Podcasts about then russell

“We were idiots to think those old dudes could help us in the first place." For those who cherish Disney, worship at the altar of Spielberg, love nothing more than immersing themselves into the world of Aardman, let us introduce you to Not Just For Kids. This is the podcast that revisits the films we cherished growing up, be they family films or something we maybe shouldn't have been watching. Host Russell Bailey concludes his journey through the works of Studio Ghibli. This week Petros, the host of Caged In, joins for one last deep dive, to discuss Isao Takahata's Pom Poko. Then Russell reviews Earwig and the Witch and gives his top five Ghibli films. Email us: notjustforkidspodcast@gmail.com Tweet or Instagram us: @adultstoopod Check out Caged In podcast: https://linktr.ee/cagedinpod And check out our new Patreon channel: https://www.patreon.com/notjustforkids

After a brief introduction, Robert takes a moment to marvel at the sheer number of Volkswagens that were produced (1:14) before Russell dives into the unexpected history of the 'people's car'...specifically the Beetle (3:02). Then Robert asks Russell to drill into the history of Volkwagen after the British involvement following WW2 with a man named Heinz Nordhoff (7:19) and VW's efforts to go international and the difficulties in sharing the Beetle's new style with other cultures (8:50). Then Russell examines the complex shared history of Porsche and Volkswagen and how the companies have continued their relationship to the present day (10:49). Before taking a short break, Robert asks Russell for his advice on the most collectible Volkswagens (13:07). Robert takes a brief detour to discuss the more obscure makes and models created by Volkswagen--like the Karmann Ghia (15:57) before steering the conversation back to the Volkswagen's arrival in America (18:41) and the creation and impact of the VW Bus (22:52). To conclude, the two men speculate on the future of the Beetle and Bus designs in Volkwagen's legacy (27:36). Get Russell's book: https://www.amazon.com/Volkswagen-Beetles-Buses-Smaller-Smarter/dp/0760367663 (Due to some technical difficulties in connecting across continents, there are some audio glitches at certain points in the recording that could not be removed.) LISTEN TO RELATED EPISODES: Brian Howard and Automobile Conservation https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/38-brian-howard-and-automobile-conservation/id1485928924?i=1000497743682 Diane Parker and the Historic Vehicle Association https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/39-diane-parker-and-the-historic-vehicle-association/id1485928924?i=1000498776283 Freeman Thomas: Part 1 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/21-freeman-thomas-part-1/id1485928924?i=1000482838944  ------------------ Learn More: Cars That Matter Follow Us: Instagram | Facebook | Twitter Hosted by: Robert Ross Produced and Edited by: Chris Porter Theme Music by: Celleste and Eric Dick A CurtCo Media production See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The guys do a little bit of investigative work on this episode of the Tolerable Nausea Podcast. Listen in as they talk about being unlovable in high school, preferred gay lifestyles, the biggest members in Hollywood and a clever Valentine's Day gift. Then Russell considers becoming the Internet's next big cam girl. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Questions? Comments? Come and be on the show, contact us at tolerablenausea@gmail.com

Russell Holly, Jennifer Locke, and Carli Velocci cover the week's gaming news, including about a million announcements from Nintendo. Then Russell and Jen speak with Jez Corden of Windows Central about Gears of War, Monster Hunter, and the future of ray tracing graphics.

Russell Holly, Jennifer Locke, and Carli Velocci cover the week's gaming news, including about a million announcements from Nintendo. Then Russell and Jen speak with Jez Corden of Windows Central about Gears of War, Monster Hunter, and the future of ray tracing graphics.

Tips to Becoming an Exceptional Board Member with Jeb Banner As the CEO and a Founder of Boardable, Jeb Banner is passionate about community nonprofits, entrepreneurship, and more. He also founded SmallBox, a creative agency for mission-driven organizations, and is co-founder of The Speak Easy and founder of Musical Family Tree, both 501(c)(3) nonprofits.   Interview Transcript Jeb Banner: More and more. I was running another business at the time, which worked mostly with nonprofits called SmallBox, a creative agency here in Indy. As we raised some money and as the business turned off, I shifted from SmallBox to Boardable in the course of 2017. I went full-time in 2018. My wife actually took over the agency and runs that now. We are all in the same building in Indianapolis here in the old library. We still get to work together, but different floors. Hugh Ballou: Awesome. Jeb, we write a plan, set some goals, and we give it to the board. It's all a done deal. The board embraces it. What is your experience with boards? Jeb: Boards are busy. Boards are over-committed. Board members are often serving on multiple boards. They are spread thin. This is one of the challenges we want to solve in the product, eventually building out a talent marketplace on Boardable's platform to give boards access to a wider pool of talent. This is a real challenge. These great people who serve on boards often get called to serve on other boards. When they show up, they're often reading the material at the Stop sign, on the drive in, in the parking lot, during the meeting. They're not always prepared. Board members, as much as they really want to give everything they can, they don't really have the time to do it because they're spread so thin. Nonprofits struggle to hold board members accountable because they don't feel comfortable asking them to follow through in a way they should sometimes, or really do the role they need to do in the organization because they're volunteers. It's hard to make demands of a volunteer. A lot of what we're trying to do is build into the product ways for those board members to be nudged toward the right behaviors. Hugh: Well, this is fascinating. Russell, you worked with a nonprofit Indian reservation for many years. Are you hearing some things jump out about boards that you'd like to probe? Russell Dennis: Communication is probably the biggest challenge that board leaders and boards have. We had the challenge up there where I was working of geography working against us. Our board members were scattered over an area that was about the size of Rhode Island and Connecticut combined in a county called Aroostook. Our council members, the government body, or board if you will, would travel from long distances, 60-65 miles some of them, to attend the meeting. We had bi-weekly meetings. In northern Maine, weather is an issue. Being able to communicate is pretty tough. There is more technology available for that. There is challenges in conducting board meetings and staying in touch. Yes, I agree that getting things done can be tough. It can be pretty tricky. A lot of times, when folks like you, entrepreneurs and consultants, people have problems that drive them bananas, that keep them awake. What were some of the key things that were driving you crazy that you thought you had to fix, that motivated you and inspired you to develop a platform to help board members operate an organization more smoothly? Jeb: I think the #1 thing is communication. What you just said there is true. Keeping up that communication between meetings. Doing it in a way that meets people where they are. Everybody has their own style. Some people like to text, some like to email, and some like phone calls. You have people at different technology levels, too. The boards I was running had less of that challenge. Boards I sit on now, that is one of the challenges they have. The #1 headache I experienced as a board chair was centralizing everything. So much was going into my inbox, like the bylaws would be attached to an email from two years ago. Where was the bylaws? There is no central repository. If somebody rolled off the board, their inbox rolled off the board with them. All that communication, all those documents they may have been working on just vanishes. That is a real problem with boards. There is no continuity if you are using those kinds of tools. They are not built for that. They are built for immediacy. That centralization was pain point #1. After that comes the communication pain point. Having a place where everything flows. If you start a discussion in Boardable, it goes into their inbox and phones. It responds, and it goes back in. It's always back in the system. That is a real headache. The third thing we thought about was it has to be super easy to use. It has to be simple. If you give a board member a tool they can't use, if they can't log in, if they can't make sense of it, it's worthless. It can do all the things in the world, but it's worthless. As we have gotten into it further, we think about it a lot more around engagement. We have different dimensions of engagement we think about as well. We can chat about that later. The initial problems were centralization, communication, and simplification. Hugh: Boardable.com. That's quite an impressive site. We have a couple folks I want to shout out to. Don Ward, who is in Orlando, Florida. He is the president of the CEO clubs in central Florida. Has groups that talk about leadership, business development, and nonprofits. He said, “Board members need to be trained. They think their input and power is far more than it was ever supposed to be. What if…” How would you respond to that, Jeb? Jeb: I think setting and managing expectations with a board member, and that is part of that training, around what their role and responsibility is on the board. Different boards have different levels of responsibility to the organization. Some boards really do have a high level. Fiduciary responsibility in most cases. There are real consequences to their decisions. They often don't understand that. They don't understand they are playing with fire, if you will. This is not a practice. Other boards are more advisory, where they are just giving input. Defining that role, and saying to the board member, “Hey, this is what we expect of you. This is your lane.” And being clear about that up front through board training, onboarding, mentorship—giving them a mentor to work with on the board—is a missed opportunity. Based on our research, two thirds to three fourths fail to do any onboarding or training. Then you have a board member that doesn't know what is expected of them, so they run wild. I agree with that comment. I think board members, not maliciously, they don't just know their role, so they do what they think they need to do. Hugh: You're so right. Without clear expectations, leaders are actually setting up conflict. People don't know where to- They can't color inside the lines because they don't know where the lines are. Jeb: That's right. I think a lot of times, leaders are timid about this. They are uncomfortable having that conversation. They are uncomfortable telling that powerful donor that has joined the board, “Don't do this.” They have trouble giving them those lines because they are writing checks in some cases, or they are influential. They struggle with that accountability and that clarity. Hugh: That's a big deal. I hear leaders say, “I can't correct them because they are volunteers. They're giving their time.” I served megachurches for 40 years. I had plenty of opportunities to fire volunteers. Sometimes they were happy about it. Most of the time, they were happy about it because they knew it wasn't a good fit. Actually, I got to a place where we eliminated the word “volunteer” because a lot of the language, like “nonprofit,” which is a lie, and “volunteer,” which is dumbing down, some of the language we use actually contributes to the lower functioning. In the church, we created members of the ministry. It was a leadership position. In my symphony, I am the president of the symphony here, we are on the road to creating a servant leader model, where people have a track, and they lead in the model here. There is a whole lot of things that we set up that we unintentionally set up problems. Talk about this- There is a fear of conflict. People want to step away from it, which fosters it. Making course corrections doesn't mean you have to tell people they are wrong. Talk about that interaction. That is a big deal, I think. Jeb: I often think- Are you familiar with Patrick Lencioni, the author? Hugh: Five Dysfunctions… Jeb: Five Dysfunctions of a Team. You look at that pyramid. You have to have that trust in order to have conflict, which gets into commitment, which leads to accountability to reinforce it, which outputs results. To have that alignment there, you have to start with trust. Making sure that board member is part- Trust is being part of a team, feeling like they are safe to step up. They can talk about their concerns. They feel they are in a safe space to speak their mind. It's very hard to engender that without some of that teambuilding work that you need to do with boards. There is some socialization to that. I use a design thinking framework when I work with boards to do small group activities to push conversations and connections so that people feel like they know each other and there is a foundation of trust so they can start to move in that conflict. Conflict is critical. You need to have conflict on a board. Healthy, productive conflict. Not political drama-based conflict, but real conflict where people really care about things. Hugh: it's a sign of energy, isn't it? Jeb: It's a sign of life. If you don't have it, you have a problem. If everybody is sitting there going, “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” you have a dysfunctional board. It may not look like it, but it's dysfunctional. Hugh: The only place I have seen where there is no conflict is a cemetery. Jeb: There is conflict in the earth between the body and the ground, I'll tell you that much. Hugh: Oh man. Another watching on Facebook is Don Green, who is in Wise, Virginia. Don Green is the executive director of a nonprofit called The Napoleon Hill Foundation. Don is sending his thank you because this is useful information. Russell, do you want to weigh in on this leader making course corrections? I think this is a bigger topic than most people realize. Russell: Running a nonprofit or an organization is just like flying a plane. When you get into a plane, your pilot takes off, and they are flying along. They are off course the vast majority of the time. They spend the whole time course-correcting. You know where you're leaving from, and you know where you're going, but you make a lot of adjustments along the way. Running an organization is a lot like that. That is the thing. I had somebody say to me one time. I was attending a church many years ago back home. These guys are all nice. One of the deacons said, “If you like everybody you've met here, you haven't been to enough services.” There is going to be that conflict from time to time. It's important to be able to come back together at the end of that day and agree on the common goal. How you get there could be an interesting dynamic. If everybody was the same, people would get bored and walk away. That dynamic tension is what makes the work exciting. Jeb: Absolutely. Hugh: You don't want a bunch of yes people, do you? Russell: No, it would be very dull. Hugh: Also, we create a culture that is the opposite, where people are afraid of standing out and saying their mind. The real meeting happens in the parking lot. “So yeah, I knew what was going on in there, but here is what I think.” Triangling going on. Jeb, let's forecast. What does a really great board look like? We were talking about the exceptional board member. Either the board as a whole or a board member. Tell us what that looks like from your perspective. Jeb: I think there are a few dimensions to this. You have the composition of the board itself. The board should be somewhat reflective, not entirely one-to-one of the people it's serving, but somewhat reflective so there is an empathetic connection to the service being provided. Then I think there should be diversity of age, race, gender. It needs to bring in different perspectives. I don't have an exact formula for that, but a healthy board has a level of diversity there. Getting into the roles of the board. You look at that. We need someone who has a legal background, depending on the organization, a finance background, a marketing background. It's important to have that composition as well. Then you look at the actual activity of the board. That's where I think about engagement. I think about seven dimensions of engagement. Preparation for a board meeting. Are they preparing? Are they reading the materials? Are they showing up to the meetings? Are they following through on what they said they would do? Are they volunteering, getting involved in the organization so they feel the impact of the work? Are they advocating on behalf of the organization? Are they fundraising? Helping raise money. Are they donating? Writing the checks. Looking across those seven dimensions, and then looking at those other areas, I think that then you need leadership. That is the last ingredient. To make sure you have that foundation of safety and trust for conflict, which leads to a healthy dialogue and the ability of that board to really, truly govern the organization. Russell: Our friend Dr. David Gruder develops a lot of tools around that for people to talk to one another. There are some other resources out there like Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone and Bruce Patten. It's important to be able to do that. What it boils down to is being genuine and authentic. You're communicating in respectable ways. What are some of the tools you have provided to help board members do that in organizations you work with? Jeb: I'm familiar with Crucial Conversations. Is that a similar framework to what you're talking about? Russell: Yes, they are different. Jeb: Crucial Conversations is wonderful training. I have done that a couple times. I think that's great training. It's a little extensive for a full board to go through. In my experience, I have a background in design thinking. It's a framework that people-centered. It's empathy-based. It's all about starting with the problem. Trying to create a consensus around what the problem is, not what the solution is. There is a lot of different exercises that come from that, different ways that you can facilitate whole and small group exercises. You can do research. There is a whole toolkit that my previous company SmallBox used in our work with nonprofits and boards. For instance, organizational values, which is a part of what the board needs to do. They need to be a part of that values conversation. Mission, vision, those conversations as well. Then you get into strategic planning. There are tools around that from the design thinking background that are helpful for that. Working with the United Way board here in town, we recently redesigned their entire board governance approach. It started with working in small groups to bring in ideas and socialize ideas with the larger board to then refine those, and take those back to leadership, and put them into a plan. I follow that approach, which is more organic. I do think there is good tools out there. My background and training is more in that design thinking framework, which is more custom to the situation. Russell: Custom solution is different. Everyone is different. Everyone on the board is different. What are some challenges in making a board run efficiently that you've seen across various types of organizations, some of the universal ones? Jeb: Meetings. Time management. Managing the agenda, managing the conversations, making sure that people are staying on topic. You don't have people grandstanding. Every board has someone who loves to hear themselves talk. There have been times where it's been me. I love to hear myself talk. But having the chair or the executive director, it's best when it's the chair, be an active facilitator and have some facilitation training, so they learn how to bring in others, make sure everyone has that safe space to be heard. I think that's critical in a productive board experience. Everything about the board is that meeting. Like you said, the parking lot conversations, that starts to happen a lot when the dysfunction of that meeting deepens. All of that stuff ripples out. You have phone calls and emails. It cascades when that meeting is ineffective. Hugh: I'm a conductor. Especially the better they are, every ensemble rehearses for every performance. We don't rehearse. Some of the stuff you're talking about is how we get better at what we do. In a sense, rehearsals, I'd like to share with you sometime later. Meetings are the #1 killer of teams. I have a whole piece that says the agenda is the killer of productivity. Agendas don't use agendas for rehearsals; we use deliverables. We can accomplish. Goals for the session. We focus on outcomes. That is a reframing. I see everything as a rehearsal. I'm sorry. Jeb: Sure, I can relate to that. Hugh: There are so many things you've hit on that are big-deal things that we have to be selective here. I want to go back to this board governance. Russell, he threw a zinger in there that had fire in the name. Did you hear that? About governance and board members. Jeb: Playing with fire. Russell: Playing with fire, yeah. Hugh: Expand on that a little bit. Not having ONC insurance, DNC insurance, Arizona missions not having- Russell: Directors and offices liability insurance policies. It's critical to protect yourself and to keep the structures separate. Compliance is a big deal when it comes to running these organizations. There is a lot of documentation that is required. Have you found that boards warm up to the challenge of keeping all of that in order? Jeb: Absolutely. I just recently joined a board. A week later, the board resigned, not because I joined the board, but because of issues in the organization. I was the last board member standing. This was an experience. Part of it was because the insurance had not been taken care of. There were other issues and lapse that were not being brought to the board's attention. It was a two-way street. The leadership in the organization wasn't doing its job, but neither was the board. The board needs to push to get clarity on those things. Part of why that happened is they did push. It was a bit of a mess. I found myself moving into a chair role when I expected to be a board member, and having to help the organization, and still now, get back up on its feet. It's been a crash course in a lot of the things we're talking about. When I'm talking about playing with fire, I am speaking from experience. That's fire. You're talking about vehicle insurance and transporting kids. You have to think about that stuff. The board is on the hook. The buck stops with the board. The board is the boss. I don't think board members really get that when they sign up. I don't think they really get that. I think they would take their jobs more seriously if they understood the consequences of not doing their jobs. I think that's a real failure in leadership because they're too timid about that conversation. Russell: That baptism by fire when I worked with the Micmac nation is the same baptism by fire you're talking about. In terms of documentation, there are so many things that have to be kept in one place. Does your platform help with that? Does it help to deal with governing documents and creating a space where people can collaborate and have these conversations? That is another common problem. I have my favorite tools I use to work with. I have different clients who like different tools, some of which I'm not crazy about. It's about getting things done, so I have learned to use a number of different things. That's not always conducive to good communication and keeping things working. Talk about if you could address the importance of organizing all of your compliance documents and processes. Jeb: That is what Boardable does. Thanks for the pitch there. The problem that we see with a lot of boards is that nothing is one place. When a new board member rolls on, they're forwarding them emails. The mess grows and expands. Having all documents, everything that you're doing in one place so that no matter what, you've got it right here on the app. You have your directory, your documents. You can call someone from here. You have your groups, agendas, minutes, and voting, everything you need in one place, your notifications, tasks, follow-up items. And you integrate with all those other tools. That is the key here. You have to integrate with Google Docs and Dropbox and Microsoft and calendars and emails because people won't stop using those tools. They shouldn't. They work. We have to meet them where they are. A lot of what we focus on is accepting the board experience as it is and coming alongside and bringing value and augmenting what they're doing. Hugh: What you don't know is the guy who comes knocking at the door from the IRS was Russell. He knows about compliance. He wants to see your corporate record book. I find many, if any, executives who understand what the function of the record book is and what should be in there. Is that part of your program as well? Jeb: Yes, it automatically organizes all those documents into folders. You can lock and control them depending on committee access. All those meetings are automatically archived historically. Who was in attendance? Who wasn't? You create a report that shows everything that happened. When the IRS does knock at the door, you can show them exactly what you did, how you voted. There is the agenda from that meeting, whatever you need to show them. Fortunately, I have not been audited yet. Hopefully that doesn't happen here soon. But when Russell does knock at my door, I'm confident at least with the organizations I'm involved with and our customers they'll be ready. Hugh: You're audit-ready. Jeb: I hope so. I'll ask my CFO and see if he has the answers. Hugh: Russell is on a good track here with compliance. I do think most are blind to this. That's why you got us on here. This sounds like valuable stuff, doesn't it, Russ? Russell: It is. As far as having processes, a lot of the problems revolve around people using a different language in addition the tools they think differently. There are certain things that have to be in place. if you can create a way where people have that common understanding and can access stuff. Brendan Burchard talks about creating different products, courses, approaching consulting, and he talks about tools. One of the things he says is if it's not easy to access, understand, and use, people aren't going to bother with it. Meetings get complicated. A tool like that, Hugh's publication on conducting a successful meeting, because it really breaks things down and makes it manageable. Jeb: Absolutely. If you can't use the tool, if you can't log in, if it's frustrating or confusing, give it 10, 15, maybe 30 seconds, and at that point, you are going back to what you know. This is where things get hard. The organization often caters to the board. They want the board to be taken care of. If the board says this isn't working for me, whatever it is, they will print out the packet. They will do whatever they need to do to help the board. It's good and bad. It's good to take care of your board. The board needs that information. I think it's also good sometimes that organization needs to push the board more than they do. Too often, they cater and capitulate to the board instead of pushing the board to do best practices in terms of how they want to communicate. They have to give them tools that are easy to use. That is super critical. Hugh: Jeb, let's take a case study. Is that okay? A real, live situation. I am the president of the board, the board chair, of the Lynchburg Symphony. We have 24 board members. A third rotate each year. It's a three-year gig. We have a moving and family situation, so we have 10 new members coming in. A week and a half from now, we are doing our strategy, some people would call it a retreat, but we are going to charge. We are not retreating. It's a work session, which is different from a board meeting. We have a planning session. I have highly skilled board members that are committee chairs of development, finance, events, and concert programs. We are mapping the future. Our proprietary strategy is called a solution map. Where do you want to be? How are you going to get there? it's the basic rubric of a strategic plan, but more nonprofit-friendly. We are doing our planning session. I already met with all the chairs and the new conductor. We are starting a new era with a new conductor. I am succeeding a president who put a lot of systems in place. I am inheriting a sound board and a sound organization, financially and structurally, and we are moving it up. What do you think is the most important things that I should do with incoming board members as we strategize on our work and integrating our work together as we plan for the next five years, and specifically the next year? Jeb: I think that the onboarding piece is critical. We talked about that earlier. Making sure they know what is expected of them and what their role is. I think that's important. Assigning them a board mentor is important as well if that is something you can do. That can give them navigational help on a peer level. The third thing is getting them a committee assignment as soon as possible. They need to feel like they have a role on the board. The board meeting, they will feel they are observers for a while. They may ask some questions, but they may not feel they have a really defined role. That onboarding, setting roles and responsibilities, getting them a mentor, getting them on a committee are three initial things you can do that will increase their engagement and make them feel like they are a part of something. That is the initial phase. Hugh: Russell, I did all of those. Jeb: Good job! Russell: Yes, you did. Building a board book. When people go through our leadership symposium, it's a board book. It lays out a big-picture overview of some things you do. He has other materials he's built that could actually take leaders through a reflective process. Having what we call a board book has the information that people need. Setting up some training around that and having them go through that, as well as having a mentor, is great. As you are bringing somebody on board, you want to find out what lights their fire. What is something they just can't wait to get out of bed to do? They are going to have some ownership around that. They will have ideas around that. Good leaders build better leaders. You set the parameters for success, and you turn them loose and let them run with it. Jeb: That's a great point. Tapping into what they're passionate about is critical. That is often a conversation before they join the board, but it can be an ongoing conversation of what is the why. What is the why here? There has to be some alignment between their why and the organization's why. If that is missing, they're not going to be engaged. There will be misalignment. That leads to dysfunction, which can be challenging. Hugh: I like that word, “dysfunction.” Russell: Especially if they are effective and highly visible, everyone accepts Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny is running after them to get them on their board of directors. That's fine if they have the bandwidth to do it. What I have seen on occasion is they are not clear with what they want to do or accomplish. They're not sure what they want from the board members. Typically, they find people who they love and adore, who they're good friends with, who support them. They don't always take that inventory of exactly what they need, and can't always define that commitment. What are some of the things you have seen? How have you been able to address those types of issues? Jeb: In terms of aligning their commitment? Russell: And crafting a set of expectations. Jeb: To be honest, I haven't done that as much as I should have. The previous time, I was chairing two nonprofits I co-founded, and they were like start-ups. It was a bootstraps situation, where the founders became the board members. We added from there. With the board I am rejuvenating right now, we are in triage mode. We are trying to get up and running. With the larger board I serve on, the United Way board, they are much more intentional about this experience. It's been good to watch from that perspective. I have a financial commitment to the board I'm making, which is important. A lot of boards have that. The more mature and functional board, which this one certainly is, they know what they're doing, they're intentional. They have a full-time administrator working with the board. There are clear commitments. I sign things every year. They talk about it a lot. They have one-on-one sessions with me every year to talk about my giving, where I'm going with my life. How is United Way going to be a part of that? I have seen that be effective. I see it more with my customers, but I am speaking from my own experience. I have been more on the start-up side of boards. When a board is starting up, the start-up phase is different. You have the start-up, the growth, and the cruise. The cruise control one is where United Way is. It's healthy, big, knows what it's doing. Different dynamics, different needs. It changes as the board changes. Russell: A lot of tools we put together here at SynerVision address organizations at different stages. What I love about the model Hugh has created is it's perfect for somebody who is starting. If you can structure everything right, which isn't always the case, you're going to have fewer problems later. Hugh: Thank you for highlighting that. What I see, Jeb, is we do the people part of this. What's missing is all the stuff you highlighted. The plethora of emails that is a cancer. I remember when we didn't have email, when we didn't have the Internet, we didn't have cell phones or texting. We keep adding things, but we never take anything away. People are just bombarded. Sometimes they don't read anything. You've covered so many important topics here. Russell, you never saw this happen, but I have seen this happen. Board members come unprepared to a meeting. Russell: That happens? Jeb: I've never seen that happen. Russell: When did that start? Jeb: Shocking. Hugh: They're busy people. They leave a board meeting and get sucked into the vortex of life. The next thing they know, there is another meeting coming up at 6:00. What was I supposed to do? It's the engagement piece that keeps people tuned in between meetings. One of my missions in meetings is we teach people that we don't work at meetings, we work in between meetings. We check in. it's an accountability system. A planning session is different. A regular board meeting, we report on what we've done, and