Podcasts about voxed

In this episode we talk to Seeta Patel and Wayne Parsons about the relationship between organisation - be they venues, companies, agencies - and artists. Living through a pandemic has highlighted the fragile ecology upon which the performing arts industry is built. The community Freelancers Make Theatre Work, a group of volunteers set up to give freelancers a voice, has published data which says that over a third of the freelance workforce received no support during Covid – making their reliance on the sometimes tenuous relationship between organisation and artist even more important. Seeta and Wayne talk about how they supported themselves and their own dancers through Covid. They discuss the pivot to digital and conclude that perhaps we are all beginners within the digital world and have much to learn together if we are to continue to inhabit the digital space with integrity. They muse upon the lessons that have been learnt, by both organisations and artists, throughout the crisis and how we all might learn from these as we build a stronger future. We unpick the value that associate programmes have for the artists who acquire them, the difficulties in maintaining relationships with organisations when personnel move on and how we build more sustainable opportunities for the artistic workforce. We discuss the terminology ‘artist development’ and what artists really need to develop right now, and Melanie poses the question – what would you do, if you ran an organisation, to support artists like yourselves? The answers are illuminating… Recording date: Tuesday 26 January 2021 Talking Moves is a Greenwich Dance production Presented by Melanie Precious Production by Carmel Smith, Lucy White and Melanie Precious

Registrate en Ledn desde este link y ganá 25 dólares: https://platform.ledn.io/join/d1bd683407adc5b41ad030cc6866c5ad Hablamos de FIN DE AÑO, 1K suscriptores, bitcoin ATH, aborto, legalización marihuana, rozed reemplaza voxed Seguinos en Twitter: Círculo Vicioso @circulovicioso8 Pablo Wasserman: @pablowasserman Juan Ruocco: @realjuanruocco Súmate al canal de Discord: https://discord.com/invite/VTvwChr Invitanos un Cafecito: https://cafecito.app/circulovicioso --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/circulovicioso/support

Hablamos de Bitcoin arriba de 18000, la ceguera del bull market, criogenización, cierre de Voxed.net, Trinche Carlovich, y más... Seguinos en Twitter: Círculo Vicioso @circulovicioso8 Pablo Wasserman: @pablowasserman Juan Ruocco: @realjuanruocco Súmate al canal de Discord: https://discord.com/invite/VTvwChr Invitanos un Cafecito: https://cafecito.app/circulovicioso --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/circulovicioso/support

Seguinos en Twitter: Círculo Vicioso @circulovicioso8 Pablo Wasserman: @pablowasserman Juan Ruocco: @realjuanruocco --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/circulovicioso/support

How to quickly double sales by weaving the 3 invisible closes into every step of your funnel… On this episode that is from a presentation at 2019’s Funnel Hacking Live, Russell talks about the 3 Closes. Here are the 3 closes he explains in today’s episode: The Emotional Close The Logical Close And the Urgency and Scarcity Close Find out what each of this closes is, and why Russell uses them in every single funnel. ---Transcript--- Hey everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I am pumped that you are here. I cannot wait to share some cool stuff with you guys today. It’s funny, I’m actually working through a big project right now, so I’ve been logging into all the archives from Funnel Hacking Live from the past 5 or 6 years, or however many years we’ve done it. And I’ve found this little presentation that I forgot I did this last Funnel Hacking Live, it’s only 15 minutes long, but it’s called the 3 closes, how to quickly double sales by weaving the 3 invisible closes into every step of your funnel. I kind of just re-watched it real quick, I’m like, “This is really good. People should hear this.” So I’m going to give you guys a gift today. I’m going to let you guys listen in on this presentation. But if you’re going to listen to it, I need your help. The help I need when you’re done listening to it, because I’m giving you this stuff for free, everyone else had to pay to get this, so if I’m going to hook you up and give you this for free, the thing I want in return is for you guys to take a snap shot on your phone as you’re listening to this and post it on social media and tell everyone to go listen to this episode. Be like, ‘Dude this episode was sweet. Go listen to it, the 3 closes.” And just get people to come listen. So that’s my only request. You don’t have to do it but if you’d like to that would be really, really cool. It’d mean a lot to me. When you do that, make sure you tag me and do #marketingsecrets, that way it will show up and I can see. Love to hear your comments on why you liked this episode. And I appreciate you guys sharing it in advance. Okay, with that said, I’m going to queue up the theme song, and when we come back you’re going to have the chance to listen to one of my presentations from Funnel Hacking Live called The 3 Closes: How to Quickly Double Sales By Weaving These 3 Invisible Closes Into Every Step of Your Funnel. Here we go. This is a framework that I've been using for myself for a long time. And I assumed that everybody knew it or did it. And one time we had a marketing meeting, this is probably about a year ago, we flew most of our marketing team into Boise and we're sitting there and I remember mapping this out. I was explaining the layout of landing page. And I said, “Hey, just so you know, this is the three closes and how we use them on a landing page.” And everyone, my team's like, “What?” They start freaking out. And I was like, “Didn't everybody know this?” They’re like, “I don't think anybody knows this. You've never talked about it before. No one's ever shared it.” And I was like, “Oh my gosh, that's amazing.” So I've never really talked about this publicly anywhere before besides right now and right here. So I want to kind of go through this. So I call this the three closes, how to quickly double sales by weaving these three invisible closes into every step of your funnel. Okay? And this is what the framework looks like and it's emotion, logic, and fear. All right, so step into kind of the, the pre-frame so you can understand how this framework works. So the first thing you have to understand, I learned this originally from Perry Belcher, I think Perry learned from Dan Kennedy, but I'm not sure, but he says something really interesting. He said, he said, if you look at anything in life, the reason why people either move towards you or they don't move at all is because of this weird thing that we have as humans called status. We like to feel status, right? And so that's kind of the how this, all selling is based on this when you start understanding it. Okay? So it's all based on status. And so when somebody is looking at any opportunity you offer them, right? “Here's the new thing, here's my product, here's my service, here's my whatever” what they’re thinking about subconsciously, because subconsciously in their mind is “if I do this thing, if I buy this product, if I move forward in this way, is this thing that I'm considering doing? Is it going to increase my status or it's going to decrease my status?” That's the psychological turmoil they haven't had every single time they make an offer. It really boils down to that simple. “Is this gonna make me feel better about myself or is it gonna be for worse about myself? Maybe increase my status or decrease my status?” Okay and some of you guys are thinking, “Oh, that's not me. I don't make my decisions that way. Okay, I'm not so self centered that I'm worried about my status all the time.” But it's interesting to status works both ways. Some people buy really amazing things, like they'll say a really expensive watch or nice car because it'll increase their status like, “I'm going to feel really good.” Right? And so that's one side of the, some people, they don't buy a car that's really expensive because they feel like that will decrease their status. Right? The first time I ever shared this concept, I remember I was talking about um, a Ferrari and I'm going to share for I story here in a second. So I was talking about a Ferrari and I remember I was talking about, you know, you go to buy a Ferrari, you do it cause you want to increase in status. And I remember a lady in the audience raised her hand and she's like, “I would never buy a Ferrari. That would not increase my status. That would actually decrease my status.” I'm like exactly like, your fear is the other side like “If I buy this thing it's going to decrease my status.” I was like “What do you drive?” And she's like, “A minivan.” I'm like, “Why do you drive a minivan?” And she says, “Well it's because it makes me feel intelligent because I know it gets good gas mileage and it makes it safe for my family, all these kind of things.” I said, “So you bought a mini bank because increased your status.” She’s like, “Oh my gosh, I never thought of it that way.” I thought that everybody, you know, status was like this thing that was a negative connotation, but all of us do it. And so that's what you need to kind of understand. So as we move into this framework, I want you to look at it through that frame of, of understanding status. Okay? Alright, so the first close when we're selling anything is our emotional close. Now, emotion is the most powerful tool we have for selling anything, okay? And so that's why we spent a whole session last night for like two hours talking about the epiphany bridge and story. Okay, story is an emotional close. I'm telling you a story. I'm getting you engaged. All your feelings are happening, right? Okay, so you're getting the emotion. Now, emotion, like I said, is the most powerful thing. And for years, this is the only way that I knew how to close stuff. I would tell stories that were emotional, people feel it, right? And then they would go in there to buy things. And so emotion, people feel this emotion that gives them a status increase. Like, “Oh my gosh, it's so amazing. If I get this thing, if I buy this product or the service, I'm going to have better style, I'm going to have more happiness, more wealth, my physical appearance, I’m going to feel better about myself going to lose weight. I'm going to make money, I'm going to…” you know, whatever the thing might be. So it's an emotional decision. Right now if you look at the metrics, about 50% of your sales will come from the emotional close. And some of you guys, that's all you use, just the emotional close. And that's okay. That's what I did for probably the first decade before I did the second two closes. But 50% of your sales will come from the emotional close. Okay? Now this is the picture of Todd. Do you guys like that red car? So this is Todd's red car and I remember he saw it and he was like freaking out and he's like, “I want to buy this car.” And he went and he jumped in the car. And he sat in, he drove around, he felt amazing, and he's like, “This is amazing. Can you imagine driving this car every single day, how awesome it would be?” And he's sitting there visualizing the increase in status like, “I'm gonna feel really good, people gonna see this car, it's going to be awesome.” Right? So the very first thing is he's emotionally sold. He's like, “This is good. I need this thing.” Right? Okay. And so most sales happen emotionally initially, right? Like imagine you guys, the last car that you bought, when you got on the first time you sat down and you're like, “Oh my gosh, this is amazing, right?” It's the emotion you feel of it. And it's true to anything life. By the way, think about the last five things you bought. You sat there, you're emotionally like, “Oh, this would be really cool to have. I want that thing.” Okay? But then what happens is after the motion kind of runs this way and you're like, “I need this thing, I have to buy it.” then we have people we love around us. Like, for example, Todd, this is his beautiful wife, Ashley, and he's got to drive home in this car and tell Ashley about the emotional experience he just had. She didn't have the same emotional experience that Todd had when he first stepped in this car, I'm pretty sure. And so from there now we transitioned to the second close, which is the logical close. So after Todd bought the car, he signed on the line, he Voxed me and he started talking to me about the gas mileage, about how the resale value is so great on this car. And he's been going on and on and on. I started laughing like, “Todd, I'm the most emotional person you have ever met. You do not have to logically convince me of anything.” He's like, “I know, but I'm driving home in a few minutes and I have to logically convince Ashley, that this was a good purchase.” And so the second close is logic. So logic is all about avoiding a status decrease, so all of us, we buy things emotionally and we justify them logically. So if you don't have logic in your, in your pitch, in your presentations and the way you're selling, a big percentage, 50% or more of your audience will not buy, even if they're emotionally moved to buy. Because it’s like, “This is amazing. But like, what about the decrease in status.” right? They feel the emotion of the increase in status. They're excited by it, but then they fear the decrease of status. Like, “What's my wife gonna think? My family, my friends, what if I drive this car to to school? Are the other parents going to think like all the different things that they start freaking out about, right? They have this fear of the decrease of status. And so because of that you have to also speak to the logical mind. And so the second close in any sales presentation is the logical close. So you start with emotion, 50% of buyers come from emotion and then about 30% of the buyers will come from the logical close. So would you logically explain things mostly so that they have the ammunition they need to logically explain to other people. So they don't feel a decrease in status. Okay. There's no logic in buying a Ferrari. I