, six people I brought through, they're in the top, if not 100, then 25 for the MLM category in iTunes now. I'm going between number one and number two on Stitcher. Darn you, [Simon Chan 00:07:24]. I will beat him. I'm number six in that category. Then, if you look at the Sales Funnel side. I want to show you how I did it as a seriously shy person. Everyone of you have to do this. If you guys have massive businesses with these cool audiences, you are sitting on a goldmine. I want to show you real quick how I did it. With Sales Funnel Radio, the way I started it, that was when I started about a year and a half ago. There's been no ad spend on any of these. Can't spend it profitably yet, so I'm not. Anyways, if you think about this is the concept I came up with as I was launching this. I was so scared I didn't know what to talk about. I chose not to talk. What I did is I thought, I'm going to reach two levels up at all time. If I go through and I say, "If this I me and my level of influence as a brand new person, and there's someone who's a little bit above me, someone who's a little bit above me," and it's like C-list influencers; people who have sway. People with lists... You think through, "Oh, my gosh. There's someone above them. Someone above them. Then there's Russell Brunson. Wow!" Let's say it's Tony Robbins, which in my mind I've switched now. "The Pope!" We got at the very top ... Who's at the top? Batman. Okay? All right. You think through that. I thought, "What if I get other people to do the talking for me and I just provide the platform?" I'm just the platform. It is ridiculous what it has done for me. The Dream 100 comes to you when you are able to boost their status. I started getting a whole bunch of people to just get on my show. This is the pattern that I used to launch that first show. My very first episode wasn't even me talking. I was so scared. I was like, "Who's two levels above?" Then when I felt like I had reached up, I reached another two. I reached another two. I didn't want to be ... and it's no hit against John Lee Dumas, but that's all he does; interview, interview, interview. I don't want to get asked just interview questions. I also want to be seen and positioned as an expert when I do, so I lace in podcasts with myself and what I'm learning. I was sitting with a student in Dallas a little bit ago, a month ago, and we were chatting. He goes, "What are you going to do on episode 157?" I don't know, I'll figure that out when I end 156. He was like, "Well, aren't you going to run out of things to say?" I had this realization. You think I already know what I'm going to talk about. The huge secret is that you're learning with me. I can't batch four months of content, because I don't know if I'm going to be able to scrunch four months of learning into that amount of time. That's not my style. When I saw ... Anyway. When I saw [Peng Joon 00:09:53] do his thing, I was like, "Oh, we're super close to that already." I got six people. We have the sweet concept machine that's been moving and just a few tweaks and we're super close to what he's been doing. This is how I launched the first one. The second one I did, this was amazing, was, I thought through ... If you think through what the perfect webinar script is, it's not just for webinars. It is the basis of persuasion. What I started thinking through is, oh my gosh, what if I just took the first part of the perfect webinar script and I write an ordinance story for the audience I want to be buying from me later. The audience that I believe will listen to me. This is in an MLM space, and I took some concepts that everyone believes you need to be successful in that space. "Talk to friends and family. Lose all your relationships." I go through and I just rocks at them as hard as I can. I literally wrote a webinar script and I wrote an ordinance story, the three more stories for the secrets and I turned them sideways; so episode number one was the ordinance story, episode number two was this story only for secret number one. The next episode's only the story for secret number two, only secret number three. Then, that let me go through ... By then, they're so freaking sold, so sold. I haven't even sold them anything, but I have tons of people who reach out to me consistently. Many of you have already. You're in here. They're like, "I listen to your podcast. It's amazing. When are you going to ask for my money somewhere?" I'm like, "Well, you just wait." Anyways, this is what I thought, is what if I combined them? That's what I've been teaching to my students lately and it is killing it. They're all over on iTunes and because what they've essentially done is sold their audience on why they should continue subscribing and listening. I combine them. Instead what I do, is I say, okay the first five episodes is going to be literally a sideways webinar. The next after that, I go through and I call my shot publicly and I say, "I have not done the thing that I'm here to show you that I've done yet. Instead, I want to show you that I'm just a few steps ahead and I will document my entire journey, both the successes and the failures. You won't want to miss this. If you don't want to go through the same pain yourself, follow me and sidestep it." It is crazy what happens. We're not at 3,000 or 4,000 downloads a day, but we're about 800-ish now. It's been awesome what that does. It's ridiculous. People feel like they know you so well when you get vulnerable with them. I talk about all this stuff. I talk about how shy I was as a kid. I talk about Russell was going, "What's happening you guys? What's happening guys? What's happening guys?" I learned this and that. It's really cool to see if you take the standpoint of a reporter and become the expert in front of them, crazy what that does. Here's the funnel that I kind of made up, but it works super well. I went through and I figured out, on all the end of my podcasts as well ... I'm going to hurry because there's something I want to ask you guys. I create this ridiculous bait. Something that is so insatiable and I say, go to blah-blah-blah.com and check it out. It's a free course, and when they go opt in, what they're actually doing, on the very first thing is my ordinance story again, that's the first video. Then I tell them, if you opt in, I'll give you this cool free course. Thank you so much. It's like a 72% off on the thing, still, it's crazy, crazy. I haven't sold anything to them yet. I pre-frame the crap out of them, though. Over the next six days, it's essentially a product launch funnel. They don't know it. "It's a free course," but it's a product launch funnel. Underneath every video is the option for them to go learn and experience more from me. It just goes through my webinar registration page and I sell. My best sales, my best customers, my best advocates, Dream 100 people, future affiliates, all come from my podcast, not my ads. My hardest customers come from my ads. Anyway. That's super cool. I have a four-and-a-half-hour course I created on this. Which as a gift to all of you guys, I will give it to all of you. It's super cool, if I may say so myself. It's pretty epic. It blows me away. I'm like, "Holy crap! A lot of you guys aren't publishing." I didn't even know how to get as big as you have been without doing this stuff. I'm excited for you to plug that in. If you have any questions, ask campaign. Can I ask really quick, you just ...them, like, "Ha!" Your hardest customers come from your ads. Your easiest customers come from your content ... Anyway, it just makes you think the frame they go through. It makes me want to take all my crappy hard ad customers and shove them to something like a podcast so that they become good customers and then we sell that at that point. Anyway. That's- Well, what I realized ... I studied Ryan Holiday like a beast. When you think about it, what controls public opinion? Publications do. Right? All of our ideas, our cultural ideas, come from the news. Whoever controls content, controls ideas. What I'm doing is creating ... I have the funnel going, which is awesome and it's doing really well, but I'm creating a content machine that can go through and it is repurposing the crap out of everything that I do to the nth degree. I've figured out I spend about $20,000 a month in hard cost in just my content machine only, because it spreads the ideas. I'm trying to change the MLM industry. I will not do that on my own, so instead I create mini-me's, teach them how to do it as well. When we are the only ones talking, the highest ranked on iTunes across blogs and everywhere, we affect ideas and belief. That's what I'm doing. Real quick, I want to ... I got to go. The reason this works is because story amplifies value. When you think about your offers, your offer has generic value inside of it. This American flag, what's the material cost for this flag? $20? Meaning retail value, probably about $20, maybe a dollar to actually manufacture. Watch. This certificate is from a senator ordering that this flag be flown on the White House for me specifically. Now, how much value just got added to this? It's worth way more than $20. I'll not trade it for that either. Isn't it interesting? Most the reason why you can't sell your thing for what you want to when you start doing things on a..., "Oh, my gosh. They just don't believe me." It's because your story suck. They don't understand yet. There's already inherent value in the flag, but what amplifies and explodes on multiples and exponential curve is story, because story gives context. Just one more thing before I ... I got to show you what I'm stuck on, because ... Dark example, a man walks down an alley. He shoots another man, and he dies. Context, it's a war zone. Shifted everything. Story creates context. Context amplifies value... Anyway. Is that helpful? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Freaking, geek out on this stuff like crazy. It's the fastest 22 minutes of my life. Oh, my gosh. I already talk fast, I'm winded. Okay. Wow. Thanks for listening. Yeah, 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.