we define what we're going to do and look for those points of collaboration and collision that we want to work on. Speak about those topics. Jeb: You're totally right. It's the in-between that is so important. Board members think of their board services as simply the meeting. Here I am, I'm in the meeting. There are some boards where that is truly their role. That goes back to defining roles and responsibilities. If all they are doing is being advisory, or simply sitting there to listen and decide, that is one thing. A healthy board has projects and activities running in between meetings. To do that, there is a lot of management. You have to set that expectation up front of what kind of hours you are committing a month when you join this board. Very few boards have that conversation. They talk about the board meetings. They talk maybe about committees. Talking about the hours you will commit and spend. This is two or three hours a week, we expect you to come in for a meeting, etc. We redesigned the committees at United Way, and it has been a fascinating experience. We are moving more toward work groups. More ad hoc. Is this getting you excited? Hugh: Oh yeah. There is the old adage that committees are a place where good ideas go to die. Jeb: I respect that committees are still the primary vehicle for a lot of organizations and our customers. I think there are healthy committees. The idea of being more ad hoc subject matter experts that come together as needed around a problem to solve that problem. Those are being formed as needed. During board meetings, between board meetings. They are reporting back. You have a platform, whether it's Boardable or something else, where they are able to collaborate, share content documents. That creates visibility to others in the organization so that work is not entirely happening in a silo. That makes the work more effective. It multiplies that work. That move is a good one. It gives people something to do. I hate sitting in a committee meeting and feeling like I have nothing to do with what's being talked about. I want to feel like I have some skin in the game. Hugh: Absolutely. Russell, this is music to our ears, isn't it? Russell: This is great stuff. Solution sessions are great because you got to get in there, got to get it done. You don't have time to goof around. Having people with the right information. Understanding the roles and how everybody fits is communication. That is where things slip through the cracks, when somebody says, “I thought you were going to take care of that.” “Didn't we agree you would?” You end up in this back and forth. You definitely want to stay out of that. You want to stay out of finger-pointing as well. What you're doing is too important. Finger-pointing solves no problems. It keeps you away from course-correcting. Hugh: I love it. My meetings always end with an action plan. Who is going to do it? What is the action? To do what? Who is the champion? What is the deadline? It ends up with a communication board. What is the specific message somebody that is not here needs to know? Who was going to tell them? We don't think of those things. We sit around and talk about things to do. Everyone assumes the facilitator will do them. Man, it's been a lot of very helpful content here. What are board ambassadors? I want to ask you two questions. What are board ambassadors? There are groups, governance and financial oversight, which is your board of directors. The symphony has an advisory council. They are just what you said. We ask their advice. And we have advisors at large, people we call from time to time to give us advice. Those are the three sets of people we have connected. But the board of directors is fitting in to the role you are talking about, the group that is responsible for this organization. Are there other entities, besides committees or work groups or project teams, you find are helpful? Jeb: You have YP boards. They are good to create a feeder system for the main board. Young professional boards. They are that group of younger people in their career, in their 20s often, who are rising in their careers. We see that happening more and more with nonprofits. They have YP boards. They can pick from their boards as you see leadership emerge. I like that system. You see who shows up. You see who gets things done. That also gets that age diversity issue, which I think is a real problem with boards. A lot of boards struggle to get those younger board members. It's two things. The younger board members don't have awareness around the opportunity, and I think they are intimidated by it as well. The YP board is a good piece for that. Board ambassadors. That could be more on the emeritus side. Folks who have been on the board for a while, who are no longer in an active role but are still really important connectors in the community, and you want to keep them involved. That is one way to think about it. Perhaps you have a different thought on that term. I'm curious what you're thinking. Hugh: I love that. That's a vacuum in my thinking. We do see a lot of old white guys. We see way too much of that. I have changed the symphony board so far. The 11 days I'm in, it's already a different board. I had a good board to build on, so I'm not saying it was bad before. We are adding some of those elements of diversity. Russell, we have about three minutes for a short question before we go into our sponsor message and give Jeb his last word. Russell: We're talking about bringing youth in. I like the idea of what I call reverse mentoring, where there is this knowledge exchange between generations. I went to a United Veterans Committee Colorado meeting this morning. Lots of gray hair. Yes, the brown guys get gray hair, too. This whole notion of diversity, I had a marvelous week last week helping Carol Carter with GlobalMinded at Be the Solution conference here in Denver. The whole event was about diversity and inclusion. If people don't feel like they are a part of something, they won't participate. That is a serious topic. We have covered that. It might be time for us to do another diversity and inclusion panel, Hugh. That is very important. I am curious as to, and you have been on several boards, what has the composition of your board looked like? What did you need to do to help that along, or make any adjustments to make sure you had the bandwidth of ideas and energy? Jeb: Each board has been unique in this aspect. The Speakeasy was founded by a bunch of white guys. We had to be intentional about diversifying the member base. People who were members of the co-working space, along with the board. Not in a check the box way, but in a legitimate, how do we get real perspectives into this? How do we get women into this? I am proud of where the board is now. It's had three female executive directors in a row. It's had a diverse board consistently. In terms of the board I'm working with now, it's diverse as well. There is a lot of opportunity to improve here. It's tricky because I think that there aren't natural pathways for people in different demographics to explore board service. I think this is a real challenge, especially in certain populations in Indianapolis. There is no awareness around it whatsoever. We have a three-phase road map: board management, which is the logistical side of it; board engagement, which gets into all the things we talked about in terms of nudging behavior to people saying what they said they will do; and board talent, really trying to give a tool to boards to get that talent, a matrix to see what diversity they have now, what skills they have now. And a marketplace for them to connect with people. We market that marketplace to populations that don't currently think of board service. That is where we are taking the product. This speaks to my desire to create more opportunity for others. I feel like this system is rigged. There is an opportunity to use technology and marketing and content to bring others into it. A board role can be transformative in the life of a person. It can broaden their network and connections. It can open doors that wouldn't have been opened. It can lead to careers and opportunities that were not available to them before that role. To bring more of those roles to people of different backgrounds, not just of my background, but all kinds of backgrounds. I am a privileged person. I grew up with parents who volunteered with nonprofits. This is the culture I came from. It's what I know. To give this experience to others is where we see the company going. Hugh: Thank you on behalf of nonprofits for doing this. This work is so important. We will be having more conversations. Russell, I can smell some cross-support here, maybe more conversations about our alignment. We have things and you have things that would be better together. *Sponsored by Wordsprint* Jeb, give us the top traits of an effective board member. What thought do you want to leave us with? Then Russell will close us out. Jeb: The seven things I discussed earlier: 1) A board member is prepared for meetings. 2) They are showing up. 3) They are following through. 4) They're volunteering in the organization. 5) They're advocating on behalf of the organization. That ambassador piece. 6) They're helping with fundraising. 7) They're donating, writing a check themselves. Those are the seven dimensions that we look at to measure in our product. What was the other question? Hugh: What tip do you have for people? Jeb: I think my #1 tip to board leaders is if you are not comfortable having hard conversations, whether it's the difficult or crucial conversations, take some time to do some training. Learn how to have those conversations in a way that is productive. I believe the difference between a good and a great organization is a lot of hard conversations. That skillset is important to build as a leader. Russell: Jeb Banner, it's been a remarkable hour. Thank you so much for coming to share your wisdom with us. 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The 45 Minute Business Breakthrough Creating More Income with John Gies After more than two decades in corporate, John Gies heard a potential client say that $400,000 tax free was not worth his time. John knew then that he wanted to work where he could make a difference. Over the next several years he gained his Coach Certification, He has taught and coached organizations around the country and he now works with small business owners and non-profit organizations to help them create the income they need to thrive. John's personal live vision is a world where people are inspired to leverage their power and influence to contribute to a more sustainable and positive workplace.   Read the Interview [Due to a video issue, the beginning of interview is lost. Transcript begins when video was restored.] John Gies: A communication coach, that transitioned from- I see your face. Was there a question there?   Hugh Ballou: No, I love that story. Go ahead. I'm excited about that. John: When I left, what I wanted to do is I tried to look at other companies or other industries. The roads seemed to be closed. I said, What do I like doing? I love speaking in front of an audience. I love training and mentoring my teams. I love facilitating that conversation around the table where we've got different interests, maybe sales, operations, and technology trying to create a common vision, and trying to get to that with all those different points of view. I said, Why don't I become a coach and a trainer? I went to work with a company. I got a chance to do some teaching and coaching across North America and Europe around sales, sales training, presentation skills, negotiation skills. Hugh, I hate to sound stereotypical, but stereotypes do exist. The Brits were almost on time, the Germans were early all the time, the French and the Italians showed up when they wanted to show up. It was an interesting experience. The Americans unfortunately were the ones who said, “We're doing great. We don't need any help.” It was an interesting experience for me. Hugh: That's a stereotype, but it's sad, isn't it? John: It is. Yet it sounds something about us, right? Stereotypes are stereotypes in some cases. His name is going to escape me. Someone once said, “If you hear a cliché, look to the truth in the cliché. There is probably something in there that led to the cliché.” Hugh: Isn't that why they are clichés? John: Right. While I was working with them, when they had lots of clients, I was busy. When they didn't have clients, I wasn't busy, so I decided to embark on my own. Today, I work with organizations with what I call a wholehearted approach to business. It's not a name that you often think of when you think about business. But wholehearted is three pillars. There is the profit/revenue/money. I used to work with a nonprofit healthcare executive, who I will call Sister Mary. She said, “People come to me all the time and ask why we don't provide this for free.” Her response was, “If there is no money, there's no mission.” It's really making sure that we have the money to fulfill our mission. Then there is leadership. Self leadership starts. If we can't manage ourselves, we can't manage other people. Hey, Russell. Russell Dennis: Greetings. John: Then it's the impact we have. Same impact we have on our people, our clientele, our community, the environment, the whole thing. That's three pillars. Hugh: Russell, there is some background noise, so I muted you. You will have to unmute yourself when you come on. He is putting on his headset. John, I want to get those three points. Those went by fast. Let's capture those bullet points. John: There is profit. Whether we are in a nonprofit, a small business, or a big business, we can't fulfill our mission without money. People rely upon us to be here in the long haul. It's not just a dream to serve. We have to create the sustainability for our future. There is leadership. Leadership starts with self-leadership before we can lead others. I can share with you what I mean about that. When I think of one place that leadership is the weakest, it tends to be ourselves. The third pillar is impact. What impact are we having on our clients, customers, employees, communities, and stakeholders? I was really influenced by a book called Firms of Endearment. It's a good-to-great comparison of stakeholder organizations versus shareholder organizations. Stakeholders are employees, vendors, the community, the environment, and shareholders. They outperform the S&P by 16X. They outperform the good-to-great companies by a factor of 10X. This lasted even through the Great Recession we just went through. For me, it's how we take care of all the people in our organizations instead of just focusing on one limited subset of our stakeholders. Hugh: Absolutely. We teach those very same things. But it's good to have you on here because people don't listen to us. We're so much in sync with that. John Maxwell in his 21 irrefutable laws of leadership has the law of the lid. You hit the ceiling of the lid, and your organization can't progress any further than your ability to lead. That is true over and over. Our boards, our teams, our cultures are a reflection of our leadership. You may or may not know I am a musical conductor. What they see is what I get. What I practice in real life as a conductor works in the board room, works with the staff, works with the volunteers. It really doesn't matter where we're leading; the concepts are the same. Russell is coming in from a remote location. He was trying to find a connection last we spoke. Russell is the one who connected with you and suggested you be our guest today. I have looked over your website. It's good stuff with some nice design. I am impressed with what you do. Thanks to Russell for finding you and finding the synergy. One thing you said was about the mindset. Thinking about the profit, leadership, and impact, and the stakeholders. [Audio issue] Clergy, people like that. Maybe even major donors. If you want to get money, you want to make sure you demonstrate impact. We want to see a difference. [Video freeze] Did I lose you? I'm here. Talk about that a minute, and where that fits into your thinking, how people misperceive profit, how people misperceive leadership. Can you hear me? I think he's frozen. Maybe, we're having a technical issue today, folks. So maybe we'll get back together. John, he showed up over there. We seem to be having some technical issues. John, your video dropped out. There you are. Russell? Same neck of the woods as him. Is there an internet outage out there? Russell: I am downtown preparing for the GlobalMindED event. We have leaders here, global-minded. It's a nonprofit that provides services to help first-generation college students connect with employers. Very big event coming up here. Starting tomorrow. It will be running through Friday. That's where I'm at. Helping with that, looking to set up interviews with leaders and coverage of the event so we have things to talk about. Hopefully, John is back with us. He has done a lot of work. He started out with healthcare organizations and started seeing some leadership challenges around that. He has done a lot of work and worked with a lot of organizations here in the Denver area to deal with some of the bottlenecks you experience with leadership. When those bottlenecks are prevalent, you can run into issues with funding. He wrote a book about that. That is one thing I want to ask him about later and have folks get access to that. It's a very good book. Hugh: We did a teaser about the book. We haven't told anybody about it yet. John, before the technology devil came in here and ate up your feed, I was talking about the misconception of the word “profit” with nonprofits, and how boards have gotten into a negative groove. Do you want to talk about that a minute? Then I will hand it over to Russell, who is the one with the real tough questions. John: Great. Yeah. If I understand you, the question is profit versus nonprofit? It's interesting. Russell did this for a long time. There really is no difference. If there is no money, there is no mission. We have to generate enough profit, retained earnings, income, whatever you want to call it, so we can redistribute it. I often encounter both in the corporate world from healthcare providers who were nonprofit, and nonprofits I have volunteered with over the years, that money is not the big thing. It's all about service. It's all about serving the customer, the patients, our clientele. If you can't keep the lights on, you can't deliver any service. I feel like I'm rambling a bit. This is where my wholeheartedness comes from. If you look at the way businesses are being structured today, more and more of them are being structured to deliver a different kind of value than just the bottom line. There are benefit corporations. There are LLCs that are for-profits embedded within nonprofits. There is a whole host of ways we can use our work, I have air quotes up there, to do good in the world. I think it was Kahlil Gibran who said, “Work is love made visible.” Regardless of what we're doing, we should be able to bring love into the world, or wholeheartedness, even at a profit. Hugh: We generate income because we generate value. Russell has helpful observations and questions. I'm going to park for a minute and let him participate. Thank you, Russ for being here. I know it was a challenge getting on today. Russell: Thanks. It's good to be here. I know John is an amazing person. I am glad I met you. One of the things that you and I talked about over coffee was the notion of value, and how that is being redefined today. Folks that are running businesses to make a profit often talk in terms of value. It seems to be a word that nonprofit leaders haven't wrapped their arms around yet. Even if they do, some of the team may not be aware of what exactly is value. How do you ramp up those discussions when you are talking to nonprofit organizations in terms of speaking to value and what that means to the different audiences they serve? John: What a great question. Nonprofits deliver such value. Whether it's providing a roof over our heads, food and shelter. They look and say, “That's what we are giving to our clientele, people who need that value.” They're also delivering value to the donors and people who are fundraisers. I met with a young man who moved here from D.C. His whole background is in philanthropy. If I'm a donor, the example I was thinking through on this is do you remember Sally Struthers and the Feed the Children campaign from years ago? She would come on TV and see all these images of hungry children. We would make a donation. We got a letter from that child. We are in relationship to that child. Now there is this warm, fuzzy feeling of, I, as a donor, am getting real value from that donation in my heart. What happens for a lot of us today is we don't think about how we're delivering value to all of our stakeholders, be they fundraisers, donors, clientele, you have different kinds of value to each one of them. For a donor, one of the big questions donors all have is, “If I give you money, will it go to the end user, or will it go to administrative costs?” There are a whole host of people who are doing valuations and rankings around that. How can I pluck John's heartstring? How can I pluck Russell's heartstrings? A friend of mine had a daughter who came into the world with a lot of physical challenges. In Children's Hospital for years. Her mom was in and out. If I deliver a message to her that talks about children and supporting people while they are waiting for a child to come out of the hospital, that is delivering value to me because it sings and resonates with me. Does that make sense? Russell: That's the trick. That's the challenge a lot of for-purpose enterprises (as we prefer to call them, a term given to us by one of our guests). That is the challenge. You have multiple audiences. Value is not only something that has to be quantified in material terms. It's different for every audience. The way that we relate to each other is through stories. People are discovering that. The big question is what is your story? Different people have different metrics, depending on their perspective. How important is it to have ways to measure what is valuable? How do you help nonprofits navigate that when they have these multiple audiences? How do you help them navigate figuring out what the message is for each audience? John: Really good question. When I share measurements, I think to my friend Annette, who is a good evaluator, who does research to quantify numbers and cents. When you think about a sentence or a paragraph or a story, how do you measure the ROI? What is the equation? Actually, there is a lady by the name of Nancy Duarte, who has mapped a really good storyteller. She took Martin Luther King's “I Had a Dream” speech, and mapped the structure of the speech with its peaks and valleys to lead to the enrollment of the audience in his message. To answer your question, sometimes the impact is emotion. Even though we are driven by our spreadsheets in business, those are only to back up the emotional decisions we have already made. Working with a nonprofit, when we think about the donor, we have to think about what emotions we touch on. If I am talking to a philanthropist or a fund, like The Knight Foundation, what is the emotion or feeling I want them to feel about what they're going to do for us? When I am trying to pull people off the streets as clients into my organization, how do I want them to feel? What I find most of us do is we run, run, run. And we don't stop to think about the value. It's not always what we think it is. What I counsel my clients on is it's not putting food in someone's hands. It's answering a question about the concern of who is giving them the food. I'll give you an example. Most painting contractors think they are hired to paint the house. They will tell the consumer, “We do great painting.” The reality is, the consumer is thinking, I'd like to have my house painted, but how do I know that painter will be on time, done on time, and won't leave a mess? We have to answer the questions behind the question to call those, whether it's a donor, a fundraiser, the clientele, or the public because the public can be very strong advocates for our for-purpose organizations. Great word choice by the way. I'm bouncing a bit, but that changes the whole framework of how you think about the organization. There is the nonprofit and the for-purpose. There is a withdrawal and an engagement. Good choice of words there. Russell: I'd like to go back to the statement of people looking at how you spend the money. I think we have seen some perception problems with the structure of an organization. A lot of people want to write checks for programs, but they don't necessarily want to pay the nonprofit's rent. You have to have a structure to deliver a program. But if you are running the organization delivering the programs, you have to be efficient. You have to be good stewards of the resources entrusted to you. Talk about some of the things you do when working with organizations of any stature to navigate that. John: When you say stewardship, are you talking about attracting money? Are you talking about managing expenses? Russell: Taking care of the money entrusted to you. Making the best use of it and maximizing value with it. Taking good care of it. John: A great question. Years and years ago, this will surprise you. I ran into a nonprofit collection agency. This was an organization embedded within another organization. Their money was to support the organization they were embedded in. For them, they could have really good expenses and really nice cars and really great lifestyles, but a lot of that wasn't coming back to what was originally meant for. I contrast that with the man who I was telling you about earlier who sits on the board of a nonprofit. Someone came in and said, “We are getting ready to do our new benefits. We want to have a nine-month maternity leave. We want to have 35 days of PTO.” He said, “Wait a minute. How can we do that? That is stealing from our organization and our constituents.” The easy answer for you is the mindset. What are we really here to do? Are we here to serve, or are we here to take? My experience is the more we deliver into the world, the more we give, the more we receive in return without having to strive for that. The way I work with most of my customers is to help them attract the stakeholders they need. What prompted our conversation was this book, The 45 Minute Business Breakthrough. What that is about is to get leads. How do I get people who are interested in coming to my organization, whether it's a client or a donor? We will often think, They will find us. It's not who you know; it's who knows you. We have to craft a message that resonates with those people. Hugh: John, hold that book up again. Remember my age and mental condition. Tell us about the book, John. John: It's called The 45 Minute Business Breakthrough. It's how to find revenue for your business in 45 minutes. Hugh: 45 minutes? John: Yes. Hugh: What takes so long? That's pretty fast. That got my attention. John: It's simple. Think about the real estate agent who tells you, “I sell real estate, commercial and residential, up and down the range.” Here in Denver, there are 20,000 real estate agents. Contrast that to the one who says, “I help millennials find the loft of their dreams in downtown Denver.” Even though I am not a millennial, I am far past the millennial stage, I will remember that message. When I hear someone say they are looking for a loft, I can make the hook. If you ask yourself, What would that do for my business? You can find money really fast. When you talk about how do I make an offer that is so compelling that I can come into relationship with you? Maybe it's I sign up for your newsletter. I hear stories about the organization how you are changing lives. When it comes time to write a check, I am more likely to write a check. There is an organization I do some work with here called Goodwill to Work. I get to work with high school students as they are preparing to enter the work force: mock interviews, reviewing portfolios, reviewing resumes. It gives me great faith in the future of ourselves. When they come looking for money, I am more open to that because I am invested in that. It's helping the business owner, to answer your question, look at the five areas that drive 80% of their growth. It's leads, how to turn leads into customers, how to create an offer that gives more value so they are willing to spend more money with me, and quit discounting. You have to sell more of the product to get the same. Hugh: There is a correlation here. We talk about selling to churches. Churches say, “We don't sell.” Then what is evangelism? I talk to generic nonprofits about business models. No, we are a nonprofit. People are supposed to give everything. That does not mean you can beat up your employees. That is why the burnout rate is about 50% with executive directors. You are moving into the mindset. It's a social entrepreneurial mindset. You talked about businesses having a triple bottom line. I think nonprofits should have multiple bottom lines. One of them should be retained earnings. Russell, why don't you weigh in on this? You used to work for an agency who had three letters. It's about where the money goes. We need another number for profit, and we need another way to look at accounting so overhead is really clear. Overhead goes to the people we serve. The words for profit are uncomfortable. Russell: When people in our circles call it “surplus,” but the bottom line is you have to bring in more than you push out. If you bring in more than you push out, you become what is known as sustainable. Operating with a surplus is important because you have to be prepared for all types of contingencies. There are things that happen. Mother Nature, for example. You have fires, floods, hurricanes, different events that impact different businesses that impact the nonprofits on the ground as well. It's important to operate at that surplus. When it comes to overhead, which is everything that isn't directly poured into the services, people think of that in terms of costs versus an investment. If it's an investment, you get a good return on that. That means the management is taking care of the assets. They are providing superior service. They are effective and efficient at keeping costs under control. But you still have that structure there so you can go out and create more impact, as it were. The impact is in the eyes and ears of the beholders. I know John has heard this multiple times. John, you deal with it in for-profits and nonprofits when it comes to talking about impact. What is your experience with that word? Do you find that it is overused or misused? How do you help people frame that in a way that is balanced? John: I play with the word “balance.” If there is a balance, we are going to disrupt it. It's more how do we create harmony around it? Impact is in the eyes of the beholder. Again, it's about- I find this with myself often. I get up, sit down at my desk, and start working. When I get done, I have done a lot, and think about what impact I actually have. The first step is to slow down. As Stephen Covey said, “What is the end in mind?” What impact do I want to have? One client recently, the impact she wanted to have was more visibility in her organization. If that's what I want to have, if that's my end in mind, how do I have to make you feel to get that visibility? Now that I know those two questions, I can ask myself, “Who do I have to be to bring it?” In terms of messaging, what do I want them to experience? A great example. I had a customer the other day tell me. We often think about painting as putting a coating on the wall. For this company, it is a customer experience. The experience that you and I as a homeowner experience for you painting. In the case of the Rocky Mountain Microfinance Institute, what impact do they have on their small business owners as they compete in a 12-week boot camp for a microloan? The answer is they get 95% of their loans are repaid. Those companies are still in business years later. Every time I go, there is someone who would not have gotten a job in the corporate world who has created a successful business because they went through a 12-week boot camp to learn basic kinds of things. The impact is how are they feeling? What are the net results? It's all of that. Does that answer your question? Russell: That does, yes. For anybody who is out there making a difference, there are all these measures. How people measure things is critical. It's getting out there, being of service, and doing that better than others efficiently and effectively as you possibly can. There are a lot of tools that leaders need to have in order to drive value, in order to grow as an organization. What are the most basic tools that you give your clients when you start working with them initially? Are there some key basics that are missing in the large quantity? Or some things that leaders overlook? In that sense, what are some of the things that you find nonprofit leaders overlook more frequently than not?   