had them for a while. It was the worst car ever. If you don't plug it in every night, it dies. Okay. You can't jump into, you have to plug it in. Takes a week to recharge, it was the worst car ever. It broke down every time I drove it. It was insane, there's no logical reason to have a Ferrari. It's horrible. In fact, I was talking to Todd the other day, he's like, “Yeah, I left it un-plugged and it sat in the driveway for a week because we didn't, we couldn't get it back.” I'm like, “It's the worst car ever.” Right emotionally though, man. It looks good. I've never been a hot girl ever, but when I drove my Ferrari the two times that it worked before it broke down every time, I would drive to the gas station and all the sudden men from everywhere would start popping up from the gas station come around me. I was just like, and they’re like, “How many horses are in there?” I'm like, “I don't, I'm not, I don't know. I'm not a car guy.” And they're like, “Can I get a picture with it?” I'm like, “I guess like I feel so violated. This is the weirdest thing in the world.” The other weird thing is you drive down the street and you see the other cars coming. And it was funny because the women drivers never noticed any of it. But the men would be like, every single man. And I would see people like flip around and speed past me with their cameras getting selfies, like, “Oh look at the Ferrari.” I'm like, “This is the weirdest thing ever.” Emotionally it was amazing. I felt like a rock star. But logically it's the worst car I've ever driven, ever. It’s horrible. Alright, we understand emotional is that increasing status. Logic is about protecting yourself in a decrease in status. And 30% your sales come from logic. And then the third close is what we call fear or FOMO, fear of missing out. This is the urgency and scarcity. There's some people that no matter how much status increase they think they're going to get or how much logically they convince themselves and others around them that they can buy something they won't buy, they won't take action unless you're going to take it away. The fear of missing out is the thing that gets the last 20% of people to buy. And so this pattern is happening everywhere. You guys will see it at this event alone, I'm going to be using this process a bunch of times on you. Hopefully you guys will respect that and appreciate it and see it. Okay, but I want you guys to start seeing where these things are weaving in. I got a lot of things. Here's some examples, so emotion, logic, fear: So just feeling this event alone, how many guys were at last year’s Funnel Hacking Live, and at the very end where I was like, “Hey, you should buy tickets next year.” And you're like, “Whoa.” And you ran the back and you bought tickets? Where are my emotional buyers? I love you guys. Thank you for doing that. Yeah. So these emotional buyers, they had an amazing emotional experience last for Funnel Hacking Live. They're like, “This is insane. Next I'm going to be on stage. I'm gonna get my award. This is the most amazing thing on earth. I'm going to commit to myself right now. I'm not going to do it.” Those are my emotional buyers, you guys all signed up before the event even left. I’m so grateful for you guys. I hope by next year you are all emotional buyers. I would make my job of selling tickets so much easier. Okay, that's step number one. Okay. So we get the emotional buyers. And then it’s like, everyone's like, “Well I don't know if next year, if I'm in a winter ward yet, I don't know if this, well, what if the speakers aren't good? What if this,….” and like all the logic, right? Like, “Oh, what if I go and like I don't learn anything new because I already know everything Russell's ever said. I've read all his books, I know everything.” And also the logic starts coming in, right? And so the next set of closes for us, we start introducing speakers and he speaker my, “Here's the speaker. This is why you need to hear from them. Logically, this is the part you're stuck on. This person's give you that piece. Here's the next speaker, here's the next speaker, the next speaker.” I spend the next two months of my life doing interviews, all speakers, and everyone's like, logically, “Okay? Alright, if Jermaine is going to come, then I'm going to come because, you know, logically it makes sense. I need that piece. Oh no, I logically I need design hacking. If Catherine's going to be there, I'm going to come.” And logically for two months I start closing the next set of sales through logic, right? So the next 30% of our sales came through the campaign like this, right? And then guess how the last 20% of tickets were sold? Literally the last day when I'm like, “Hey, tickets sell out tomorrow, and then they're gone forever.” And all the rest of you guys were like, “Oh! Oh my gosh, Russell’s been talking about this every day for 12 months of his life. I think I'm going to finally get it.” And then we close down ticket sales the next day and People are like, “I didn't know it was closing down. I need to take it.” I'm like, “Are you serious? Every day for a year I've been telling you about this.” It’s painful, but this is the process. So I'm showing you this because this is a typical campaign. We lead with emotions, we lead with webinars or product launch videos, things like that, videos. We’re getting the emotional close, right? Then we transition to the logical closes and we end with urgency and scarcity, right? Emotion, logic, fear. If you look at the perfect webinar script, it is strategically designed to do this exact same thing. The very first section of the perfect webinar is all about emotion. We're breaking false beliefs, am I right? Then we transition to the stack and the close, as a very logical argument about why you need this thing and this thing and this thing and the value. I'm logically convincing you why it's actually worth the thing you did. So if I go back and say “Here, you're feeling the emotion of like, yes, this is an increase my status. If I get the thing.” and I transition to the close and you’re like, “Oh, but what's my wife gonna say if I have to talk to her about this? It’s a really good offer, is it really good deal? Like what are my friends gonna think? What if I buy in? It doesn't work?” And all the sudden the logical mind starts freaking out. So I come and I do the stack. And in the stack I'll walk you through that. I'm like, “This is the offer. This is the value.” You're like, “Oh my gosh, this is a really good deal. Okay.” and you've grabbed your wife or your spouse, your husband and be like, “Look, this is a really good deal. Check out the offer.” And they're like, “Are you sure this is a good deal?” And you're convincing them logically, right? And then at the end, call to action. We have urgency and scarcity, “This is why you got to buy now.” Okay? So that happens inside of the actual webinar script. Okay. Same thing happens in the webinar funnel, okay? At a macro level, you step out in the webinar funnel, the first part of the webinar campaign is all about emotion, right? They register, they get the indoctrination videos, they watch the webinar, it's a very emotional sell. From there, we transition to the replays, which are very heavily pushing the offer. We talk about “Go watch the replay and here's the offer, here's the offer.” And then the end of the campaign, we do our urgency and scarcity in the last 20% of sales come the last day when everybody's like, “Oh, this offer is disappearing, and I must finally go.” Okay, emotion, logic and fear. Okay? We also see in our landing pages. If I know that the best opportunity to have to sell is, is, is emotion, the top one, third of my page is all speaking towards emotion. If you look at any of my landing pages you'll notice that the emotional pitch is everything above the fold. Above the fold means without having to scroll, everything you see on the page is all emotion, right? And it's crazy. If you guys use analytics, like the tracking software, see how people scroll down. It's like most people never scroll past the initial thing, right? What happens is emotional buyers like “This is amazing.” Boom, they buy. And then the logical buyer is like, “This is amazing, but like….” and then they start scrolling for more information. So they scroll down and it's like, “Oh, here's all the emotional arguments about why you should buy this thing.” We speak to emotion, excuse me, we speak to logic here, so my logical people who are typically more readers will start reading through the longer form of the thing, they get the justification they need, and at the bottom is like my urgency and scarcity, “This is why you got to act now.” You start noticing this in all my landing pages, you'll notice top one third is emotion, next big section is logic, the last 20% is urgency and scarcity and fear. Same thing happens in my email campaigns. Somebody comes into my list, they join my list, my first few emails are all going to be speaking towards the emotion. You notice I'm telling stories to get you excited and then I'll transition to like, “Okay, let me talk logically why this is the thing you need.” And then we end with urgency and scarcity and we close down the campaign. It happens inside my email campaigns. If you look at my value ladder, how we send people up through it and he stepped in the value ladder, boom, this follow up sequence that takes somebody through that step of the value ladder and then moves to next goes through emotion, logic and fear. Then you move to the next one and then boom, the next one that goes through emotion and logic and fear. So that pattern just weaves throughout every single campaign as we're moving people through our value ladder and ascending them up, okay? And it's also happening not just not just there, but in all of our campaigns. This is kind of why I map out my campaigns. So we get emotion, logic, fear’s is up at the top here. Left hand side is, like, “here is when somebody comes to this page, they click on the ad, now we have re-targeted campaigns, okay? Even our retargeting campaigns follow this process, right? The first set of ads they see after they hit a landing page to click on an ad, are all very emotional based ads, right? Okay. And if they haven't bought off the emotional, we transition to logical based ads, and they haven't bought up the logical based ads, then we transition to the urgency and scarcity ads. So it happens there in retargeting campaigns happens in our email campaigns. happens in every single aspect. This pattern happens over and over and over and over again. So that you guys is the urgency and scarcity, or excuse me, The 3 Closes Framework. You guys like that?

The biggest mistake I see people make when approaching others of influence is they enter the relationship without adding value to the other.   This is my campaign I used to approach Russell Brunson about Keynoting at OfferMind 2019...   HOW RUSSELL BRUNSON HELPED ME CREATE OFFERMIND   I wanted my own event real bad, so last year, when Russell Brunson came out with his 30-Days Book, I decided to piggyback off the launch to build my event.   Each affiliate received a $100 for each person who signed up through their link.   375 people bought the book through me which meant that I could use that income to create a sweet event.   Each person who bought the 30 Day Book with my link also got a free ticket to my first OfferMind.   We found a room that would hold 180 people, and about 160 RSVP’d to get tickets.   There's always a 5 - 10% no-show rate on all events, no matter what you do (crazy, I know),  so on the day, we ended up with roughly 150 showing up, which is pretty good for the first time.   I know that OfferMind is an event that I will probably do each year, so I wrote down my dream list of potential speakers on my whiteboard.   You can guess who was top of that list, right? ;-)   HOW NOT TO PITCH YOUR DREAM 100   People have asked:  “Stephen, you’re friends. Why didn't you just ask Russell to speak at Offermind?”   Well, first of all, I’d NEVER leverage a relationship for the sake of my business. So I'm gonna do EVERYTHING I would normally do to Russell that speaking at OfferMind was a GREAT idea.   I created a full-out stack and offer for him with closes, calls to actions, AND a fast-action bonus!     If you're gonna ask an influencer to do something, you better go the freakin' distance.   The absolute worst way to get someone to speak at your event (especially a dream 100 influencer) is to send them a message and say, “You wanna speak at my event?”   I've been asked to speak at two events recently, where I can tell my name was just being used to fill their event.   I will NEVER do any business with those individuals the rest of my life, they burned the bridge so hard.   You're gonna NOT get an influencer to show up for your business by walking up and saying, “Hey, you being coming to my event would truly be awesome for me and my business.” That's stupid!   You need to make your OFFER amazing and speak their language.   That's exactly what I did with Russell Brunson, and thankfully he agreed. I'm really pumped! The reason I'm sharing this with you is two-fold:   #1: I want you to come to OfferMind.   #2: I want to show you how to approach a Dream 100 influencer   Next, I’m gonna go through the script and offer I created for Russell to show you how I presented it, but if you wanna download the script, all you gotta do is get a ticket for OfferMind.   I'm handing the script out to each person who grabs a ticket at OfferMind.com. PITCHING MR RUSSELL BRUNSON   So, instead of just asking Russell straight out… I started dropping hints.   My first move was to send him a Vox saying, “I'm NOT asking you to speak at OfferMind, I'm just telling you I'm trying to think of ways to get you to speak at OfferMind.”   I was kinda messing with him, and surprisingly, he messaged back, and  said, “I want sushi while getting a massage.”   I said, “As long as it's not me doing them, yeah.”   So two days later, I walked into his office with a masseuse gift certificate from his favorite masseuse and sushi for the entire ClickFunnels office.   I also wrote a sales script and created a stack slide to pitch him on keynoting at OfferMind.   