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. Dana Derricks: Oh man. So good. 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. 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? 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." 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. 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. 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." 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." 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. 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." So because they're a big company, they can just by having a full-time affiliate partnership management person. Right? So he ends up being Brandon's brother, and his name's Jeff. He's awesome. 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. 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? 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. 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. 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. Dana Derricks: Right. But if it's like, "Hey did you see the package I sent?" That's a different ball game. That's like, "Whoa you spent money on me, and you took the time and energy to cut through and go to me in the mail." Right? So I'm always like, "Hey did you get the box yet that I sent," or whatever. And I'm not like ... I'm never annoying about it because like, I'll look at the tracking and make sure the thing was delivered before I'm like, "Hey did you get the box?" And they're like, "No, what box?" Right? It's like ... So that ... So it's basically multi-channel followup. It's really ... It's extensive. So it'll go from emails and Facebook messages and whatever they are on, and then if I get no response from them, and I know that they're potentially seeing my messages and I've gone to the extent of like, two, three, four weeks of followups, next is a dodge ball in the mail. 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. 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? 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. So anyway, I'm super excited. 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.
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... I felt like I was in a bit of a funk there for a little bit and I talked to Russel about it and he was like, "Dude, we've been running hard for so long, this is the first time we've had a chance to breathe." 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. One of my classic examples is the Olympics. The Olympics just happened. Winter Olympics, my family I grew up skiing like crazy a lot actually. 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. Let's take Disney and what I want to do is I want to walk through Disney's offer with that question in mind. So, let's say I'm Walt Disney. 1955, that's when Disneyland started, I believe. 1955, and I'm Walt Disney, and I'm sitting back and I'm like, "I want to make a sweet theme park." And he's like, "Cool, I'm going to go make a cool theme park." And I start making this theme park and I'm like, "Sweet."... 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? "Crap. This tech stuff is like figured out now, I actually have to know how to freaking market now." 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? "Crap. I don't know what to write." "Don't worry about it. We created Funnel Scripts." Does that make sense? Whatever product you've got there's a follow-up problem, lots of them, that you created for your customer. And if you can just go solve the major ones that you can foresee and bundle it with the original product, man it's like so easy to destroy your competition because they're not thinking that. 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 ..." And like, "Okay, cool." 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 then they're like, "Sweet we're getting lots of traffic but why isn't it converting?" 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? That's literally ... I was trying to solve the follow-up problem. Some of you guys are too concerned with the actual product itself. 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? So, I was thinking through a lot of their ... like that's their core thing. 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." Money, "Don't worry about it if you bundle together if you buy this package here go to the Disney Hotel we'll package it this way." 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. In fact, it was funny, literally every single ... Let's talk about upsells. There were upsells all over the place. And I loved it, I was reading them, I was seeing them. 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 I never in my life have considered that until ... you know what I mean? It works. It totally works. 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. That was clever because that made me ask, "Well, how much is it?" 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... By the way, how did we know that this whole thing existed? Disney. We would not have gone. Let's just think about this for a second ... last thing I'll say, I know this was a long episode. 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.
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". Now, 99% of the time Russell already knows what the sales message is going to be. He's done it so well. He's done it for so long. But, he understands right from the get go without really even thinking about it. He kind of starts from this place of sales message. Meaning, if he can sell it then we'll go make the offer. And, he already starts from those places ... 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. And, I was like, "Huh. That's the one that did it over here. Huh. 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. And, that's exactly what I'm talking about. You figure out the sales message. What is it that gets people off the butt? They are so insatiably connected to what it is that you have promised. You've broken and rebuilt the belief patterns. You've helped them see the world in a brand new way and you are now served up to give them an offer. Aww. And, it's not there yet. That's okay because now you know it's safe. It's worth you time to go create that actual offer. Does that makes sense? 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. Like, since Funnel Hacking Live is ... I'm been getting on my plane here in an hour? I gotta get out of here. I was like, I just gotta podcast one time though. I'm excited to talk to you guys. 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. 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." 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. Anyways guys. I'm really, really excited. 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. 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. 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 doingthat I can tell you about a little later. 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.
Hey, how you guys doing? I am super excited for today. I apologize. I didn't really publish in the last little bit here, and the reason is because I flew down to Vegas actually this last week and I spoke at two events back to back which was kind of crazy, and went through and I had an awesome product forum, and I literally created two pitches from scratch back to back which if you've never done that before is extremely challenging, and slept just a couple hours each of those times. But I have a mastermind of my own that went and we did, which was fantastic. I did that on Tuesday. We did a four hour session with a gentleman who wanted some of my time on Monday. That was on Monday, then Tuesday was the mastermind. Then Wednesday I spoke at another event which was awesome. Thursday spoke at, it was kind of like a private mastermind, which was a ton of fun. It's been a lot of fun. Anyway, I'm very, very excited for everything that's been going on here and I just want to give a little bit of an update first of all. We just barely opened the doors on Secret MLM Hacks. It's only been open for just over two weeks. Two weeks, and we've had about almost 60 people, I think about 60 actually, join this program and start going through it, and it's been amazing. It's been really, really fun. We've had people do some amazing things with it and dive on in, and really, really enjoyed getting these people some success with it and it's been cool to see them out starting their own ... The business is for real, you know what I mean? The way an actual business would handle it. And it's been a lot of fun. Anyway, what I wanted to do though real quick is I wanted to give a little bit of an update on, a lot of you guys know that one of the reasons why my downline is so unique and why my downline recruits like crazy is because of the application that I make people go through when they join my downline. And I know a lot of you guys listening right now have applied and I appreciate that. And so there was a big influx recently which has been a ton of fun and certainly enjoyed that, and what we've done though is when people come through and apply to join the downline, what we were doing previously is we would have people, we'd call them on the phone and we'd do an hour and a half chat with them going through the presentation. Well it's the same presentation that we give every single time, so I thought what if we ... This is like part two of my application process, so I was like, what if we just had them watch the presentation and then we had a call with them to be able to go and actually answer any followup questions? And it's been cool to see how that's been working out. This last week what we did, on top of everything else, it was kind of cool. I got a cool interview in Europe and got asked to go on a bunch of other podcast shows which has been a whole lot of fun. I'm not beating my chest you guys. I'm just letting you know what's been going on and stuff like that. Anyway, what's been super cool about that is what we did was my buddy and I, we took some recordings from the presentation that we give people, so they know what the dealio is. Look, here's how the MLM works. And think about this for your own MLM too. Start thinking about the way you can ... You give the same presentation over and over and over and over again, so I thought why not automate the parts that we do over and over and over again, and I don't want to take the human out of this business. I don't want to take the human element out of it. I want to stay personal. I want to stay in touch with people. And so what we did is we took each one of those things and then we made the presentation so they can watch, so it's the same every time for every person, because that's what we were doing is the same thing every time. Then what we did though is we set it up in this cool way that if you still love it, if you go through and you're like, "Oh, that's what Steve Larsen does. That's what MLM he's in." If you're like, "Oh my gosh, that's amazing," then you can progress on from there, so the presentation goes through the MLM. It goes through the product. Start thinking that what's obviously for your MLM, but the one that I just put up, it goes through the presentation. It goes through the product. It