John: Great question. I think there are two big opportunities, whatever your work is. The first one is really getting clear and planting your flag on who you serve. Being clear that we are in this to serve children, sick children, healthy children, starving children, whatever the service is. And then nobody else. We all think we can serve everybody. We want to serve all sorts of people. Until we plant the flag and say this is who we serve, how we serve, and why we serve, we are noise. Russell, you know this because you're in Denver. There are 11,000 nonprofits in the Denver/Boulder community. Many of them are duplicating services. It's noise in the marketplace. How do they stand out? Planting the flag, being clear, and saying, “I am for the 10% that this resonates with.” Because then they will find us. We will get some of the other people who will be in that outer circle who will be attracted to us. We have to call our tribe to us. From the business standpoint, that is the biggest thing. I get this. I want to serve everybody, too. We have to get clear on who we serve, how we serve, and why we serve. Russell: The idea of niching down and picking a category is frightening for both business owners and nonprofit leaders. I know I've had movement within my own business of who do you serve, will there be scarcity. I think scarcity thinking is terrible for the mindset of an entrepreneur regardless of the tax status of the organization he/she runs. How do you have that conversation with people who may be apprehensive about the idea of niching down and being more focused and targeted? John: It's history. It's experience. I'm working with a company right now. They have been doing Groupons to call in their clientele. I finally got him to stop that because what he would get is people coming in looking for the discount all the time, but they weren't coming back to purchase more. He recognized that is not the clientele he wants to serve. He wants to serve the people who really care about what he delivers. When he gets one of them, they don't question his cost. They know he can trust him, he will deliver the service, and they will walk away with value. You have to ask people to step out on faith and try it. I have yet to have someone who tries it fail at it. I just had this conversation with a lady at a digital marketing firm this morning. She said, “Sometimes I just have to have faith. I don't have to worry about this deal or that donor or that foundation. I have to have faith that if I serve, I will be rewarded. It took me until I was in my forties to realize that my middle name is Faith. Faith plays a role in all of this.” Hugh: It does. John, you talked earlier about going to the bottom for the price. We tend to race to the bottom because we think we have to have the lowest price to attract people. There is a similar model with nonprofits. We have this money shadow. We don't want to talk about money, and we don't want to ask for money. It's reframing the whole conversation about what you said earlier about value. What we're talking about is value. Money is an exchange. We have to pay the rent. We have to pay the salaries of those good people we employ. Talk about this thing with money. Do you see what I'm talking about? Is there a similarity with entrepreneurs looking at everyone else and pricing themselves under it? That's not a good way to do it. Nonprofits are asking for too little money. John: I lost your audio there. It's a good question. What I find- I grew up in sales. I'm afraid to ask for more because I was afraid I was going to hear no. As a nonprofit, if I'm asking for donations, I don't want to hear no. Nobody wants to hear no because they are afraid of being outcast. I wrote this on a blog post not too recently. I came to a realization. I was on my way to a meeting with someone to give a presentation, and I had this voice in my head say, “Who are you? Who do you think you are?” I was in the presentation watching the audience, and I saw a couple of people on their phones. “Oh my God. They're not paying attention to me. I've lost them.” I got some of the highest marks I've ever had for a delivery. I have come to the conclusion that I want to have that voice say, “Who are you? This is not your comfort zone.” on my shoulder because I know I'm doing the work that will deliver value to my organization. I think to get to your question of how we get past that fear of asking for money or undervaluing ourselves, we step out of our comfort zone and realize the value that we bring. I have yet to have an experience where I have said, “I can step into this, even though I don't know where it's going to go.” that hasn't delivered value. All too often, we think if we don't know exactly how it's going to happen, we don't want to step into it because we are afraid it might go wrong. Russell: Life begins outside of the comfort zone. John: It really does. I was teaching a class one time. It was very dependent on a certain program running just the right way. About 20% of the class got an update from Microsoft that eliminated that functionality. What am I going to do? We'll get to it. We'll talk about it. Stay away from me. Get feedback from my tech team. Keep teaching. It was some of the highest reviews I'd ever gotten. They've asked me back several times. I want to create something going wrong in the presentation just so that there is that kind of result. When we get out of our comfort zone and into that place where it's not working exactly right, we become more present. We become more focused on what we want to deliver to our audience, whether it's one or many. One of the things I wanted to come back to, you asked me earlier about one of the biggest things that for-purpose or for-profits or anybody struggles with. I shared with you that niching idea. The other piece is more personal. It's self-accountability. We talked earlier about self-leadership. Many of us are more than willing to hold anybody accountable for what they are supposed to do. We have meetings around it. We have metrics to race for it. But the thing that we're not accountable to is our own self. The #1 appointment we break on our calendar is the one we set with ourselves. I might sit down and say, I need to plan my budget for next quarter. But if the phone rings, I will pick up the phone instead of working on that budget. Or I might decide I want to lose ten pounds. I will quit eating French fries and start running. But then it snows. When we don't hold ourselves accountable, we can't hold other people accountable. When we start breaking promises to ourselves, we start disbelieving ourselves when we say we can get something done. So part of it is keeping promises to ourselves. Russell: It's interesting that people make commitments to others they won't make to themselves. I think that is a human nature thing. That plays into what's best. There are a number of people who talk about self-care and taking care of yourself. One of the things about leader burnout is people drive themselves far too much and don't necessarily take care of themselves. When you come across executives you're working with, a lot of times they are burned out, what is the first thing you tell them as far as taking care of themselves? How do you go about finding out if that's the problem they do have?   John: It's about creating psychological safety. We can do this in our own organizations and families. We want to create safety so that people can be and bring their whole self into the conversation. I am a child of the ‘80s. Greed is good. We have to put up a front. If you remember the shoulder pads from back then, we literally put our armor on. But the reality is when we can bring our whole self into a conversation, we don't have to carry the stress of trying to be someone we're not. The first part is bringing psychological safety. People will begin to open up and tell us what is really wrong in our lives. I tell people when they are working with me, “There is a lot to do, but you have to schedule two hours a week for you to sit back and think about, “What do I want to do this week? What happened last week? What did I get done? Celebrate! What did I not get done? What will I do to move that forward?” All too often, we run from task to task to task to task. We don't slow down to shift our state to move into the next meeting. I work with a lot of people who have nine meetings a day. That's incredible. When do you get your work done? I see three. Hugh: We're coming to the last minutes of our interview. I want to give you a few minutes to talk about one of the most important topics: communication. In 32 years of working with organizations, there has never been an organization who brought it up as one of the top topics. In a quick overview, I want you to talk about why that is significant in the work that you do. Then I will have a sponsor message before giving it back to you for a closing thought. Then Russell will end this interview. John, there are a lot of good sound bites, I must say. John, what is missing in communication? What do we need to do to make it better? John: There are four things we need for effective communication. One is clarity. If we are not clear with our message, I ran across this the other night. It's from Yo-Yo Ma. If we don't have clarity of message, we are just noise. What happens all too often is I tell you I'm looking for a dog. You will tell me, “You should get a Labrador.” Russell will tell me that I need a terrier. Someone else will tell me a shepherd. I am allergic to most dogs, and my wife doesn't want anything over 20 pounds. If I had been clear in what I was looking for, you would be clear in your response. Slowing down to get clear. Two is respect. Every organization you and I work with has respect in their manual, their mission statement, or their vision statement. Yet 94% of the workforce reports having uncivil behavior in the last year. 54% in the last month. This comes from Harvard Business Review. What does disrespect look like? It might not be holding the door open. It might be perceived disrespect. But what we have to think about how do we create psychological safety? Even if you are a high performer, if you are not treating people right, we need to help you move to a place where your humor is appreciated. Candor. Everyone wants more candor. If I were to show you my slide, there would be a burning plane behind me because NASA did research that said commercial airline pilots in a simulator that gave them a crisis, there were three outcomes. One, the captain took control of the plane and crashed it. Two, the captain said, “Crew, I need some help.” Everyone contributed, shared information, and worked together. The plane landed safely. The third one was the interesting one. The captain said, “Help me!” The crew said, “You got this.” They crashed almost as often as the first one. Why? Because the captain created an environment where candor was not appreciated. What happens in our organizations if we are not open to candor? What are we not learning about? The last piece is attention. What are we focused on? How many times have you told your child, “Don't spill the milk?” What happened? Hugh: Spill the milk. John: When we tell people, “Stop complaining. Stop smoking. Stop fighting.” they don't hear stop. The brain doesn't hear stop. Let's focus on what we want. Those four things are what we need for good communication. Hugh: Don't be late to the meeting. Those four are clarity of message- John: Clarity, respect, candor, attention. Hugh: John, a lot of good sound bites. You are so well-read. I love this thing about the clarity of the dog. A guy goes up to an intersection in Denver to a guy with a dog and says, “Does your dog bite?” The guy says, “No.” He reaches down to pet the dog, and the dog takes a big chunk out of his arm. He said to the guy, “I thought you said your dog doesn't bite.” The guy says, “That's not my dog.” It's an old joke, but it's a good example of what you're talking about. We are assuming that's his dog because it's standing next to him. We talk about how leaders set up problems. Then we make them worse. This candor and autocratic leadership is not what we do. Thank you for this. *Sponsor message from Wordsprint* Before Russell closes out this really helpful interview, what thought do you want to leave with people today? John: I thought in preparation for this. I talked to a couple of colleagues who are active in the nonprofit community. What they shared with me is one of the big stressors for nonprofits is resiliency. They are overstressed, under-resourced, struggling against how do we deliver value to our constituents? I thought what would be helpful to them is to acknowledge the stress is there. Leaders paper over the stress or frustration. Until we admit there is something there, we can't deal with it. If we don't admit it, our team is looking to us and thinking there is something you're not telling us. So acknowledge it. Have a little bit of grace. We are all doing the best we can. Everybody is doing something for their own reasons. Let's get clear about what's going on. Be accountable to yourself and to others. When everybody is doing what they are supposed to do, and I don't have to pick up after you and you don't have to pick up after me, there is less stress in the organization. Clarity of values, beliefs, and behaviors. Making sure we all agree what we want to do to serve our organization and our constituents. Appreciation of ourselves and others. We go from day to day to day, from win to win to win, and we don't stop and celebrate. Celebrate the things you have done well. This has been a lot of fun. Russell: Thank you very much, John. I appreciate that. It's been an enlightening conversation. Always remember that honesty without compassion is brutality. How we talk to each other and work with each other is critical inside so we can serve the audiences we can serve. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"how to be productive" "growing business" "entrepreneurial skills, value ladder, team building   This is the one question I ask every quarter that always CHANGES my business... Answering this question ALWAYS results in me growing my business. Each my business changes for the better... NOT my funnels, my business.   ...if you’re wondering, “...but, Steve, aren’t your funnel and your business the same thing?” I totally get why you’re asking that. I used to think that it was too… until the strangest thing happened to me...   Here’s how it went down… HOW TO BANKRUPT A BUSINESS I was building cool funnels for a company:   Day #1: We launched the funnel, and the sales start pouring in.  I get a call from the owner: "This is awesome, this is epic, this is incredible. Are you serious! I can't believe this."   Day #2: I get another call:  "Wow! The sales are still coming in. This is really still cool... I think..."  (This time they sound a little more unsure)   Day #3: The phone rings: They're like, Help! The sales are still coming in. Turn the funnel off. TURN IT OFF!"   The first time this happened, I was shocked that anyone would want less sales?   But the company was like, "You're gonna bankrupt us." I was like, “Oh, crap!”   Until that point, I didn’t realize that the funnel was different to the business.   It sounds silly to say that now, but I just didn't know that at the time.   A massive amount of sales sounds fantastic, right? But if your business doesn’t have the systems to cope with a massive amount of fulfillment, then you’re in trouble.   So what do you do about it? *ANSWER* You ask yourself the question:   How do I increase my speed?   ASKING A POWERFUL QUESTION   When I ask THIS question it ALWAYS provokes the most change and the most progress in my business.   It actually happened this way…   I was coming back from a speaking gig where I’d sold a ton of stuff. It felt awesome and I was excited about it.   ...THEN I had to spend the entire night fulfilling on what I had sold. Which was great, but I’d only slept four hours the night before and I was exhausted!   So sitting on the plane on the way home the thought came to me, “Stephen, how can you increase your speed?” And I wrote it down in my notebook.   I started listing out all of the ways that I could possibly increase the speed of my business.   My funnels, do great, but the business needed some work so that I could leverage all the opportunities that were coming my way…   The BEST way for me to show you how I answered the question:   How do I increase my speed?   … is to let you in on a Q&A session I did with my OfferLab Group.   These are the high-level killers who work with me directly, one-on-one.   Each week, I do training sessions with them. Look at their stuff to help them design their:   Funnels   Offers   Message   I haven't officially launched OfferLab, so unless you came to OfferMind, this is probably the first time you’ve ever heard of it.     I'm not selling anything else. Offer Lab is not open to anybody else because we're fulfilling. We're putting in the processes and the systems in place.   … So this is kinda like a sneak peek behind the scenes of Steve Larsen.   HOW TO BE PRODUCTIVE & INCREASE SPEED   We had a cool chat with the CEO of Pruvit (the MLM I’m in). And, like a lot of people, he asked me to build funnels for Pruvit.   I was like, “Well…”   My first thought was, “Sure, that would be honoring, but I don't have the team in place to handle that.”   That's why I initially went back to Tony Robbins and told him, “No.”  I didn't have the team in place to build the front revenue, or the team in place to support it after it was built.   After talking with CEO of Pruvit, Colton and I just stared off into eternity for a little bit. Our heads were spinning.   We had a tremendous opportunity in front of us. But first, we had to answer the question, (...and here it comes again): “How can we increase our speed?”   So we've been asking that question in TWO areas:     How do I increase my speed on fulfillment?   How do I increase my speed on sales?   *NEWSFLASH* Answering those two questions, usually, does NOT involve MORE of YOU as the entrepreneur.   ENTREPRENEURIAL SKILLS & PLAYING BIGGER   Play Bigger teaches that in order for you to really make a lasting business that's awesome, you need to design a category, a product, and the business, at the exact same time. Well, I've gotten really freakin' good at designing:   Categories   Products/Offers   I'm getting far better at the business side, as well.   It's the reason why I’m able to create so much the content …   But what do we have in place on the fulfillment side?   I'm nervous to bring in all the money that we could because I wouldn't be able to fulfill on it very well.   … So the questions that I've been asking are:   How do I fulfill faster?   How do I sell faster?   We asked the question, “How could we increase speed?” And that question ALWAYS leads to growth and things that are, frankly, a little bit uncomfortable.   Let’s use my content machine as an example:   I have #1 Content Team for Sales Funnel Radio, but a while ago, I realized that I needed to spin up a second content team for Secret MLM Hacks. So that’s what we did.   There are a few people that are on both teams, but it's a separate team. It's really interesting, the process is different, even though they're both content. It's really fascinating.   We mapped out a high-level process and we found the people to fill all the positions. So I wanna walk you through this because this will change everything for YOU… 3 QUESTIONS THAT’LL SAVE YOUR LIFE   So glad you asked… ;-)   The 3 questions that will save your life are:   What problem am I trying to solve?   Who is my dream customer who has money and is able to spend a lot of money?   What's the model that I'm following?   As part of answering those questions in my own business, I draw up value ladder and leave it somewhere visible to act as a roadmap and an anchor.   (A value ladder is for life, NOT just for Christmas)   Opportunities are so funny guys, it's like they show up as soon as you start the down a path, another opportunity pops up.   It's like opportunities have babies and multiply the moment you start moving and doing anything in life.   I'm sure you’ve have experienced that, right?   So to keep myself rooted and forward, I always draw a value ladder.   I have two value ladders because I have a front-end business and a back-end business.   The business that's in the back-end is the MLM stuff, you know about. The front-end stuff is all offer creation/ funnel stuff You’ve seen me building out.   I wanna walk you guys real quick through this value ladder, and then tell you guys what’s happened because we asked the question, “How can I increase my speed?”   That question usually, (in fact, I'm not even gonna say usually), it has ALWAYS made me grow. And sometimes, in ways that are NOT all that comfortable… in fact, pretty much every time.   Just beware, every time you ask that question, if you're truly willing to find the answer to the question, you're gonna have to grow.   So here’s what I do...   CREATING MY VALUE LADDER   Because I have my value ladder planned out, I can answer the question, “What model am I following?”  In this instance, I'm following the Info Product Model.   Now the stuff that I'm doing has never been done, but the model that I'm following has totally been done.   Does that make sense?   That's where I get a combination of living on the edge and doing things that have never been done before - so I have security at the same time.   I don't need to run a risky business. There's no way. I'm not into risky business.   But the stuff that I'm doing though, the actual content and all those pieces; 100% is stuff that's never been done before.   It's how you get the combination of risk and security at the same time.   I draw out the value ladder. At the bottom, is all my free stuff:   My radio shows   Publishing like crazy   A free program on each side.   An affiliate program.   The real reason Affiliate Outrage exists, is so I can teach people how to be affiliates for me. About a third of our sales last month for the MLM side came from affiliates. It's working - it's awesome.   I'm not just gonna give somebody an affiliate link. I'm gonna teach them how to use it, and how to make an offer so that they feel inclined to create content around that affiliate link. Does that make sense?  That's the way I do it.   My value ladder has:   The radio shows... and that kinda content   Books   Webinar   Event   Mastermind   It's the exact same model on each side of the business.   It’s a lot of funnels! We have a hard time getting somebody to just build one funnel… We counted; there are 12 funnels we need to truly hit every single step that we have planned.   So what I do is I hack the value ladder in order of importance?   I always start in the middle; I practice what I preach.   I go up to the top of the value ladder.   Finally,  I go down the value ladder.   But the question that we started asking is, “How can I increase my speed?” That's the question I want you to start asking yourself:   “How can I increase my speed in…”   Creating an offer?   Creating a sales message?   Creating a funnel?   Fulfilling for what I sell, (so I can sell faster)?   Gaining the sale?   I ask that question multiple times, in multiple areas, for multiple things. Asking this question helps tweak out a lot of the processes that support revenue. BE UNCOMMON AMONGST UNCOMMON PEOPLE   The first time I asked the question, “How can I increase my speed?”... I was working for Russell and had no time of my own. It led me to create a schedule, that I lived by for about a year, that was painful.   Went to sleep five hours a night, then I'd get up at five, be at work at six, work on my own there 'til nine.   It's always been that question because…   Money loves speed. Money sticks by speed. Money feels the thrill of speed.   ...and so I have to adhere to that lesson at some point.   I can build everything in these value ladders, but if I’m the only one building them,  it's gonna be slow. I want all that done next year. In just one single year. That's fast, man.   That's almost as fast as ClickFunnels builds their own funnels.   Seriously, they build one funnel and launch it, just about one every other week. That's crazy!   So what I've started asking the question about...  and what I want you to start thinking about is: What revenue model am I following?   What business model am I following?   So the questions that we’ve have been trying to answer, and I think that we have, are   How can I increase my speed in the business?   How can I increase my speed in the revenue?”   ...and the way that I'm doing that, is by building teams around both. QUESTIONS INVITE REVELATION    I have two businesses:   The Offer side - the sales funnel side   The MLM side.   These are revenue models, but what supports these?   So Colton and I asked the question several times last week:   What do we need to have in place in order to pull  EVERYTHING off, in a year? If questions invite revelation, which they do, you gotta be real careful of the question you're asking in business and everything else. So we went back and forth:   “Well, here's all the stuff that we have and all the things that are forward facing. Do I have that on each side?” Like, “Crap, no, I don't.”   “Do we have a system set up where if I don't show up for a month, would things keep running on their own? Like, “Hmm... I gotta build more of the business side there.”   It's just about there - which is really fun.   For my content teams; I show up the first half of each Tuesday, and it keeps both machines alive.   I can keep speaking and be forward, in the front of everybody, because of the systems that I've built. The teams that I've built.   We have Content Team #1 and Content Team #2.   Then our NEW funnel-build team, they're gonna be the ones who actually go dive in and build out all the funnels.   Although I'm a funnel builder, I’m been my own bottleneck.   Which is what I realized when I was looking at this stuff.  I was like, “The only way we can keep going as we are now and still make great money is to get another team.”   The parts of the business that I should be involved in are actually a lot narrower than I'm currently focused on.   A GROWING BUSINESS    I was talking to Al Hormozi this last week, and a few other of my good buddies who've made like 10 million in a year, and they validated exactly where I'm going with this. They said:   At this point, it’s NOT about you. It's all about the team.   Q: How do I sell faster? “Crap, I gotta speak more. Oh, I can't speak more…”   A: Content Team #1.” Boom! And I mapped out the content team, and then made it.   Q: How do sell faster on the MLM side?  I'm either gotta speak a lot, or I’ve gotta go drive a lot of money with ads…   A: Content Team #2.  Boom! that's the one that did it on the MLM side too.   ...the next question I asked was...   Q: How do we increase the speed so we can build-out this value ladder with even more speed?   A: “I need an internal funnel-building team.”  It came faster than I thought, but I realized I needed it. I've built the majority of everything on the MLM side, and I've built a few things on this side, and lots of stuff on the bottom. And I'm good at it, but I'm just only one person.   So we've mapped out the process and the positions we need, in order to build an internal funnel-building agency.   We just got the last person on board and they're like, "Absolutely, heck yes."   Next, I'll tell you how we automate everything... LEVERAGING ENTREPRENEURIAL SKILLS   If you’re already selling stuff, the next process is speed of sales - and has less to do with you, which is fun, but it can be terrifying.   When I left ClickFunnels, the position that I had ceased to exist. When I left, the position closed. So my final task was to replace me with a system.   That made me think about what I was doing in a different and advantageous way.   I had to document everything that I was doing for each funnel, find the similarities, and then start systemizing all the pieces and create a checklist.    It's  was super complex and  crazy.   If you’ve done like funnel-building on your own, you know that the checklist can be freakin' huge. Let alone:   Write Research Positioning Voice   ...and all those things.   The actual act of putting a funnel up - it's easy because of ClickFunnels, but there's still a big checklist with it. There's a lot of things you can put inside of there. There's a lot of bells and whistles that you can get distracted with.   THE BAT SIGNAL   Anytime we built a funnel at ClickFunnels; they had what's called a bat line meeting. We grabbed a cool image. You know that like the Bat Signal that Batman shines up in the air.   When Russell sent that image out to his team, they all know that in 15 minutes everybody has to get on the same Zoom room.   Then Russell teaches for the new funnel for a straight hour. He draws it out, “First, we're gonna have this page, and then we'll have this page, and then we'll have this page, and then we'll have this page, and these down-sales, and then this automation.”   He draws all the pieces and  puts it together.   What's cool is that it’s recorded. So afterwards, they take that recording, and some writers go and they'll make mini tasks for each individual. There's heads of each of department.   So they grab a writer to write out the to-do list of everything they were assigned during Russell's batline meeting. That's exactly what I'm doing.   I'm planning out not just the funnel, but also planning out podcast material and content that would be really cool to time with the launch of the funnel.   This year, you guys will see me do specific podcast episodes to build pressure around the launch of the whatever funnels we're building.   Then there’s the:   Funnel plan   Sales message   Offer   Fulfillment   We're gonna need this package and this package - so we  go to our fulfillment house (which is a few miles down the road), and let's make sure they package everything together, so that every time a sale happens, this thing gets shipped out.   That's all the stuff that I'm really good at and what I teach…   Then I know, I'm gonna create sales videos. Right from the get-go. The videos are gonna be on the pages - because I can just hand those videos to writers... and I know who all of these people are.   If you notice, most the styles that we do, pretty much all the time, if you look at the copy underneath all the videos in any page I create, it's pretty much the exact same thing that was said in the video.   Which is means I can hand videos off to a writer and they can write all the copy for the sales page.   Then the video and all the copy gets handed off to the designer, and they make it look incredible.   Design doesn't sell, but I'm not against making things look good.   The designers make things look awesome, and use the copy. You’ve seen sales copy, where certain words are bolded out. There's a certain style of writing for sales letters.   Now they have the writing, the designer can take one of my templates to build-out the initial funnel, put all the copy in there and put the videos in for the initial build.   From that point, the funnel will go to to a funnel finisher... that was actually my original role at ClickFunnels when I was hired.   I was the funnel finisher.   We didn't have extra writers or designers. We had a videographer, it was Brandon, but we didn't have writers, we didn't have designers… So I actually did all three of those roles for the first year.     It was the only the final eight months that I was there, that we actually started building out, actual teams and processes. Before that, it was just me - it was insane. It was freakin' insanity.   Funnel finishers are the ones that do all the stuff that's not fun to do in funnels:   Legal footers   Favicon   Metadata   Naming all the pages   Linking all the emails   Adding the email copy in email sequences   Adding  SSL Certificates   Porting over URLs if it's bought from somewhere else   It's all the stuff that sucks to do in a funnel, but it's super important.   Next, I try to break the funnel. That's my favorite part. I like to go in and try my hardest to just crush it!   Then, because we've gone through video stuff, we've had designers and all this stuff, then  I start working with the traffic team and coordinate my podcast episodes with the launch of the actual funnel and the ads going out.   Then I just review and tweak it. So that's it.   It seems really complicated, it's actually not. This changed my life.   What I focus on, when I'm building these teams out, 'cause you guys all should all have teams, eventually. If you don't right now, that's okay. If you don't have a team, (or you're not in a position to have a team)...   What I found is that it means that you're still building this main core product inside of your new value ladder:   You haven't actually built the product yet   It's not actually selling very well yet   You don't have a funnel yet.   The first time, you being the one doing all that is totally appropriate - that's totally fine.   But building out, everything from above and down below it, after that, is really just a repackaging of that main idea in different ways that are more expensive or less expensive.   This initial build-out, that can take awhile. That's fine, that's fine. So if you're like, "I can't have a team yet." That's okay, usually, it means you don't have enough cash or you're still launching this main core product inside of your value ladder.   But from there, everything else, you should be able to do fast when you build a team.   But there's one thing that changed my life  when I'm building out these teams...   TEAM SECRET SAUCE   ...So when I'm building these content teams out, the things that have really made the BIG difference is:   I no longer hire individuals. I hire agencies.   That changed everything! When I hire an agency to do video, rather than a person, the speed is better, the quality is better.   If some reason, there's a holiday, or birthday or whatever, they got a replacement, usually.   When I hire an agency, it's usually a little bit more money - 100% worth it. 100% worth it! They're easier, they're faster, they can implement better.   They follow the processes better which I'm about to show you. I don't hire individuals anymore. I hire agencies.   So there is a specific agency for each one of these, almost. Like the funnel finisher one, that doesn't need to be an agency for that, that's a single person job.   Like I don't even know how you'd make an agency out of that. But I actually do think that that person has an agency, which is funny.   This person's the only person that hasn't is the writer, but he's had a massive writing company in the past, which is cool. So he still has that background and totally gets the project management side of fulfilling - which is really interesting.   I don't ever hire a person anymore, I only hire agencies.   That's true for every one of my content pieces.   It's funny, looking back, on the Sales Funnel Radio content team, and the Secret MLM Hacks Radio. In the Sales Funnel Radio content team, there's seven or eight, something like that.   But they're pretty much all full-blown agencies behind each individual person. It's the reason it costs so much, but it's also the reason it's so good. You know what I mean? And it's fast, and it's consistent.   I can pretty much set my watch to each time an episode drops. They're good, they get it, they move. And they got backups.   And what's cool, is that when I hire an agency, they've thought about their internal process. They've thought about how to fulfill. They've thought about how to do all the things the best possible way.   When I hire an individual, a lot of times they haven't, and they're just doing it. They know how to do the thing, but they haven't thought through how to actually write down the process for the thing. That's a very different mentality to be in.   In the Secret MLM Hacks Radio,  we just barely spun that team up, probably about three weeks ago, cause I knew we needed it. I could just tell. There are a few people on both teams, but there's a lot that aren't.   The team has either eight or nine people now -  which is pretty crazy.   I use this approach for even for one-offs stop kind of things that I do now.   There's a person that I've been hiring to revamp my LinkedIn profile, 'cause it sucks. I know it sucks.   But I'd rather hire a person, who owns and started their own agency, rather than an individual - because of what they've gone through mentally to prove-out the process. And the fact that they can bring revenue to keep a team going.   Man, it's night and day difference.   I'm not saying the individual can't be good, but holy crap, huge difference in insights. Oh my gosh! So, agency, agency, agency, agency, agency, agency, agency. That’s saved a ton of stuff.   Oh yeah!   Hey, wish you could geek-out with other real funnel builders, and even ask questions, while I build funnels, live?   Oh, wish granted!   Watch and learn funnel-building, as I document my process in my funnel strategy group. It's free, just go to thescienceofselling.online and join now.