I wrote out the vehicle, internal and external related false beliefs that  I knew he’d go through when I asked him to keynote at my event.   I went through the whole marketing process and created an offer and wrote a full freakin' script. I probably spent five hours writing it.   This was a spawn of my brain. Sometimes that's great, and sometimes it's dangerous... right now, it's great.   Here’s how I did it…   CREATING AN OFFER FIT FOR RUSSELL BRUNSON   I took Russell’s webinar script which he knows inside out, (I use that script a lot too), and I went slide by slide from the stack slide on, to create an entire script.   What you’re gonna get when you choose to keynote at OfferMind 2019. The first thing you're gonna get when you commit to keynote at OfferMind 2019:   #1: First, you're gonna be the featured keynote speaker, with ads, paid content, hyper fans all promoting the event.   Also, Steve's personal closing team will be calling his audience after any purchase throughout the year leading up to the OfferMind event to sell 'em tickets. Whoa!   *On the right side, I added in a lot of trial closes which imitate what you'd expect a person's brain to be going through as I'm speaking...   It’s a two-sided conversation that I'm having both with Russell, but it’s also what’s going on inside of his own head.   #2: Secondly, you're gonna get more paid traffic to your One Funnel Away Challenge, Steve's ad team will drive paid traffic to each of your One Funnel Away Challenges throughout the year.   Each One Funnel Away buyer who buys through Steve's affiliate link will get credit for an OfferMind ticket where they'll further get ClickFunnels indoctrination from Stephen.   Wow, that's pretty awesome, right? Now you're probably thinking…   (Okay, now, I'm starting to hit secondary objections.)   Right now, you're probably thinking, “Is Steve Larsen or OfferMind even big enough for my level of influence?   (That's a vehicle-based objection right there, I'm hittin' it on the head.) And... “Could the decision to speak threaten my status as the CEO of ClickFunnels?”   You're probably thinking that right? Great question! We thought of that too. So, the third thing you're gonna get…   (And so there's literally a piece of the offer combating each one of those objections exactly as I’d do in any script.)   #3: So, the third thing you're gonna get high-end stage and event designers with professional media coverage to make this the coolest experience.   Steve has already hired the same A/V companies that do a lot of the Funnel Hacking Live and Two Comma Club X stages and they'll put on the event so the caliber will match your caliber.   Steve's caliber will match your caliber.   We'll also have professional photographers and videographers taking pictures, recordings, and B-roll that we'll turn over to you afterward for your own use.   (He's always looking for cool B-roll.)   You'll have your own custom backdrop and smoke that comes out. The crowd will be chanting, “Russell, Russell, Russell,” with Seven Nation Army blaring when I invite you onstage.   Additionally, the audience will be wearing the same Funnel Hacking or funnel promoting t-shirt like a uniform... which I will provide.   If that isn't enough, Steve will personally yell in the face of anyone NOT absolutely going nuts when you walk up.   *Um, my jaw just dropped* Are you starting to imagine how epic you're gonna look on the stage of OfferMind?   If you listen carefully, you probably already can hear them chanting, right? “Russell, Russell!”   BUT if you're like me, you're probably thinking, “Ah but, what would I even talk about?”   (I know he's gonna think that)   *How do I know? Because I sat in a room with him for two years. He's gonna go, “Um, I don't even know what to talk about? That's alright I'll figure it out later.”   I know he's going to say that, but I wanna make sure I answer that concern as well. It's very much an internal-based concern:     “I can see OfferMind would be a cool thing to do, but what would I talk about? Do I have the personal capacity to jump in and do that?”   He's gonna wanna over-deliver. So the objection is gonna be content focused, and what’s he gonna talk about?  So I'm gonna bring that up ahead of time.   Ah, but what are you gonna talk about... and for how long? #4: So the fourth you're gonna get topic and length autonomy. You'll have 500 - 800 people in the room...   *We're going for 500 to 800 people (if it’s possible with the event space). I'm sure we'll figure it out... but 500 people at least is what we're goin' for.   Steve will be speaking the full first day, and we'd like you to keynote on day two. You'll be the last speaker and have total control on what you talk about and how long you wanna go.   Feel free to test new material or talk about anything you want, but at the end of your speech…   (Okay, now I'm gonna tie into something that he wants)   It's not just WHAT does Steve Larsen want... It's HOW can I make my purposes align with Russell Brunson's purpose?   *If you're trying to Dream 100 somebody, aligning with their purpose is a major key...   At the end of your speech, Steve would like some time to interview you on-stage, sitting on couches, about your new Traffic Secrets book... releasing a few months before or after OfferMind... Feel free to pitch him!   Already, as one of your top product affiliates, Steve will drive heavy traffic to your new book using that interview you do with him onstage.   At the end, the crowd will go nuts and cheer you offstage. Steve will take a few open questions as you leave through our secret backstage door to avoid swarming.   (I know he's concerned about that, so I'm gonna put that in)   Woo! I don't know about you, but this is getting pretty amazing, right? By now you're starting to see how insane this all will be, right? Luckily, Steve is a safe bet too…   Imagine yourself speaking on his stage.   Think of how epic the ads will look to have a sweet stage interview promoting your NEW Traffic Secrets Book.   As a busy CEO, you're probably saying inside…   (Here comes the external-based concern)   ... “I might not have the time or mental bandwidth to add another thing in my life.” Right? So here's the fifth thing in the offer.   #5: You're gonna get your choice of the actual event date to fit your schedule.   (Oh! There's the one-two punch, right!)   Q: What's the biggest reason someone would probably NOT be able to come speak or keynote when they want to?   A: Scheduling! So what if I just let him choose the schedule? Steve isn't here to add stress and understands firsthand what you do and the speed of your office. He doesn't expect you to stay the whole time or try to sprint from one thing to the next just to squeeze in a stressful pitch or speech.   Keep it all simple by telling him what day works for you, he'll plan the event date around you.   Oh, and don't worry about travel either, a limo will pick you up from ClickFunnels headquarters and take you to the event room where you'll be greeted by Steve and taken to your private room.   Prüvit Ketones, (which he loves, I love, I drink every day) Bullet Bars, Quest Bars, Hydrogen water will be chilled and waiting for you in a private retreat and recharge room.   Bring anyone you like with you, and the limo will take you back when you're ready.   *Now I know that he doesn't wanna even think about travel. So I'm gonna take care of that. Even though it's local, I'm gonna send a limo to pick him up ‘cause he's the man.   Dang, this sounds super awesome, right? This sounds like a no-brainer! What will everyone think when the limo arrives to pick you up? Imagine their faces.   Imagine stickin' it to that daycare next door; can't tell you where to park, right?   (There's a daycare right next to ClickFunnels that's a little bit moody about where you park. So I threw in a little humor here)   This will be one of the easiest and coolest speaking experiences you've ever had.   HE SAID, YES!   I want you to see like what lengths I went to to make this happen:   I bought sushi for the whole office. I didn't say why I just arranged it and got it there.   We called his favorite massage places to figure out where he got his last massage last because I knew he liked it.  We had to go hunting to figure out who that was so we could get it book it again.   Then in the office, on-camera, in front of a bunch of people, I read this script to him:   Just to recap, here's what you're gonna get when you agree to keynote at OfferMind 2019:   You're gonna be the featured keynote speaker.   You get more paid traffic to your One Funnel Away Challenges throughout the entire year.   You get a high-end stage and event designers with media coverage that's amazing.   Topic and length autonomy.   Your choice of the actual event date to fit your schedule.   Dang! That's a really good deal, but wait, there's MORE... on top of everything above... if you confirm with Stephen soon, (so he can start preparations), you'll also get:   Your own speaker highlight video created at Steve's expense and given to your two video guys for any B-roll they'd like to use.   You're gonna get a copy of your Traffic Secrets book interview that you do with Steve onstage for more B-roll epicness.   I'm gonna give you a couples massage by your favorite masseuse, (gift certificates already attached).   Sushi, from your favorite local restaurant which will already be in the kitchen today at noon.   Professional recordings of Steve screaming, “It's Monday, baby! It's Tuesday, baby!” … and so forth, so you can use them for all those ideas you keep bringing up. (Yeah his voice has that weird ability.)   Man my face is starting to melt. This offer is too cool, OfferMind must teach really cool offer creation methods. I just wish Steve let this offer last forever.   The total value of this offer is incalculable. It's too awesome, but unfortunately, it can't last long due to overexposure of pure awesomeness.   So, to take advantage of the positive effects this offer will have on your:   Offer   Mission   Bottom line   ….just open up your phone right now and Vox Steve the phrase, “On like Donkey Kong.”   Again, that's, “On like Donkey Kong” to get started now. Luckily for you, we've recently started accepting talking or typing options on Voxer. Now, Steve had two options when he made this offer …   (I went and I grabbed a lot of the closes he likes to use in webinars)   The first was to go as weak sauce as possible, be a little pansy, be a little Sally, and approach you with the question, “Will you speak at my event?” in a stupid dumb voice with no value added back to you.   But that wouldn't really incentivize you to agree to this…   ... and Steve's beard would shrink two sizes too small.   The second option was to make it as cool and memorable as he could be dumping all profits from his One Funnel Away affiliate earnings into a sick, awesome, kick sissies in the teeth event where you can nerd out to whatever level you want.   Now let me ask you a question:   If all this did was let you get in front of a group of people of your hyper-followers already in your community, would it be worth it? Of course, right?   If all this did was let you test your material and thoughts before you test them on your own platforms, would that be worth it? Yeah!   And like I said, you'd be getting tons of creative assets at Steve's expense just for showing up.   If all this did was give you another chance to promote your new awesome book, build pressure for the launch, and push more people to ClickFunnels, would it be worth it? Absolutely, right?   Steve knows you…   He knows you're gonna spend hours behind your computer promoting your new book when it launches...   Why not spend some of that time in an awesome, local, professional location with a swarm of people who already know, love and buy from you?   Again, get started on this risk-free offer now, simply open up your phone and Vox Steve the phrase, “On like Donkey Kong.” Again, that's. “On like Donkey Kong.”   (He has a shirt that says that and he loves it. He says that phrase a lot.)   To make it even easier, Steve has already Voxed you this phrase. You don't even need to type it, just forward it back to him.   Remember, this offer won't last forever!   Just think, what's one extra Traffics Secrets book buyer worth to you? $7.95, $9.95, or even $50,000 each and every year. What would that do for you and your family?   Imagine getting that new BioHacking test, or even a second Cryosauna, which you can shove Steve in again.   ( There are a few inside jokes… I'm gonna skip some bits here)   Remember, this isn't a cost, it's an investment!   Just open up your phone right now and Vox Steve the phrase, “On like Donkey Kong,” to get started.   Agents are standing by for your Vox.   Again, to keynote at OfferMind, simply pick up your phone right now and look at it, let it recognize your face, look at it, open up the Voxer, and tell Steve, “On like Donkey Kong,” (talk or type accepted) and Steve will handle the rest.   Remember, you're just one Vox away. THE DREAM 100   On my Dream 100 speaker list, along with Russell Brunson, I have:   Mark Joyner,  he created a book called The Irresistible Offer many years ago.   Dean Holland   Todd Brown   Jay Abraham   Dana Derricks   These are all some of the best *living* offer creators. I don't know anyone beyond that list, that's really it…   I’ll reach out to Dean Holland and Dana Derricks because they’re on the same level of influence as me, so that's an okay thing to do. I'm sure that they'll say “Yes,” hopefully so.   If NOT they're gonna get tagged inside this episode for Sales Funnel Radio, and I'll ask them that way as well.   But Russell gets approached like crazy by tons of people. So he's got walls and barriers just to keep his own sanity. We can all understand that, right?   So to approach influencers who are above your status, you’ve gotta go all out...   I got a pretty awesome Dream 100 package in the mail.   I was handed an envelope and inside, somebody (this is actually very clever), had attached an actual hundred dollar bill.   They attached a hundred dollar bill and said, “We know your goal was to always do 10 grand a day, so a hundred dollars should buy 14 minutes of your time. Please read the letter and see if you would like to spend the time.”   