goes through all the things that you would normally ask. Comp plan. Events. All the stuff that it goes through, but then what it does is it goes through, and I talk about why my downline is unique. Why you should join me over the other guy. You know what I mean? You got to answer that question for people. Think through what that answer is for you. And so what I do though is I go through and I talk about how like, look, when you join my downline you get these funnels. You get these pieces of automation. You get, I understand that our product sells really well on the Internet using this piece of automation. And you get all that for free when you join my downline. That way I'm handing them things that are pre-made and pre-packaged so that they're able to actually go off and implement quickly, and so what I've been doing is vetting the system so that after they watch the video what ends up happening is at the bottom it says, "Look, hey. Did you watch the video?" And if they click yes, it said, "Awesome, you have two options now. The options are right down below the video." And what they do is it says option number one. It says, "Hey, Steve. I'm in. Let me just join now." And they can click and they can join the downline immediately. Or option number two, "Hey Steve, this is awesome. I just have a few final questions before I dive on in." And they can literally click a button and select a time on my calendar in the next day or whatever so that we can chat face-to-face, which is awesome, and I make it so that multiple people can join the call at the same time so I'm talking to a bunch of people at once so that they can grab the systems and ask any final questions before they dive on in. So that's it. Anyway, I just wanted to give you guys a bit of an update. I know it's a fast episode, but as I've been sitting back and looking through, man, there's so many people who are applying. Number one, how do I make it so it's still personal? That they understand that they're also getting me, but that it's also duplicating me? That it's also making it so that I'm not the bottleneck of my own organization? And so I've been going through and that's actually what we've been doing. It's been a whole lot of fun, so I thought I'd ... A lot of this podcast is about me documenting my journey on the way for this whole thing, so that's what I've been doing and it's been working. It's been great, and we've had awesome, stellar people come through, watch the video and what's fun about it, I think the funnest thing about this is that it attracts an individual who ... Really there's two kinds of people that it's been attracting. Number one it's the kind of individual who is a rockstar already and they've already got a downline somewhere else and they want to bring them all under me. You know what I mean? It attracts those kinds of people. Or they're amazing at marketing. You know what I mean? People with experience. Or, it attracts an individual who is basically brand new but they're willing to learn and they're coachable. For some reason, and I haven't quite figured out why, this whole system keeps people out who are not otherwise coachable, which has been nice because it's increased the culture of the downline. You know what I mean? I'm a respecter of everybody, but we all know not everyone's going to be an equal recruit. It's not the nicest way to say that. Not everyone is going to be the funnest to work with sometimes, and so it's been fun because people who are new, they come in and they're like, "Oh my gosh, look at these rockstars I get to surround myself with." And then people who are experienced get to come in and they're like, "Oh my gosh, look at these cool systems Steven has." It's cool because I feel like for the first time it's been this awesome win-win-win-win-win for everybody all around. Obviously it helps me, but it helps them because I'm helping them and I'm solving up their followup problems once I hand them the opportunity, and then it's helping new people who've never done this before either. I've had people who have been joining simply because they're like, "Oh, it's Steve Larsen. I know he's awesome." But they know nothing about MLM. They know nothing, and it's been cool to get both sides of the spectrum without as much drama. It's been cool to do that, and it's been exciting because of the kind of person that it's been attracting. You know what I mean? Very, very fun. It's been exciting for that whole reason. Anyways, I've been loving it. It's been awesome, and I know there's been a few people who've been like, "Steven, why do you make me go through this entire process? How come I can't just call you directly?" And I know that's one of the things that people will be struggling with sometimes when they go through that, and I know that. The reason why though is because the process is also the filter, and sometimes part of the reason why you may not like the person who's joining your downline or joining your MLM or whatever it is is because there's not enough of a filter. You know what I mean? I've got some amazing crap for the people who join my downline. Insane stuff, and it's really easy to be unique in a blue ocean in the MLM space right now because there's not that ... I believe all the other tactics and strategies are stuck in the '90s, and since I do stuff that's cutting-edge and new, it's really easy to make a splash and that's one of the reasons my downline has been so much. Anyway, that felt really braggy. I'm sorry, but I'm just trying to show you guys and understand what this all is and the power of it and why it's such a huge deal, and even though I know there's been some people that have complained or whatever. Also, that system is part of the filter. The people who want to work with me, they prove to me they want to work with me by going through that process. I was speaking. It was the second place I was speaking at this last week, and this guy walked up afterwards and he was like, "That was amazing. Oh my gosh. We have this list of 12 million followers. I really want you to get on my podcast." And I was like, "Hey, that would be awesome. Just click on this button." I told him. I was like, "Go to SteveJLarsen.com and click on Interview Steve." He was like, "I don't want to do anything like that. I just want to give you a link." And I was like, "Well for me and my VA and my current process there's so many people that want to interview me, that's what helps me. Just go click there and I've got no problem getting on." And he was like, "Ah, don't send me through a process," and he walked away all mad, and I was like, "Sir, then I can't get on your show. You understand? The process is also what protects me." I didn't say that, but I did tell him, I was like, "Then I can't get on your show." That's why though, is because if you don't have a process it's half the reason why you haven't been enjoying your MLM. It's half the process why you've been getting people that aren't doing anything. If you don't have a process down, if there's no consistency, how on Earth can you measure progress? You can't, and so you don't know what the levers are in your business to be turning and focusing on and the other ones to leave alone because they don't matter. You don't know what the time suck and emotionally draining activities are because everything is different every single day. There's no consistency. And I understand that I might actually not get as many people into my downline because there's a process, but ... We're getting a ton of people. I mean, that's not what I'm saying. It's also the process though that vets out the amazing people who want to work with me and it's really been awesome because it not only elevates everyone else, also it culturally protects the downline because there's a process in place. Then I can sit back and be like, "Oh my gosh, look. I'm saying the same thing over and over again." Or, "Look, I can identify this little spot over here that's not been good. I can identify that spot over there that's not been good. Because there's a system I can keep tweaking the system until it's better and better and better, an awesome oiled machine, and then when something works I just hand it off to everybody in the downline so they can do it too. You know what I mean? Anyway, that's all I was trying to say. That the system is your friend that you go create, and if you don't have a system it's the reason why you're feeling a little bit all over the place, and I understand that there might be a few cons to having ... It's like a two-step process I ask people to go through. Number one, apply to join my downline. Number two, watch this presentation that I give to everyone every time, and then we'll jump on the phone and you can ask any final questions you have before you join. You know what I mean? That's the process that I have people go through, and that's it, and it's to help me understand who's serious just as much as it is to help me understand who would be poisonous in my downline as well. It's also been funny. There's been a few people who have been a little bit frustrated like, "I don't want to watch it. Come on. I just want to talk to you directly." I was like, "Come on, understand what I'm doing. Watch ..." It's like when you're at a magic show and you watch the magician's hands and you're trying to catch the trick. That's all I was trying to say. Watch the magician's hands. Understand what I'm doing. Look at the process that I'm taking you through if ... I'm not pitching you right now on joining, but that's why I do it, and I want to tell those people that and be like, "Look, that's the reason why is because I want to hand you the same thing I'm asking you to go through because it elevates the quality of the runner. It elevates the quality of the producer that you're essentially hiring into your downline. Anyway, it's been awesome. It's been a fun, fun, awesome experience. We just got a bunch more people into the Secret MLM Hacks course. If you're interested in that at all go to SecretMLMHacks.com. You can watch it. If you go to ... I don't know if I want to tell you where to go to join my downline because I don't want people to think I'm pitching, and I also don't want you to start applying without the actual intent to join because there's some really cool automations that happen in there, you know what I mean? Anyway, I think there's a previous episode that I talk about where you can go to check this out if you want to, but anyways, it's been awesome and fantastic. I've been improving the process. Been improving the things we're going through, and it's cool. It's like step two of people applying to join my downline, and we sent it out to another 57 people or something two days ago. It's been awesome. So it's working guys, I want you to know that. I'm not just teaching MLM. I actually do it also, which should be a source of comfort for you to know that I'm not just blowing smoke around and theory. This is the actual stuff that's working. Anyways guys, been awesome. Have a great one, and go kill it. Hey, thanks for listening. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Would you like me to teach your own downline five simple MLM recruiting tips for free? If so, go download your free MLM Masters Pack by subscribing to this podcast at SecretMLMHacksRadio.com.