Why Myles Decided to talk to Greg: Greg Smith is the host the Rise Above Podcast. He is master at mentoring successful entrepreneurs scale their business to new levels. Recently, he helped take a $133,000 ARR business to over $1,850,000 in revenue in the past 11 months. He is a father of three and married to his high school sweetheart of 11 years. Tips and Tricks for You and Your Business: The morning routine (1:00) Greg’s Story (9:30) Staying Motivated (24:00) Quotable Moments: "You have to have somebody teach you the way." "Go find a mentor, but be coachable and teachable, but most importantly, implement what you learn." Other Tidbits: Finding a mentor who’s path you can follow and mirror is important to succeed quicker. Important Links: FunnelHackerRadio.com FunnelHackerRadio.com/freetrial FunnelHackerRadio.com/dreamcar ---Transcript--- Speaker 1:     00:00         Welcome to funnel hacker radio podcast, where we go behind the scenes and uncover the tactics and strategies top entrepreneurs are using to make more sales, dominate their markets, and how you can get those same results. Here's your host, Dave Woodward. Hey, what's going on everybody? Speaker 2:     00:18         And welcome to funnel hacker radio. Today. I have a very special guest on, but you may notice this is a different voice than you're used to today. Dave's voice is very, um, I guess you could say raspy. He was yelling a lot yesterday. We did a funnel hacking live telethon. And so his voice, he's a little under the weather. So I'm taking over today. Hopefully this is close to the standard that he has already set. But today on the show, ladies and Gentlemen, I have Greg Smith. Greg, how you doing man? I'm doing great. Thanks. Miles. So, Greg, I want to start with kind of a different question than you're probably used to getting in that most podcast started off with. So I'm going to come right out the gate. Greg, what is your morning routine? Speaker 3:     01:02         Oh, you know, uh, it's so funny because this has been something I've, I've really been dialing in. It's so funny you asked this because this has been something for me personally. Uh, growing up, like as a kid, I kid you not, I funny story. I used to sleep in my parents' room because they had TV and no other house, you know, no other room in the house did, but I'd stepped a one or two in the morning like as a five-year-old. Dang. Yeah. I've always been this night house. So for me as an entrepreneur over the past 11, 12 years I've gotten all of my work done primarily from 10:00 on, uh, because that's when my wife goes to bed and then it's just like my time. And as of recently, you know, I have three kids, six, 3:00 AM, you know, 18 months. So I've had to like start becoming a morning person and you know, the biggest thing for me in the morning, number one is, is I have my phone set to where it's on do not disturb mode and I only have like three people, like four. Speaker 3:     02:05         So I have, you know, my parents, my wife and then uh, a few key business partners and a couple of ventures that I have that can get through to me at all times, but I keep that on do not disturb typically until 10:00 AM. And then I also now with the, the iphone has screen screen limiting like car app limiting and I turned all my apps off except for the ones that I read, um, you know, until 9:00 AM. And that's after I get my stuff done in the morning. I typically read something like I have a rule where I have a non digital morning. I used to just get up, check my emails right away and just like get into the day. And then when I found out is I was, I was always reacting to other people were throwing at me instead of like getting my mind set. Speaker 3:     02:50         Right. So I typically don't work out in the morning. I'm a Jujitsu guy in the best Jujitsu a simply at nighttime because that's just what other people have the ability to go in. But for me, getting my mind right and reading something a pre Gutenberg like something prior to the printing press, whatever that might be for you is very important to me. So I get that in and I guess some wisdom and then I go on a typically to learn something or read something from, you know, thousands of years ago and then to go into something that I'm kind of hot on a which is marketing or mindset. And then from there I ended up, you know, kind of get thrown into the whirlwind, getting my kids ready for school, getting them off, then coming home. Then I can go into like more of reaction mode. So then my question for you, like when did you really start focusing on the morning routine? Speaker 3:     03:41         And then there's a second part of this question and I'll ask that as soon as you kind of tell us when you really start focusing. Was it 10 or 11 years ago when you got into entrepreneurship or was it just recently? It's just recently. It was, it was really just within the past year because um, my daughter who's three now, she goes to a pre K and so her and my son Sam, they go to two different schools whereas prior it was just like, it was one school, uh, just for my boy and so my wife was really able to like take him in and kind of do the kid thing by herself and now we kind of both, like she could do it by yourself but it's just easier if we both, like I go to one school, she goes to another and so her doing kinda like Kinda loop. Speaker 3:     04:24         So just within the past year has been like all about the morning and I don't know if that's just because I'm getting like I don't like mornings. I really don't like I am a night owl. That's, I mean that's just how I am. Like I record my podcasts episodes are typically in between 11 at night midnight. And that's because when, that's when my house is like guaranteed to be quiet because in the morning and you know, you'll find out, you know, being a new dad that in the end you probably have this now asleep. But even if you schedule, you're like, I'm going to wake up at five. Well there's, there's no law that your kid's not going to wake up at 5:15 and just, he's, he's waking up at 4:30 and stayed for two hours. So. Exactly. And then you're just totally thrown off. So it's really been within the past year because my, uh, my wife is asleep wizard. Speaker 3:     05:09         I mean she has a thing throughout the night, even like at five months, our kids are typically get like five, six hour stints. So now there's your, there's your next funnel right there. Man. I know, I tell her all the time, I'm like, Hey, you know, she's like, ah, I just don't know. Like with the first kid we just thought it was luck. And then with the second kid, we were like, I told her, I was like, if you get the, our daughter Charlotte's asleep the same way you got Sam to sleep and we know like you're good. And then she did it and we're like, Nah, it's just too. And then we had the third one, it happened again and I mean it's literally like she is just, she's so good at it. She has been able to help a lot of our friends do the same thing too. But a lot of it comes down to the mothers, um, personality style and, and, you know, different, different feelings with letting the kid kinda cried out for a little bit. Things like that. So I expect it. I expect to see the funnel pretty. Um, I Speaker 2:     05:58         did have one question on that. So you said you turn on do not disturb. So for me, I don't do that. I feel like I'm very reactionary even at night and it kind of takes away from, you know, sometimes family time and in the morning it's the first thing I do, I see in like, Oh man, I've got to put out these fires before I go into work. Um, and you mentioned it kind of getting your mind right and getting in that right state of mind. Do you feel by doing the do not disturb that even though like the messages and emails pile up, you're more productive during the day? Speaker 3:     06:27         One hundred percent. Now let me tell you, because as you're saying that I'm envisioning like your phone in the morning because he's insane. Yeah. It used to be my phone. So let me tell you, the number one productivity hack that I've ever done this in productivity has been. This is actually been something where I'm like, dude, I need to put out a course on this because this has changed my life forever. Um, I have turned off all red notifications on my phone so I don't get my mail APP does not get red badges. My facebook doesn't get red badges. Instagram, my facebook pages app and my email app, they don't, they don't Ding, they don't give me red notifications and what I've also done, which is key because even when you're on do not disturb when you get a text, well I don't know if it's with texts but it will often show on your, on your screen. Speaker 3:     07:17         You'll see it pop up. Like right now, uh, you know, you and I are talking on a podcast. If I didn't have, do not disturb on and I didn't have what's called banner notifications off, somebody could text me and I could see it and it, it would totally derail my thoughts. And so I also turn that off too. Like just to give a tip. Like you can turn all those things off and go and do not disturb, but you also have to turn off those banner notifications that are popping up on your phone because it's like, it's, it'd be amazing if you couldn't look at it. But like humans, you're just like, Dang, you know, and you look or it pops up and your, your phone, just like, even when your phone's screen just lights up, it's like, you know, Martha, you just look. So, Speaker 2:     07:59         uh, and then we feel obligated to answer back. Like that's me. I'm like, Oh man, like this came in, I need as entrepreneurs or as employees and is people in general, like we don't want to leave people hanging. So it's like our first thought is I better respond to this. Even if it's 4:00 in the morning while you're feeding the baby or you know, as you're falling asleep, you're like, I better get this done before I hit the sack. So with that, I'm going to try to implement what you just said. I think that's great. Um, I'm going to do it and let you know. And then next time I'm on the podcast with Dave, I'll give an update. Speaker 3:     08:26         That'd be awesome. I'd love to hear that. And it. And it will. The thing is what you find out. And I found this out, I used to travel a lot and um, we'd go over to Europe and other places where you didn't have the Internet, like legitimately, like 2009, like your cell phone carriers just didn't carry over. If it did, it was expensive and so we had all, like, we're as usually with a bunch of entrepreneurs, you get to the place where you had internet and you'd be like, oh my gosh, you know, I can get to my phone. And then when you find out is there's really not that many important things that happen within a or five hour timeframe that you just can't answer all at once. Speaker 2:     08:58         I love it, man. I'm going to try to implement that because I agree. I think we overreact like in the instant or in the moment, like when you get back to this right away and in all reality, like people could probably wait a day, two days a week, two weeks. So if everybody out there that's listening, if my response time slows down, it's Greg's fault. Greg, I want to jump into your story. I'm like, you're a two comma club award winner, but we're going to get to that here in a minute. I want to hear about Greg. How'd you get into entrepreneurship? What was kind of that initial push into it and then what has kind of transpired over the last, you know, 10, 11, 12 years? Speaker 3:     09:39         You know, ironically, I really became like, you know, everybody has a story, like I've always been an entrepreneur and always sold things and you know, that kind of thing. And I did like, you know, I sold like lemon heads and things as a kid, but I really didn't even know what being an entrepreneur was. I just knew like when I was 18 I didn't want to go to college. Yeah, exactly. I did my, my dad. Yeah. My Dad always joked because I always had money for things that I wanted and that was the key. Like I was a bmx or in a rollerblader, like thex games kind of did and I always had money for those things because I would work for it. And frankly I grew up in like kind of a poor middle class family. So I had to pay for my own things and so, you know, I always had that going on, but when I was 18 I had watched my sister go through college and I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. Speaker 3:     10:27         And I thought, man, I'm, I just don't feel right spending money on an education where, you know, I watched my sister, not everybody's like this in college. So, um, but my sister, you know, like took bowling class and clay pottery and I'm like, you know, I'm like, this doesn't make any sense, you know, like, this is absolutely insane. And so I didn't go to college. I was in the pizza industry actually for seven years and I went off and did a bunch of odd, odd end things like bought a box truck for 800 bucks. I was going to have like a used tire business. And then I ended up, uh, the box truck was like a total lemon and I parked it in the middle of, well I won't say where, but I parked it and I never like, I don't even know what happened to it because I'm like this, like it was going to cost more to fix it and to keep it or get rid of it. So long story short, I always wanted something, I didn't know what it was. And then I had a friend approach me about network marketing company and this was when I was 22, I was working third shift and I made really good money at the time. I say really good, but you know, it was $45,000 per year without a college education. Speaker 2:     11:31         Yeah, that's, I think a lot of people out there, you know, employees, that's a good wage right there actually for a note. No degree. Speaker 3:     11:38         Yeah. Well, and I was watching all my friends, you know, coming out of school, out of college at that time and they couldn't get jobs in their respective fields that they went to school for. And so I was extremely happy with my job, but not my hours. The third shift, the whole, you know, climbing the corporate to where, you know, for me at that time, like I was in the trucking industry and these guys were 60, 70 years old like they were, they were bleeding it out. And so for me to get a pay raise, I needed somebody to retire, die. Yeah, totally. So, and I've always been a competitor. So for me it was like I want to be able to get rewarded for where my effort, the more effort I put in, the more reward I get. And so as somebody approached me with network marketing and I didn't even know what it was like, I had never heard network marketing, Mlm, direct sales, whatever you want to call it. Speaker 3:     12:24         But what I saw was a product that I liked because I tried it, I loved the product I was into is the supplement space and I was a wrestler and I've always worked out and done those things. But more importantly is there was somebody attached to it that was already successful in it that said that they would mentor and teach me. And that was what I had always been lacking in the other like odd and end things that I had tried in the past with somebody to actually kind of hold my hand and mentor me through the process. And it was amazing because with network marketing, I believe you can get mentorship and training to different ways, you know, right now we're in double Comma Club, a x coaching and we pay for that. And it, my goodness just last week was, was one day of that was worth our tuition for the year. Speaker 3:     13:09         And it's truly like unbelievable. And then the other way is you can earn favor from somebody, right? You can start to get into their good graces by serving them and providing value to them. And through network marketing, you have the opportunity to really do that by being a producer and actually taking things that people teach you and applying it, um, you gain their favorite because those people genuinely, typically like me. I love to coach and teach people as long as they're applying what you're, you're coaching and teaching and so long story man, you know, over 11, 11 and a half years now. That's what I've done. Network marketing relationships, personal growth, success mindset, strategy, like that's been my bread and butter, but that's ultimately what led me to click funnels, you know, after a long time because network marketing, I always tried to figure out how to, how to do it online, you know, I've built my business, you know, primarily I say offline, but we use funnels and stuff for our webinars and stuff like that. Speaker 3:     14:07         But no advertising, you know. So then what was like your first initial step into click funnels? You said you were trying to get more of an online presence. What was your goal? And then like how did you find out about click funnels? Yeah, so I had um, since 2008, uh, so I started network marketing 2007, 2008. We started building our own boat called team website, like basically a training portals, right? You would come to it and you would get the documents that we have and systems and strategies on building your business and so forth. And so I started building all that, like html kind of stuff, you know, like just, I had to learn how to build websites and then I actually owned a gym for four years and I did a websites through that, um, you know, wordpress and things like that. And so I was familiar with all these different things. Speaker 3:     14:55         And what happened was, it was, it would have been maybe a little over two years ago. I had a friend. We're trying many different softwares and we came across clickfunnels and this was like version one point. Oh yeah. And it. But it was still, it was still better than everything else out there, you know. And um, I started getting into it and it was amazing. All the stuff that was inside one piece of software and whereas before, you know, I had like 10 different accounts with different things and trying to implement it. So I saw these ability. But what really came, and I was, what I was trying to do at that time with clickfunnels was I was trying to run some ads and different things to a fitness professionals because that's part of my background with the network marketing thing as well, uh, owning a gym for four years. Speaker 3:     15:45         But I just couldn't quite figure out like what it is that, that was like greg at that point. Like what, what was I sharing? And then I had an opportunity, uh, through learning all of this stuff. I mean, if you look in my office, there's just books and books and books everywhere. And I, I kinda, I relate it to like I had all the knowledge but I didn't have a playground to like get out there and click funnels gave me that playground. But then through a strategic relationship that I had with a couple of John, Michelle Bishop, uh, I was able to plug myself in to something and truly like show the skills that I had because they had a business idea and they were doing, you know, they're done pretty well with it, but they need somebody with the strategy. And the knowhow through click funnels and facebook advertising, Youtube, pre roll ads in those things and they needed that part. Speaker 3:     16:38         And so we, uh, we actually formed a business and I just told them I had equity in order to do that just because my network marketing company is very successful. So in order to take time away from that and divert it had to be worthwhile. And so what was cool is through what I've, I've learned and the neat thing with click funnels, you know, going back to the mentoring thing is that you can either, you know, either pay for it or you can earn it. But the neat thing about what Russell has set up with.com secrets, expert secrets. And then you know, the final trilogy here, the final book, traffic secrets, when that comes out, he is truly given you, you know, mentoring from far with those books to show you exactly what to do with the software. And you know, if you can implement that and you learn it, it's amazing what happens. Speaker 3:     17:25         And that's what's been phenomenal with us for the past 10 years of forming that relationship with John and Michelle is what's trending, what happened from the knowledge that I've learned throughout all the years. And we might have to cut this up and turn it into a promotional video and a testimonial video. It's all through it and it's, it's, it really is amazing. You know, the, the traffic event that we just came back to you, it really liked it. Honestly. I felt like it pulled the last 10 years of my life together and really like, even though I'd heard things and I knew them and I knew like little pieces, but the whole strategy and the overall concept that Russell teaches through that. I mean, if you can't build a business with that, I don't know what you're going to build a business with online. I really don't. I mean it's, it's the, to me, it's the end all be all in terms of like step one, two, three, playbook, and then you have the software to do it with Speaker 2:     18:19         Mike drop seriously. Mic Drop, man. No, I totally agree at that event was unbelievable, right? Like the.com secrets, hey, how to, what you need a funnel for and how it goes, how to get the most out of your customers and then, you know, expert secrets, how to position yourself as the expert and become like the Goto or the guru and then traffic secrets, you know, how to get more customers Speaker 3:     18:44         [inaudible] Speaker 2:     18:45         to your product and a man like you mentioned, Russell was mentoring from afar and I think, you know, as people get into those books, implement, start having success, you know, they start moving up the value ladder and everything and try to get closer to that mentorship, right? Sometimes we have to go out and find that person, um, build a relationship with them and Russell's allowing people to do that through his books, through his courses and through as a higher ticket coaching programs. So I have a question for you, Michelle and John, you met them, have ladies edge. Tell us about the funnel. I mean, just so everybody out there listening knows this is a two comma club award winning funnel. They are crushing it. It's a beautiful funnel and the product and the results speak for themselves. So if you want to give us a little insight to that, that'd be awesome. Speaker 3:     19:31         Yeah, it's been amazing. We, um, so originally Michelle has a background to where she used to do meal plans, you know, a long time ago prior to we actually met through network marketing. I mentored her in that specific business and then her and John got married and so then it was kinda like this mentoree relationship between me and then the both of them. And so we had a history of working together and what had happened was she had a child and a couple different moves and then she wanted to get back into the fitness industry, like, you know, and really share her message and her heart and help women, not just with meal plans but with the entire package, you know, women empowerment, a self love, all of those things that come along with it because that's a big piece of that whole, you know, world really with, with female specifically. So for us, the, the, we originally started out, um, we, we were at a premier price of $97 per month Speaker 3:     20:22         and so that was December 17th and we are monthly reoccurring. So prior to, um, the bishops and I as they had just done kind of like a one month promo, they would say, hey, let's do a four week bootcamp. And their biggest one at one point it was like 600 people, you know, at $97. So they had had a phenomenal, phenomenal year. I won't get income for that, but we've more than 10 it since we, since we formed our partnership. And really it's just amazing how well we all work together. It's just a true blessing to be in business with great people. And so, uh, we started with $97 per month and what we did is we just transitioned, instead of trying to collect money, you know, once every month we create a continuity based program, which is the background I came from with my, my physical gym, you know, as, hey, let's get them automated and make them cancel. Speaker 3:     21:15         And it's the best thing for everybody who holds them accountable and helps them get better results in the end and then just as of recently and, and so then we actually go back, we did that, we promote and promote it, and then we started doing like a front end hook to where we'd say $7 for seven days. We let them try us out for seven bucks. And it was a way that we could pre qualify who came in. So instead of just doing free seven days, we're like, because we're at $97 a month, I mean, you know, free seven days and then 97, that's a large jump. Even $7 for seven days in the [inaudible]. Ninety seven was lard jump. However we had a 72 percent trial to conversion rate. Holy Cow. Yeah. So that. So we knew like, all right, we have a winter. And so we built that up and we now call that the sisterhood. Speaker 3:     22:01         And so we have the sisterhood. And then we had a lifetime membership open for, for a little while in the beginning with, since shut that off, you can't get a lifetime membership anymore. No longer. And we have now have a, a, I want to say lower tier, but lower priced package because we did have a lot of people with the demographic being in between 20 and 35 even though we have up to 60 and 65 year olds in there is phenomenal. And yeah, it's totally cool to see like the different demographics that are within there, just backgrounds and body types and everything is so amazing. The group of women, it's as crazy miles I run like I'm uh, you know, I'm a hunting, you know, fast car driving like a real man's man. Yeah. Like, you know, and uh, I, you know, I'm an, I'm an owner, you know, a partner in this women's right. Speaker 3:     22:54         But it's amazing to watch what these women have done and like there's no judgment and it's so cool. Like it's, it's absolutely just changing a women inside out, which I know is, for me, I get passionate because I know that helps change the marriage. Yeah, that's really, that's really important to me. I've been married for 11 years, been with my wife for 17 years and so like to see that I think is like the most fulfilling part for me. But anyways, uh, we now have a lower tier and we do a free trial for seven days and then $27. But uh, we, we have kept the premier package called the sisterhood at 97 as well. So, so I think one of the big takeaways for that and that people need to realize is I'm providing value before asking for money. Right? Like, I know you did the $7 to 97, but you are providing them value where they are going to see results or to learn something. And like once they see Speaker 2:     23:46         the value or see the results, it's like, you know what, this is what I want and that, you know, that's why we do the books. The free plus shipping, right? They're going to get it. They're going to learn, they're going to see the value and then they're that much more likely to sign up for clickfunnels, for, to join the coaching program because they've already seen how much value has been provided at such a low price point. So that $7 to 97 converting at 72 percent is absolutely insane and incredible. Um, so you guys are listening out there and provide value before the big ask. Um, Greg, I do want to ask a couple of questions. Is going to be a little rapid fire, so just, uh, as you can say as much as you want or as little as you want, but here we go. So I kind of already asked you what your morning routine was and you're already crushing it with ladies edge. We'll get to your podcast here before we get off, but you're killing it in network marketing. How do you stay motivated? Speaker 3:     24:38         That's a great question. You know, for me it's always, it's always, um, I have journals from all of my past, like I keep journals and I've documented like the most emotional moments in that. And typically for me personally, that's changing people's lives through coaching and mentoring and so I always remember who it is that I'm serving in the end result and the feeling that comes from seeing them get that result and I keep them at the forefront of my mind and I have pictures all around my office, like if you know, you had it live, you would see like me with those people and so I keep keep the people in front of me, which was cool to hear a rustle talk about traffic is really people and when you start looking at traffic as the people and providing that value, like you said, that's what really motivates me is to see change in behavior and changing habits. So Speaker 2:     25:24         dude, perfect answer. Next question then. What has been one of your biggest challenges? So you say you know, you're motivated by impacting people's lives, changing their lives, helping them out. Um, what has been one of your biggest challenges with doing that? Speaker 3:     25:39         No, man. I'm gonna get a little vulnerable. I'll try. I'll keep it short though. Speaker 2:     25:44         We love vulnerability. We think that that's important and kind of really helps people connect, right? We're not all on this pedestal. Uh, we've all been through things, so please go ahead. Well, Speaker 3:     25:56         for me, so I started in network marketing. I've had great success in that. I love it. Like I'm still very active with my team and, and leaders in our organization and I'm absolutely love that side, but I believe that I have a bigger purpose in that I can help more people than ever, ever before with the Internet, you know, the fact is we're the first humans that have access to this thing called the Internet and we've literally touched the lives of almost every human in the world somehow. And so I've been trying to figure out, and this is what, what's been amazing is like I've been trying to figure all this stuff out, like how do I serve people? Like what do I do? Do I create a coaching program? Do I create a mentoring program? Like I still don't have the answer to that, but what I've done is I've been able to use the skills that I've acquired while trying to figure that out to do the ladies edge and that's what's been so neat is because I see my talent there, but then I also know like, you know, I also have another purpose to, to serve outside of that and I'm still really trying to figure that out. Speaker 3:     26:53         Like what is Greg's funnel? You know, I don't, I don't necessarily have that. I know what I know what I want to do, but I don't have like the specific program lined out for it is really what it comes down to you. So that is still my biggest struggle. And I think the biggest takeaway from that that like as I as I journal about it is for anybody, because I know the clickfunnels community and I'm around it. And the two comma club thing, it's like even if you don't know exactly what you want to do, go help somebody else fulfill their vision. And that's what I've been able to do with Michelle is like help her fulfill her vision and, and I kind of took a back seat because I'm used to having the front seat, like I've spoken in very large stages and helped a lot of people in that sense, but like I've taken a back seat to, to now serve again in a different way to where I can figure out what it is that I want to do. I still don't know. So that's, that's my, you know, that's, that's still it, you know, I'm trying to figure out like how I'm going to serve the world on a bigger scale. Speaker 2:     27:53         And I think we know that was perfect answer again. Um, but I think we all struggle with that, right? No matter how successful we are, we're always trying to find like one way or another rising something, whether that's our income or the impact or our reach. And so I'm not as a great answer. And so next, when you kind of talked about the gym, the pizza industry, the box truck, where you going to start the tire business. So I don't know how many of those were failures or how many of them just are learning experience, but how many times did you have to fail before succeeding? And then, you know, what are those experiences teach you? Speaker 3:     28:24         Uh, yeah, there's, there's so many more stories. Unfortunately. So funny. Yeah. The pizza thing was just like my first, like I come from a very industrious town. So I started working when I was 14. I really started working when I was much younger than that. But the pizza was like my first job job that I stuck to for 77 years. And you know, I was actually one of my best friends. Well previous best friends, you know, almost 20 years ago now, uh, told me I was only ever going to amount to being a pizza boy because I didn't because I didn't choose to go to college and um, so anyways, we're no longer friends but um, you know, that always stuck with me and so I kind of had like this, like try to figure it out mentality. And so there were, there was actually like so many different things that I tried to do because at one point I just like, I just want to make money. Speaker 3:     29:16         Like that was just like, I was like, God, I just want to make money and not have a job like, or a boss and control my life and I really didn't have clarity. And then, you know, through all of those, what I really learned is that you have to have somebody teach you the way. Like I think having a mentor and you can do this through books, right? Like, like we were talking about with Russell's books. Then Russell has other ways you can do at this even more hands on Double Comma Club coaching. Like that's even more intense. And so I think making sure that you're learning from somebody who's already gone through the experience of whatever it is you're trying to do is so important because it can literally raise like two or five or even 10 years of just regret and failures and struggles when you just say, okay, I'm going to do what they say, like the, you know, uh, Kale and talking about Hashtag do what Russell says, it's so important. So I think finding a mentor is so vital and learning and doing. And so that's like my message of life is like go find a mentor, but be coachable and teachable, but most importantly, implement what you learn. Okay. Speaker 2:     30:24         Awesome man. Thank you for sharing that. Now. Awesome. Now these last two, we're going to end on a little lighthearted. I appreciate you coming in and getting vulnerable and telling your experiences and not just focusing on the successes, right? You're going back and talking about some of the harder things that you went through. And I think that's what, you know, a lot of us need to hear it right? Like we see these people that are having success. Russell and all those guys were like, ah, it's just so easy for them, but there's a story behind it and that was cool about traffic secrets in the week before we had, um, you know, the dry bar comedy where Russell went through all the stories and you saw the struggles that they went through, the literally the, almost being bankrupt and laying people off and you know, everybody goes through those things and I think people need to hear those so they don't get so discouraged and they were like, okay, they went through this, so can I. So I really appreciate you sharing your story. So we'll finish it off with a little light hearted. I'm a food guy. You've seen me. I'm a little bigger around the waist and everything. I love food. What is your favorite food? Speaker 3:     31:20         Oh goodness. It's donuts. I can put down like six donuts. No problem. Speaker 2:     31:28         Any certain type like maple chocolate, Maple Bay, Speaker 3:     31:31         I'm a glaze with chocolate icing or glaze with chocolate icing with cream filled. Speaker 2:     31:36         Ooh Man, that sounds good. I said, oh goodness. It's lunchtime right now. That sounds good for you. What would be your dream vacation, like kind of the favorite way or favorite place for you to relax and kind of step away for a minute? Speaker 3:     31:51         Well, it depends, you know, you kind of have vacations that you take solo, which for me are a little mini vacations down to my property where I go hunting, but I am a very relationship focused kind of guy. So I love taking, going to amazing places like my most favorite vacation I've ever been to has been Bora Bora, hands down. But what made Bora Bora, Bora Bora was I was with about 50 people that were entrepreneurs as well and, and we all, you know, are of the same mind and heading in a direction. And so to have that experience with other people I think is, is as amazing. So for me, I love getting out and traveling really anywhere. It's about the company that I'm with. Speaker 2:     32:35         Awesome. Man. I, I agree. Like I like to get away and relax, but I'm also a little bit of an extrovert. I talk with people. I like building relationships as well and so a kind of feel the same way. If there's not people there with me on vacation, was I really there? Is it really a vacation? So we're going to close this up, but I want people to know where they can find you. Where can they find you on instagram? Tell us about your podcast real quick and they find you on the other social platforms. Speaker 3:     33:00         But instagram is just the real Greg Smith. Uh, that's my user. And then facebook, I have facebook page is Greg Smith. Hopefully you can find it. There's a lot of spirits, but the best place to find me is rise above podcast. So just started that, uh, were like episode 17 and uh, that's just, you know, I share a lot of really deep stories about catalyst. We only scratched the surface today on some of my past and the struggles and pains to get to where I am and continue to go through. So a rise podcast. That's, that's, uh, that's kind of what I'm putting out right now. Speaker 2:     33:33         So where can they find that page? It's just rise above podcast.com. Yes. Awesome. So guys go to rise above podcast.com also. Go on Itunes, subscribe and review the rise of a podcast. Greg. Dude, thank you so much for coming on the show. I know it was kind of a little switcheroo on you instead of having Dave you had me, but I really appreciate you coming on. It was great talking with you. Can't wait to see you at the next event. Everyone out there listening. Go Follow Greg and then also make sure you go subscribe and review this podcast and then let me know how this episode when tell Dave if you want me to ever be back on the show or if you never want me back on the show, let us know. Greg. Thanks man. We will talk to you soon. Speaker 3:     34:12         See everybody. Thanks miles. Speaker 4:     34:15         Hey everybody. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to podcasts. If you don't mind, could you please share this with others, rate and review this podcast on itunes. It means the world to me where I'm trying to get to as a million downloads here in the next few months and just crush through over $650,000 and I just want to get the next few $100,000 so we can get to a million downloads and see really what I can do to help improve and and get this out to more people at the same time. If there's a topic, there's something you'd like me to share or someone you'd like me to interview, by all means, just reach out to me on facebook. You can pm me and I'll be more than happy to take any of your feedback as well as if people you'd like me to interview more than happy to reach out and have that conversation with you. So again, go to Itunes, rate and review this, share this podcast with others and let me know how else I can improve this or, and do to make this better for you guys. Thanks.