That’s super cool!   STATUS DECREASE   One of the principles of the Dream 100 is that:   If what I'm offering presents a risk of a status decrease, the answer will be, NO!   This is more important than whether or not the event fits into their schedule.   So I'm crafting an offer with stories and I'm listing out his false beliefs.   If it's gonna decrease his status, or if there's any risk that it will, he's already gonna say, NO.   So I need to show ways to increase his status while protecting it from decrease at the same time.   Does that make sense?   I’m gonna answer the objection of, “Oh crap, will this decrease my status?” I'm gonna say, “No, in fact, here's how it will increase your status.”   So one of the BEST things you can do when approaching a Dream 100 influencer is to know what campaigns they’re running.   I need to know what campaigns an individual is already running that I could piggyback off to increase their status?   The internal hang-up definitely is NOT, “I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough.” Instead, for Russell, it would probably be, “What do you want me to teach?”   For him, it's not so much about money obviously... he's probably gonna have a time-based concern 'cause he's Russell Brunson. He's also gonna have a mental shelf space concern.   It's NOT, I don't have enough to teach, it's, “Oh my gosh, I have to spend time planning what I'll teach.” That's a real concern. That's a BIG issue.   I solve each one of these pain points inside of the offer.   Q: Where am I fishing out of right now? Where's my market?   A: ClickFunnels.   Q: What's the new opportunity?   A: OfferMind.   There are parts of the offer designed to scratch, soothe and satiate all the concerns that come from the vehicle, internal, external-based objections...   And then, there are a few pieces that are just awesome and straight from me. X-A-V-I-E-R   Here's the XAVIER model for drafting offers created by yours truly, and highly featured in my book coming out soon called Your Core Offer.   Go to YourCoreOffer.com if you wanna get on the waiting list.   X = what you want to sell.   A = what they want to buy.   These are NOT ALWAYS the same thing.   When you sell something to somebody, they don't ALWAYS want what you want to sell.   For Example:   Russell wants to sell Funnel Hacks web class. When he sells Funnel Hacks web class you pre-buy ClickFunnels for six months with a whole bunch of programs.   The A: the anchor of the offer, is ClickFunnels itself. People just want ClickFunnels; so that's a prime example of what I'm talking about there.   Now, back to my offer to Russell…   So X - equals:   Russell what you're gonna get when you come speak at OfferMind 2019, the first thing you're gonna be the only keynote speaker at OfferMind. I'm gonna put ads with a lot of ad money behind it, content, fans, all promoting your appearance and your name.   *One of the things I'm gonna give him is status. That's one of the ways I'm fighting the status decrease thing, but it's not the exclusive place that I'm fighting it yet.   A - equals:   Each One Funnel Away Challenge buyer in 2019 who buys through Steve's affiliate link will get credit to OfferMind for further ClickFunnels indoctrination from you and Steve.   That's HUGE! What did I just do?   ‘A’ is the anchor of the offer, it is the part of the offer that’s the sexiest. The thing that the other person wants the most.   I know Russell is spending a ton of time, money, effort, energy, and resources on this One Funnel Away Challenge.   He's re-launching it, and it's gonna be massive. He's gonna push hard to get a ton MORE people in One Funnel Away Challenge than are probably in ClickFunnels right now. So the question is: What could I do to best support that?   What if I attached my OfferMind tickets to that again to fill the events, promote him, promote ClickFunnels and align myself with what he's trying to do.   That's a no-brainer because now the offer’s NOT about me.   DON’T PITCH AN IDEA LIKE THIS   I hate it when somebody walks up, and they're like, “Stephen, I'm so excited man, why don't you come get on my show because you’d be great and you’d bring tons of people to my show.”   ...I'm like, “Wow, okay, what’s in this for me? This is a two-way relationship, you're just goin' one way though. That’s hurting our relationship by you approaching me like that.”   STUPID! STUPID! It's D-U-M-B!   You’re gonna trigger:   Fear of status decrease, “Why on Earth is this for me?”     Rejection...   Objection...   Tons of stuff  like:   “Oh, my gosh, NO. I don't have time for that.”   “What would you want me to teach? Nah!” *status decrease*   “There's no way that vehicle aligns with where I'm moving.   This is key; when I’m dropping something out to a Dream 100 influencer...   I'm aligning with their current mission... so part of their offer is also part of my offer.   Dana Derricks just did this to me, and it's one of the reasons why he's speaking at OfferMind.   ALIGN   I was on Voxer with Dana, and he goes, “Dude, I would love to pre-buy some OfferMind tickets next year to give away because I want my people to go through some of your stuff.”   I was like, “Sick, super cool. Yeah, that'd be awesome.”   What did he do?   He said, “Let me give your tickets away as part of my offer.”   Russell Brunson did the exact same thing with Grant Cardone for his 10X Event.   He went to Grant Cardone pre-bought a thousand of your tickets to give away as part of his current offers.   What does that do?   It spikes the value, someone else fulfills on it, aligns the two offers together.   That's part of the “A” in anchor for XAVIER. Does that make sense, you guys gettin' this? I'm NOT trial closing... Does that really make sense? This is HUGE. This is a BIG BIG deal right here.   In my pitch, it went like this:   Each One Funnel Away Challenge buyer in 2019 who buys through Steve's affiliate link will get credit to OfferMind for further ClickFunnels indoctrination from you and Steve…   Meaning: I am going to go and push One Funnel Away Challenge really really hard. When people buy the One Funnel Away Challenge through me, I'm gonna give them credit to get an OfferMind ticket where you can speak to more of your people and continue to get them inside ClickFunnels.   That's HUGE!  It aligns both me and Russell.   VEHICLE OBJECTION?   Q: What's the vehicle-based fear here?   A: Probably status decrease: “Is this good enough?” That could be the potential major concern about speaking at OfferMind. “Is he big enough?”   Russell would never boastingly say that, but you get what I'm saying… He’s Russell Brunson, right!   I'm like, “Oh don't worry about it...   To protect your status I want you to know that we hire the exact same A/V team that designed your Funnel Hacking Live stages, and they're gonna put on the OfferMind stage. The stage caliber will match your caliber.”   One of the most frustrating things I've ever experienced ever is to show up to an event that I've been invited to speak at, and you can tell that there wasn't much thought put into the experience in the room.   That's why OfferMind costs me so much money... and it did it cost me a lot of money. I actually went in the hole just a little bit... because I wanted to create an experience.   You can find out MORE about how I created OfferMind and made it an experience here. I specifically made it so it felt like you were entering a new environment... (which is so freaking key, it is ridiculous!)   I'm letting Russell know:   We have all the old OfferMind recordings. This is what it looked like last time. It was very professional. It was amazing; very top-notch and high caliber... it’ll be the same kind of thing.   Rest assured, it's the same people you're used to working with, so there won't be any new faces when you're getting mic'd up. There won't be any new experiences.”   Does that make sense?   INTERNAL OBJECTIONS This is how I'm combating the internal hangup, “What would you want me to teach?”   I see it’ll be cool, but…   How will I?   How can I?   Do I?   Will I?   Do I know enough?   I don't know what to talk about?”   It’s ALL the ‘I’s’... I know one of your strategies, Russell, is to go in and test your material on smaller crowds before you go to your major one. Feel free to do that at OfferMind.   Let your noggin have the playground and the fun crazy zone that you wanna go to, and test your material on my audience.   Does that make sense?  I just solved that internal objection for him.   EXTERNAL OBJECTIONS   How will I solve the objection: “I don't have time to speak at your OfferMind, but I want to...”   I believe it's a good vehicle.   I believe I could pull off.   BUT I DON’T have time/ money/ resources #externalbasedobjection   Don't worry about it, man. You will choose the actual date of the event so that we can make sure you can get there.   We know what date it's gonna be, but if it came down to Russell NOT being able to speak, and us just choosing a different date that's a few weeks difference…   We will Change the Freakin' Date.   That's a SICK OFFER!   From his perspective, it’s like, “Oh man, he's gonna change his whole event!”   Well, yeah, we're talking seven months in the future, so, yeah, we'll definitely change the date if we need to.   That's a BIG offer right there.   I've been asked to speak in several locations in the past little bit including Australia and Greece... It's not that I don't want to, it's a date issue…   So if Russell has control over the time and date, and it came down to it and I'm like, “Dude, what day? Say it, just, and we'll do it.” He's like, “You know what, I could come to downtown Boise, so I don't need to travel anywhere.”   I'm making it EASY.   A limo will pick you up from CF headquarters and take you to the event.   And he can talk as long as he wants to. Does that make sense? Like, this just got sexy, man.   He doesn't need to worry about travel, it's close to him, it's right there, it's downtown Boise at a SICK venue. THE CTA   Reason to Act Now... (this is what he told me he would like to have)   A couples massage: he wants a massage from his favorite masseuse. We already set it up.   Sushi from his favorite sushi place.   I mean that's a sexy offer...  it's NOT just, “Dude, come speak at my event so that I can fill it with people who are interested to see you.”   Some more things I'm gonna add inside this offer are:     We’ll send you the professional recordings.       We’re gonna have professional photographers there to take pictures.       His own private room where he can go and just kick back, and there are snacks and drinks in there.     I know you're always looking for new material. You can have the recordings. You can have the pictures... very very high-end stuff so that you can look like a rockstar on my stage.   That’s what would motivate a Russell Brunson-esque figure.   So what I'm trying to help you guys understand is like, when you're doing offers, and especially when it comes to Dream 100…   Offer creation for Dream 100 is NOT the same thing as offer creation for customers. It’s NOT the same thing as offer creation for affiliates. It’s NOT the same thing for offer creation for front-end product. It's all different. You gotta understand exactly WHO you're speaking to. THIS DIDN’T HAPPEN…   The last thing I tried to do was find a local actor to play Claude Hopkins,  tell a fast origin story, and hand him a piece of paper with the offer and the call to action.   Claude Hopkins was one of the original offer creators.   You probably know about Claude Hopkins if you've been following me.   Claude Hopkin was the first guy to put an ad on a car.   He actually popularized the concept of brushing teeth so that they could sell toothpaste!   Seriously, brilliant, brilliant man; late 1800s.   Anyway, I wanted some dude to gonna dress up like Claude Hopkins and walk up and say:   “What's up? My name's Claude Hopkins, I was one of the first offer creators in America: Hey that Steve Larsen, you should really go talk to him about his event.”   ...and then hand off the offer, the gift certificate for the massage...  the sushi already on the table.   It's Pretty Sexy… but unfortunately, the Claude Hopkins bit didn’t happen.   PLAYING FULL OUT   I wanted to go full out because I knew that if Russell said, “Yes!” Then it would be a lot easier for us to get two or three other really high-end people to speak at OfferMind.   It was definitely worth crafting a campaign for.   I want to be able to bring in some of the best to OFFERMIND, and Russell obviously is THE BEST!   Remember I talked about how important it is to follow the framework master, and Russell is that guy! Why would I bring in anybody else?!   So that why I went to soooo much effort crafting this offer for Russell to keynote.   It's was an offer NOT a request.   It's WASN’T,  “Come look at me…”   I'm not gonna EVER do that. That's the fastest way for you to put a bad taste in their mouth when you're talking to a BIG influencer... even if we're friends.   In any influencer scenario, you got ONE SHOT to set up the way they're gonna look at you FOREVER. It really does matter!   So, when I talk to the other offer creation rock stars I want to bring to you, I will craft a custom campaign for each individual.   Campaigns are a dying art (It’s NOT the same thing as a Facebook ad). I will craft a campaign, NOT just an offer, NOT just a sales message, and reach out to each individual to try and get them to come to speak at OfferMind. BOOM!   If you're just starting out you're probably studying a lot. That's good. You're probably geeking out on all the strategies, right? That's also good.   But the hardest part is figuring out what the market wants to buy and how you should sell it to them, right?   That's what I struggled with for a while until I learned the formula.   So I created a special Mastermind called an OfferMind to get you on track with the right offer, and more importantly the right sales script to get it off the ground and sell it.   Wanna come?   These are small groups on purpose, so I can answer your direct questions in person for two straight days.   You can hold your spot by going to OfferMind.com. Again, that's OfferMind.com.  