Click above to listen in iTunes.. Untold ideas are already dying.... Hey, guys. I am very excited for this episode... I've actually had this episode on my mind for, I don't know, it's been a while. I've had a hard time trying to figure out how to actually present it. I want to walk you through a little bit of, I don't know. About four years ago I decided that I would create, every January 1st, I would go and I would create a video that would basically publicly declare my financial goal for the next year, and it's the scariest thing that I do pretty much every single year. It's interesting what has happened though because of those videos. They're on YouTube. If you go to my YouTube channel, you can check it out. About four years ago, it's me, I'm in the army, I've got a shaved head, and I'm like, gosh, you know what guys, if I could just make an extra $1,000 a month that would change my life. That's where I was. I was like, hey, and here's my plan. That was the video for that year. Then three years ago I was like, "Hey, if I could just do $3,000 a month that would be crazy. Oh my gosh, that would change my life." It's crazy, because what I do then as I go through each one of the months and I say, hey, here's what I did, here's how I did. Then the year before this one, I was like, "hey, I just want to do $30,000 a month". That's excluding salary income, excluding any other income on the side. Just my own stuff. I'm pleased that I hit that several times this last year, which is awesome. I want you to know that that's on the side, working for somebody else more than full-time doing ... Still have a family, two kids, a wife. You know what I mean? This is not meant to be that video, but about four-ish years ago. Let me check actually. About three-ish years ago, I so badly wanted to be able to just start being around other people who shared my common interests. I was in college at the time. It was 2015. It was wrapping up the year, and I just wanted to be around other people. I felt like I was very alone, funny enough, even in my marketing degree, my marketing classes, which I love school for the environment it gave me to learn, but I didn't actually learn that much stuff that I use now, hardly at all, which is true for pretty much any education now. That's fine. I had been following Russell for quite some time at that time, and I knew that Russell was really into things like masterminds, and he had this Inner Circle and stuff like that. Honestly, before Russell, before I ever knew who Russell Brunson was, I thought masterminds ... I'm just going to be open and honest with you. Because I had no other expectations at all, I thought masterminds were a way to get more money from people. I didn't know what they were. I had no idea if there was any kind of value or anything like that. My perception was just that it was a high-ticket experience to hang ... It was a reason to hang out with people who paid you a whole bunch of money to hang out with them. You know what I mean? That's what I thought it was. Then when I saw that Russell was doing masterminds and he came out with his Inner Circle, I was like, huh, that's kind of ... Pre-Russell my attitude towards masterminds was very like, "Meh. You're just trying to take my money," or something like that. You know what I mean? That was my attitude. It's more of a scarcity mentality as well by then. This is like three, four years ago now. A lot's changed since then. After figuring out who Russell was though, and after seeing more of what he was doing with his Inner Circle and more what he was doing with that, it became very apparent to me very quickly that this was not a normal thing, that this was an extremely rare opportunity to learn in some really, really high-speed ways. I was seeing the results that some of these people were coming out and saying like, "Hey, I've got these results, X, Y, and Z." And be like, "Holy crap. That's awesome. You get that from the mastermind?" I had to change my mentality. I had to change the way I was looking at it. I found myself really wanting to go attend one of these masterminds. Granted, they're not all the same. The only thing I knew of Russell at the time was his DotComSecrets X product, DotComSecrets book was out, and I had read that definitely by this time. I believe so, anyway. I really just wanted to learn more from him, and I really, really wanted to get into his Inner Circle. I knew I did not have 25 grand though at the time to be able to do something like that. Fascinating, right? Fascinating experience. Fascinating predicament. I know if you're listening to this podcast right now, you've probably been in the same boat before. You've probably experienced it before, be like, "Hey, I wish I could be a part of this program. I wish I could do this or that." The FAT event and funnel hackathon event, secrets masterclass, 2 Comma Club Coaching, he has few different names for it. That's 15 to 25 grand, and for very, very specific reasons. I understood the reasons. I understood why he was charging that much, but I was in college and I still wanted to be a part of that. One day Russell sent out this email, and in fact I can tell you it was December 14th, 2015 at 5:44 p.m. I remember it. I remember this moment. This was a huge moment for me. I went and I actually found the email. I found the email, and Russell said, "Hey, look, there's 74 out of 100 spots taken. As you probably know, I have a small group of entrepreneurs that I personally coach and I call them my Inner Circle. For the past two years, I've had dozens, and dozens of success stories come from this group, in fact." Anyway, he went through and he started talking about it, saying, "Look, this is a new development. I'm going to say that when we're at 100 spots I'm going to end it." I was devastated. I was so devastated. I remember exactly where I was. I was in the campus basically rec center. There was a pool in that room or in that building. I was standing in the hallway and I was walking down in the stadium steps, the basketball stadium steps. Smell of chlorine from the pool from several rooms over was in the air. It was quiet. I was one of the only ones in that room standing in the middle or almost in the middle of the basketball stadium. It was quiet, and I remember reading this email, and I remember out loud actually saying, "No! No! Crap. No!" I was pissed that he was closing down his Inner Circle at 100 people because I knew I would make it somehow, but I knew I couldn't make it at the speed he was filling it. I just knew that I couldn't make it. I was like, "Oh my gosh. No." I remember I sent a message to my wife, and I was like, "He's closing it down." She didn't really know what it was at the time still, or what I was really doing or what I was into and stuff like that. She said like, "Oh, that's too bad." I was like, "No." I remember at that exact moment though, I mean I was crushed. I was shattered over it. I so bad wanted to be a part of that group. Again, this is December 14th, 2015, three years ago. That's crazy. Is that two years ago? What's the year? What's the year? '16, '17. Wait, this was only four months before I got hired. Holy crap. I thought this was longer ago. That wasn't actually. This is only two years ago. Never mind. It's December 28th right now. This is only two years ago. I remember I was pissed. I was so sad that I wasn't going to be able to be in that group, because he had already been changing my life so much, and I had a successful funnel building agency at the time and I was making money for other people, and I was making money for myself finally. Now that I know more of the timeline of where all this was happening. I remember standing in that room. It was silent, but you know like when you're in a huge room and there's really, really high fans, so you can hear the light hum in the air, and there was a little bit of the smell of the chlorine in the air from the sport unit, from the lap pool that was over. The racketball courts were near, and I could hear them ping ponging around. For the most part it was pretty silent. I was standing there, and it was one of those moments that was just like, "I'm going to get in that group. I don't know how, but I'm going to get in it." I stood right there, as soon as I read Russell's email, and I actually wrote him one back. I just clicked reply. I was right on my phone, and I wrote an email back to him immediately on the spot. This is what I said. I know, because I found it. I said, "Dang it. This just breaks me apart. I'm in college and working to get in, and I'm trying to become your dream client, because I know I'm not yet. Thank you for everything you've given me. I can't express how much you've changed my life, but you don't even know me. I feel like I know you because