Staying in business can be difficult at times. Critical skills that are required to build a business exist and grow year after year. All business owners, at one time or another, find themselves struggling to keep clients (retention), to keep up with what customers want from the company (experience), and to add people (increase products). Over the last 20 years, Jess Dewell has worked on many of these problems with companies and clients. When there is a chasm to cross, she points it out and cultivates the team to figure out how to build a way across. Professional and thoughtful, she brings to the table. Transcript of the Interview Hugh Ballou: Greetings. Welcome to The Nonprofit Exchange. We are into the fourth year of this now, Russ. Russ, I know we're on an audio podcast, but I don't see your smiling face. All I see is a picture. One of your better pictures. Russell Dennis: Well, I'll fix that. I should be live. Hugh: There you are. I'm traveling today. I'm at a hotel in Orlando. We have a live audience here. We are going to be watching with bated breath, and we will come in with a few questions. We do have a little background noise, so I'm going to mute myself. It's probably a popular notion with some people, so we will mute our end so it will be quieter. Russ has got some really good questions for what I think is going to be an amazing interview today with- Jess, you know me, so I am just getting acquainted with you. I am going to pay attention. Jess Dewell: It's great how that happened. You meet somebody, and they tell you all about you and how you think, yet you have never met them before because of the personality and the ways that we get to communicate. I totally understand being in that place. Hugh: Love it. Tell us about yourself and how come you do what you do. Then Russell will take it on and ask you some really interesting questions. Jess: That sounds great. I am Jess Dewell. I founded Red Direction 14 years ago. It started out as something slightly different than what it became. It became building frameworks for resilience. What came up on the radio show that I host, which was live streamed right before we are live streaming here, we were talking about bounciness. The more struggle we face, the more that we fall down, the more risks we are willing to take, we get bouncier. I love the concept of that and how that fits into businesses. Businesses can get that concept of bounciness. Pick ourselves up together, and go forward together. The last seven years have really been dialed into what we do for organizations that are growing and changing. They are in these critical points of development, and their leadership got them so far, their skills got them so far, and now it's time to infuse them with more. Turn them upside down. Look at them in different ways to maximize the work flow, learning, and experience that already exists to go forward with grace and determination and whatever words you use to describe your companies. That is what we do over here at Red Direction. Russell: It's all about establishing the great culture. There are a lot of things that go into culture. For our audience, what does culture mean to you in the sense that applies to organizations? Jess: You could look it up on the Internet and get the definition that Google or whatever your search engine is will tell you. I define culture as how we work together, and the strength with which we are able to work together and its effectiveness. Russell: Yeah. What are some elements of culture that make organizations successful? Jess: What makes an organization successful? I am getting cues that your volume, Russ, is not as high as our audience would like. Since I got that message, I am going to pass it on to you right here. Will you repeat the question? Russell: What are some of the elements that go into culture that make an organization successful? Jess: Are you ready for this? Are you really ready for this, Russ? Russell: Bring it on. Jess: People, people, people. There might be a few more p's, and we will just replace them with people and people and people. It's the culture. It's what do we look at, how do we react, and preferably, how do we respond, and of course, how are the other people that we are surrounding ourselves with doing those things? And an awareness of the fact that we play off of each other. Russell: Because you work with a lot of organizations of all types, what do you find are the biggest disconnects in organizations that have problems culturally? Jess: Are you ready? Russell: I am ready. Jess: People, people, people, people, people. So really, it's we think we are doing one thing, and we are being perceived as something different. There is a break in our communication. We think somebody is doing something, but we never actually asked the clarifying question. Even some people go, “I have a dumb question.” You know what? The dumb question that goes unasked just leads to bigger misunderstandings, so might as well ask that and get rid of the qualifier at the same time. “I have a question. Did I understand this right?” We are thinking of culture, and we are thinking of how to work together as a team. We all have different reasons for being in the roles that we are at. A wise man once told me, “The people who work here choose with their own two feet every single day to come to work for us.” I thought that was really a fabulous thing, and understanding that everybody has a different reason for being here, to work together. Yes, we have all agreed to this goal; however, if we haven't created some sort of an awareness of how all of us fit into that end goal, we end up getting bumps and scratches and slowdowns and stalls and U-turns also. Russell: Let's look at the term “rules.” My good friend Dr. Hal Dibner talked with me the last time I saw him, we were actually talking about rules and how to move people to action. There are a lot of internal rules that each of us has that shapes the way we approach things and the way that we live. I think these rules can become internalized in the culture with an organization. What are some rules that you have seen that have become part of the culture of organizations that have hindered their progress? Jess: I call those “elephants in the room.” The big elephants in the room. One of the things that Red Directions' programs are really good at is finding the elephants in the room, pointing them out, setting up a little station, and inviting them to break them. Just being aware of what elephants are in the room. Another phrase might be “unwritten agreements.” We have done it this way. It's worked all right, so this is the way that we do it. Whether that's the case, or we are avoiding something, the elephants in the room, either way, when left unexplored, it can cause so many big problems. I have been a part of a company that has imploded because of that. I have also seen companies really unfortunately breed distrust and really feel fear around, “Am I actually safe in my role?” because of the unwritten agreements and insecurities and unknowns they cause. All that gets in the way of decision-making, which really when we are in business, is the ultimate goal: make decisions, nonprofit or otherwise, move toward an objective, make decisions, move toward an objective. Hit those goals and those signposts along the way. Russell: I think that the way people view their work really impacts the culture. When organizations get stuck, in my experience, a lot of people don't really like to be told what's wrong. At what point do you find that organizations have hit a place where they are willing to have those conversations? How much does it generally take in your experience for somebody to reach that point? Jess: It really varies. I have witnessed some other outlying symptoms if you will. If we were to look at symptoms that you are on your way down that rollercoaster, and you're not sure if there is an up at the other side, is that everybody is tired. Everybody is behind. They are unable to keep up with the things that they have going on, with the commitments that they have made, and it becomes a drag. Those are the types of things that allow us to miss other cues. We are turned off from actually using our external perception, and it's only stuck inside here. It can manifest other ways, too, besides the “I'm stuck,” “I'm overwhelmed,” or “I can't meet my deadlines.” People leave. I'm burned out. People leave. “This is not what I thought it was going to be.” People leave, and then they are talking about their experience. They don't talk about their experience until they leave. Nobody inside knew because there was a gap between each of the people, and there was “seemingly” to have a connection, but it was actually missing or had been broken. Russell: A lot of our work focuses around leaders and how leaders interact and work with people and a common problem is leaders that overfunction. Jess: Yes. Russell: They take on a lot of things rather than train people. They find that it's “quicker” just to do it myself than explain how to do it. Sometimes there is a fear of letting go of some control, not trusting people to do it. But if you bring people on to your team, you hire people because of the skills, knowledge, and abilities that will serve you, they have talent, and letting people actually do what it is that they do is a little difficult for leaders. That can get grounded in the culture. That creates burnout because you have a few high performers who are not being built to be better leaders, and they are just trying to do things instead of spreading them out, delegating, and building. The leadership skills of other people. We see that in nonprofits. Are you seeing that with- Jess: In every organization. Every organization is susceptible to that. It's interesting because yes, we hire for skills, knowledge, and ability. Most of the time, in most processes for bringing people on, what is left out, or what doesn't have enough focus in that interview and onboarding process is what we mean when we say whatever we value. If service to a specific group, serving an underrepresented group in some way, if somebody comes on and they have the skills, the knowledge, and the ability, but they are only using this as a stepping stone, and they are exactly what you want for the job, part of the conversation becomes, “We know this is just a stepping stone on your path. Are you able to buy in? What do you like? What are we disconnected on what you're doing while you're here? Do you understand with where you're going how this actually helps you get there?” You know what? A lot of people don't want to face the fact that they are hiring someone who is going to leave. However, if we bring it up in the conversation, and we are talking about this, and it's part of what we believe in, we know- We know we're not going to do what we're doing forever. We know we haven't done what we're doing forever. We have all had different experiences in the past. So why not just put that on the table? Then it's never a surprise. Then it's your performance reviews, your check-ins we're having along the way, the conversations we are having before, after, and during meetings can still revolve around what are we doing in this organization? What is our mission? What is each of our parts in that while we are here? That type of collaboration is what is going to make somebody want to stay, but also it will prepare them to get them to where they want to go. As leaders, as employers, anybody with staff, it is our job to embrace and to love and get that person where they want to go because maybe this is the place, maybe it's not, but we can do really well for them, for us, for our community, for our donors, for the people that we serve because of that small thing: having that type of conversation up front. Hugh: Hey, Russell. We are having trouble hearing you. Russell: It's all about growth. That better? It's all about growth. If you have a conversation about values, it's important for both individuals and the organization to understand what it is that people want to get out of a relationship that you have. This is how you attract people, whether they are working for you, volunteering for you, coming to work as a staff member, coming to serve on your board. It's having congruent values that will drive the day. The idea of growth is something that is fundamental to everything. To get better at what you do, you increase that level of support that you get. Culturally, with nonprofits, one of the things aside from the fact that you have some leaders that may overfunction, maybe they haven't thought through all of their processes or systems or how they can actually get better at creating an experience because they are more effective and efficient at delivering their programs. Talk a little bit about your experience around that and some of the things that you would help people work around that. Jess: I wouldn't say work around, I would say work with and strengthen. The reason is that we all have a strength. When we can put a stake in the ground and say, “This is what I stand for,” wherever I work, whoever I work with, I know what I stand for in general. That allows me to have a guidepost when I show up in an organization and when I am working with other people. If other people are floundering around and are not sure, we put on that lens. What is important to me? What is my purpose here? What is my purpose in this situation? Maybe not my life purpose, but in this situation. How can I bridge that gap to move things forward? Those are the types of skills that we develop, programs that we create. The biggest reason for that is experience. Until we do it, we don't know if we are good at it. Until we do it, we don't know how to apply our personal strengths to the work that we're doing. When we find our strength and can focus everything through that, it becomes easier as managers, as directors, to find the strengths in others and be curious and be willing to try a few things here to be curious with others to find their strengths as well. Maybe it's a strength. A lot of people know that they can stay behind an idea. In a nonprofit, I come to work for a nonprofit, I volunteer at a nonprofit, I give money to a nonprofit because I care about the idea they are working on. When it comes to actually doing the infrastructure, taking the action to make all that possible- You mentioned your values, how do we bring all of our skills together to get something done? But also you talked about processes and systems. Processes and systems are great on paper. As soon as you add people to them, you add what they are thinking in that moment, what their past was, what their dreams are, and what is on their mind right now in that situation. It may not be those things that are most important to working on an organization to develop it. Processes and systems are really impacted by all of the things that we care about, all of the things that we face. I am all about efficient systems, efficient processes. However, when we stop, when we weave what we care about, how we do our work together here at this organization, allows us to then be able to have a deeper conversation, a quicker conversation, which improves efficiency in a whole different way than just pushing the levers of a process. Hugh: How about a question from Florida? Danna Olivo: Yeah, Jess. Jess: Bring it. Danna: Bring it on. It's funny that we're talking about this today because- My name is Danna Olivo, and I am a business strategist. I work with early-stage micro-companies and medium companies. I work on those processes, the systems, and things like that. But one of the things that was really fascinating to me was you were talking about communication styles and hiring and things like that, talking about skills and values. One of the things that a lot of companies don't take into consideration when hiring are the behavioral and cultural characteristics that are inbred in the people they are looking to hire and making sure that those cultural characteristics match the organization. Therefore, in order to do that, what we have done is we are trying to make a concerted effort to try and match those cultures to the behavioral characteristics to get a better understanding of their fit within the organization. Jess: May I ask you a question? Danna: Yes. Jess: When you're thinking about that, that means an organization really has to know. Danna: The whole thing just dropped. Jess: That means an organization has to really know where they stand. They understand that what they're doing is already working. Do you find that a company is going to need some other help and some other work actually figuring out where they stand as an organization versus just being able to put this on top of what already exists? Danna: Yes, I do find that part of the whole process is we have to make sure that they have those working systems and methodologies in place. Part of that process involves bringing the team on that will work with them in order to do that. If they aren't centered around the same cultural values that the company has set in place, you are going to end up with a divided approach to these systems and methodologies. Does that make sense? Jess: It makes complete sense. In fact, sometimes, in an existing organization that is going back, they are going, “We are having this problem hiring the right people. We are having this problem keeping the people we want who have the skills in our roles.” When we get to that, it's interesting because people are always like, it's the people. It's the talent we are facing. They forget to look inward. Those would be the things where I'd be like, How strapped are ya? Because you might be better off having somebody do some temp work just for a short period of time, stop to take a step back, and evaluate some other things. Those are the elephants. You're talking about the elephants in the room right there, Danna, and being able to recognize what we are willing to incorporate right now for where we are. One of the things that I hear in the work that you and I do, people want me to come in, and they think I can change everything. The answer is no, I can't change anything. I can only facilitate and create a program to educate to allow that change to occur within an organization. The other thing that people think, in all organizations, both profit and nonprofit, I get a lot of work done from people who have just done a rebrand, thinking that rebranding will actually solve the problems that we are unclear about what we stand for. You probably are unclear about what you stand for, but the way you look and describe yourself doesn't matter. It's a Band-Aid, isn't it? Danna: I love the fact that you're talking about this because we are all about education. What I teach my people is you can't operate in a vacuum. You don't have all the answers. You have to surround yourself with that team that will be able to help you reach those goals. You have to surround yourself with those people who will be able to say, “You're off base.” Jess: I keep pointing with two different colored pens because these are the notes that I take. Anybody listening is going to be like, “What is she talking about?” I have two pens to take notes on every conversation that I have because there are things I want in one color and other things in another color. All of my notes have been written on before by a third color. If I hold up pens at you, it just means I'm excited. Yes! Nonetheless, I hear what you're saying. You're right. It is about education. You said something that made me think about a program that we have. We talk about ThinkTime. This is a combination of words, think and time, that might be heard in the same sentence, that are squished together with no spaces. ThinkTime. This is something that we do at Red Direction. We have a process. How do I, as the steward of this mission that we're on, whether it's an entire organization, whether it's a business unit, whether it's my particular role, how do I in the stewardship of my position have time to actually allow all the chatter to get out? Because all that chatter has to get out to have new creative thoughts. More importantly, ThinkTime, a lot of people are like great. I like a whole day; however, I don't use a whole day. I use a half day to get started. I use four hours, once a week for four hours, closing everything out. This is how that system typically goes. I am going to give you all the steps. You guys can play with this as much as you want. That is first, put it in a calendar, and guard it fiercely. Four hours, one time a week. The first month, the first four, maybe the first eight, you are going to think they are useless. They will feel useless. All you will want to do is catch up on email. All you want to do is clear up the clutter on your desk. All you want to do is return those phone calls. All you want to do is write out a report that needed to happen or think about reports. It takes some time. But after about eight to ten sessions of four hours, all of a sudden, you sit down. I remember this so clearly the first time I did this. This is going to work; this is so great! You sit down, and it's like, Okay, I actually see the Red Direction vision. I actually see the actions that we're taking right now. I can just experience what that looks like and have an idea of what problems we're facing right now, where we're doing really well, and then what are the things that we could be doing better or different? When we have that space outside of our ThinkTime is when we go, Let's break it down into a problem. Do I have a problem here? What's that problem? Let's go through those four steps of problem-solving. Then we can go bright. When we get to the options, we get to make a decision. Being confident in a decision comes from not running around rapid, not thinking or knowing we are never going to have all the answers no matter how much information you know about it, but we spent the time upfront to decide what the decision was, what the problem is we are going to solve. We are evaluating the path, not just a solution, but the path to betterment, the path to what we want next. The more we get to do that, that's the second piece, the more we get to practice those steps, the more confident we become in our decisions, and we can make them quicker. We can evaluate and get rid of options that don't work right now. Tell me this, Danna, and whomever is sitting next to you, and Russ. When you are sitting here and looking at all these problems you're looking at all these things that are going on. I can choose any one of them. I don't know what this means; you have too many options. Does that happen to you? Occasionally, sometimes, all the time. Danna: Oh yes, even as a strategist, I find that I have to take a step back and decide, Okay, which one do I need to focus on right now? First of all. Secondly, what is the fastest way to come into a solution? By taking that step back sometimes and evaluating what is my talent, what is it, my talent that can help me come up with that solution? If I can't find the talent within me to provide a solution, then I have a resource of people around me who I reach out to. I am not afraid to bring them in. You can't operate in a vacuum. You said this. Our capacity as an entrepreneur only extends so far. Jess: That's right. Danna: This happens to me. Jose Belen here, has a new nonprofit that he is starting called Mission Zero. Great nonprofit. We happen to be meeting Hugh here so we can get some tips and learn and stuff like that. Do you have any questions for her? Jose Belen: No. Actually, this has been very informative. We have been around for about six months. Mission Zero is an organization dedicated to helping veteran suicide. That was part of the initial invasion into Iraq in 2003. Since I was honorably discharged in 2005, I have been fighting PTSD and suicidal thoughts. Every 80 minutes, there is a veteran somewhere in America committing suicide. We are dedicated to making a difference. So Mission Zero hopefully one day will stop veteran suicides. We appreciate any support and like-minded individuals. Thank you. Danna: So they took the advice that you are giving. They have been surrounding themselves with the people who can help them get this off the ground rather than trying to do it all themselves. Hugh: Jess, you probably know more about me than I know about you, but I'm quite amazed at the synchronicity of what you are talking about. I will give it back to Russell. I hijacked his questioning here. But it's the synchronicity of what you are talking about and what we teach at SynerVision. This whole culture piece is core to transformational leadership and how we empower leaders. Thank you for such a passion around this. Love it. So, Russell, remember the old age and mental condition? I will give it back to you. Russell: Almost escaped without that. He loves that one. That is his trademark thing. I don't know why. It's not true. He likes it. He entertains himself with that story. He's going to find out as he gets to spend more time with you and learn more about you how remarkable you are. We haven't known each other very long, but I love what you're doing. What you're talking about is creating safe spaces and collaboration. Collaboration is something that I think people are slowly starting to get. It's a really important piece of everything that we do. It's about people. I just had a mastermind this morning with other business leaders who were talking to me about helping me and my business. It doesn't matter how many people you meet. A lot of times, there is that little piece of us that resists. Talk to us a little bit about how you help businesspeople, nonprofit leaders, some of the tools that you use to help them face that inner resistance. That is the one thing an organization, it's all about people. We have this built-in resistance. Part of it is to change and some other things. Talk a little bit how you equip people to deal with that resistance and what they should look for. Jess: Such a loaded question. There are like 212 ways—that is when water boils—we could start this conversation. I think ultimately the point is that water will boil. If we resist long enough, we have no choice, just like water in a pan on a stove. It doesn't matter how long you leave it there. It will eventually reach 212 degrees and boil. I feel like when, so tools. Let's talk about tools. A lot of the tools that we teach are soft skills. The reason we teach soft skills is because I can come up with a process just like all of the other processes out there. Some would be good, and some would not be as good as the other ones out there. We all work differently. When we all work differently, and we are thinking about how we do what we do, we don't give ourselves grace. We resist what our own strength is and how we work. We are going to go back and use me as an example. There were five people in my family, three kids and two adults. Every Sunday, we would sit at the dining room table after dinner and we would look at the whole next week. If it wasn't on the calendar, it did not happen. It was the time to ask questions, get permission, do all of this stuff. I grew up with this time management concept. I grew up with this concept of, Okay, we know who the decision-maker is, the person who can drive. If it doesn't fit in their calendar, it can't work, so I have to make a really good case that my stuff is more important than my sister's. This happens in business. This same thing happens in business. We get together, whether we are using time management skills or not, it comes down to how persuasive are we, how passionate are we? Can we clearly communicate the beginning, middle, and end of an idea to move it forward? Some people use time. I am really good at time and time blocking, and ThinkTime is a part of that. I am also really adept, and the programs we teach around soft skills are also around time management because we can only scale so much. We can only scale so much with one person. Each person can only scale so much. The whole purpose of being in an organization is to be able to understand what is my purpose, how do I leverage my time? What is their purpose, and how do we leverage their time? Have a good time doing it. Enjoy being together. You mentioned the word “ collaboration.” I think collaboration fits in a lot of different ways here. We are talking about- By the way, everybody who thinks collaboration- I am going to stop what I was going to say and talk about collaboration. I have a bad taste in my mouth when somebody says collaboration because I remember when, and we can all do this, I remember a time I was on a collaborative cross-functional team, and I did all the work. Now you know- You're a driver. You're going to do what it takes. Right? So we have to let that go. Those of us who feel that way, and other people are like, Ooh, collaboration. I give ideas, give ideas, give ideas, and I don't have to do anything. Let me just be an idea machine. Well, that only works to a point, too. Then there are the people who will take different kinds of action and throw in what some of us would call kinks in the wheel, but they are trying to make it better. They are poking holes in it. Can we get this to a point where we are seamless, we have something that can stick that we all agree on? Those people are really necessary, too. When we embrace not everybody does well, not everybody thinks well, not everybody wants to be the devil's advocate, then we get to go, “Hey, we need everybody.” We can do this in a different way. We can have a conversation. Collaboration starts with a conversation. What are we doing? What can our parts be? How can we move this forward together? Hugh: Jess, you have opened up a lot of topics. Jess: I know, right? Hugh: You're in here because Russell invited you. I have to work hard so I can keep up with him. He's a smart dude. What I'm going to throw out here is I'd like to take a couple of these themes and come back around and dig into some of these themes a little deeper. You have a whole lot of stuff to unpack here. We are coming to the top of the hour for this particular show. I want to talk about the sponsor moment here that makes it possible and give you a chance to wrap people's heads around some of the major themes you want to leave us with. Then we will let Russell close us out. Does that sound good to you guys? Russ has been really diligent in helping us pull this together today with a whole lot of technical issues. *Sponsor message for Rock Paper Simple* Jess, how would you like to wrap this up and leave folks with? What is a profound thought you want to leave people with before Russ closes out this great session? Jess: All right, we just upped the ante. The most profound thought you want to leave us with, Hugh. There is no low bars here. Everybody, I have listened to a few of these in preparation for this conversation. Of course, I know Hugh, and I know Russ. There is no going back; there is only forward. I think that that's really a key piece of what culture and what we're talking about when we are talking about these elements of culture is that we are always moving forward. We can embrace it. We can resist it. Either way, it's coming. We can make it more fun. We can make it more effective, and we can serve more people when we get out of our own way and we recognize our own self and how we can show up and invite others to continue to join our party. Russell: Great stuff. In conversation with what's happening with anything that I touch has to start in the mirror. That is the X factor. That is the one thing I can actually do something about. The willingness to actually look at where we are as individuals energetically makes a big difference. We can find some compassion for ourselves in there and in other people and put ourselves in their shoes and say, “How can we create an experience? How can we get to the larger point? What are the things we need to put on the shelf to make this thing work the way it is built to work?” That is really where it starts. Jess, as always, it's been a pleasure. Danna, Hugh, all of our friends down at CEO Space, the July forum, wonderful organization. Being a part of that has changed my life. I have a contact in veteran suicide that is actually somebody that has been in Texas shining the spotlight on it. His primary thing is to get their stories captured. We will cycle back around and talk about that again. In the meantime, I'd like to thank all of our listeners out there every week who join us here at The Nonprofit Exchange. We got a really good guest next week. He is going to be talking about conversations. He has an incredible tool that can help us look at the way we have conversations on a personal and professional level. You don't want to miss this because he has got a brilliant tool called Conversations. Join us next week for that. Hugh. Hugh: Thank you, Russ. Thank you, Jess. It's been a great session. Thank you so much. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Routinely, these are the most common ways we'll increase the perceived value of our offers... What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business, using today's best internet sales funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. How you guys doing? Hey, just right off the bat, I want you to know if I'm talking fast or a little bit jittery, it's because I am a little bit jittery. Okay, so a few weeks ago, about three weeks ago I was like, "Crap!" When I first met my wife, I was six per cent body fat. I was running ... I was doing sprint triathlons like crazy, I was ... I'm not gonna lie, you know twisted steel and sex appeal. I mean, I was like ... I was looking really good. I had veins all over me, it was awesome. And then this thing called like work and college came along, and married life and responsibility and that kind of stuff and I was like, "Man, I'm not gonna lie, I feel a little bit big." So I went online and I went to YouTube and I found this guy that was just like shredded, right? I went on YouTube with the explicit purpose of finding some person who just looked totally jacked and huge and swole and looked like he could kill me in a single flex. And I found someone. And I got on there and I was like, "Hey man, do you do like, you know, do like customized meal plans?" I got no problem with the actual workout part, but I want like help with the meal plan part. So anyway, he's been ... I've been on this super, super strict like ... I mean it's literally like chicken and veggies and some healthy fats, like that's it. That's what I've been eating for the last two weeks and I feel so much better. It's amazing! How restricting actually makes me feel more enabled, think about how many lessons that applies to. But anyway, it's been interesting and right now, I was about to go do a workout and I've just been pounding some caffeine before I go and do my workout. And it's starting to hit me right now. So, if I sound kind of jumbled and all over the place, that is exactly why. And anyway, I'm excited. In fact, a few days ago, I was talking to Russell, I was like, "Dude, I feel so good, like oh my gosh, I've had no caffeine. I've had like ... I'm eating super clean." And he's like, "Really? Like that's awesome man. Like oh that's so cool." And I went back home and I was started looking at what it was he was having me take, and I've been taking 275 milligrams of caffeine in the morning. And I was like, "No wonder I feel like I'm on freaking cloud nine, my head is like buzzing, I'm going like crazy." And anyway, he's laughing, he's like, "Dude, that's like the equivalent of 12 Ignites, that's like so much caffeine." Anyway, so it's just been kind of funny. Hey, so we just barely finished a Funnel Hackathon event. Now, if you never heard of that, what happens is people come in for three days and day one, we go through their sales message. Now, well that's really day two. Day one what we do is a lot of foundational work, okay. What's your new opportunity? Who you selling to? You know, have you actually created a new niche? What's your message? You know, describe more of the target? It's more stuff like that. What are the false beliefs of the individuals? What stories do you have in your life that we can start crafting around it? And we do a lot of like, it kinda feels like you bouncing around a lot, but in day two, a lot of stuff starts to come back together. Okay, so the first day is like a normal nine to five kinda day, the second day though is ... We start at about eight thirty in the morning and we go til about midnight. And the entire three day event, it's not like we take breaks, there's no official breaks, there's no ... I mean, it's intense, it's very intense as a participant. It is extremely intense as the person running it, you know what I mean? It's kinda fun 'cause day one Russell and I, we're on stage, sometimes separate, sometimes together, sometimes we're kinda ping ponging back and forth, teaching this and it was just a ton of fun. I know a lot of you guys listen to this podcast, shout out to you guys, I know that. We've had hundreds and hundreds of you guys come through it now, it's been great. Day two though, it's just ... It's mostly just me and we go from sun up to way past sundown. And we build out the entire webinar slide presentation. All of it. From top to bottom. Then Russell comes in, the very last thing of the day, usually like nine or 10 in the evening and he does this actual stack presentation and just breaks it down and shows what he's actually doing and why it works. It's really cool. And then the third day, we jump through a whole bunch of funnels and one of the things I like to do, and I promise this is going somewhere, one of the things I like to do is on day three, I like to stand up at the front on the stage and just ask ... Okay, we've gone through the actual message, we've gone through how to deliver it, we're gonna go through some funnels here in a little bit. And I open up ClickFunnels with them. And we start to go through ClickFunnels itself and it's a lot of fun and I help them get the webinar ready to rock. But I always like to ask, "What ..." You gotta understand it, like Russell Brunson and ClickFunnels and Expert Secrets and DotCom Secrets and all this ... I mean, I have a marketing degree, I have no idea what it really did for me, besides create an environment for me to learn all this other stuff. I don't ... There's nothing content wise in college, except like two or three lessons from a single semester that I really even use, you know, from college. And so, what's funny is that, this is the best material, right? It's the best stuff, it's the best tools, it's the best everything and they're in the room. Each one of them paid like 15 grand a seat, just to be there, right? There was like over 60 people in this room, it's a ton of fun. I mean, I absolutely loved it. Everyone else always does love it. It's .... There's no other place on the planet where I know you can get that kind of stuff. And so, I always like to make the point, "Look, you've got the best stuff, you're in the best scenario, you're in the best environment, you're in a room with people that frankly you probably will not find in many other places, right? You're all A players, you're all here to run, you're all here to go." But it is incredibly baffling to me to sit and realize that like 20 per cent of them aren't gonna do anything. What? Are you kidding? You know what I mean? I never had an event like that, I never had any kind of ... I had DotCom Secrets, that was it. Expert Secrets wasn't even out, right? ClickFunnels was kind of just barely getting started, there were still a lot of things they were fixing, a lot of bugs. Like why on earth would you not just go take action? So what if no one sees your Facebook Lives when you're just starting? No one knows who you are anyway. Like there's nothing to lose. And so, I always like to, on that third day, sit back and write. Okay, what are the real barriers? What is the thing that is actually gonna keep you from going? What is it? I wanna know what those things are. And one of things I always like to bring up is a ... It's a section ... So everyone's using the Stack slide, we're creating brand new offers, we're all creating brand new opportunities in brand new niches 'cause they're creating the niche, not choosing a niche, if you choose the niche, you lose. You create the niche, okay? If you choose the niche, it means you're in a proven based offer already, out of the gate. Don't be that, right? I know I'm saying a lot of technobabble right now, but it was kinda interesting because I had the thought hit to me, like, there are some things that we constantly do to help increase the perceived value of the offers that we sell, right? The perceived idea ... I mean this is huge, massive gold mines going on here, okay? Or goldnugget, whatever you wanna call them. Okay. And so, what I said is like, "Let me show you guys some of the things that we do and the things that we use to increase the perceived value of the offers that we sell." Let's think about this real quick, okay? If you are selling just a straight info product, what is it cost you to fulfill on that? Like nothing, right? You're gonna send an email with an email link in there and they're gonna go jump into the members area or they're gonna go download your stuff or something like that, right? The amount of work that it takes to fulfill on an info product, very small. Now that's awesome for the business owner, right? But as a consumer, there usually needs to be more sales copy, you gotta convince me that it's actually worth it, right? That the information itself is actually worth it, okay? Now let's think about this. How much sales copy is on an Amazon E-commerce page? Not that much, right? There's not that much sales copy that actually goes onto, I don't know ... Whatever ... Let's say you buying a CD player, whatever, an MP3 player, something like that. Let's say you're buying whatever it is off of Amazon, how much sales copy actually goes on that? Like not much. We're talking bullet points, right? Another additional paragraph talking about the features. A little section that might be frequently asked questions from people that have already bought it, right? Some reviews. That's it. Now those are all things we would include in an info product, but why do we not have to include that on a physical product? It's because we can anticipate, right, the tangible aspect of that product. I can sense that I'm gonna be feeling and holding and touching this thing. This thing is gonna be real. It's gonna show up in my mailbox. I'm gonna take it out and it's real. I can touch it, right? I can hold it. I just got this sweet hoody from a rap artist I really like. I'm usually not that much into rap, but I found this guy I really like and he's amazing and I've been just all about his music for the last like month and ... Or however long. And it's been awesome and I totally bought his hoody, it's freaking cool. And it was expensive. But the perceived value is through the roof. Now if someone ... It was $60 for this hoody, okay? So it's relatively expensive, right? Actually honestly not that bad, now that I think about it, but when I think about like, okay, how much would you have to sell me for me to spend $60 on an info product, right? It's gonna be quite a bit more, you know what I mean? It's gonna be quite a bit more money. Now you think about it ... Okay, so the first thing I'm trying to tell you is that if you are selling an info product, if you can figure out a way to actually send something physical, anytime someone buys an info product, you're perceived value of that offer is gonna go way up. Let's think about this for a second, right? On a free plus shipping offer, free plus shipping, you're getting something physical in the mail, so free plus shipping, seven dollars, for something physical in the mail, that's really cheap, especially if it's a book, right? The perceived value of that is way higher than seven dollars, that's why it's so stupid, simple and easy, for people to go and get that thing. If you bundle an info product with a physical product, the perceived value goes through the roof, most of the time. If you do it right, if it's not crap, right? But most of time, the perceived value goes through the roof. And so, that's something I was trying to tell them, is that when you're actually selling on these webinars or these mid-tier products, right? Let's say it's around $1000, $2000, something like that. If you can bundle some kind of welcome package, something that they get in the mail, something that the perceived value is gonna go through the roof. "Hey, guess what guys? You're not only gonna get this sweet info product that's gonna teach you X - Y and Z, guess what? You're also gonna get my welcome package. It's something that I'm gonna ship to you in the mail, so make sure you put in your shipping address because I've got some cool box that's coming. We've got a T-shirt for you, we've got this cool notepad that's customized and a sweet pen with our logo on it." Or whatever. You know what I mean? If you've got those kinds of things in there, it's gonna be a lot easier for you ... Perceived value is gonna be a lot higher. I hope I've made my point with that. Start thinking through what those things are. And if you don't have an idea, I guarantee that if you were to go to Amazon and you started checking out key words that relate to whatever you're selling, I bet you can find stuff, right? Even if it is another info product, you could seriously just serve it up in a physical way, right? "Hey guess what? It's a whole bunch of recordings. Oh, guess what? I also transcribed the recordings and I put them in a little notebook and I'm gonna be shipping it out to you." Does that make sense? A lot of times, the additional money you're able to spend or sorry, a lot of times the additional money you have to spend to ship out something like that is gonna be far worth the additional money you get to charge for that thing. You can sell a lot more stuff typically, when you bundle an info product with a physical product. Okay, that's number one. Physical product, one of the easiest to increase perceived value of whatever it is you're currently offering, okay? And there's I think, through a lot of things that we've sold, you know, either personally, I've seen a lot of my early funnels, that's actually how I did it, was a free plus shipping thing, but then it went onto info products afterwards. And that's one of the models, where we have the most ROI, usually. Personally, as well, I've been that way, because we lead them in with a physical product and then when we sell info products on the upsells, it's pure profit. It takes nothing to fulfill on that. And it's free plus shipping, they've already paid for the shipping, they've paid for the product, right? And now we're just selling additional product, more info products than we were going to 'cause more people are seeing the upsells. You guys following me? I hope you guys are seeing how this gonna makes sense for your business, because if you think ... Especially on front end funnels, front low tier funnels, and even mid-tier, heck, even high-end products. I mean, I've seen Gary White, those black books that he sells like for $1000 or $10 000, however much it is, it's a lot of money. You're getting something physical in the mail and a lot of times, that's one of the easiest ways to boost the perceived value. So, anyway, without beating a dead horse, I hope you understand that. Start seeing the way you can apply that in your business right now. Number one, have an info product. Number two though, you toss something in, even if it's simple, you toss something physical in there. The perceived value, typically can go through the roof, as long as you not sending them pure crap or something like that, you know what I mean? It does have to be good, obviously. Alright, does that make sense? Alright that's number one. Physical product bundled with info product. Number two. Number two way to increase the perceived value. Now, this is not a definitive list, but these are three things that I always teach, that's kinda always off the top of my head. But we were two ... Sorry, getting stumbly, it's that caffeine starting to hit. I routinely see these things as the things where the perceived value goes up through the roof a little bit higher. Okay, so number two: software. Now when you think software, I don't want you to think ClickFunnels, right? You're not gonna go out and you're not gonna freelance this software ClickFunnels in like a day. Okay, that's just ... It's amazing, right? That's software's incredible. What's cool about software is that it does take usually an extra coder or programmer, it does usually take some extra people, it does ... It does definitely increase the perceived value. Now, I wanna give you a few resources you guys can use to go create your own software. I, right now, am creating my own app. I have this problem that I continue to run into, over and over and over and over ... And it's not a huge problem, but I see a really easy, obvious way for me to create this cool app that's gonna solve a ton of my own problems and I know if I'm having the issue, a lot of others are also. And I'm not gonna tell you what it is yet, I'll tell you guys as soon as it's out and stuff. It will probably take two months, honestly. But guess what? I'm not a coder or programmer, I have no idea how to do that stuff. The most I know how to code, I can read a little html, I kinda know what Java Script is doing and I read it, I definitely cannot write it. I can definitely read and write CSS a little bit, at least enough to be dangerous, that's how I do a lot of, you know ... That's it though. And that should be a source of comfort for a lot of people. That I don't know how to do that stuff, because it means that you don't have to either. If you don't know how to do that stuff. So I wanna give you two resources real quick. Alright, if you start thinking through software, software, software, software ... Software is some cool stuff you can toss into your current offer, to easily boost the perceived value. When you think of Brandon and Kaelin Poulin, right? Those two, they're doing like a million dollars a month or something like that. I mean, something ridiculous. They're selling an app, okay? They're selling access to an app. You think about how powerful that is, okay? It's huge, that's amazing. And I guarantee it, it could not have been a million dollars to create that app, but because ... I mean, the perceived value of apps are so big. Apps aren't that crazy hard to create anymore. If you go to Flippa.com, Flippa.com. That's with two P's, F-L-I-P-P-A.com. What's cool about Flippa.com is they ... It's a place for entrepreneurs to post pre-made apps, pre-made E-com stores, pre-made ... And all of it with an existing revenue. And you can go buy existing software and apps and E-com stores and all this ... In fact, pretty soon, one of the people I wanna interview, what he does is he goes on Flippa, he finds a cool E-com site that's already killing it, buys it, puts a funnel in front of it, if he can tell it's in a cool niche and blows it up. They've already proven the product concept the hard way, now he just puts a funnel there and blows it up. Like Flippa is amazing, well in Flippa, you can buy pre-made apps, they're already on the Apple app store. You're buying the whole thing, you're not buying source code, you're not white labeling it. Although there's plenty of other places, you could also white label apps or something like that. But what's cool about Flippa is that you can go and you can actually, you know, you can grab a whole bunch of stuff that's already existing and anyway, so super cool. Flippa.com, that's awesome. The other place that I go is Freelancer.com, I love Freelancer. I know there's others, there's Upwork, there's a whole bunch of other places you can go get, even Fiver, although I've wasted more money software wise on Fiver, than anywhere else. Although, Fiver still has its place. But anyway, Freelancer and Flippa, those are two places I like the most 'cause I can post projects and I can post contests and find out and sift out who's actually good. Does that make sense? So anyway, software does not need to be expensive. And what's cool is that you can go and you can get, you can go get existing software that's already proven, you can bundle it for free, you can put it into your existing stuff, you can do ... And it's way, way, not as nearly as expensive as you might think it is. I saw some app on Flippa the other day, I get little notifications 'cause it's exciting for me. I'd rather go on Flippa than Facebook, Facebook stresses me out now. And so sometimes I'll just kinda dink around in there and I'll watch what's going on. Some app, it was pretty cool, sold for like 70 bucks. I mean, when I say it doesn't have to be expensive, I really mean it, you know? Some of the most expensive ones I've seen on there, like three grand, even up to 10 grand, but it does not need to be that much. Anyway, there's a really good book that's called ... And this is why software is so cheap. And I'm sorry I'm going kinda deep, I know this is kind of a bit of a longer podcast, but I just wanted to drop this all to you guys, so that you know some easy ways to make more money. That's what I'm really ... This is me trying to help you make more money. So hopefully you don't mind that this podcast is a little bit longer this episode today ... So, there's a really good book, it's one of my favorite books actually. I read it in college and it was one of the books that actually had a stark impact on me. It's called, 'A Whole New Mind', it's by Daniel Pink and the subtitle is: Why right-brained thinkers will rule the future. You need to think about this. Now in America, and honestly most places, you know, first world places, especially obviously like ... Are you farming right now? Do you have a farm? Most of us, no. And even if you are farming, you probably chose that profession, you know what I mean? Like it's not like I have to go be farming. I'm not ... we're not making our own clothes, I'm not trying to like pump anything to try and get electricity, like the basics of life are pretty taken care of. You know what I mean? In a lot of first world places. Especially if you live in America. And so, like back in the day, when you know, during the Industrial Age and back when we were manufacturing like crazy or electricity is brand new or you know what I mean? Like those were the hot things to go sell, that was the hot markets. But that stuff's kinda taken care of. It's either monopolized or de-commoditized, right? So who really rules the future? It's the creative ones, right? It's the ones who are ... It's the reason why you can go hire out programmers super cheap, they're a dime a dozen. You can go get programmers ... And it's not ... I'm not saying don't go be a programmer, there's certainly a great place for it. But you just gotta understand where value gets really creative inside the market place, it's not typically someone who's doing some maintenance style job, right? It's what's new and exciting? It's the creative stuff, it's the stuff that's out there. So if you can be the creator, that doesn't mean you have to be the programmer, but if you can go create a piece of software, if you can go create ... It's not that expensive to go create those things anymore. And so, that's all I'm trying to say. Anyway, start thinking through like simple apps, little tiny simple things that you see ... I mean, I'll go back to the Brandon and Kaelin example, Brandon and Kaelin's app is a list of recipes and some exercise videos that describe to you what you should be doing on your daily routine and stuff. It's not like, it's not like it's doing crazy stuff, it's basically a content app. Does that make sense? That's the whole point I'm trying to make. It doesn't need to be crazy. So, if you've never thought about creating some kind of software piece before, I urge you to start thinking through that, okay? Anyway, so number one, think about how you can do a physical product bundled with your info product, right? Or vice versa, as the upsell. It definitely ... It boosts your perceived value. And number two, some piece of software that you can bundle with an info product or with your physical product or ... Does that make sense? Okay. And then number three, here's the other thing, now I wanna explain this one just a little bit. Let me just say it first, okay, number three, live Q and A. Okay, that's number three. Live Q and A. Now when I say live Q and A, I mean live group Q and A, alright? I mean live group calls. In my opinion, in my opinion, you should never include your own time as part of the fulfillment of whatever your current offer is. Let's say you're selling a $100 thing, don't you dare be offering your time as part of the offer, when they buy that info product. Does that make sense? Even on a $1000 webinar funnel product, a $1000 product, I still tell people, I always tell people this, at the FAD event, to Two Comma Coaching, anywhere, I tell people, "Do not put your own time in to fulfilling each order." Okay. When we do the Two Comma Coaching programs, like when I built Secrets Master Class and we built that program, when we were putting all those things together, I am not doing one on one calls. And the reason why is because there's no way I could handle that, I'm trying to sell a lot of right? Of Two Comma Coaching programs and they're totally worth it. And it's awesome to have all those people in there. But I do group coaching calls and I record them and I make those recordings available to all the people who are currently buying and buying in the future. And I index them. So I say, hey, in this one we talked about this and they can go listen to the recordings, and it starts to replicate me. And this is when we talked about this and that replicates me. And this one we talked about that. And I index all of them and now they're all inside the Secrets Master Class and Two Comma Coaching programs. And now anyone who comes in the future, they can keep watching those things and reading those things. And I still continue to do the live Q and A, group Q and A, every single week. One on one coaching time, that's higher up on the value ladder for me. I don't want myself to be a part of that fulfillment, right? I don't want that. I want an info product, it's only a $1000, like my time is not worth that, you know what I mean? It's worth more than that. And so, I wanna ... Anyway, those are some of the easiest things ... Because when you offer a live Q and A, as part of your stack, as part of your offer, whatever it is you're selling, right? Stack slides and things like that, that's not just for webinars, that's for every step of the value ladder. No matter what you're selling. I don't care if it's a free plus shipping seven dollar offer, put a freaking stack slide side by side with it, alright? Where does the free plus shipping book sit on the stack slide, probably the tool, right? Or that top one. Cool. Let's fill in the gaps. Alright, let's figure out what a bonus one is, bonus two, bonus three, that's how we make offers, that's how we ... On any, in any level of the value ladder, okay? Anyways, I'm sorry, I know I'm going really technobabbly with this one, I just wanted to toss in three of these things that we routinely do, that I routinely do also, to boost the perceived value, to give more and actually help you guys charge what your things are really worth. So, anyways, number one, just to recap again, find some kind of physical product. If you don't have any ideas, Amazon probably does for you, right? Number two, software. Doesn't need to be expensive, Flippa.com, Freelancer.com. Honestly, what's cool too is you can go to the app stores and see what things are already selling. You can probably go to some coder and say, "Hey, I wanna make me a version of that." And all they gotta do is ... What do you call it? App hack. Right? Software hack. And actually create that. Number three, live Q and A's. That gives warm, fuzzies, that I'm gonna be taken care of, that helps me know that there's plans after this. That lets me know that I'm not left on my own. That makes sense? That lets me know that other people are involved with it. So anyway, those are three things. I'm sure there are a lot of other things as well, but those are the three go-to things that I continually go through and that ClickFunnels and Russell continue to go to as well, to help boost the perceived value of what it is you're selling. I'm not saying it's not worth whatever you're selling it, but sometimes customers have a hard time like believing it, you know? Especially if they're Debbie downers, especially if they're doom and gloom style people or they just don't ... Whatever it is, like whoever you selling to, people want that extra thing, they want to feel like they're taking advantage of you, which is sad and stupid. But if you can play to it, by boosting perceived value and show 'em like, "Yeah, you're right. You are taking advantage of me. Here's all this extra stuff." You know what I mean? Like then it can help you sell even more and those are little things that take hardly anytime on your fulfillment, you know what I mean? Which is awesome... So, anyway, guys hopefully that was helpful. It's one of my favorite sessions to do, we dive a little bit deeper into that, even at the FAD event and through Secrets Master Class, but I thought I'd just kinda dive into it a little bit more, so you guys can see a little bit some easy ways to do this. So, again, does not need to be expensive, does not need to be very time consuming even. And honestly, you don't need to be the one doing it, right? If it's physical, a fulfillment house can do it for you. There's a ton of places, right? I don't send out ... I have a free plus shipping CD thing that I've been sending out for years, I don't send any of those, some other person does 'em. I think in Indiana. I don't even know. That's the whole point with this whole thing. So, anyway, physical product, some kind of software and some kind of live Q and A, group Q and A that you can record and continue to use in other assets, in other places and keep perceive value high. So anyways, hopefully this is helpful guys. I know it's a little bit of a longer episode, but this is honestly one of the coolest things on the planet for me, to share that kind of stuff with you. Please ... You know what would be really cool though, honestly? This podcast is gonna hit 80 0000 download here, very shortly, which I can't believe. I mean, it's so exciting. Thanks for being listeners, thank you for jumping into this content with me and sticking with me in all this. Number one, I would love if you guys wouldn't mind to go to iTunes, I am asking, and just leave some reviews. It was fun for me to go back the other day and see all of people who have left reviews, it's exciting. It's really cool actually. Got me pumped. But number two, more importantly, honestly, if one of these three things, I would love to know if you guys actually implemented 'em and I would love to know how much money you guys actually made back from it 'cause that would be so cool. Very, very exciting. So anyway, you guys are all awesome. I really appreciate just you listening. You know what's really cool for me too? Is just to know you guys are all out there, that you all listen to this, that it actually is helping you with your life. I love reading your comments. I love reading the things you guys are doing as well. And you've been successful with all this stuff, so scratch and back both ways, just so you know. I love hearing your comments and making these, probably just as much as little pieces of gold I'm trying to drop in each one of these. So, anyway, you guys are all awesome. Talk to you later, bye. Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Wanna get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to SalesFunnelBroker.com/freefunnels to download your pre-built sales funnel today.

This week, Russell chatted to Mark Sargent and he reckons the world is flat. Then Russell started talking about an emery board again! Plus, Matt doesn't think Russell would be very good at living on the streets.