Some almost-incoherent thoughts on my way home from trick-or-treating. On today’s episode Russell talks Halloween, and about trying to look at everybody in the world the way he looks at his youngest daughter, Norah. Here are some of the insightful thing you will hear on this episode: Find out why Halloween is not longer Russell’s favorite holiday. Hear why watching Norah laugh caused Russell to change his perspective on how he sees other pepole. And find out why Liz Benney was nervous to sign on to have Russell coach her when she found out he was a religious person. Listen here to find out why Russell believes we need to serve everyone at the highest level possible without casting judgment on them first. ---Transcript--- Hey everybody, this is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you to a late night Marketing Secrets podcast. It’s Halloween, I just got done trick or treating, and I just dropped off Blake, who has been filming behind the scenes of everything this last week, at the hotel. I’m driving home and I wanted to share with you guys some thoughts. Alright everybody, this is probably less of a marketing thing, and more of a life thing. I hope you don’t mind if I share this, but it was on my mind a little bit as I’ve been having so much fun with my kids. So we had Halloween tonight, which it’s crazy. I used to love Halloween, it used to be my favorite holiday by far. I think I’ve recently transitioned from Halloween being my favorite, to now the 4th of July. Just because the fireworks, the age of my kids now, fireworks I think are more fun. But last year, I didn’t know that was going to happen. Last year my kids started wrestling, so wrestling practice happens until 5:30 every night, we get home at 6:00. So last Halloween, that’s what was happening. We get home from wrestling practice, race home, and in my head I’m like, I’m going to wear my new Batman costume, which if you guys haven’t seen my Batman costume, it’s amazing, but it takes like an hour at least to put it on. So I’m racing home and I’m like, I don’t have time to put my Batman costume on, and I’m kind of bummed because I wanted to wear that, I was so excited for it. I get  home and the kids are eating and everything is crazy and all the sudden the doorbell rings, and I’m like, “Oh trick or treaters.” So we run to the door and it’s my daughter’s friend, and she’s all, “Can Ellie come trick or treating with me?” And I don’t even know how to explain what happened, it broke my heart. And I didn’t want to, I was like, “No, this is my holiday.” And my wife’s like, “No, this is the kids’ holiday.” And I was like, “No, no.” and it broke my heart, so we let her go with her friends. And then the boys wanted to go with their friends, so I dropped one of our twins off. So it ended up being one of the twins, Norah who fell asleep in the car as we were dropping the other kids off, and then Aiden. And we went out and I remember it was the most depressing day of my life, I’m not going to lie. I took them trick or treating and I fell asleep in the car, because me and Norah were sleeping the car while Collette took the other one’s out, and I was just like, so bummed because this is my holiday and my kids stole it from me. But alas, I finally grew up and realized that it’s their holiday. So this year I was more prepared for it, I was like this is going to be good. They went with their friends, we were okay with that. I took Norah out, it was really fun. She is still a super cute age, so at least I got one baby who still loves me. All the rest of them are out with their friends. Anyway, so that’s what just ended tonight, and I’m not going to lie, I’m beat up and worn out. And my beautiful wife is such a good sport. We had Blake come and film the whole thing and she’s not a big fan of being on camera all the time, but come one we’re doing vlogs, and we need to document us dressing up. And she even got a costume and everything just for it. So she’s amazing to put up with my, with me. I can’t imagine being married to me. Can you imagine being married to me, that would be so annoying. But I love her and I’m grateful for her. So for any of the spouses of the crazy entrepreneurs, thank you for putting up with your spouse because I know it’s not, it can’t be easy. I can’t even imagine. So I’m grateful for my wife and I’m grateful for all the wives and the spouses. I always tell people you can only be as successful as your spouse will allow you to be, and Collette’s an amazing sport for doing all that even though I know she doesn’t want to. But that’s not what I want to talk about today. I actually want to talk about yesterday. So yesterday….. Hey, sorry to jump in the middle of the podcast episode, but I’m at home and I actually finished recording this whole episode and then I got home and the rest of it just didn’t make that much sense. And then I tried to rerecord it and it didn’t make much sense. So I’m jumping on again, a third time, to try and finish out this episode because it’s something really powerful and profound that I wanted to share, but for some reason I can’t explain it. It’s one of those things where you experience something and then you try to explain it and then it doesn’t really make sense. It was like you had a moment. So I’m just going to share with you the moment and then the insights, and then again, it may not make any sense to you but hopefully it will give you guys a little glimpse of what I experienced yesterday. We went to this school carnival at the kids middle school, and we get there and all the kids run off and they’re doing a million things with all their friends, and then me, Collette and my little Norah had a chance to go and hang out. And then we went out to the field and she wanted to go run across the field and I was like, “Okay, let’s go.” So we start running, and we ran all the way to the goal posts, and we ran back and as we’re running, she’s just laughing hysterically, and she’s so cute. And I look over and I just see her face and I see her laughing. It’s just one of those moments when time just froze. I was like, this is such a cool, it’s a cool experience to see your little daughter laughing and happy. And the experience I’ve been trying to explain to you guys and I’m just struggling to get out, as I was watching her laugh for a split second, I had this really cool realization, where I realized once again that everybody in this world was once a kid, just like Norah. Even the people that drive us crazy, people I love, people I admire, people I look up to, all of them not that long ago were kids just like Norah, running around without a care in the world. On the same side, people I love and admire and look up to, but also the other side, people that drive me nuts, people I don’t agree with, people that I don’t agree with them personally, or I might not agree with their political beliefs or religious beliefs or whatever. But the gift I was given, and I don’t know how to explain this to you guys, but as I was looking at her I realized everyone once was a child like her. And it made me just look at people differently for a little bit. I started realizing that the people that drive me nuts, they’re just little kids, they were a little kid not that long ago and they may believe different than me, but it’s because of their life experience or because of the things that they experienced. It could be their parents screwed them up. Or it could be the group of people they got into, or maybe I’m the screwed up one. I don’t know. But it just made me have a different level of love and appreciation for everyone in that moment. And I wanted to just kind of share with that with you guys because I think so often we give people such a hard time, people that believe differently than us. I know the political seasons are probably coming again soon. I don’t track it close, but man, when the last political stuff happened it was like war every single day and everyone was hating each other. It’s like, oh my gosh step back and realize the reason why someone is on the left or someone is on the right, they didn’t care about that 10, 15, 20 years ago, or however long that they were little kids like Norah, but because of how they grew up, or because of their parents or situation, all sorts of things, that’s why they believe that way. You may feel that they’re wrong, or I may feel they’re wrong, but at the same time it doesn’t mean they’re bad. Same thing with religious beliefs, same thing with all aspects of our lives. I don’t know, after seeing her in my mind I was like, I want to be more tolerant of people. I want to be more loving with people. I want to respect them for who they are because they’re all children of God, just like little Norah here running around. Then I started thinking about our callings. Everyone who is listening to this podcast, if you’ve been following me for more than 5 minutes you know that I don’t believe business is just about selling stuff. I believe that we are called to these callings, what we’re doing are actual callings. Like me and our team building Clickfunnels and training entrepreneurs isn’t just because we’re trying to make money, we feel like there’s a higher calling. In fact, at the Dry Bar Comedy Club, where Andrew Warner interviewed me for two hours on the Clickfunnels startup story, he asked that. He’s like, “Do you guys believe that this is inspired by God?” and I was like, “Oh yeah, 100%. No doubt in the slightest. We definitely feel like this is a spiritual thing for us. We’re doing our best to serve the people we have at the highest level that we’re able to.” We’re by far not perfect, we screw up so many times, and we don’t always give the best service all the time. You know, sometimes we have customers that leave angry or upset or whatever, but man we try hard. If you guys knew how hard I try at every angle every direction. And I just think about this, as we’re serving we shouldn’t care about what people believe, you know what I mean. We should serve selflessly, serve without worrying about that. It’s interesting, and I hope she doesn’t mind me sharing this, but one of my close friends and someone I admire and look up to so much is Liz Benney, some of you guys know Liz. It was interesting when I first met her and she joined our coaching program, this is probably 3 or 4 years ago now, and she told me this. So Liz and she’s got a beautiful wife Christy, and you guys know that I’m a Mormon, I’m a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and she told me when she was applying through our thing, there’s a video of me telling the story about how God changed my life, and I talked about God in this video. And she told me she was scared to apply because she’s like, “What if, Russell talked about God, what if he won’t want to work with me, or what if he looks down on me, or what if whatever?” And man, who knows there may be a time in my life, I don’t know, who knows? Hopefully not. I hope I never have been or would be that way, but you know she came in and I was like, I don’t care what you…that’s not my purpose. My job is to serve in the best of my capacity anybody who’s willing to listen to my voice. And I shouldn’t be pushing people aside because of sexual orientation or because of political beliefs or religious beliefs or anything. That’s not my choice. I have so many things that I struggle with, I should not be the one trying to fix people’s things. That’s not up to me. My job is, hey Russell, this is your sphere of influence, this is the platform you’ve been given. Everyone who comes to you, serve them at your highest level regardless of any of those things. And I almost feel like if I was to try to cast judgment or doubt or whatever on people for whatever the thing is they’re struggling with, man, I think about all the things I struggle with. What if the mentors and the people I was seeking help from didn’t want to help me because I’m a Mormon, or because I believe this way, or because I’m struggling with this addiction, or this problem, or this thing. I don’t think we have the rights or we shouldn’t be the ones who are doing any of those things because we’re not perfect ourselves right. So why should be the ones coaching everybody on all these things? I feel like we’re given these platforms to serve anyone and everyone who comes to us, at our highest level, no matter what we’re able to do. And I think yesterday in that moment with Norah, as I was looking at her and seeing her laugh, and I just got this weird love for everybody where I was like, oh my gosh, I just need to…any prejudices, anything like that that I have in my mind, I just need to get rid of them and look at everybody through this lens of oh my gosh, this is someone who is just trying to figure this out. Figure out this whole game the same way I am. And I can’t cast my preconceived notions or judgments upon them, it’s not my job, not my role. My role is to serve each person. I look back at Liz, I had a chance, it was fun…I hadn’t heard from her for a while and she Voxed me yesterday and was just telling me about everything she’s doing, the people she’s serving,  how much success she’s had and how many people’s lives she’s changing. And it was such a special moment. I’m so grateful that first off, she was willing to apply even though I know she had fear. She told me there was fear of that. I’m grateful that people on my team didn’t cast any judgment. I’m grateful I didn’t cast judgment. I’m grateful that we looked at her as we look at anybody and just said, look we’re going to do our best to serve her at our highest level because she’s special, she’s got a gift, she’s got the ability to affect other people’s lives. And I think that if we start looking at everyone around us that way, it will help us to not judge them because of their political beliefs or judge them because of their religious beliefs or judge them because they believe something or do something different than we do. Everyone’s got their own demons inside themselves and until, what’s the parable? If you read the bible there’s a parable, you know whoever is perfect among you, cast the first stone. And I’m like, I’m not perfect so I’m not casting any stones. Because I don’t want those things coming back at me. Instead it’s in your sphere of influence, serve the best you can. So anyway, I don’t know if that makes any sense or if that helps at all. I hope it does. I just know for me, I had this really rare, amazing glimpse seeing my daughter and in this instant I saw everybody as her. And I was like man, everyone here 10 years ago, 15, 20, 30 however many years back was just like Norah is now. And I love Norah so much and I was like, I need to love everybody that much because if I do I can truly have an impact on them. And if I’m not careful when I look at people through this other lens, it’s going to hold myself back. Anyway, it was really a reminder for me just to understand y mantle, my calling, my job, my profession, my career, whatever you want to call it, that I’m called to serve all people and anyone who can hear my voice and is willing to come towards me, I’m going to do my best to serve them at the highest level I can, regardless of everything else. So I’m grateful for everyone, grateful for you guys who are listening to this, I’m grateful also for your willingness to go out and get your message out there. It’s a scary thing, and as you will find, two things you will find as you start putting your message out there…It’s funny, Steven Larsen shared one of them yesterday at the telethon, he’s like, “As soon as you go hit publish, the second you go out and start doing your thing, instantly every character flaw you have is going to smack you in the face. That’s the best thing about business, as soon as you start putting yourself out there, all your character flaws come like, boom, right in front of your face.” It’s scary. That’s number one. Number two then, the critics come fast, and they want to silence you as quick as they can. But man, I’m grateful for you guys who are willing to step up every single day in spite of those things, in spite of the fact that starting a business will bring every character flaw you have to the surface and you’re going to be super,  hyper aware of it. Things that weren’t that big a deal before suddenly become a big deal because you are the leader, you are the person who’s putting yourself out there. And number two, the critics when they come, it can be scary. I will get critics from this podcast. I will get messages from people who are like, “I can’t believe you talked about God in the podcast. I came to listen to marketing, not…” I will get that, I guarantee it, I get it every single time. But it’s like, it doesn’t matter. This is my message and I’m sharing it, and I’m sharing it and I’m grateful for you guys that are willing to do those same things as well, because it’s scary, it’s rare, but man when you do it, it’s why you’re here. So know that, keep being bold, keep being brave, keep putting your message out there. Get rid of any judgments or things you have out there because that’s not your role. Your role is to serve at your highest level to all people who will hear your voice. And if you do that, you serve selflessly, you’ll be able to have the impact you really want. So there you go. For all those who I offended today, I’m so sorry. For those who heard my message and understand it, thank you and I hope that you’re able to look at people the same way I had a chance to see people yesterday when I was looking at Norah. So thanks everybody, appreciate you all. Have a great night and we will talk to you again tomorrow.