I've gone through so much of your material for years. You're a blessing to me and my family, and I sincerely thank you for all you've sacrificed and given to make sure others are successful. You're one of my very real inspirations and I thank you, Steven Larsen." Then I put in parentheses: "See you at Funnel Hacking live event. Woo!" At that time, that's when I was bootstrapping my way to the funnel hacking live event, because I still didn't have any money, so I was exchanging funnels for the event tickets, funnel for the flight, funnels for the hotel nights, and that's how I got there. Which was literally what, like three months later? Then I sent this email over. No one replied. I didn't expect them to, but I kept sending stuff like this. I sent tons of stuff like this, and what was funny, what was interesting is three months later I was at his event. I applied on a Saturday. I think it was a Saturday, because that's when the event was over. I think that's when it was, on a Saturday. I got a call on Monday to come get an interview, so two days later, two days later. The next day, Tuesday, so this is three days after the event was over, I was in Boise doing the interview. Actually, I think it was on Wednesday, so four days later. I was in Boise in the middle of my finals week and I got the job. I was in Russell's office working full-time within, I think, eight days after funnel hacking live 2016 ended, within like eight days. What was crazy is within a month he had his first Inner Circle, not first, but first since I had been there working for him, a mastermind come up for his Inner Circle. Guys, before I recorded this episode I was trying to find the Voxer that Russell sent me inviting me to come to the Inner Circle meetings. I was blown away. I was like, "Are you kidding me? Oh my gosh." I went berserk. I think I almost killed Voxer, which seems like it's dying anyway. I literally spent, because it took so long for everything to load, plus I was reading all of our old conversations over the last two years. Anyway, it took 30 minutes, and I was one month away from going back to where the messages were, where he invited me and then my response. I was going to take those excerpts of him inviting me and then my response back and put them in the episode. Voxer wouldn't load anymore messages. Said there was no more messages left. There was messages left. I think I just broke it. Super-sad, honestly, that I didn't do that. I went nuts though, I went crazy. I got into the mastermind. I was freaking out. I got there early. I sat down. I was like didn't know if I should talk to anybody. I was like, "Oh my gosh. This is Russell's Inner Circle." I was like, "Oh my gosh." I was kind of slinking around the sides of the room, because I didn't feel like I was qualified to be in there. Just four months, five months earlier I was telling Russell how much I wanted to be a part of it, didn't know how I would, and I ended up now working for him in the same room with him. Like crazy. It's ridiculous. The turn of events, that's insane. That's pure insanity how that all worked out. I sat in there, and holy crap, it was fantastic. Everyone was following the same format in this mastermind, and it was better than I thought it would be. Everyone stood up and they shared something amazing. We're not talking about like little tiny tips and tricks. I got almost straight A's in college in my marketing degree, and I was also that kid who was like fighting with the teachers actively and didn't really get along with a lot of the other students in there, because none of them were doing it. They were all freaking studying about it. No one was actually starting businesses. No one had been doing it. I had been doing it for years by the time I got there. You know what I mean? I was that weird kid who was kind of on the side fighting what everyone thought, or was just taking as face-value truth. I was like, "No, that's no. No, and it's not true because of X, Y, and Z." With that backdrop, the stuff that people were just getting up and openly sharing was ridiculous. What I did is I actually opened up Trello while I was in that mastermind, and just sitting on the side listening and taking notes, I mean ferocious notes. I was going back through reading some of these, and I was like, "Holy crap." It's not like some of the stuff was like, "It only works right now. You got to do it now, because the trick is going to end soon." It's like, no, like the stuff that I'm reading that I learned from that mastermind is still stuff that I both teach and use and apply to this day. That was a year and a half ago, which is crazy, which is crazy. I can't believe, I cannot believe that I got to go do that. Then I got invited to the next one, and to the next one, and to the next one. It was like over and over and over, and drinking deeply with that group, just listening, taking notes. Very super-observant, like just writing it all down. It's nuts to me, absolutely nuts to me the amount of personal progress that came to me because of those masterminds. I'm frankly a little bit ashamed that I ever thought something like a mastermind wouldn't be valuable. Then as time progressed and I started getting invited to go speak places and present in different masterminds, several of them, which has been so much fun, and come be a keynote in some masterminds, and things like that. It's been interesting to see how much I've learned to just flat-out adore them, and not even learn to. It's really easy to love them because they're amazing. I'm very anti-meeting. Meetings freak me out. My first perception was that, hey, I'm going to have to go sit in this meeting and it's going to be boring. I'm going to sit there all day. It's like no, like it is fun. They are high-paced. They are high-energy, and if you've never been a part of one, I want you to have that experience. Want you to be able to know that is. Since I'm leaving ClickFunnels, there are two questions that have been popping up very, very frequently. Very frequently. The first one is, "Steven, will you coach me?" That question has been asked to me like crazy. Is there any kind of coaching package? No. Not yet. I'm sure there will be at some point, and when I decide to do that. I'll tell you why I'm not doing it right now, also. For right now, no. I do 30 minute consultations on people's phones before they go launch them. That's fun. That's awesome, but I don't do active coaching yet. Then the second question that people have been asking me like crazy, I finally have a support team, awesome support system, a ticketing system finally. I finally have structure underneath me that I've been building ferociously in the evenings; it's 1:30 in the morning right now, as I am literally in two days going to be unemployed. What would you do if you knew you were going to be out of a job with like four or five months advance notice? Russell and I both knew way before I ever told anybody. You know what I mean? What would you do? You'd do the same thing I'm doing. It's not exactly relaxing. I almost feel like it might have been easier to just have the whole two weeks notice thing, but instead ... Anyway. The second question I get like crazy is, hey Steven, is there any kind of mastermind or event you're going to be doing? The answer to that one is yes, because I am such a proponent of them. I cannot believe how much growth has come to me because of them. There's 100 people in Russell's Inner Circle. That's four different mastermind sessions twice a year. That's eight mastermind sessions per year, and I've got to sit in a huge portion of them and learn like crazy, I mean from ... Just brilliant. Brilliant. Even the ones that aren't Russell's that I've been able to go like, people are like, "Have you really done much? Have you accomplished much?" Sometimes one of the fears people will have, I've noticed, is they'll be like, "Well, I haven't accomplished these great things, therefore I can't attend because there's nothing to contribute." No. That's not how it works at all. This is very much like a huge synergy situation, where you just put multiple minds together who are trying to go towards a common goal, and it is ridiculous. I don't care what kind of background you have. It's fun to watch just different experiences and backgrounds and stories that people bring to a room and go like, "Oh, yeah. Do this, or X, Y, and Z, or this is my feedback for this." The amount of decision making, the time that it takes to make the kinds of decisions that people need to make in order to be successful, the timeline decreases. The clarity of the path that people go down afterwards is amazing. Clarity not just on the marketing, or clarity on the offer, or clarity on this, but how they actually operate and conduct themselves