Click above to listen in iTunes... Garrett and Danielle White Family, Russell Brunson, and TONY ROBBINS... What's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen. You're listening to Sales Funnel Freaking Radio. Whoo! Hey, this is actually a special episode. This is part 3 of 3 in my review day-by-day of Funnel Hacking Live Event that Russell just threw in Dallas. I'm actually in Dallas right now recording this. I didn't want to leave the hotel room before doing this and spiting it out and everything was fresh on my mind. So, I'm just sitting inside here in the actual hotel room itself and just getting these podcasts out to you guys. These are kind of a review. Today, will be a bit shorter than the other two. The other two were a bit long, but I wanted to go in-depth so you guys felt like you were getting some values from the podcast itself. Again, and just as the others, if this is the first episode of this 3 part series that you're listening to, go listen to the other 2 first. The whole event was meant to build on itself, so I would go listen to Day 1 first, and then Day 2, and then come back to this one. Really, the last one, but this is the one where Tony Robbins came in and it was so cool. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. Where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow you online business, using today's best internet sales funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. Again, thank you to all you guys that I was able to meet, and talk with, and take selfies with, and all the gifts you guys brought, which I was not expecting that. And it was very, very humbling. Anyway, guys, thank you so much. Again, my voice is totally shot still and talking as much as I am is not helping. But it is what it is. The very first person who came in was Garrett White with his wife. Now okay, Garrett has spoken every single time at the Funnel Hacking Live Events. The reason Russell likes to bring him in is because he also helps people implement. Now you think about, Garrett made this point as well. He's like, "Okay, I know you like coming to Funnel Hacking Live and you get a whole lot of extra goodies and nuggets, and things that you don't get anywhere else. Think about it, if you would just freaking read the book, watch the tutorials, and do it, you're going to be farther along than the majority of the people who are out there." It was really funny to listen to, but it was like, "Okay, okay, that makes sense." There is a lot of stuff that you can't get from a book that you do get at the event. It was actually really cool to listen to him and hear him say that. He was there with his wife though and we've never done that with him before. And his kids on the stage. Garrett was the same Garrett, swearing like a storm, but he went through and he started teaching us more about, like an echo of what Setema taught. But even more depth on certain areas; it was really cool. He was banker actually and in 2008 when the economy really tanked, he lost everything. He realized that he had no idea who his wife was. He had no relationship with his kids. He realized that the life he was living was pure crap. He hated it. He realized that a lot of it was because, again similar, was the story he was telling himself. Which was kind of cool because, Tony came in and talked about "the story we were telling ourselves." There was kind of a theme there for many, actually several speakers, not just those three. At least, that's what I picked up. Maybe that's what I needed to hear. You know what I mean? You guys might have picked up something different, who were there. Anyways. So he said, "You need to choose yourself." I don't mean that in like a freaky-deaky way, like weird. Meaning you got to create yourself, okay? Know who you are. Know the story you are telling yourself. He had us turn and scream, at the top of our lungs, at our neighbor that, "I am a marketer." Number 2, you got to live in the land of yes or no, none of this maybe crap. "Maybe I'll get this done." That means no, you're not going to do it. It was interesting to hear him say all that stuff. "Got to live in the land of yes or no. No more maybes." So, he had us turn to our neighbor and scream, "I am a closer." So, number 1 is, "I am a marketer." Number 2 is, "I am a closer." Number 3 was ... He said a lot of times when we get in these businesses, we start getting followings and we, guys I've been totally guilty of this and it's been cool to hear him say this. Because right now, sitting here right now, as I'm recording this podcast there's probably 400 messages, collectively, between email, tons of Facebook messages ... Oh my gosh, I can't even handle it anymore. It stresses me out. I want to give, and give, and give, and give, and help. I feel guilty that I can't give, and give, and give, because I have to live too. You know what I mean? I know a lot of you guys listening to this, you guys get the exact same way. We attract like people and you're listening to my podcast. We're probably really similar. You start to feel guilty that you can't help everyone and their mom at all times, for free. You feel guilty that you can't get out there and do that. I was like, "That's so true. I've totally had that experience before." Now, Russell has since been teaching me that it is your moral obligation to sell people. It's your moral obligation. It's actually the name of the last section in his new book, by the way. After he and I talked about it, because it's such a huge deal. People feel guilty about talking other people's money. He goes, "No dude, think about this ... Russell told me this and then also Garrett White was saying this on the stage too. He said, "Okay, think about it. You've gone through, you've done the epiphany bridges with people. You've been selling like crazy. You've helped them realize the need for the product. You've gone in. You've changed their paradigm of the world. Then you don't sell them something?" A. The worst thing you could do is give it to them for free. When you give something for free to somebody for free for too long ... Number 1: it can bring in these feeling of well you gave it to me for free, so everything you give me should be for free. And I'm not talking about your base. All the things you're putting out there for people, that's fine. But if you're giving your actual bread-and-butter product and service away for free, for too long, it jacks up the value that they see of what you've built. You guys know that I built the funnels for Marcus Lemonis on the tv show, The Profit. That was like 11 funnels in a day; it was nuts. Marcus saw the vision. Marcus caught the benefit of the funnel. He understood it... He had the epiphany. Because he talked to Russell about it and it was super cool. He's like, "Every business needs a funnel." And we're like, "Yeah, that's why it  exists. This is freaking cool, right?" He's like, "Oh my gosh, yeah." Then what happened is, I went out and started building all these funnels for all these peoples. That was my role in the company shortly after I got hired. I was building these funnels and I was putting them together. It was all these companies. You guys probably haven't heard of ... A lot of them were tv show episodes of the show, The Profit. I was going back of all these episodes he'd done in the past and building funnels for these companies. I'd build them and I'd put them together and the whole way, the whole way, I had to keep selling these people on why they needed the funnel. They didn't have the epiphany. We built these beautiful funnels. Oh my gosh, these guys could be making so much extra money and they came in and were like, "Cool." And it sat for like months and months and we're like, "You're not doing a dang thing. Why not?" And they're like, "We don't even know what this is. What do you do? Why is this" ... And I was like, "I've been telling you. I've been showing you. I've been coaching you. I've showed you so many times how this thing works." And they're like, "We don't want to do an internal launch to our list. Why would we do that? They've already bought from us." And I was like, "You are idiots." Oh my gosh. So what was hard and what was challenging is, if people have the epiphany and you don't sell them something, then you are actually doing them a disservice. If people pay, they pay attention. Right? They need to put some skin in the game, psychologically, to actually go in and digest and get after something. There is something you have to pay, whether with time, or with money, or with some sacrifice in order to actually get stuff. Understand it. Implement it. Push forward on it. Everything is bought with your time, your thoughts, anything. Right? And if you go in and you say, "Hey, here's this really cool product and I'm giving you this awesome offer and I'm going through and I'm ... Guys, the funnels I give for free on my site, I should charge for my full 10 grand price for a lot of them. I don't though. The ones that are 100 bucks or a 127 bucks and people come back and complain about it. There's only been one person who's actually complained about it. It's because they didn't know ... I don't even know how they got on the page. I don't even know what they bought. I mean they probably don't know how to turn on Facebook. Anyway. There's only one person complain, I couldn't even believe it. But no one else has complained. But then I'll go back and realize that some people have just not implemented it. I'm like, "I wonder if I charged more money, if people would implement this harder." Like half of the people get it and they push forward. The other half don't. Interesting. That's what Russel's been teaching me, is like if you've gone through this whole thing and you've taken away their ability to pay with money, they have to pay now with something else. Does that make sense? It's the moral obligation to sell. Right? So, Garrett White had us screaming, "I'm a closer! I'm a closer! I'm a closer!" at each other. Because we need to live in the land of yes or no. Charge the money. Charge the money. And get out there and make the sale. Because, then they're motivated. They've go skin in the game. You've changed their mindset and you've actually given them a way. The product is the path. Right? The service or the product is the path for them to actually get done what you were just saying they could. And it scratches everyone's back. That's how it happens. And people who can't afford it? That's okay. It means they're trying to figure out how to afford stuff. That's the phase that they're in. That's okay. Anyway, I shouldn't keep going about that. So, he had us screaming at each other, "I am a leader, not a savior." And then we whispered it. And it was really interesting to feel that. I have a vested interest, you guys, in your success. You guys know that, listening to my podcast, but there are just some people that I just can't help. And I can't do it for free anymore. I did it for free for three years just so I could prove myself to the market that I knew what I was talking about. That I was motivated enough to get it done. All right? That I was getting it done. That I was getting real results for the companies. And I gave it free, and free, and free, and free, and helped, and helped, and helped, and helped, and helped. But what really brought more people success, was when I started charging. And I didn't realize that until Garrett came out and he said that. I was like, "Oh my gosh. That is true. I am a leader, not a savior." Right? I am very religious and I believe in Christ, but that is not the point of this podcast. But it was interesting to think about that on that level. It was like, "Gosh, very fascinating point, my friend. Thank you very much." He's like, "There's no hack to work. Quit looking for an excuse to suck." All right? He's like, "Just suck. Just freaking do it. You're going to suck. And then you'll suck less. And you'll do it even more and you'll suck less. And eventually, you'll suck less, so little that you'll actually be good." He's like, "You just got to start. Just freaking do it." And his little daughter came up and she wanted to be on stage with him. And he's like, "Well, it's going to cost you." This is the backstory of how she got on stage with him, his little girls. "Well, you've got to make $1000." So, this little girl followed Russell's path; read the book as a punishment for time-out for something she did. Garrett makes her read Russell's book. So, she finished the whole book... She went through and made a webinar. She made $1200 on her first webinar as a 10 year old girl. It was so cool. And he was like, "Now what do we tell people who are just bad-mouthing us?" She immediately knew what he was asking and she started yelling, "I don't care about you. You probably don't know how to do half the things that I'm doing." It was really funny. Anyway. I'll stop on that. It was a big epiphany that I had for the event. That was really cool... Then Russell came through and we have a sweet traffic course. I mean you guys are starving for traffic. So, what we're doing is flying in the top experts. The people who don't sell courses. Right? These are the people who are so freaking good that you can not attain them unless you pay ridiculous amounts of money. We were like, "What if we paid the ridiculous amounts of money. They train us as a team how to do it and you guys get a camera on the inside watching us do it and how to get trained and how it worked for us. It's really just such a freaking good offer. There's a table rush. That was the first time I ever experienced a table rush. People go up before he was even done and just ran to the back, because it was gosh it was so good. Then we had a big break and Tony Robbins's security was there... And we didn't know it, but they were testing us to see if we were actually bouncing people. I like to fight, so I was like, "Make me a bouncer, please." I look like a softie and I smile and hug like one. And I'm always pumped and excited, but there's this other side of me that really likes to fight stuff. Which is why, I think, that I got drawn into the army. Anyway. So, apparently they were testing us. They were like, "You guys are doing a great job. We're really impressed with your staff." We're like, "Yeah, we're totally freaking security guard. Yeah, what." Anyway. So, Tony Robbins came in. I have got a full page of notes, and graphs, and stuff he was saying. I don't even know where to begin on this, you guys. It was so good. Gosh, it was so good. He was like, "Hey, raise your hand if these three days, while you're here, you're kind of stressing because there's things in your business that you know you need to get done, but there just not getting done without you. Raise your hand, if you're that way. Now, repeat after me, keep your hands in the air: I am a business operator, that sucks." It was really funny. He was like, "Okay, you guys are business operators, not owners, if three days is making you freak out. Time to expand it a little bit." He was like, "I'm not trying to be cheesy. A lot of people think of me as a happy, happy, thinking, go-lucky kind of guy. That's total bull crap. I am more of a strategist. Realize when I say that 80% of success is your psychology, it's all about your state. What state are you in, if someone tells you bad news? Act like you're having bad news right now and go make the sounds and noises you would next to the person. Shoulders slouch, you know, and face kind of gets upset. You know? And he's like, "Okay, now stand up and introduce yourself to someone like you're scared of them. Notice how your body is. Now, let's go talk to people like we're excited to see them, like it's a long-lost friend." And the room was like ... It was ridiculously loud. You could hear it basically out the hotel doors, way in the back of the hotel. It was so cool. So we were jumping around like crazy and it was really, really cool. We went through three different forces of creation. He talked about us, you know, who we're spending the most time with. Life is decisions not conditions. He told us his story, which was very, very humbling. He said that success was the result of good judgment... How do you get a judgment?... By failing like crazy... He's like, "You get good at judgment by learning what bad judgment is, because that's what you make." Anyway, guys, I don't want to keep rambling on here. But, gosh, it was so freaking good. It was about how you kill your fears and people stood up. He's like, "What is really the most scary to you? I'm not going to make you guys share it. So, just he write it down. And then he's like, "Let's share." It was really funny. "I lied to you." And he pointed at one girl and he said, "Stand up. What do you fear most?" And she said and it had to do with, I can't remember, insecurity or something like that. And while she was describing it, he was like, "Okay, raise your hand if you can identify with this." Tons of people raised their hand, of course, the feeling of insecurity. He was like, "Oh man, ma'am I want you to know just how alone you are and how no one has ever experienced that ever in their entire life." We are all laughing. He was like, "Understand, you guys, that there is the mind, which is the organ in your body, in your head. Then, there is your mind. And so many thoughts of the mind control us, you know feelings of insecurity, feelings of this, or this, or that, or that, or that, or that. Realize that the mind can produce lots of stuff for the body and persuade you." He said, "I realize it was fascinating to have the epiphany that the mind is different from my mind. Although it's happening in the same place." And we had people from so many countries there and different religions, different languages even. People all of the world came to this event. So he was like, "Interesting. So people from all over the world, different languages, different backgrounds, totally different places they came from. We all feel the same feelings, though. And yet we are so our own person and think that all our problems are our own and no one else is thinking them. That's total bull crap. So, understand there is the mind and then there is your mind and you need to separate them. And when a thought like that comes in, just know that it is the mind. You can dismiss it and you can move on. It was really cool. It was really cool, guys. I don't even know what else to say on this huge page of notes. I got nowhere else to go on here. He talked about motion determines emotions. If you're feeling sad or depressed or bored, freaking start moving. Just get up and already your body is going to start changing. Your biochemistry will change. You'll feel happier just by moving. Stop sitting. We are a sitting culture now. We just sit. We don't do anything. Just get up. Do stuff. You'll feel better and you'll be happier... It was really cool actually. Anyway, guys, that's all I got for you on this one. Those are the huge, key take-aways that I got from those three days. Thank you so much. I just want to point out to you guys. Thank you. I really appreciate all the awesome stuff you've done and meeting you guys. I had to step out a little bit on Tony Robbins at the end, because we go pictures with him. I'm sure I'll post that as soon as we get back. You guys get to see that it was kind of cool. It was the whole Click Funnel team that was there with Tony. It was really fun. All the inner-circle people got their picture with him and it was really fun. And it was cool to go through those experiences together. It was very, very bonding. What I do know is that Click Funnels is far more than a software company. It is a marketing company, but it's ... I mean, do you see Russell as a standard CEO? No, this company is so much more than just CEO from some competitor that we have. By the way, he totally took the gloves off and we were 100% fighting and trying to destroy Infusion Software and Leap Pages now. Everyone got their own comic book. It was really cool. It was totally over-delivered in true Russell fashion. Anyways, guys, I will talk to you later. I've got some cool, special announcements in the following podcasts here that I'm going to be doing, because I want to take action on my own business and the things I do with you guys based on what I learned at the actual event. So, I'm going to do that. I've got some cool things going on that are going to be coming out here. And things that I'm no longer going to be doing or offering so that I can focus and help out where it's needed right now. Oh yeah, hey, one thing that was cool, before I get out of here. He brought us to this place called Medieval Times as a staff afterwards. Crazy cool. You go inside and you sit down and it's one of those dinner theaters. You go inside and it's like a big arena and there's real, live horses jousting in front of you. It's the craziest thing. The guys are riding at each other. They literally joust each other. Splinters of wood going all over the place. It was the craziest I've ever seen. They were sword fighting and sparks going all over the place. It was really cool. Anyway, it was awesome. I was actually really impressed by that place. It was funny because we are the Click Funnels Team and we were walking around trying to funnel hack them. Okay, they got this many seats. They're probably pulling this much revenue. Overhead is probably this much. We were figuring out their whole business while we were sitting there and they were serving us. We were looking up all these different words, medieval vocab. So we were like yelling. Someone did something wrong and we were yelling, "Forfeiture!" It was really funny. Anyway. You should totally go there. It was totally awesome. It had nothing to do with the event. It was really fun, though. Anyways, guys, you are awesome and I will talk to you later. 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 pre-built sales funnel today.

Click above to listen in iTunes... Russell Brunson, Justing and Tara Williams, Caleb Maddix, Emily Shai, Trey Lepelen, Jason Fladlien, Darren Stephens, and Setema Gali... What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. This is day number two from Funnel acting live. These are the things that I learned, the things that I loved. You're going to get a front row seat here on some of the things that, behind the scenes, of the things that I thought were awesome during Funnel acting live day number two. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. What's so funny is that, we brought in so much energy. We wanted everyone to be in a state to receive, and to learn, and to be there, and to grow and develop that by day number two, my voice was already shot. It's actually been this way for several days. Anyway, it's slightly painful actually but that's okay. Okay, so the first day, if you haven't listened to it, I would go back and listen to it before you listen to this. Because there's a lot of foundational things that were said in day one. The conference was meant to build on itself. I would listen to day number one before you listen to this. We're just going to jump right into it. We get in there, we're all fired up and stoked up. They had me as a VIP badge checker. Just so you know, inner circle, certified partners, anyone else who's kind of in the VIP area, they sit in the front seats. And I was a bouncer. It was a lot of fun. I really, really enjoyed it. I got to meet tons of you guys again. I took a lot of selfies, it was a lot of fun. It was a fun time, guys. Just like I'd said in the other one, very touched and humbled by the amount of people who came up and said hi and thanks for the podcast. Guys, that fuels me. You know what I mean? This entrepreneurial journaling is not easy for anybody. It was really nice to hear that from you guys. It was just nice. It was very nice. Especially the guys who brought gifts. Man, that was just ... that put me on the floor. That was so nice of you guys. I really appreciate it. Anyway, man, today was so nuts. Or, day number two was. It was Wednesday, February 22nd, 2017. The day before was all about marketing strategy, and how to sell without selling. Day number two was all about the funnels. What we did is, we brought in all these experts in different industries. We know the majority of you guys are in MLM, or e-commerce, or you're an author, speaker, coach, consultant, or you're in retail, you're a brick and mortar. You fit in these certain categories, so what we wanted to do was bring in people who were using funnels in those industries that you could hear from. That's what day two was all about. What happened is Russell came up and we did a presentation called Follow-Up Funnels. We were thinking about what happens when somebody comes in to one of our own funnels. We had John, who does our traffic, he went in and he ran some numbers. We found out ... it was pretty cool, because Russel showed all of our actual numbers. He's like, "Okay, here's all of our funnels during the month of just this last December. Just two months ago." And he said, "Okay here, you notice ..." And he went through all these funnels and they're profitable, and they're profitable, and they're profitable. He was showing the actual numbers. Opt-ins, cash, revenue, profit on marketing a car and Funnel University, and all these different things on all the front-end funnels. What was so funny, we realized when we were looking at him, we were like, "Man, how does ... how are we making money?" We didn't ask that question. We obviously crafted this on purpose. This is just how we presented it. It's like, "Wait a second. We pulled in only like 17 thousand dollars in front end funnels on December." We're like, "What the heck?" And Russell goes, "Wait a second, are you telling me, Russell, that you're running a multi, multi, multi million dollar business, but you only pulled in 17 grand in December? How is that even possible?" You know what I mean? It's like, "What the heck?" We went through and we found out that for every dollar that we are gaining on those front-end funnels turns into 16 dollars in the back-end. We wanted to do this because we realized that a lot of you guys, what you're getting stuck on, is you go out and you build this tripwire funnel, right? This front-end funnel. You will expect it to make you beaucoups of money, right? That's cool. That's true. Somewhere though, the customer has to be bought. Whether it's with your time, you have to buy the customer, or actual money with ads and stuff like that, you have to buy the customer. Somewhere, a customer will be bought. What we do then, is those front end funnels is how we buy the customer. We call them break-even funnels. They're not to make money. What they're supposed to do is get us a customer, get them buying something, and then recoup costs by selling them products and/or other services... So, we break even on the front-end with these funnels, but then it's all on the back-end. It's all these huge follow-up sequences that we have going on. I'm not talking about email sequences. Okay, that's one of the elements. But massive, massive things that have everything to do with actionetics. All the stuff that we put in behind turns into 16 dollars after we bring in one dollar. Now, the hardest scenario for you guys to make a whole bunch of money in is by making a front-end funnel ... okay, listen to me ... is to make a front-end funnel only. Some of you guys are like, "Well, I'm making money, but not much." Well then you're done. Move to the next step. Make a webinar. Make an invisible funnel. Make something. Ascend them to the next level on the ... you know what I mean?... Don't try and make all this money from your tripwire front-end funnels. We call those break-even funnels. We only made 17 grand ourselves in December on that, but we turned all that money into 16 dollars per dollar, right? Ascend. Age and ascend. It's one of the most important elements of your strategy, okay? He went through and he started showing how we use all this stuff. We're like, "Hey look, if you're all in, you'll be able to kill it with this thing." It was so cool. People ran and sprinted to back before he was even done. He was like, "We're not like, hard-selling anything. Just so you guys know." I think he pitched one thing the whole time. That's not the point of these conferences. The point is not for us to make money, either. We barely break even on these babies. You know how expensive it is to through an event like this? It was massive. Oh my gosh, it was so massive. We barely break even on them, and it's to help all of you guys get the tactics down, the strategies down. He first went into fallout funnels, and we did kind of like a state of the union, and showed some cool things and new features that are coming out that are just ... oh my gosh, they're mind boggling. I'm sure we're going to have to come up with a list of all the cool things we talked about there, because there's no way I could do it here. I mean, it was like an hour presentation, and people were on their feet going nuts. It was the coolest thing. Oh my gosh... Then we had a little break. And then, Justin and Tara Williams came up, and they talked about podcast funnels. They talked about how their entire multimillion dollar business has been built using podcasts. I've talked to Russell personally about this before and he's like, "Dude, the reason why podcasts are so good ..." You're on it right now. The reason why podcasts are so good is because the kind of person that listens to a podcast is usually someone who's a more active, proactive individual in their life. If I was to put a YouTube ad up, typically people who congregate around YouTube, they only want things that are free. Or, they might not be action-takers. They just want to be purely entertained. If you're on a podcast, you are deliberately trying to accelerate your life, and I applaud you for that. That's what you're doing right now. I'm trying to give you guys some cool strategies and little insights on what happened in there. Anyways, they came through, and they ... like, "Hey look, we built our entire empire using podcasts. You've got to go in there and you've got to be able to deliver great value, but don't get hung up on it." They gave a lot. It was so good. My dad was actually at the conference. I was able to get in and get him a seat. He was like, "Oh my gosh, that was the coolest thing I've ever heard." He started a podcast before yesterday was even over. It was so cool. He had the first 20 episodes planned. It was super cool. Super cool. Then we had Caleb and Emily Shay come in. Just so you guys know, Emily is like eleven. She wrote her own book. It was book on how to have the perfect sleepover. She's a cute little girl. She calls herself princess of the pitch, and she was standing up. She had the whole crowd laughing. She was a total natural. My gosh, it was so cool. She was teaching us all about what this whole funnel game is really about. She wrote that book and then she sold it door to door and made 20 grand. What's your excuse?... I was like, "Oh my gosh." She's like, "I knew I could target people at car dealerships even better." So she would hang out at car dealerships and sell her book on how to have a perfect sleepover to all the kids that would come in. I was like, "Holy crap." Little marketing genius. That's amazing. What was I doing when I was twelve? I think I was picking my nose or something. I don't know. What the heck? Oh my gosh, she was great. She talked about it's not about making money. This about your power and your ability to make a difference. Sometimes you make a funnel, and sometimes the funnel makes you. Sometimes it just sucks, and sometimes it makes money. It's all about the repetition, and wanting it, and fighting for it. It was really ... I was like, crazy impressed with the amount of wisdom that came out. You're not too small for your dreams, and your dreams are not too big for you. It was really cool. I came in. I wrote down a whole bunch of things she was saying. I was like, "Do you know what you're saying? You're like twelve and you're killing it." You know what I mean? This is really really impressive. You and your kids are just one funnel away. That was really, really cool. Then Caleb came in and he smashed it. Caleb is an outstanding, just incredible speaker. I really, really enjoyed listening to him as well. Very impressive individual. He's spoken with Gary V. and he's been on the news like crazy. He's fifteen. Just so you guys know, he's fifteen. He's killing it. He's written four books, been all over the news, he's done a TED talk. It was crazy cool, crazy cool. Been with Tai Lopez, hanging out with him. Been with lots and lots of huge people. For what he's done as a fifteen year old is insane. Most of it he did when he was fourteen. But a lot of it was because of his dad. He went through, and he showed how his dad wouldn't give him money for certain things he wanted, and instead taught him how to build a business, and get it that way. It's really, really cool. His dad wouldn't pay him for doing chores, and instead taught him how to do business stuff. It was really, really cool. It was fantastic. The first secret he gave to us was that you got to work your face off. Just work like crazy. Number two is give like crazy. He said, "Give your face off." Just give and give and give, and be charitable to all people. It's always about the individual. It's never about the money. It was cool to know that he was being genuine about it. It was so cool. Very inspiring. People were tearing up in the audience, man... It was really, really cool. Right now he said he's experimenting with doing the perfect webinar script, but inside of a game show. He's like, "You're not going to get kids inside of this webinar, just watching it." So, he's making a game show. It's really clever. Probably going to interview all those guys here in a second, and put them on the podcast. Anyway, really cool. Then we had Trey Lewellen come in. Gosh, if you guys know who Trey is, this guy made ... I don't think I'm at liberty to say the numbers. But, he is the person who's made the most money using click funnels ever. He also has the world record for offer that has made the most money in the shortest amount of time. There's been no offer ever, in the history of the world, that has brought in the amount of money. Insane, ridiculous amount of money. We're not talking just a million or two million dollars. This is a lot of money. I don't think I can say more than that. He came in and he showed us some really interesting numbers. He showed us funnelitics. He showed you, literally get a product in these price ranges. Aim for these types of conversions. Once you've got that, then you can do this. And then once you've got those conversions and these numbers, then it's time to implement these things. It was very tactile, very awesome. He basically gave the road map on how to make a million bucks. It was so cool... Something he said in there was very key, and I wanted to bring it up here. He said, "Any time you add another product to what you're selling, you immediately 12X the complexity in your business. Immediately." He said, "People say to me all the time, 'How did you make that much money? Do you just have like, thousands and thousands of skews and products, and things that you're seeling all the time?'" He's like, "No, we got like, 20." It's like, what? 20? That's it? He went through and he showed how simplicity inside of what you're trying to sell is better. Don't try and do this and this and this. He would build one funnel a week to just see what works. Just a little more of the backstory, because I know him. The guy is awesome. I've gotten to talk to him a lot, actually. He's the man. He said, "I would launch a funnel. One per week. Just to see what would work. Then, when one would stick, I'd abandon the ones that didn't work, and put all my focus and energy to the one that did break even." They would make it profitable with a few little tweaks that he showed us. That's how I'd blow it up. Then, I'd automate it. Get a little customer support in there. Then, find a relatable product that I could upsell them to after they got done with the first one. I'd build a funnel a week... It was really, really interesting. He's like, "Every time you do that though, you literally ... the number is, you will 12X the complexity and stress inside your business do to all the customer service, and support, and all the extra processing, and all the extra stuff that goes into a single product." I was thinking about it, and I was like, "Crap. I'm selling too many things. I know I am. I'd rather just focus on one or two, get extra good at it and then ..." I've got some big announcements after I'm done with this little series on ... Then, right after that, Jason Fladlien came in. Jason is the Amazon funnel expert. He has made over a 100 million dollars in the last couple of years using Amazon. You'd think, "What the heck? How does that even work?" It was so cool. I mean, it was so cool. He came through, and he showed us how he's taking ... He has his product on Amazon, obviously. He's like, "Guys, for every dollar that is spent on the internet, 25 cents of it is going through Amazon right now. Do you know how many buyers that is?" He's like, "I can make a million dollars selling ketchup, or something stupid." There's so many, and they go to Amazon with the intent to purchase... The stat right now is that like 83 percent, or something like that. It was huge. I think he said it was in the 80s. 83 percent of people make a purchase per month in the US. Isn't that crazy? 