A really cool principle that I’m revisiting as I’m going into a consulting swap day. On this episode Russell talks about why he can’t relate to people with information overload. Here are some of the amazing things you will hear in today’s episode: How Brandon Poulin helped Russell see what he’s been doing all along, by saying something profound. How Russell is able to separate context and content to only use things that apply at that moment, and shelve everything else. And why it’s important to know what context you need in your content in order to avoid information overload. So listen here to find out what strategy Russell uses to be able to retain all information, but only use the stuff within the correct context of what he’s doing. ---Transcript--- Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you to a very special episode of Marketing Secrets podcast. Hey everyone, I’m actually laying in bed right now, I’m about to go to bed and I’ve had an amazing last two days. We’ve got our entire development team out here, which is really special. We’ve never had all of thme here before. There’s probably 35-40 people here. It’s just been fun having them in the office. I had a chance to speak to them and talk about the vision of Clickfunnels and kind of behind the scenes of what happened when we first launched it and the ups and downs and all the craziness that kind of ensued during that part of the process. It’s been kind of fun. And then Todd, who is my co-founder in Clickfunnels and partner, he’s actually staying at my house. Normally he stays at a hotel but we were like, back in the day when we were first getting started he would always fly out here to Boise and stay at our house, so we thought it would be fun for him to stay here. So it’s been fun every night staying up late talking with him about the whole process and all the craziness and reflecting on the last four years. Clickfunnels had it’s four year birthday today, and it’s insane to see what has happened since it went live. From zero to 66,000 active members and all the other craziness in between. Anyway it’s been cool and we’ve got a couple more fun days with everyone here. And then tomorrow actually, Brandon and Kaelin from Lady Boss are flying in and we’re doing something really fun. It’s something I think all of you guys should be doing with other people inside your community that you find that are smart as well. So we’re basically swapping consulting days. So they’re doing a lot of cool things in their business operationally, from a traffic side and a couple of other things that I’m curious about and we’re doing a lot of cool stuff that they’re curious about. So I said, “How about we swap consulting days. So let’s do a day and I’ll consult you and you’ll do a day and you’ll consult me and we’ll just you know, not charge our normal fees and we’ll just have some fun.” He was up for it and I was up for it, so that’s what’s happening.  So Thursday and Friday is going to be fun. So Thursday, basically they’re going to be consulting me and my team, a lot into operational stuff as well as the traffic process and just things that they’re doing. And then we’ll flip the table on Friday, I’ll be consulting them and some guys on my team will be consulting people on their team. It’s just going to be really fun. As we were planning this today, trying to figure out what we’re going to talk about, what are the goals we want to accomplish while they’re here? Brandon said something that was super profound that I want to share with you guys because I think a lot of people struggle because of information overload. We’re all getting a lot of information all the time, it’s always coming at us. And a lot of times I think that we think the key is more information. But a lot of times what the problem is that information is what will strangle you and drown you. Too much information keeps you from actually getting the thing that you really desire. So that’s more so the problem than not enough information typically. So what I told Brandon basically, “This is what I’ve been geeking out on for the last three or four months, this topic. This is what I’ve been studying from and everything. So I understand all the content, I don’t need to be retrained on that. But I need to figure out how to plug it into to what we’re doing.” And he Voxed me back and said something cool. He said, “Yeah, we went through the same processes and learned the content, but then you have to figure out how to plug the content into your context. You have your own company, you have a context of what you’re doing, what you’re trying to accomplish, where you’re going, what your goals are, what your motivations, what your team looks like. There’s this whole foundational framework, this context of what you’ve created. So when you look at the content it’s not so much like, I need to take all the content and understand it and memorize it and absorb it all.” Which is what they teach us in school right, which I think is the reason why a lot of us entrepreneurs and people struggle in school because we can’t remember it all. Because we’re looking for, what’s the stuff in the context of what I’m looking for? What I desire? My goal is to blah, blah, blah, and we struggle with school because all this information is coming at us and we’re like, “How does this fit in the context of what I’m trying to accomplish, I’m to….” Whatever your thing is. It doesn’t fit into the context of what you’re trying to accomplish. And that’s why a lot of us struggle there, whereas if you get us outside the school system and we have a context of, I’m trying to grow a company, or I’m trying to become an athlete, or I’m trying to make money. Whatever your thing is. And then when the information comes to you, you’re like, “Oh this is how it fits into the context of what I’m doing.” Then learning becomes fun. That’s when I became obsessed with learning and you know spent, literally over a half a million dollars in 2 ½ years on courses and training products, and programs, and seminars, and masterminds and everything because I have this context. I’m sucking out the best content from everybody and finding the pieces that fit what I’m trying to do. I got really good at absorbing this information and looking at stuff like, “Whoa, that’s amazing.” But I’m not ready for that so I put it on a shelf, plug it over here, plug it over here, and the pieces, the gold I needed I could grab and put it in the context of what I was doing and it would drive it farther, faster. And I think what’s interesting, I think why I’ve become a good coach over the last ten years or so is because I’ve done that so much. I’ve absorbed information and put all these things in my mental shelf. Like, okay that was amazing, but I’m not ready for it. So I’ll put it somewhere. Or that’s amazing, but it doesn’t fit my business. That’s amazing but…. And I’ll kind of shelve them in different places, and it’s cool when I start coaching people, if anyone’s ever coached with me one on one, you’ve seen I’ll be in the process of coaching someone and all the sudden I’m like, “Oh my gosh, okay. Eight years ago I read this course, it was by this guy. It was like this section of the book, this was the topic. I don’t remember all the details but I do remember that the answer you’re looking for is right there.” And people are like, “How do you do that?” and I’m like, “I don’t know, it’s just there because I read it, I learned it, I just stored it away because it didn’t fit in my context but I had it in my reserves to be able to find it again.” Anyway, I digress, that wasn’t the point of this podcast. The point is for you, as you’re learning, you have to first build out your context, your framework. What is it you’re actually trying to accomplish, right? Because you don’t have that, all the content just becomes information overload. There was somebody recently, not recently, a couple of years ago that was in one of my hiring coaching programs, I’m not going to mention their name or business or anything because it doesn’t matter. But what they struggle with is that they would learn this stuff, and then everything coming at them, they were trying to like, they didn’t have the ability to filter it into the context of what they were trying to achieve. So I’d be talking about, “You could do a tripwire funnel or a product launch funnel.” I’d be talking about ten different options of cool stuff you could do, and then they go home and they’re trying to do all ten funnels at once because I had said it. I’m like, no, those are potential options but its not what’s best for you. “What’s best for me?” I’m like, “I don’t know, I don’t know your business. What’s the context of your business?” You gotta look at it through that lens and you realize here’s the context I’m trying to accomplish, then you can take information and be like, “Cool, this is for me. This isn’t yet for me, I’m gonna put it on the shelf. That piece I can immediately apply. I immediately can do that.” I’ll go to mastermind groups or seminars and I’ll sit there for 3, 4, 5, 6 days taking notes on all the stuff that is awesome, but then when I’m looking for I’m like, “Okay, what’s the pieces that tonight I can plug into my machine I’m building, or thing that I have…” That’s the key. So for you guys I want you to understand, your real goal, your real job in this process and learning and being coached is to be able to filter out the content and be able to figure out how to plug things into the context of what you’re creating. And it’s a hard thing at first, because a lot of times you don’t know. And especially at the beginning you’re so excited, there’s so many ideas and concepts and it’s so fun right. But if you chase them all, nothing will ever get done. Anyway, hopefully that helps some of you guys. Some of you that feel information overload. It’s funny, every time someone tells me they have information overload, I’m so confused. I don’t have empathy, I can’t relate to that, it doesn’t make any sense to me. “I have information overload, there’s so much stuff.” I’m like, “What? It’s not that much stuff. There’s a lot but you don’t have to do it all. It’s just, don’t think of it as a school where you have to memorize and regurgitate everything. You don’t. All you have to do is sift through it. Sift and sort and be like, boom, that’s gold today. I’m going tonight and doing that in a hotel room before I come back tomorrow because it’s done. This one’s gold for next week. This one’s gold for next month, and these ones I’m putting on the shelf and when I’m ready for that, they will reappear.” That’s how I look at things. So those of you guys who are struggling with information overload, think about that. Your job is to take the content and then be able to transition it into your specific context. And if you don’t have context yet, that’s the thing you’ve got to be figuring out. That’s the good thing to hire a coach for, hiring a mentor, joining our coaching programs, or hire a consultant or something to give you the context of okay, this is the framework of what you need to do. As soon as you get the framework done, then it’s just fun. You’re trying to implement and improve and add things and tweak things and make it better and even more exciting all the time. But without the framework, without the context there, something you’re running towards, it gets really hard. That’s why school sucked for me, I had nothing I was….I was in school so I could wrestle. I’m learning all this stuff that didn’t help me wrestle, but I had to learn it to be able to wrestle. It was so confusing for me. As long as I got a C I could wrestle. So I was like, I just have to understand enough of this to get a C, and that was my context, which is a horrible way to go through school. Whereas if I was like, hey, I gotta reteach this or relearn, or whatever those things are. For example, a good example is the Book of Mormon podcast. Some of you guys know I launched a podcast about the Book of Mormon, in fact, if you want to see it, go to bookofmormonchallenge.com. So the whole thing is like, I’m using this as a, I’ve tried to read scriptures and stuff my whole life, which they’re typically harder to read books. And when I used to read them and it’s like, “oh.” Even if I have this framework I’m trying to plug things into, this context of how it fits my life, you can find those things. You’re like, “Cool, I need to do this to make my life better.” And you plug things in. But for me it was like, the reason why I started the podcast, I was like if I know that podcast is me digging through this section, these verses, these chapters and I got to find the gold and then find the story that gets people excited by it, now I have this context and this framework where it’s like, cool. Now I’m reading this chapter, but now I’m going to read all the commentary and all these things to find out what’s the most exciting thing I can bring to the table for this verse, this section, this whatever. Now how do I tell this story in a way that fires people up? And now it makes reading the scriptures alive to me again. And it’s exciting, it’s fun. So for me it’s like, one of the things I had to do for that. So yeah, I hope that makes sense. That is the goal, I just wanted to share that with you guys tonight. That’s what I’m going to be doing with Brandon and Kaelin, the last two days of this week, which I’m pumped for. So if you don’t know the context yet, and you’re not sure, go find someone, swap consulting days, have a day with them helping you figure out your context, you spend a day helping them figure out their context, build out a framework of what you’re trying to accomplish, and then go in there and start consuming the content, and then plugging those pieces into your framework. And that’s the magic. Alright, I’m going to bounce, I’m going to bed. It’s 11:30 at night. I appreciate you guys listening, hope you enjoyed this and you got some good ideas, and we’ll talk to you guys soon.

James is not only one of the most well connected individuals I've ever met, he's also got his B2B funnel totally dialed in... Steve Larsen: What's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to a very special and frankly quite unique episode of Sales Funnel Radio. Speaker: Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels, and now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. Steve Larsen: All right, you guys. Hey, I'm super excited to welcome you and our special guest today to the show. This is an episode I've never quite done before, and frankly, it's an area that I personally am still learning about sales funnels and I'm really excited to have him here with us today and I think part the curtain, let the veil down, so to speak. Very, very pumped to learn from him. Guys, please help me welcome Mr. James Smiley. How you doing? James Smiley: What's going on, Steve? Steve Larsen: Living the dream, man. James Smiley: Woohoo. Steve Larsen: Living the dream. James Smiley: Thanks so much. This is going to be awesome. Steve Larsen: I'm excited that you're here. Just for everyone else, the first time I ever met James, my life is run off of an app Voxer, and pretty much my life, Russell's life, all of our lives, we live on this app of Voxer, and that's how we talk. I don't think I've ever called Russell on the phone ever. I don't know his number, you know what I mean? We all live on Voxer and I get Voxed a lot, from just lots of people. Sometimes it's about me creating new barriers just so I can have my own headspace, you know? But then also there was this guy who kept asking, he's like, "Hey, do you want" ... From these really big and really popular companies, "Will you build a funnel for these guys?" "Hey, what if you built a funnel for these guys?" They were these huge companies, massive, massive, some of them billion dollar companies, and I was like, "Who is this guy? How is he" ... Number one, "Who is this?" Number two, "That would be cool, but how are you getting these leads? How do you find? That's insane." We have a lot of our own certification partners, ClickFunnels. I have my own clients I've built for, but man, the people that you were talking about, I was like, I mean, "This is insane." Anyway, I don't know if I'm allowed to say any of the names, so that's the reason I'm not, but man, I just got to ask, how do you get into something like B2B funnel building? James Smiley: Yeah, no, thanks, Steve. Super excited to be here hanging out with you guys, and I'll just start by saying massive, massive ClickFunnels fan. Being following you guys since before ClickFunnels. I was actually working at- Steve Larsen: Oh, really? James Smiley: Yeah. I was following Russell from some research that we were doing at a big company that I was consulting with, and we were trying to figure out how big was this internet marketing thing going to be and content ... It was really content and where was content going. It was really cool. It's just been awesome to see everything that's happened and been a massive consumer