outside of the mastermind in order to get their goal. I wish I could just dive in and start telling you all of them. I am shamed to say that I have not taken notes in every single one of them. I should have. I don't know why I didn't for a lot of them. Some of it was because I was building funnels on the side. Actually, a lot of it was because I was building funnels on the side, so I'd be listening and when there'd be some massive thing, I'd come over and write it down. I've got this huge, massive, Trello column of just huge. On one side it's direct quotes from Russell from all the lessons of me sitting next to him and hearing him as he's talking to other people on those podcasts. The other one has all these ones that he hasn't actually explicitly told me, but I've learned from him, or gleaned from him either in a mastermind or directly from his desk, or whatever it is. I mean it just blows my mind. I couldn't have gone and got a master's degree, even PhD in marketing or internet marketing or whatever it is, and I still would not have learned even a fraction of this stuff. I know that. I know that, because these are the people who are doing it. These are the people who are out actually proving what's actually happening, what's actually working right now. You know what's funny, like I was saying before, of course it matters who all is in the mastermind. Obviously, if you're more experienced, overall it's going to be awesome, even more awesome. Even if you're not crazy-experienced and you have the chance to go to one, you should do it because it's crazy to see how much actually comes from it. Anyway. I feel like I'm saying the same thing over and over again now, and I apologize for doing so. It's just if there was one thing that I could do the rest of my life, if there was one activity that I would go do the rest of my life and never read another book again, and never take another course again, if there was one thing that would replace it all and I would still feel like I would be able to stay on the edge, the peak, the cutting edge place of the markets, whatever I'm trying to do, it would be masterminds. The mastermind would replace. Now, that's personal preference. Obviously, I've quite a bit of experience in the funnel building world, a lot of it. It's true though. I would put down all these books. I've tons of books all around me. Lots of bookshelves, bookcases and stuff. I love them and they're awesome. It's gold, amazing stuff. The one thing in my mind that has actual potential to replace the huge amount of knowledge in books that's sitting around me or on courses, or whatever it is, is masterminds. It's masterminds. For whatever reason that kind of synergy that comes from people who are truly trying to dive into and dump amazing information in and get amazing things back out, I mean it's amazing what happens. There's this really interesting study that happened actually, and I'll end this episode soon, because I know I've been going for a bit here. There's a really interesting study that happened, I heard the results from anyways, where some people went through and they watched those who contributed the most. Here was the rule. This is what they found out. Those who contribute the most in masterminds, those who contribute the most in masterminds almost always are also the top earners in the room. That wouldn't shock you. That wouldn't shock you at all. Think about that. When you get into a mastermind, and you see people who are just giving and giving and giving and giving and giving and giving, it is very much the antithesis of what most people treat wealth creation and secrets and, "I got to keep all my products to myself, and no one's going to know what they are. If I say anything, someone's going to steal it." It doesn't really happen that way. Guys, I tell you everything that I do and there's maybe like one or two people who have attempted and kind of done the stuff that I say, kind of done. Why? It's because I'm a different person with a different background, different frame of mind. Even if they did take the same idea and they did try and go, they still would execute it differently than I did. Ideas when they are shared grow. Ideas when they are shared actually turn into better ideas. You get up, and you stand up, and you actually start sharing all of your best stuff with the room, and you'll be shocked, shocked, completely floored, completely floored at what ends up happening to your idea, things you would never, ever, ever have thought of or it would have taken you a very long time to think of. Time is money. Anyways, I have a mastermind. It's not necessarily a Steve Larsen mastermind yet. I am having fun partnering with a lot of my friends at the moment, but no matter what, you can always find whatever mastermind I'm doing or running or pulling off, or whatever, at SteveJLarsen.com, and just click mastermind up at the top. It's in the top header. Click mastermind up at the top, and you'll be able to go to whatever mastermind is currently going on that I'm doing. Would love to have you guys. There are different prices, different price points, different things that you can go check out, whatever it is. I just got to bring up one other thing, one other thing. As I've been preparing to leave my job, as I've been preparing to leave ClickFunnels, I've surrounded myself with a lot of coaches, just to make sure that I keep the edge. One of the pieces of feedback that I've received is actually from Mandy Keene who's actually the Inner Circle coach who's amazing and has totally changed my life in ways that I still have a hard time expressing to her. I'm very thankful for her. What she taught me and actually what Russell personally taught me also, he and I were chatting and we were talking, and we were talking about the purpose of Inner Circle and the purpose of masterminds. Mandy separately was also talking about this, also. Russell has his own mastermind for many purposes. One of them is so that he can stay up to date with all the other industries and what's going on and all those things, so he knows how funnels will work in those different areas, things like that. That totally makes sense. The money, yeah, I mean the money's nice, but that's not really the real, real reason. The real, real reason is to keep him sharp. Then he'll attend these extremely high-ticket masterminds, these 100K masterminds in order to attend. $100,000 just to go to the mastermind, with these extremely high, A players. You can imagine the kind of goodies that go into there. The only thing I'm bringing this up for is so that you understand that if you're not collaborating actively and you're not actively your ideas, the idea is already on the way to dying. In my opinion, going to masterminds and being active in them and contributing your face off, it's one of the fastest, best accelerants I have ever, ever, ever seen, or ever witness ever. I think I could say ever a few more times. Ever, ever, ever, ever... It's because of all those things, not just the personal growth of the person explodes. Obviously the business does. The connections do. Hey, I know a guy who can hook you up with X, Y, and Z over here. The connections in the room, the ideas in the room for both your offer, or the marketing message, or the litmus test of the people who are sitting in there. People who are offering their connections. People are offering things that they've taken time and money to build on their own in order to contribute because they all understand the law. The law is if you give the ideas away, yours explode and expand in ways you could have never done on your own. People know that when they're regular, habitual mastermind attenders. I invite you to come. If it's not mine, I don't care. Choose one. I would love it if you came to mine, but my gosh, choose. Just attend. Go to one. You will be shocked by what happens. If you're like, "I don't know which ones exist out there." Just start looking around or come to mine, or go to someone's. I guarantee if you go to Google and start looking around, or any guru, gosh, just start asking around, and you'll find one. Anyway, hey, so if you want to do whatever one I'm currently running or putting on or about to go to or whatever it is, I'm just going to be putting at SteveJLarsen.com, and you can click mastermind up on the top. The next one is actually here in just a few weeks, which I'm very excited about. Anyways, guys, appreciate it. Go collaborate like crazy. Share, share, share, and give your ideas away, and you'll be shocked at how much, A, they grow but B, no one steals them, because no one can truly replicate you. Anyway, talk to you later. 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 funnels for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today.