83 percent of people make a purchase per month in the US on Amazon. That's nuts. That's so many buyers. He's like, "And, it's increasing." It's the most insane thing ever. He's like, "So I totally hacked Amazon. What I do, is I take the image of the product that I'm selling. I put it on top of a ..." He showed us the exact strategy. He showed us the seven strategies that he's using. He walked through all seven funnels, showed exactly how they're working. I was like, "Holy crap. I've never even heard of this." It blew my mind, and I'm pretty immersed in the funnel world. I was like, "This is the coolest thing ever." He went through, and he showed how his product is on Amazon. He takes an image of it and he puts it on a click funnels page. He basically sends people to it. He sells it a little bit, but he said, "The less copy on selling physical products through Amazon actually converts higher than more copy." I was like, "Oh, that's a cool tip. Thank you." He's like, "And it's easier, which is awesome." He's like, "So then what I do is I say, 'Hey'..." He acts like it's a product launch. When people go there, there's a coupon code they can download... Well, when you click download coupon code, a pop-up with an opt-in form comes in. That's how he gets your email address, right? Because, Amazon keeps all the emails. So, when they put the email address in, the second page has the coupon code. He just walks people through how to buy the product. So, they take the coupon code. They'll go to Amazon. They'll search for the product, which boosts his ranking like crazy inside of Amazon's algorithm. Then, they'll go inside there, search for the product, pull it on up, buy it with the coupon code, and it scratches so many backs, it's ridiculous. Oh my gosh, I couldn't believe what he was doing. He's like, "Now I got their email for follow-up purchases of the same type of product or same product. It's the craziest thing on the planet. Amazon fulfills it. If they got Amazon Prime, it's like free shipping. I don't have to worry about that crap. It was really cool. He's leveraging what Amazon's doing. That was worth it all just right there. He showed seven different variations of strategies of when to use which. It was really cool. That was awesome. Then, Darren Stephens stood up, and he showed us event funnels, and how he throws events like crazy. Just so you guys know, you may not know who Darren Stephens is. He has helped author some of the best selling business books on the plant. Darren's a very impressive individual. One of the most well-connected individuals I've ever met in my life. Just insane, what he does. I'll stop there on that. But, he has gone and made, several times, one to two million dollars at a live event with only 80 people in the room. Think of the numbers on that. So, what he did is he goes through ... Okay, one to two, even 2.5, I think was the biggest one he did, million dollars in a couple days with only 80 people in the room. Think of the numbers that that takes. That's insane. He went through, and he showed the strategies that he uses. Very subtle cues and techniques. Ways to keep the brain engaged while you're talking to a live audience. Very subtle, little things that you do. They may not seem that big, but he's like, "They make all the difference in the world. Because I get them with me before I'm even pitching anything." It was cool. Then we had a little break. Then we had Setema come up and share ... Gosh, if you guys don't know Setema, he won the Superbowl with the Patriots. He showed some really fantastic stuff. He went through, and he started showing. He's like, "Okay. My job here is to show you guys how to implement, and to get things done in your life." And he said, "Number one, you've got to get clear about what you want in your life. You gotta declare it." He showed some really powerful examples. He's like, "I'm not just telling you to say, 'Well, I want to make money.'" He's like, "No, you've got to get clear. When you're clear, you don't go hang out with your buddy, okay? You make your business happen. When your clear, you give up a little bit of time here, you know? You start doing ridiculous sacrifices." He gave some very powerful, tear-jerking examples... I won't lie, I don't cry. But man, there was like three times at this event I was like, "Holy crap." Not just with Tony Robins. Setema is one of them. I want to go learn from him. I'm actually going to go find ... I don't know if he's got a course or what. But, I want more of that. It was cool. He said, "Number two, the story I believe most about myself is the story that I tell most to myself." He's like, "If you want to change yourself, just change the story you keep telling yourself." He's like, "That sounds really simple. And, it is, but it's harder to implement than I'm saying." Meaning, I'm too slow, I'm too fat, I'm too this, I'm too that, I'm too scared, I'm not good enough on the camera, I'm not good enough to do a webinar, I'm this. He's like, "Then you're never going to freaking do it." You have to change the story that your telling yourself. Really cool. Number three was have a holy cause, right? Just take ridiculous, imperfect actions. Stop trying to make it perfect. The things that he was saying were so ... I mean, it was good. It was really, really good. It was calling to a very entrepreneurial ADD person like myself. Really awesome. I got to keep moving a little bit faster here. The day's almost over. Then we had Two Comma Club awards. These are the people who made a million dollars inside of click funnels. Just think about this ClickFunnels is only a two or three year company, right? We've had about 100 people make a million dollars in a single funnel with ClickFunnels. You don't have those types of ratios in any other industry. MLM doesn't give that to you. Nothing else gives that to you. Really interesting. Just do what Russell says. You look at all the people that were standing up there getting a Two Comma Club award, they were doing what Bran and Caleb did. They paused the video. They did what Russell said. Then, they played it and they paused the video. They did it. It's very, very cool. Then Russell did a presentation about how you're only one funnel away, and he brought us through his actually story from college. All the intense ... Oh my gosh. I already respected Russell like a brother. I've told him that many times. I look up to him like that. It's cool to sit next to him. Really cool. But man, you guys, that man cares about you. I already knew that, but I listened to what he went through to get where this all is right now. He doesn't share the whole thing much. I don't know if there's a dry eye in the audience. It was very humbling to realize that I got to sit there. I already was humbled knowing that, but I mean, everyone else in the audience was thinking the same thing. It was so crazy. Then after that we had a ... All I'm saying is, if you were at the event, please tell Russell thank you. Even on social media. I got a few gifts from you guys that you wanted me to bring to him. That's really nice of you all, so I'm obviously going to do that. But, just say thanks to him. The guy obsesses over your success, and I don't know any other business with a CEO that does that. Please show who that is. Then we had a sweet hackathon. It was very similar to the roundtable before. I was out there mapping out stuff with you guys, and answering some of the questions. It was so freaking fun. You guys are my people, man. You hackathon people. Oh my gosh, I love it. We got an even in Boise. A new even in Boise. I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag a little bit, though. Just watch social media, you guys will see what's happening. I'm really stoked, because you guys get to come hang out with Russell and me for three days, and we build out your funnel with you. By the time you're done, and by the time you leave, you have an entire webinar done. The script, you've actually done it live. You have the entire funnel complete. You have several variations that you can get it done. We've recrafted the entire message. It has nothing to do with the product, like I was saying in the previous episode. It has everything to do with the way you put the message together. We rewrite your message. Russell is an expert copy writer. He doesn't always it himself. Actually, he does. Never mind. He does do all the copy. I forgot about that. I'll go through, and I'll write it, and usually ... I'm getting better at the copy writing part. He actually doesn't tweak as much of my stuff now, but he is a great copy writer. We go through. We write it all. We put it all together, and it's three days. Very soon here, you will have to do that before you're even allowed to get into the inner circle. We're taking the whole inner circle through this course, because we realized that the inner circle was struggling with the same sets of things, which is the whole reason we created the event. In the future, whether or not you go into the inner circle, you'll have to go through it as a lock gate to even apply. He's going to be able to elevate what he does within a circle even higher. It's going to be awesome. Giving you even more stuff. Anyways, guys, that's day number two. Thank you so much for sticking around, I know this is a lot of stuff. You guys are all awesome. Appreciate everything you guys are doing. Again, go get the ticket for next time. Day one was all about market strategy. Day two was all about the funnels. Day three is all about personal development. It will be a shorter podcast next time, because I don't even know how to capture the things that Tony Robbins taught us. I had never seen him before, and I know that everyone rants and raves about him. I was going with an open mind. I was like, "Cool. This is going to be awesome. I'm sure it's going to be great." But, I had no idea the level. I'm going to do that for the next episode, here. That's kind of my run through on all these amazing dudes. All right, bye. Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? 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Click above to listen in iTunes... Russell Brunson, Todd Brown, Brandon and Kaelin Poulin, Jim Edwards, and Stu McLaren... What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen. You're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Now, for the next three episodes, I'm actually going to do ... This episode will be day one of Funnel Hacking Live, and I want to go through and show you the lessons I learned, and kind of what some of the speakers were doing and sharing with us. And then, obviously, next episode will be day two, and then day three. So the next three episodes are going to be a bit of an overview of the things that I learned. Let's kick it off. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. All right guys, now the first thing you'll probably notice is that my voice is shot. I am completely humbled by the number of you that I met who listen to my podcast. It was so awesome. But I met so many of you. I was totally touched, also, by the number of you ... I mean, I was not expecting gifts, but a lot of you guys ... Anyways, I'm saying thank you to those of you did that. That was very nice of you and I appreciate that a lot... I pretty much talked for three straight days and my voice is totally gone. I was going to do these last night while it was all even more fresh in my brain, but I was like, "Gosh. I can't even ... I can't even ..." You know, anyway. I was like, "Maybe if I go to sleep, everything is going to be better, and I'll wake up in the morning, my voice will be better." It's not. It's actually worse. I'm probably going to lose my voice, 100%. Anyway, that's okay. Here it goes though, all right, so you just have to, I guess, deal with that. I'm going to go ahead though, and I'm going to let you know the things that I learned, the big takeaways from Funnel Hacking Live. Now, understand that what I'm going to do here, it's not going to give justice at all for what really happened. But, this is more the tactile stuff that I'm going to go over. The very first day that we had ... Gosh, it was such a good event. Oh my goodness. Everyone was going nuts, so crazy. Totally got my picture with Tony Robbins, which was crazy cool. That guy is huge. Anyway. I'm not a small guy either, but man, he was like a full two heads taller than I was. Anyway, all right. So hey, the very first day we had Russell Brunson speak, obviously, then Todd Brown came in and spoke. Russell spoke again about something so good, and I could see everyone going like, "Crap. I need to redo how my whole product works now that I've heard Russell speak." Brandon and Kaelin spoke. Jim Edwards spoke about copies. Stu McLaren came in and taught about membership sites and how to make millions of dollars with them, it was fantastic, it was amazing. Then we had huge round table discussions, and honestly, that's ... I really lost my voice from the majority of, really, two things. When people walked in the door for the very first day, I mean, music was bumping. I mean, it was so loud, it was awesome. The stage looked incredible; it was so much bigger than last time, which none of us could really believe. We were like, "Oh my gosh, this is just amazing." Melanie and our team did fantastic. It really, really went well. Just, I can't even ... It's hard for me to describe everything that went on there. But I ... As people walked in the door, I was screaming, "Yeah, what's up? It's game day baby," as loud as I could, slapping, giving hand-fives to everyone that came in. I'm pretty sure I started bruising my hand; it actually really started hurting. But it got everyone jazzed up and in state as they walked into the door, which is awesome. We wanted the energy levels to go up, because it pulled them out of their comfort zones. I try and do that a lot of times when I'm learning things, even on my own. All right, so Russell first spoke about creating a mass movement. These are really chapters that are hardcore in his new book. But the main point is that you really need ... You got to have three things in order to create a mass movement. The first one is, you need a charismatic leader. Second one, you got to be able to have ... There needs to be a cause. Then the third thing, I think it was a following... Crap, I should have brought all my notes with me as I was doing this. But, anyway, it was so good, because he started talking about ... This is way beyond product creation, right? Most of our audience speaks, and talks, and is focused solely on, "How do I create the funnel? How do I create the product?" Right? He's like, "Okay that's good, and you guys are getting really good at that as a community. But the next step is really, how do you get people to it." Right? Joe Polish, this reminds me of one of Joe Polish's courses, but he's talking about how marketing ... You think about sales, sales is what happens face-to-face, in front of people. I think that I've mentioned that before in this podcast. Imagine standing in front of somebody, that's how you sell them, right? But marketing is what gets them in front of your face, right? That's what turns their feet and gets them standing in front of you, and that's really what Russel talked about first. Very tactile, how to do that, how to construct the message, how to get it and put it all together. Really, really cool. Then we had a quick break. Then Todd Brown came in and he talked more about the big idea, and this idea that you could latch, go back in history and look at other marketing messages that were killing it, and just tweak those messages, and he showed you how to ... Again, the whole thing was extremely tactile. I saw someone post, and they were like, "I learned no actual hardcore strategy." I was like, "Man, you must not have been freaking in the room then, because you're the only person who said that. Ever." I don't even ... Everyone I've been talking to is like, "That was the best thing I've ever ... That's the best event I've ever been to, related to business, ever. Across all business, not just marketing, in general." I was like, "Yeah, it's pretty cool." We worked our butts off for it, so we're super glad that you guys liked it. But Todd Brown talked more about how to actually get that big idea, right, the one thing, and how to construct it. The big takeaway I got from him is that the creativity that your business requires is not in you. It's not. He said, "You have got to be obsessed with the market that you're in. As you dive into the market, and as you figure out what pieces are missing, the creativity comes from the market, not from you." If you're sitting there and you're not reading books, and you're not digesting things, and you're not there trying to get better and get your craft down, you cannot conjure the amount of creativity needed, that your business needs. I was like, "That's so key. My gosh." I started thinking back, and I was like, "Holy crap. He's totally right." Any time I've ever made a product that really has done well, it's because I have been obsessed with that market. I found out exactly what the pain points were, which essentially told me what to build. It didn't come from me. There was ... I actually wrote an e-book when I was in college, and I talked all about this, that man, essentially you don't need to be creative. That is the number one thing that entrepreneurs come out and they're like, "I got to create something totally new." It's like, "Ugh." Anyway, I'll talk about that some time later... But I wrote an e-book that talks about ... I call it "Product Big Bang Theory", which is where these new ideas ... I was like, "Oh, I got to create something totally new," and it's like, actually the market might not even be ready for that. Let's say you actually did pull that off, which is super rare, that something you just made was totally new, not influenced by anything else, that's rare. That doesn't happen very often, right? It's more about product evolution. Right? You look at current states of things and you make an improvement on the way things are, and sell the solution. Then the next person comes along, he's like, "Well that's cool. That brought me up to here. But, now let's go ahead and let's elevate it again." Why are there so many freaking iPhones? Right? That's exactly what product evolution is. That's how huge money is made. Not by product big bang theory; half the time the market doesn't even accept it, you know what I mean? Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked, but ... Okay, that was the first half of the day. It was so good. Then Russell came back on and he gave a speech about how to sell pretty much anything, without selling anything. That was his headline. "How to sell almost anything without actually selling anything." He talked about this concept of ... Okay, right now, you listening, right, think about the industry that you're in right now. Think about it, and think about what it took for you to become an expert in that industry. If you don't feel like you're an expert yet, just keep learning. Right? Keep learning, and the fastest way I know to learn is to teach. Right? This podcast also helps me, guys. It helps me sharpen my craft. Right? Sharpen the saw and get better, and better, and better... I always tell people to get a coach, because it accelerates your learning, and then be a coach, because it solidifies it. Get a coach, be a coach. Get a coach, be a coach. Get a coach, be a coach... That's what I gave my closing speech on at graduation, when I graduated. Anyway. He goes through and he starts saying, "Look, as you came into this industry, whatever it is that you're in, you loved it and you started learning all the vocab from that industry." Sales funnels, auto-responders, SMTP, right? All this crap, no one know what that is if they're not in here. You go out, you get so excited, and the first person who you think is even remotely a good fit for a sales funnel, let's just use that as an example, you run up to them and you're like, "Sales funnel. Auto-responder. SMTP," and they're like, "Ah." You know, we call it technobabble... Technobabble's this thing that will kill the sale, always. The point of Russell's speech on that is that he said, "You need to go back to the time where you had the epiphany, personally. Right? That you needed a sales funnel, and you have to tell that story in a way that gets them in the same state, to have the same epiphany that you did. And then you don't have to be selling anything." Suddenly they'll have the epiphany. They'll realize, "Oh my gosh. I got to have a sales funnel now." You know what I mean? For me, because of the origin story, right? My origin story ... I've said this before, so I'm not going to go into it, because it's a big story. Right? I was in college, I was trying to make a lot of money on the side, and I was doing all right at it. I was getting hired by Paul Mitchell, the hair school. I was driving tons of traffic for them. We were building websites for some of their rising celebrities. Funny, because it was in the middle of my marketing class. We walked up to the teacher and I was like, "Hey, I don't want to come back to your class ever again. I'm already doing this stuff." He's like, "Cool. Just show me a deliverable at the end." So I went and I worked for Paul Mitchell during those hours, three hours a day, driving lots of internet traffic for them, and I could get huge volumes of traffic. I was getting all these people, all these ninja waves, white hat and gray hat stuff. We were getting lots of website visitors for Paul Mitchell there. I realized I could get tons of traffic. But I kept looking at the numbers, and they're like, "Okay, we're spending extra money on this traffic that's coming in. We know we're targeting okay, but why aren't people converting? How do I actually know that these people are making me money?" Right? It's a brick-and-mortar story. That was the big challenge, bringing them from online to offline, and walking into their stores. Right? That's when I realized, there was a skillset out there that I did not have, and that's what ultimately led me to getting all over the internet. I was like, "Oh my gosh. How do I do this? How do I do this?" That's when I ran into "DotCom Secrets" and Russell Brunson. That's how I did it. Anyway, that was the whole point of that though, is that you need to go back to ... start categorizing, start ... Sorry. I'm getting ahead of myself. Start indexing. I should say that, that's probably a better way to say it. Start indexing your stories. Okay? Russell told way over 40 stories in each one of his presentations. It's not because he's just sitting there telling stories, it's to help us. Now that you know, okay, watch what he does, watch what he does in his Snapchat. That's a huge, long, slow story that's going on. You see behind the scenes of what he's really doing in his own personal life. Right? That gets the attractive character up... He tells stories in his podcasts. He tells stories, and it's to help people have the same epiphany of need for what he's selling. Right? That's exactly what it is. That's exactly what he's doing, because he doesn't like hard closing people. He's not even that good at that. I'm not either. I'm not very good at hard selling... It's like, when I was doing door-to-door sales, that was one of the things I sucked at. I was like, "Man, I could come up with a sweet offer, but the best way to sell without selling is story selling." That's what we call it, instead of storytelling... Anyway, so we're going to keep going on. Then Brandon and Kaelin Poulin came up and they talked about social webinars, and they talked about how they spend a thousand dollars getting Russell's Funnel Hacks class. I'm sure you guys have had the Funnel Hacks class, you've gone through it, you know what it is. It's the, "My weird niche funnel that's currently making me 17 grand a day," which, that's very low compared to what it is now. But, anyway, they went through, though, and they started saying, "Hey, I got the thousand dollar thing, and all we did is we played Russell's thing for five seconds and then we stopped, and we implemented exactly what he was saying. We paused the video." He's like, "Sometimes it would take us hours to get through this set that he just showed, and we'd play the video for five seconds, then stop." Russell wanted them up there ... Sorry guys, my voice is shot. I'm trying to do the best I can here. Okay? But Russell wanted them up there to show you guys that you can go just follow Russell's path, and just pause the video. Just pause it, do what he said. Pause it, do what he said. The first year they did that, they turned that thousand dollar investment into 300 grand. The second year they did that, which was 2016, they turned it into 2.3 million. Right? Every time they saw Russell do something on social media, they paused the video and immediately did it. Right? I mean that day, they got it done, and that's how they did it. They didn't know anything about tech stuff. I know way more about click funnels than them. Right? The point was implementation, was getting out there and just doing it. Right? They used social webinars to do that. That was the name of their speech. They would stand up, and one of the cool takeaways I got from them was they said, "Hey look, if you can do it afraid, you'll be able to make it." Meaning, it's scary sometimes to do this stuff. You're like, "Oh, I don't want to do the webinar. I don't want to get out there. I don't want to be myself. I don't want to do a podcast when my voice sucks." You know what I mean, like right now? They said, "If you can do it afraid, people will sense that, they'll bond with you even more, and you'll be able to just take action and just get it done." It works out for everybody. Let me keep going here. Then there was a break, and then Jim Edwards came in and he taught about copy. Now, he is the creator of Funnel Scripts. If you guys have never used that software, fantastic software. You go in, and he basically says, "Hey look. Look, copy is not written, it is assembled." All the top copywriters in the world understand that there are elements, there are fill-in-the-blanks, for whole sales letters. Right? Everything. If you need to change your sales letter a little bit, he's like, "Think of it like Legos. All right? You take one little Lego out, and you stick another one right there to complete the sentence." You know, how to blank without blank. You know, how to make a million dollars without leaving your house. You know, how to blank without blank. Over and over again. But that works for all copy, it's not just for headlines. It works for ... He said, "I became a great copywriter when I realized that, that copy was assembled, it's not written. You are not a copywriter, you are a copy-assembler." You might think, "Okay, wow. That's not ... Is that a big enough golden nugget to actually make a speech on?" Well, then he started going through, and he started showing us how ... I mean, this is how Funnel Scripts works. If you ever used the software, it's these inputs that you toss in, and it spits out all your sales copy. At the end, he said, "Hey. The best copywriter that I ever hired, ever, is me." He's like, "If you really want to get amazing at copies, Funnel Scripts is a great launch pad. It will get you there very quickly, but you have got to learn how to assemble it on your own." He gave all the funnels, and all the scripts, and all the fill-in-the-blanks that we would ever need for any type of copy, ever, while we were there. It was a really huge value. Most the speakers gave something ridiculous at the end. It was really nice. Just, tremendous value the whole way. Okay, then Stu McLaren came in. Guys, if you don't know who Stu McLaren is, this guy's one of my heroes, second to Russell, okay? What Stu does with his time, is he goes out and he has something called World Teacher Aid, and any time you ... Some of you guys ... We were actually shocked at the number of people that did not know this. When you click 'Add New Funnel' in ClickFunnels, and you build the funnel, as soon as 100 visitors hit that funnel, a dollar automatically gets donated to World Teacher Aid. Well, we presented him with a $76,000 check while he was here. Literally 100% of all the money that comes into World Teacher Aid is used for building schools in Kenya and Africa. They've built like 11 of them now. Anyway, it's really, really cool, really touching. But we were like, "Holy crap, 76,000 funnels with 100 people came in." That's what that means. Oh my gosh. But he came in and he talked about membership funnels. What he does, is he goes through and he says, "Okay, I'm going to make a sweet membership site, but I'm only going to spend 2 weeks out of the whole year running it." You're like, "What the heck?" He goes in and he says, "Okay. I'm going to go in and I'm going to, on week one, let's have an expert come in and teach something. On week two, let's do a live Q&A about it. On week three, let's do some kind of blog or post, or something like that, some other tangible item that they can go learn from. Then on week four, we'll do some other behind-the-scenes video. Like, 'Hey, this is how I really do it. These are the little hacks I learned.'" And that's what he does. If you look at those, week one, two, three, four, the only two pieces that you have to do ahead of time are getting an expert to come in. He flies everybody in. In two days he interviews, back-to-back, to back-to-back, to back-to-back, to back-to-back, 12 of them. Right? Pre-loads 12 months of content, gets it transcribed, puts it in the membership area, puts it on a drip thing so that it goes out for them after 30 days, after 60, 90, the whole way through the year. Then he creates the blog post for it, same thing. He gets the whole thing set, and then he presses go. The way that he makes $7 million a year off of membership sites, where he only runs them a couple weeks a year, is by the way he handles the cart. He does not leave it open cart all the time. He leaves it as seats. He's like, "Look. I treat you guys like students. I really do want you to know." So rather than these huge ups and downs in his membership sites, he will literally just ... It's like stairs, steps. It's a little up, and up, and up, and up, and up, and up, and up, because while the cart is closed, while people can't get in, there's a waiting list. If there are times when he knows he wants a little boost in the revenue or he might lose some numbers, he just goes to the waiting list and says, "Hey. Look, a seat is going to open up. If you guys want to jump in, go for it," and he'll get a little boost in the sales. That's how he handles membership sites. I thought that was a really great takeaway, and I just wanted to share that over to you guys. Anyways, after that, Russell is taking people to Kenya if they buy a school. We're just trying to raise money for charity. But we don't any of that, obviously. That's literally straight for charity. Then there were huge round tables at the end. It's like non-stop talking. It was awesome. It was really fun to talk to you guys, because half your questions are tactile, "Hey, how do I do this in ClickFunnels?" Then the other half are strategy like, "Hey, how would you sell this?" I got to sit down with so many of you and draw out funnels, and show you how I'd do this, and the ways we've seen it work. You guys know I've built over 140 sales funnels with Russell in the last 11 months. Way more than half of them have been all on my own. You know what I mean? Right at the beginning it was like, "Hey, build this funnel," and then I'd go out and I'd build it, he'd destroy like 90% of it. Well the percent that he's destroying is going smaller, and smaller, and smaller, and smaller. Until finally, the last six months has been like, "Okay, cool. Hey, just change the headline just a little." That's it. I was like, "Holy crap. That's so cool." But it's really fun to sit down with you guys and just start showing all these cool things we've been doing. Hopefully next year we get a round table. That's what I'm hoping for. Don't tell Russell, but tell Russell if you want to. Be like, "Russell, Stephen, why aren't you speaking? Why aren't you at a round table?" I was like, "Well, it's not my company or my call, so I'm not ... " Maybe next time I will. Anyways. Guys, that was the first day. We were there until midnight, and then we got back up. We had our meeting at 7:30, and then huge hand-slapping times the whole way, high-fives coming on in. It was awesome, again. Anyways, that was the first day. Hopefully something in there I said was of use and of value to you. Very, very awesome. I want to encourage you guys right now, if you want to ... I think we sold several hundred tickets for 2018. We sold almost 100 for 2018 right before this event actually started. But then during this event, we sold another couple hundred tickets. Anyway. There are 35 tickets, 35 seats, available for our next conference in 2018. It's going to be at Disney in Florida. We already got the resort, everything's done. The contracts are signed. We are going to freaking Disney... The early-bird price right now is 697. I think you can go to funnelhacking.com ... Well you can, I built it. Go to funnelhacking.com. You can only buy single tickets right now, not two. But, just so you guys know, a little inside track here, they are going to raise the price significantly higher for this one. Half of it's just because of demand, and because we bring in people like Tony Robbins. You know what I mean? That is not cheap. I am legally not allowed to tell you how much money it was, but holy crap. Get your ticket now, is what I'm telling you to go do. I'm not pushing an affiliate link, I'm not telling anything else, I just would love to meet more of you guys. About 75% of the room raised their hand when they asked if this was their first event. I think it's because you guys were listening. Anyways guys, fantastic time, and again, next two episodes, I'm going to go through the next two days here. I think you guys are going to like this. It got even cooler. I can't even believe the first day was just so freaking awesome. The first day, when Russell and I were talking about it and going through it, we were going through slides ... I made so many images for his slides. It was a lot of fun doing it with him. But, we realized that the first day is so foundational for the remainder of the event. All right? It had less to do with, "Hey, make this tweak on your funnel here and get an increase in conversions." That's not what the event is about. The event is about how to sell. The event is about how to actually be the business owner. It's about how to outsource. It's how to craft your message. That's really what this was all about. Okay? I saw a blog post from some guy, Billy Gene, and he was like, "This was the worst thing ever. Day one went by, and he didn't go through any tactics." I was like, "Are you freaking kidding me? What he just laid down there means you don't have to strong sell anybody else ever again, ever. All right? I don't like doing that. I'd rather put that on autopilot through a funnel, and he just told you how to do it." No tactics, my butt. Anyway. Okay, don't get me started on that, because what he put out there, there's nothing else from that event ... There's nothing else you could learn that was so valuable. It's pretty much more important than the offer. I have watched Russell ... Just so you guys know, and then I'll end this podcast. I have watched Russell, many times, not know a thing about the person's product, but because he asked certain questions, he knew how to sell it. Did you just have an epiphany? Because you should, about your own products. Some of you guys are so obsessed with your product, but you are not obsessing on how to sell it. They're different things. They're totally different things. Right? One, you've got, let's say ... I was asking someone at the event, I was like, "Do you know what's in a Campbell's Soup soup? What are the ingredients?" He's like, "You mean like all of them on the back?" I was like, "Yeah." He's like, "I don't know." I was like, "Then why'd you buy it? You don't know everything that's in it? Oh my gosh. You're crazy. You're nuts." I was like, "Now is that really that crazy or nuts?" He's like, "No." I was like, "You are thinking that everyone is going to look at all the ingredients in your offer, and all the little pieces, and all these things. That's true; the offer needs to deliver, it needs to be awesome. It's got to be amazing. But, just as important, if not more, in fact, I would say even more, you have got to obsess on how to sell it." I say, "Okay now, can you tell me what a Campbell's Soup label looks like?" He's like, "Well, yeah," and he goes through. I was like, "Okay, now why is that?" He's like, "Because they spent so much more time ... Okay, the ingredients list is on the back of the can, even. Right? That's not the highlight." However, it is the product; it's got to be there. But the message, what people see, the thing that pulls people in, right, the message they put on TV of you drinking this soup while you're sick ... Those are stories. That's how everything's sold. Anyway, I was trying to tell some of this, "Understand what I'm saying to you, that the product is important, but you have been obsessing over your product for the last several years." I knew he was. I was like, "Stop. Okay? It's time to obsess on the message. It's time to obsess on your culture. It's time to obsess on all the little analogies you're going to tell, and inventory your personal stories so people get attracted to you. Let's say your product got shut down, or you lost something, or whatever, that way people still know who you are." Does that make sense? That's the important of this, and that's really what day one was. Anyway, it was a long podcast guys, but hopefully you guys liked that. Hey guys, seriously, again, I would go get the ticket if you haven't. I'm so excited to show you guys day two and three. Holy crap. All right guys, talk to you later. Bye. Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your pre-built sales funnel today.

David is in the mix with Forever Evil: Rogues Rebellion #1, Justice League of America #8, Trinity of Sin: Pandora #4, Green Lantern New Guardians #24, Batman and Two-Face #24 and Batman/Superman #4. Then Russell and David get you caught up on some news before discussing the latest TV episodes from 'Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.', 'Arrow' and the season premiere of 'The Walking Dead'. They finish up with their 'Best Bets' for next week.

Russell and David begin the first 'In The Comix' podcast with their favorite books from the past week including Aquaman #16, Batman: The Dark Knight #16, Teen Titans #16, Superior Spider-Man #2, Justice League Dark #16, Talon #4 and more. Then Russell reviews High Crimes #1 and The Sixth Gun #28. They finish up with some news and reveal the titles they're picking up next week.