of everything that you guys do, so thanks for everything you guys are doing. I guess to directly share how can somebody go from being an internet marketer or running an agency, or whatever they do now into getting B2B clients, I think one of the things I try to share with people is you've got to get face to face with these kind of people... I think your chances go up exponentially if you can get face to face with them. One of the things that I've been doing and having a lot of success in the past couple years is running a webinar, mini webinar type of system where you could be running a lead or you could be running a lead ad or a Facebook ad or something, and running that into a small auto-webinar kind of scenario. Believe it or not, even removing the login aspect, we've seen a lot of success. We've gotten a tremendous amount of appointments by sending a LinkedIn ad or a YouTube ad directly to a website, to a ClickFunnels page, where it's auto playing myself or one of our sales reps or whatnot, and then from there, they can just click to book, to book a meeting. Steve Larsen: And that's the main goal? You don't do anything else besides that's just the main goal, the interaction from? James Smiley: Yeah. Something that I've used for a long time, I actually learned this I want to say it was like in 2004 or 5, at a Chet Holmes event. Chet Holmes, Tony Robbins event. I think it was called Ultimate Business Mastery a long time ago. Steve Larsen: Sure. James Smiley: But I learned about the ideal thing to do is to try to broaden and generalize more your message and really hit on something that's new, cutting edge, innovative. Chet taught us year ago to do things like an executive report or an executive summary, and nowadays with technology, it's pretty easy to come up with something innovative. You can look up online really innovative videos and blogs, and what are the trends in such and such technology. And then essentially what we're doing is we're saying, we're running an ad saying, "Mr. or Mrs. executive. Are you prepared for the 2020 blah blah blah revolution?" Or, "Are you prepared for this and this? Join a three minute webinar," whatever you want to call it, "And let me explain it to you." The person there explaining it is my sales rep. Steve Larsen: Interesting. James Smiley: Yeah, and then at the end he or she is saying, "Well, I'd love to follow-up with you. I'd love to give you this $600,000 of research that we've done" or whatever that number is, "Book an appointment right now and I can give you this guide, I can hand you this guide," or whatever. We would always try to get face to face with them if we can. Steve Larsen: So do you run these local just to where you are mostly? Or I mean, you're getting on a plane? You're flying out to them a lot? James Smiley: Yeah. I think it really depends on what kind of business you're running. When I worked for much larger companies, our territory was across the nation, but in more of an agency model I've helped some internet marketers in the space, it's easy to set up a local roadshow or those kind of things through your town or through your city, where you can go and present some information. Really hot things I would think would be for your guys' audience maybe like where is Facebook going to take business in the next three years? And, are the companies in your area prepared for that? You can run a local ad saying, "Hey, I'm booking nine meetings" or, "Six meetings and this is a local tour that we're doing and it's a $3000 event and I'll do it for free, and I'll come to your office, but here's the deal. Number one, the owner has to be there, and then number two, you have to give me X amount of time," or something like that. You put some stipulations on it, but if you can get in front of them, your chances are going to go tremendously. Utilizing the web system and the web tools and the web automation that you guys have set up, and I really like Russell's two step follow-up process that you guys use. I believe for like high ticket sales and stuff. We use a very similar approach. I would say a lot of the times it's one person versus two, but the psychology's actually exactly the same as a two step, so that might help people when they get on the phone with somebody, knowing what to do and where to take it next, but yeah. Steve Larsen: That's amazing. That's really cool. I mean, we're always ... Go ahead. James Smiley: I've done this with as big as companies that are in the government all the way down to when I ... I think I was one of Dan Henry's first 50 or 60 students. Steve Larsen: Sure. James Smiley: When I buy even a course like that, I'll just go implement it right away. I want to know, I want to know everything in the first 10 days or so, so I went out and booked a ton of small appointments and went out there and did it. The same process works whether you're going after a chiropractor or whether you're going after a Fortune 2000 or somebody in the government. Steve Larsen: That's amazing. Because this kind of approach, I mean, the core of what we usually teach is usually, "Hey, let's do a free plus shipping offer. Here's this little $7 thing." That's not really the same approach you're going to use when you go to B2B, but the same principles certainly apply of sales. This is cool... I've never seen this before, that's awesome. I want to ask more about you personally, right after this too, but you're saying funnel wise ... Go ahead. James Smiley: You're right. Like, the psychology is the same, which is when I read the DotCom Secrets book, I was like, "This is right on." Even in my industry, I was like, "I don't know if you guys fully understand like how big it is in my industry." I mean, it's huge. Steve Larsen: It's massive, dude. I read it when I was laying out, holding my M16 out there and I was reading this thing and I was like, "This is changing everything" and all these startups were like, "Shut up Larsen." I was like, "No, I don't think you get it. This book's amazing." Sorry. Just a little testimonial there. James Smiley: And I would say the comprehensiveness of that, I mean it's just scripted out for you. It's the most complete book I've ever seen on this kind of stuff. The other thing I was going to inject, too, Steve, is a lot of people say, "Okay, I can get that meeting. What do I sell them? What do companies want? What are the sweet spots?" I'll share some of the things that we're doing and seen a lot of success with, so we're seeing a lot of success with companies that are five million to about 15 million. Steve Larsen: That's the sweet spot for you, right? With this funnel. James Smiley: It's a sweet spot that it's almost downmarket from where I usually play. I usually play in the 10 to 100 million dollar client range, but I've found the ease of getting into clients that are between five and 15 million is unbelievable. If you look at how many businesses in the last three to five years have gotten into that four, five, six, seven million dollar range, it's astronomical. The small and medium sized business has exploded and so most of these owners have gotten there because of some innovation, some relationship they built, some partnerships, some new technology or new industry that came out, and they almost, when you get with them, they almost don't fully understand how they got there. But they're just happy they did, right? Which anybody would be, and so- Steve Larsen: So like the people that have like, they've figured out enough stuff to get that far but they're ... That's kind of an interesting filter, though, as far as cool clients to have. That's interesting. James Smiley: Yeah. The beauty of these people, these companies, is number one they have money. Number two, they reach a plateau where their main goal of the executive staff, the CFO, these people, is they're just trying to maintain revenue and herd the cats. Steve Larsen: Sure. James Smiley: They don't want revenue drop off, right? I mean, it's a generalization, but I can tell you through Gartner and Forrester and all these market research firms that I've been fortunate enough to see what the data is, these companies that are in this small and medium sized world, they have no real focus on sales anymore because they're just trying to maintain the revenue that they just ramped up in the last one to five years. Steve Larsen: Interesting. James Smiley: So you come in, right? Or any of your followers who have an agency or whatever, and the great questions to ask them is, "How does your pipeline look? How does your sales funnel look? What's your cost per acquisition? What's your cost per lead?" It's astonishing. I would say over 9 out of 10, almost 95% of the time they will not know how to answer that. Steve Larsen: Wow. James Smiley: You talk to a 10 million dollar company, they don't know what their cost to acquire a customer is, what their cost per lead is. Steve Larsen: Wow. Truly is an accident then, which makes you the hero. That's awesome. James Smiley: Yeah, so you come in with that angle and then it's funny, like the main thing we lead with is funnels, right? It's the main thing we lead in. We say, "Are you getting leads online? Are you using online automation? Are you using social media?" 9 out of 10 times, maybe more than that, they're going to say, "No, not really but we've heard about it" or, "We're thinking it." Steve Larsen: "We posted on Facebook once. We have a page we don't do anything with." James Smiley: Yeah, like one of my clients is a big company in California. They're a top tech company, and they were telling me that when I asked them these questions they said, "Well, we have a marketing agency that did our website and then a year ago they said, 'Hey, do you want us to run Facebook ads?'" This is very typical, right? Marketing company- Steve Larsen: Sure. James Smiley: ... they know branding, they don't really know leads, sales, or want to be responsible or on the hook for sales, but they know branding, they know the four Ps of marketing, all that stuff, right? Steve Larsen: Yeah. James Smiley: They watch an Etsy video or YouTube, or took a class, and now they're Facebook ad experts. Here I come into a client, they're spending 5 to $6000 a month on Facebook ads, and all the agency is doing is boosting their posts. Steve Larsen: Like, with no other strategy. James Smiley: I could not believe that. I was like, "You're paying this company thousands of dollars, plus you're earning five grand of your own money, and all they're doing is boosting your post? That's not even an ad. That's not like a real ad." Steve Larsen: No. I could do that, and I don't even know Facebook very well. That's easy. James Smiley: Yeah. They had done this full fledge for about three months. Steve Larsen: Wow. James Smiley: They ramped into it and then they said, "We're all in, five grand a month." I said, "How many sales have you ever made in those three months?" They said, "Zero." I said, "So you've spent over $15,000 in ads and you don't have one trackable sale?" He said, "Yeah." He said, "Can you help us with that?" It's like, once you get in the door, you'd be surprised how many of these big companies are disorganized in that area and they're looking for somebody to help them. Steve Larsen: That's so cool. That's so cool. I mean, right before this we were chatting, and you were talking about, "Hey." I mean, there's this process you go through while you're with them. Do you mind taking us through that, like the outline you have in your head? James Smiley: Yeah. One of the things that I'll train people on is when you're in a meeting, when you get face to face with somebody, there's really three things that you need to know before you close, okay? Here's one thing about closing is if a sale is moving too fast and it's a big sale, something is drastically wrong, okay? Steve Larsen: Which is such the opposite thing you want to know and here. James Smiley: It's almost like the opposite of true internet marketing, where it's like you want speed, you want traction, right? With these big companies, very few times does one person make the decision. Nobody really wants to be on the hook if there's a downside, but everybody wants to wave the flag if there's an upside. When you're coming in, you have to understand that there's going to be ... B2B is more of a chess match and you have to understand how the chess match is played and why people want you in there. Believe it or not, the bigger the company, it's not always about revenue and it's not always about sales... It's usually about the bigger the company, and I'm just saying this so people understand, that most of the time the motivation, the influential factor is going to be somebody wants a promotion, somebody wants to look good, something like that. Steve Larsen: Just to follow-up with that real quick, what's your strategy to make sure you're actually pitching the decision maker, you know what I mean? Because otherwise, I could see you literally pitching everybody, you know what I mean? James Smiley: Yeah. One of the things that I do when we're warming up leads and booking meetings is so number one, we're trying to get a face to face meeting. Number two, if we're going to do an onsite seminar or something like that, we require the business, the decision maker to be there, or we'll say, "Or we'll charge you." Steve Larsen: Interesting. James Smiley: The decision maker has to be there or we'll send you an invoice, and they have to stay the whole time. If you don't set those parameters, 80% of the time you're going to get some marketing manager who's just basically stealing your ideas and going to go tell the boss that now they're smarter. You've got to get the decision maker there when you're presenting and being the guru. Steve Larsen: And you're presenting in their office, with them, as like a roadshow, part of your funnel basically? James Smiley: Yeah, that's been a big thing that we've done the past five, six, seven years. I've done it at a number of different companies, big companies, small startups, all those kind of things, and for my own agency, and it's worked really well. If you can't get into meetings, the next best thing, something that and I'll just throw this out there for your audience as well, just like a backend hack that we're using, is something that works really, really well is to set up your own Meetup.com or network with somebody who runs a Meetup.com. Say, "Hey, I'm an XYZ expert." "I'm a Facebook ad expert," "I'm an online automation expert," and say, "I do this seminar and we've done it, the value of it is thousands of dollars, but I'll do it for your people for free if you can get 10 people or 20 people in the room." Then, so you can use Facebook, you can use all the little event invites apps to get people there. You can use Meetup.com. For a while, we ran our own Meetup.com here when we we're just getting established in Dallas. Here's the thing about B2B that's different, is you only need like one or two or three really good people in the room to make a six figure income. Steve Larsen: Yeah. That's ... Wow, yeah. James Smiley: Yeah. One of the most profitable meetings in the past, or really this year that I did, was with one person. This person was a big business owner, big time networker, multimillionaire, and it was just to him, and I talked to him and wrote all over his whiteboard for an hour and a half, and then he referred me to my biggest client this year, which I mean, getting a five and six figure deal is pretty common in the B2B space. Steve Larsen: Sure, which is just crazy for so many people who are just starting this game. Like, that blows their mind. "One deal, six figures, what?" But that's the kind of stuff that you kept dropping on my Voxer and I was like, "Who is this guy?" James Smiley: Yeah. Really, some of the people that I've been helping is the ideal scenario for somebody like me, is to go there, win that relationship, keep up the corporate relations, and broker out the services on the backend to people. I've got a network of trusted people. If I need email copy, if I need funnels, if I need Facebook ads, you know what I mean?... That's an ideal scenario for somebody like me. I would say when you start out, try to do as much as you can so you learn the process inside and out, but it's amazing how much money you can make versus how much time you put in. I always have people say, they're like, "James, you have four kids, married for 13 years, great marriage, you seem like you" ... I used to be a pro fisherman, pro bass fisherman, so I fish a lot, I have all these fishing pictures, I run an info product for fishing. Steve Larsen: Wow. James Smiley: They're like, "How do you do all this stuff? You have this huge business, and you're speaking at these conferences and stuff." I'm like, it's the B2B space that I play in where I only need less than a handful of clients at a time, and they're going to more than take care of me. I would say something that's really important and I don't want to be one of those people to paint