Steve Larsen: Hey, what's going on everyone. This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Secret MLM Hacks Radio. Here's the real mystery, how do real MLMers like us who didn't cheat and only bug family members and friends, who want to grow a profitable home-business, how do we recruit A-players into our downlines and create extra incomes, yet still have plenty of time for the rest of our lives? It's the blaring question and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Secret MLM Hacks Radio. All righty, it's ten o'clock right now. I'm honestly super tired, but there's so much caffeine still surging through my veins that I don't think I could go to sleep for a while anyway. Which honestly probably is not that like healthy, but anyway, I am excited to be here. I'm excited to share with you something I've been working on, that is finally ready, that is out there. No, it's not the course yet, the actual, everything is launching on January 4th, 2 PM Mountain Standard Time. If you want to get on the waiting list for that, there are 500 of you on there now, that's crazy, that's crazy to me. It's amazing the community that has already been forming around Secret MLM Hacks and what I call the Mavericks. You guys will learn more about that on the actual launch, which is awesome. The Mavericks are amazing and I'm excited for those of you who want to become one. It means something very specific. We've got our own little mantra and everything, it's awesome, it's fun stuff. It's very, very, very passionate community, which is very fun. I want to be around passionate people. I want to be around people who care about what's around them and what they're doing in their life. It's been fun to see how the community has been exploding, we're about to pass 10,000 downloads on this podcast, which is awesome. Which is really, really cool honestly, it's only a few months old. Then, man, I literally looked only maybe a week or two ago, and there's 400 people on the waiting list to check it out. Now there's almost 500, just underneath 500 barely. We'll probably cross it like tomorrow, which is crazy to me. I just can't even believe it. What it means to me is, okay now, let me flip into marketer mode. What it means to me is, I am validating through the market, the market is telling me that I'm hitting the head. I'm hitting the nail on the head, hitting the pin point straight on the head, which is awesome, okay, that helps me like crazy. Hey, I want to talk to you about something that's really, really important to me real quick, and that is publishing. A lot of you guys know obviously, I'm publishing right now, you're listening to me. I'm in your ear, I appreciate it, whatever you're doing. I don't know if you're at the gym, you're driving in the car or you're at the grocery store or whatever it is, thanks so much, I really appreciate that. The power of publishing is amazing, and I know I've talked about it before on this podcast, but I just wanted to talk about it again real quick. Specifically, okay what I've done is I've gone and I've created some funnels, some internal funnels that help manage my internal processes. These internal processes are amazing, because they help save me time and help me focus solely on selling rather than running my business. That makes sense? As an MLMer, especially at the beginning, look, you are the sole driver. You are the only person that your success hangs on, does that makes sense? When you get cash coming in and I know a lot of you guys, especially a lot of you guys who've been reaching out to me, you guys have huge downlines already, massive rock stars, which is awesome, very, very cool. You have cashflow to be able to go hire other people. You have cashflow to really go, and now if you're just starting out brand new, a lot of times it's going to be more challenging for you, I mean to be able to go hire other people or to whatever it is, right? You are the sole driver, you are the sole person. There's no other person that you can look to for why you may or may not be successful other than yourself, which comes with a curse and a blessing. You know what I mean? It comes with both a pro and con with that. Do you know the buck stops with you, there's no one else for you to look to, and I don't need to keep saying that. You obviously get that. What I do, now I have a team. I have people I hire. I have people that, because I'm in a different situation, I've been doing this for a while now. I mean I'm literally leaving my job over this right, which is happening in just a few days here, which is both exciting and nerve wracking with both pieces around it. A lot of people don't know though that before this job that I have now, before I actually was doing heavily a lot of internal processes related things. The things that I was doing and building, people would hire me to go improve their internal processes. When someone places an order online, how does it automatically get over to this person in support? How does it get over to fulfillment? How is it tracked? How is it checked off the list? You know, all those things, and so I heavily did those pieces for companies. They're inside of me, I already like efficiency and you can go overboard with it, but man, efficiency is amazing. What I do is, I build sales funnels obviously to sell stuff, but I also build funnels for internal management things. Kind of do this with me okay? There was this company that hired me to travel to these different states and I would film and I would create their internal processes, and I would go around. I was just trying to prove myself to the market at the time, okay, this was several years ago. It's crazy. That's probably almost four years ago now. That's nuts. It's not, maybe three anyway. What they would do is, I would go around and I would film and I would create these cool internal processes for these companies. My favorite was to work with people just like you, people who might most likely on their own/have a very small team, two, three, four, five people maybe at the most and go help set up the internal processes to help alleviate the business, alleviate the team. Especially alleviate the entrepreneur, whose main role is to go sell stuff. A marketer, salesman, entrepreneur, I don't care which call, it's the person in charge, their main role is to sell things. Your job, you are a salesman, okay and I know sometimes for whatever reason salesman has somewhat of a negative connotation to it, which is stupid. Sales makes the world go round and if everyone stops selling, our economies they all die immediately. Like be proud to be a salesman. It is in my mind besides parenthood, it's like the most prestigious career path on the planet. You should be proud to be a salesperson, okay, sales is amazing. Everyone sells, no matter if you've never sold anything for money before, you've certainly sold to the people on whether or not they go to this movie or that movie, that restaurant or this restaurant, get this pair of shoes or that shirt. Okay, everyone has sold no matter where you are. Selling is part of life, and so you are a salesman, and so your main role is to sell. I want you think real quick and start thinking through and say, self, what are the tasks that are taking up my time that are not sales related? If something does not actually contribute to your bottom line, why are you doing it? Okay, and those are questions that I constantly come up with and I go like, oh, questions that I ask myself and I constantly get new answers. I'm like, oh my gosh, look, I'm spending too much time doing X, Y and Z. Oh man, which one of those can I automate? Which one of those can I start and actually start putting some automation behind it? That's when I automate stuff, and so what I've done is, I went and I have been automating this internal process that I have been spending a lot of time on. Although I have, I think I've only ever had one other person on this podcast so far. I actually have a second show and I love interviewing people. I love diving deep into their sales processes or these funnels or sales flows or whatever you call them, whatever you want to call them. I want to see how people are selling in their businesses, and I want to see what offers are working with them and I want to see where the traffic is coming from. I want to see, I like that stuff, I want to know where those things are. I want to know who is doing what and who's killing it. It's the same thing with this podcast. It's just, the main purpose of this podcast so far, this first few episodes has been all about me documenting the journey of me creating the product that is launching on January 4th. We're hard at work. We're putting all sorts of stuff, cool stuff together. We've got the workbook together. I've been creating this cool, there's a lot of awesome stuff here and I want to tell you more about it in future episodes. The main point of this episode though, is I want you to know that, what I've done is, I've taken a step back, just like you should too and ask yourself, "Oh my gosh, what keeps me from the act and role that I have of salesman, right of revenue driver?" I'm not getting sidetracked with logo, I'm not getting sidetracked with if I have an office space, who cares. Do it on your couch for a while, it doesn't matter, and eventually just go talk to people. Start thinking through those things, what are the tasks? What are the things that I am distracting myself with, the things that I am saying to myself, "Oh, this is more important, because selling for me is uncomfortable," and you go and you start. This might be a little bit unpleasant, this might be a little unpleasant okay, to get real with yourself. Get honest with yourself. What is it that keeps you from selling? What is it that keeps you from pushing your MLM out there? What keeps you from recruiting another person? What keeps you from, what keeps you from basically working towards your own retirement early? Okay? How much, what is that worth to you? You make a list of what those things are, a real list, okay, not what you think I want to see or hear or someone else wants to see or hear. What you know that you're supposed to be doing next. What is keeping you from doing those things, and write that on one side of the paper. The other side of the paper write down like the one or two things that you know you're supposed to be doing. What's distracting you, and on the other side of this paper, what are the things that are actually that you're supposed to be doing. Distractions and then real, real tasks. I will tell you that number one on the right side should be revenue. It should be sales. That's what I've been doing, is I went back and I started thinking to like, what are all the things that are keeping me from selling? Honestly, it's this internal process that I go through and I love it, but it's different literally every single time. There's no systemize ways that I've set up yet to be able to handle this scenario, and that is, with the way I handle my interviews. I love interviewing people on the podcast, I love when people ask they get interviewed on my podcast. I'm about to do a whole bunch more on this podcast. It's not a pitch fest, it is an opportunity for people to share how the strategies they're using to recruit or to sell the products or that kind of thing. It's not, there will be zero name dropping of someone's actual MLM that they're a part of. That's not the purpose, that's not the goal of this podcast. It is literally just to share strategies with you, so you know other cool ways that other people are recruiting besides the whole friend and family trap. Which again, I know if you love that, that's awesome. It's great for you, but I hate that, and I am not actually that amazing face to face with people. I would rather not talk face to face with people about this stuff, so I found other ways to do it, which is the purpose of this podcast to show you what I've been actually doing. Interviews, I love interviewing people. What I've done is, the problem is that every time someone asks to get interviewed on the show, which is a whole bunch that we'll be coming up in the future. Or when someone asks to interview me, it's always different. The process is always different. Literally every single time, they might ask through Facebook, they might text me and find my phone number somewhere, they might email me, they might find my phone number. There's been some weird ways people have found some stuff, and I'm not sure whether or not to be flattered by their persistence or kind of creeped out. What I've done is, I've systemized it and I've put a process in place that replaces me, right, that replaces the stuff that I continue to do over and over and over and over. I shouldn't be distracting myself, I should be mostly focused on sales like you. Here's what I've done, and I'm going to draw it out here while I'm describing it, so that I make sure I put all the pieces together. If you go to secretmlmhacksradio.com, secretmlmhacksradio.com, it's the same place that the outro talks about my little call to action, saying that I'll help you and help your team, train your team on more ways to actually recruit people, which is awesome. I get a lot of great feedback from that course, but it's free. It's got the MLM Masters pack. You can also ask a question to me, that I like to place on the show. I haven't done one of those in a while either, I should probably, I know there's a few questions that I got to catch up on. If you go to secretmlmhacksradio.com and on the top click 'Get Interviewed', what it'll do is, it'll take you to a page that's basically a three step process on a single page. Section one asks you just for basic contact information. It says, "Hey, what's your name, email address, what's your Facebook ID?" Of course, I look people up before I interview them. I am very protective of my audience. I'm very protective of you guys. I vet people really hard both myself and a VA, okay? There's a vetting process. I only want the best of the best of the best, or someone who's very passionate to come on the show. Or someone who has a story or someone who's like, "Hey, I've got this cool story," whereas kind of the rags to riches, around rising above, that kind of stuff. You know what I mean? What's inspiring to the rest of the group, the rest of the community, those are the kinds of things I'm looking for, right, or some cool strategy found or some cool, whatever it is. Whatever you want to share, but it's a chance for you to be set on a pedestal. Honestly, the episodes are getting downloaded, I'm getting anywhere from one to 200 downloads a day right now, on this podcast, which is awesome for a completely organic, only a couple months old. That's awesome you guys, thank you very much, I appreciate that. What it'll ask you, again, go to secretmlmhacksradio.com if you want to get interviewed. I guess that's my call of action to you, that's my subtle, totally non-subtle plug right there. If you go to secretmlmhacksradio.com, click on the top 'Get Interviewed'. The first thing it asks you, and so I built this whole thing yesterday actually. The first thing it asks you is, "Hey, name, email, Facebook ID," all those kind of stuff, Skype ID, because that's usually where I do my interviews. Then when you click Next Step, there's like this cool show hide element and it shows the next section. It's the same page, you don't actually leave the page ever. All it does is hide the first section and show the second section, and then it asks things like, "Hey, what do you want to share? What are the things that you'd be passionate about, talking about? Are you okay if I put your face in different places? Are you okay if I spend ad dollars in the future with our interview and kind of push you over the place? Can I repurposed and syndicate the content?" Stuff like that. Then the third thing it asks you is, "Hey, what's one like massive value bomb you'd love to share with the community in order to provide value?" Please understand this is not a pitch fest, it's not X, Y and Z. It's not are you okay with that, and it goes through. Anyway, that's kind of it. When they click Submit, it automatically through something called Zapier, it automatically sends all that data to a spreadsheet in Google sheets. It automatically emails the person who just submitted it, and it automatically notifies my assistant that a new submission has been placed, so she can go through and do the initial kind of vetting walk through process. Then, if we both give the thumbs up, then she sends over a link, where you can go and choose a time from my calendar to jump on and do an interview call and come share your cool thing. That's kind of it. I'm super stoked about it. The next page that takes you over to, that's all the animation in the back and the next page it takes you over to the thank you page. It's like, "Hey, look, if you, thanks for, you know want to get on my show. If you want me to get on yours, click right here," and it kind of brings them through a similar process. It's kind of like this cool loop that I created. The whole reason I did it, was to automate a process that I have been finding challenging for me to handle. So many guys are going to be thinking like, "Steven, I don't love funnels the way you do. I'm not a total geek, nerd like you are. I don't have a pocket protector like you probably do." I don't by the way, but if anyone wants to send me one, I'm all down. I'm just kidding. Hey, I totally get that, and it's totally fine. Luckily for you there are other nerds like me who are looking for people like you, who want to set that up for other people and maybe this is something that I should make available with the current product that's coming out on June, oh sorry January 4th. Anyway, no matter what it is though, so you don't always need tech, you don't always need X, Y, and Z. I'm not a coder or a programmer, and it always shocks kind of people I think when I say that, but I'm not. I don't know how to do any of that stuff, and so I've pulled this stuff off without knowing how to do that stuff. That should be somewhat alleviating to you. Yes, I spend a lot of time around technology, but this doesn't need to be something crazy. No matter what it is, just systematize more areas of your life. If there are things that you are finding that you're doing over and over and over and over again, that don't actually contribute to your bottom line, why are you doing them? Okay, think through why are you doing them? Do you really have to or is it a distraction? Is there something that you're trying to get yourself to, you're trying to convince yourself, oh my gosh, like if I just do this one thing, if I just read this extra book, if I just answer this other email that has nothing to do with the sale, I'm going to be successful with it. That's not true at all. You must be spending as much time as possible, especially in the beginning, in the act of selling, which for a lot of people sometimes means discomfort. Think through yourself, think through what are those things. What are those things that are distracting me and can I systematize any of them? Is there something that, this has more to do with setting up kind of internal processes and more of the business internally for you. I get that. This is an MLM podcast and I get that, but it's so very much applies to you, whether you are new or you are very seasoned and have a massive downline. What are the things that are distracting you from the sale? Can you automate them? That's all this episode is about, man I'm super stocked so I guess that's kind of my un-shameful plug too. If you're wanting to jump on, go ahead and go to Secret MLM Hacks Radio and click on 'Get Interviewed' over the top. Anyways guys, and the same is true otherwise the other way around. If you're wanting me to get interviewed, if you want to interview me, you go to SteveJLarsen.com. It's very similar process click up on the top, it says 'Interview Me'. Anyways guys, that's it. I guess that's my soft pitch for absolutely no money. All right guys, hope you're doing great. I'll talk to you later, bye. Hey, thanks for listening. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback for me. Do you have a question you want answered live on this show, go to secretmlmhacksradio.com to submit your question and download your free MLM Masters pack.
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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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... Click Funnels is growing so fast. It's growing so incredibly fast. We're actually just trying to keep up. We've 3X'd, two years in a row. We're on track to do the same thing again this year. By the way, just so you know, that kind of thing doesn't really happen. We're extremely unique as a company, Click Funnels is. 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 legitimately am taking four people, but I already have one gone. I'm building for my dad right now. His is almost done and I'm going to share behind the scenes of that here soon, just so you guys can learn what we did. It's kind of cool. It's very clever. 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'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. 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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