a false reality here. You've got to know how to fire your own client when you're in this game. Steve Larsen: Do you do it a lot? James Smiley: I would say I turn down about 50% of the people who say they want to work with me. Steve Larsen: That makes me feel better because I fire a lot of people. Fire your own customer, yeah, okay. James Smiley: Yeah, it might even be more. Whereas, if I feel like I'm going to get into something and as soon as something goes wrong they're going to blame me, like it could be anything, something in marketing, revenue, CFO doesn't ... Whatever. I'm out of there, you know? Steve Larsen: Totally, yeah. There was a guy, like just recently, and he ran up to me and he's like, "Hey." He's offering me 50-100 grand for me to build a funnel and I was like, "Hey, that's really cool" and it was like a drop in the hat, really easy one that I knew it'd like double sales and all this stuff, but it was simply because ... I said no to him just because I didn't think we'd get along. That sounds ludicrous to people but I don't want to get into this relationship with someone where it's like just hell the whole way, you know? James Smiley: Yeah. Steve Larsen: It's like, "Oh." Yeah, anyway. James Smiley: Yeah. I mean- Steve Larsen: The key is firing more than hiring almost, you know? Just be really picky with those high end ones. That's the biggest thing, [inaudible 00:23:48]. James Smiley: Yeah. Something to piggyback off that, Steve, is you want to make sure you're set up as a corporate entity, a minimum of an LLC. Because you're dealing with big clients and they have lawyers, so- Steve Larsen: Got you. James Smiley: I mean, I've been able to navigate the waters and stay out of any of that, but this is not like working with a three-man show down at the local strip mall area, you know what I mean? Steve Larsen: Sure, yeah. James Smiley: If something goes wrong, the CFO's not going to take the heat. He's going to shift it to somebody else, and so you just need to be prepared for that. Make sure that you don't get into those type of relationships on the frontend, that's the best thing you can do to protect yourself. Steve Larsen: Right, that's interesting. I mean, when you first got started doing this, I'm sure you had your own legal documents and all this stuff. I mean, did you spend a lot ... Probably more time obviously than the average person, just setting up the legal aspects of it? James Smiley: Yeah. I hired a coach to make sure I did everything right. Steve Larsen: Oh, cool. James Smiley: I'm big into coaching, have always been, and so yeah, I hired somebody just to make sure that I had all that buttoned up. It's not as complicated as I thought, but I'd rather be safe than sorry on that end. Steve Larsen: Sure. James Smiley: A lot of these companies, they're legacy business models and legacy leadership styles. They're not going to be all about handshake deals a lot, so you're going to need decent contracts and things like that. Out clauses. You don't ever want to get stuck to where you can't get out. You always want there to be a way for you to step out without any repercussion. That's a big thing, yeah. Steve Larsen: You've gone through and you ... I mean, you showed me how you got the leads. Totally genius funnel, and Meetup.com, ah, I wonder why I've never thought of that before. Like, people go to those. James Smiley: crosstalk... Steve Larsen: Like, that's such a, that's perfect for that industry. Anyway. James Smiley: Yeah. We've ran them, like digital marketing ones, like 5-10 people would show up the first meeting. We ran technology ones, you'll get a ton of people. Meetup.com, there's people there. Once you schedule that, you can rally all your social media channels and get more people there, but yeah, I mean we've ... Let me give people a hack on how where to have this meeting, right? You don't want to have it home or something, and you may not have a place of business. The best places I've found is number one, a really nice local library. Steve Larsen: Really? James Smiley: Yeah. Like, I'm here in Frisco, Texas, just a local library. There's a great meeting space, projectors, all that stuff, and it's free. As long as you're a card carrying member of the library. Steve Larsen: Which takes like five seconds. James Smiley: That's right. Steve Larsen: Yeah... James Smiley: It's funny, this lady actually asked me, "Are you a card carrying member?" I'm like, "Um, that sounds like a little bit more than" ... A card carrying member of the library. Steve Larsen: "Where's the bouncer?" James Smiley: The other really cool place is the Microsoft stores, if you have a Microsoft store in your town or city. They usually have a business center that's attached to it, and you can go in there, and as long as you're not ... I hate to say this, but as long as you're not bringing an Apple computer, and a Windows computer, there are hookups and everything, and just- Steve Larsen: Wow. James Smiley: ... A really cool free innovative space. You just call down there and say, "Hey, I want to book a business meeting." They love it because a bunch of business executives are going to come and be around their technology, so they'll let you come in for free. That's two easy places to have it. The third one is I'll ask somebody, a company, if they want to sponsor the location. That actually works really well, because you'll usually have somebody who wants to show off or maybe wants to create opportunity for themselves, so they'll host it in their own building. Steve Larsen: Wow. James Smiley: That's the third way we've done it and it works out really well. Steve Larsen: Do you end up selling a lot of times the sponsor on your services? I can imagine that they'd get interested, too. That's [crosstalk 00:28:07]. James Smiley: We will sell everybody in the meeting. We'll sell to everybody, yeah. Steve Larsen: Do you mind going into how you run the meeting itself? Like, what do you do in there? "Hey guys, want to build a funnel?" James Smiley: Yeah. Surprisingly when I first downloaded Webinar Secrets and all these online methodologies, it's actually very similar. Steve Larsen: I thought so. I was wondering if it was ... Okay, yeah. Nevermind, go on. James Smiley: Yeah. That's why the more that I've unraveled all the things that you guys are putting out, number one I've personally spent over $10,000 on your guys' stuff. I mean, Steal Your Funnel, Let The Show, everything. Your guys' stuff has been rock solid and I actually consume it, right? Steve Larsen: Sure. James Smiley: As I've been consuming it, I'm like, "This is so unbelievably productive in my area." Like, you could actually take the content of some of these things and just say, "Hey, B2B, fill your funnel. B2B, sales presentations." It would open up the doors tremendously. Steve Larsen: That's all I did in that first info product, actually. I was in college, I read DotCom Secrets, I was obsessed with it, and I held a three hour meeting in a stranger's home with tons of people and I recorded it. It was the same content. They were like, "Brilliant." James Smiley: Yeah. It's amazing, like one of the biggest things that people are going to need when they're starting out is they're going to need credibility. Usually people will give you a shot, you can set up one of these meetings in a couple weeks, and actually have it. Like, in 10 days from now you can have your first meeting and have people there. But you're going to want to make sure you record it, the audio. You can go onto Amazon.com, there's a $20 Bouyer microphone that has a 20 foot extension. You can lapel it up onto yourself, so you can record what you're doing. Number two, you want to get somebody to take some photos so you have photos. All those kind of things help you build credibility, so as you continue to move forward, you can use those photos, use the recording, all those things as promotional items and those kind of things. Steve Larsen: Interesting. James Smiley: Yeah, and then once you get into the meeting, the general structure is in the very beginning I will absolutely try to wow with something big. Like, the biggest headline I can come up with, and so in my career, I was able to grow two zero to 20 million dollar businesses, new lines of business, like from nothing to over 20 million. Steve Larsen: Oh, my gosh. James Smiley: And I did two of those before I was 35. Steve Larsen: Holy crap. James Smiley: Yeah, so that's usually the line I'll start out with. I'll say, "I'm going to tell you the backend secrets of how I grew two zero to 20 million dollar businesses for two different companies, and how I did it before I was 35, and maybe some of that will be helpful for you guys. Would you guys be onboard if I shared that with you?" Steve Larsen: what... James Smiley: Yeah, exactly. Steve Larsen: Cool. James Smiley: That shocks them, and then you go into like the three step process you use is awesome. Then, on the backend, the biggest thing you want to do is push them to one on one meeting. Like, you'll get people just the hot leads are going to walk right up to you, but try to push everybody to a meeting. If you can get 10 people or let's say you only get five people in the room, if you can book half of those people and then close one of them, that could be easily a five figure deal, easily a five figure deal. Steve Larsen: Interesting. James Smiley: So, yeah, I mean and that's just with five, you know? Steve Larsen: Right. James Smiley: But it's surprising. When you think of psychology of what we're doing, the more I read the stuff you guys put out, I'm like, "Wow, this just crystallizes what we've been working on." Like, it streamlined everything we've been doing. Steve Larsen: That's cool. James Smiley: Yeah, it's been really cool. Steve Larsen: You just barely touched on, so you go through, use some of the Perfect Webinar script which we ... Russell's always mentioned he regrets that he called it that because it's used way more places than just a webinar. Then, you're trying to push to a one on one with them which is awesome, booking and closing them. The one part that you kind of mentioned before the call, so I'm like biting at the bit to try ... I want to hear about also, because every single one that you ever talked about with me was like these huge deals with these very well known companies. I'm just not sure if I'm allowed to say the names so I'm not, but like, "Whoa, that's crazy." How do you structure a five and six figure kind of deal? James Smiley: Yeah, good question. I'll just reveal what we do and hopefully that helps your audience. The three things that mentally in my head, when I get to a one on one meeting, whether that's a phone call, but ideally it's face to face, is I'm looking for is there a need? Like, do they really have a need for my results? I'm pushing results, what I've done, and here's a simple hack I've taught new sales reps. I mean, I had a sales rep come in who was a used car salesman, and at AT&T he ended up being one of the top salesmen in the entire country among 10,000 sales reps and he was a used car salesman. I've taught them this strategy of if you don't have a true result, just Google a result in that industry for that type of service or technology. There's stories out there, there's blogs, there's videos, and you want to be able to share some type of result. Like, "People who used this, this is the type of result they're getting." Like if you can't honestly say, "My clients are doing this," or, "Your competitor who works with me is doing this," then at least share something in the industry. It will help you move the conversation forward. You need them to anchor on a result, and I will keep going back to, "So is that the kind of result that you guys want in your business?" Or, somehow I might say, "What would it do for you guys? I mean, I know you guys have a lot going on, but what it would do if you were able to get that kind of result? Do you actually think you could handle that amount of leads or would I absolutely swamp you?" Once I can get them to anchor on a result, I'm trying to see like is there really a need with that, right? Once I've established that, and a lot of times if I don't understand it, I will just ask them. I'll say, "Do you actually need this or do you just think it's cool? Like, do you need that result? Will it actually help your business?" Stakeholder, board members, VC angel investors, will those guys care or how big is this, right? Number one is need. Number two ... Go ahead. Steve Larsen: Yeah, I just wanted to touch on that. Because that's actually a very stark difference between what we do and sounds like B2B funnels. We always tell people what they want. If we try and sell people what they need, most of the time you don't make a lot of money with B2C, you know? In that category. That's interesting. You specifically go for the ... That makes sense, too. These big companies, they've got a bunch of cash, they're trying to figure out how to plug the holes in. That's probably their mindset anyway, that's fascinating. That's a big difference. James Smiley: Yeah no, that's a very good point. I would say one of the things that I've seen a contrast between what the internet marketing world as I understood it and consumed it to be, and B2B, is in B2B there's not as much emotional decisions. People who make emotional decisions do not stay in executive leadership very long. It's like the bigger a company gets, the less agile they get, right? Steve Larsen: Sure. James Smiley: I ran innovation at AT&T, I did some stuff with Facebook. When you deal with these bigger companies they'll talk about ... I ran an innovation center, but I would always say, "What are we innovating?" You know? Steve Larsen: Sure. James Smiley: Because when you're a big company, you can't make as many mistakes because when you make a mistake, that could tank your stock price three bucks, which is billions of dollars. Steve Larsen: Interesting. They're all walking on eggshells all the time, that's interesting. James Smiley: Yeah, so people want sign off, approvals, and all those kind of things, and so it's important to have someone inside the business, ideally the key decision maker, the owner, who's your champion. Very key to have a champion, someone who's willing to champion it internally, in the business, but I would not try to push to one call closes and those kind of things as much, because a lot of times there are influential factors. Like, if a CEO makes a decision and he spends money on you but then this other part of the business is going under, somebody, like the CFO, the board, whatever, could say, "Well, why did you shift money there versus over on this side?" There's a lot of factors that take place, and so, although I am absolutely pushing them to make an emotional decision, so I'm actually trying to push on that want feeling more, but I'm presenting it more as a need is maybe the way I would say that. Steve Larsen: Oh, that's clever. I love that. James Smiley: Number one need, the next thing I'll go to in the meeting is I will ask them directly, "Perfect. I mean, that's cool. I know we can do it. You've got the right person" type of thing, and then I'll say, "So what's your timeline to get this done? When would it be good for you to get this done? When do you want it done?" Once again, if a sale is moving too fast and they're just skipping over this stuff, something's going to fall on the backend, and you're not going to close the sale. You need to establish a need and get common agreement there. Then, you need to establish and get common agreement on a timeline. They may say, "I need all these results in two weeks." You're running LinkedIn or Facebook ads or whatever and you go, "That ain't happening." So, you need to understand the timeline, and that's going to set expectations, right? If you can agreement there, the next question I'll ask is the most important, which is about the money. I'll say, "So, you want these results, we've already talked about how you think you can generate $8000 a month more or $8000 a week more," whatever. Steve Larsen: Wow. James Smiley: "What's your budget to be able to" ... "What are you willing to invest to be able to do that?" I'll tell you, like 90% of the time, somebody's not going to come back and say, "I have $200,000 free cash flow." But you will find out with that question if they don't have a budget. I mean, most of the time, you're going to find out if they don't and that's key, right? Like, if somebody comes back to me and says, "I can probably carve out like 6 to $8000 this year for you," that's not my client, you know? Steve Larsen: Sure. James Smiley: Although it could be a great relationship for a lot of people, it's not my client. Steve Larsen: If they don't have a budget, do you walk then? James Smiley: Yes. Steve Larsen: That's awesome. James Smiley: Yep. I've got a playbook that I'll usually leave with them that during the meeting, I'm kind of like writing a few notes, a few ideas. I'm wowing them with the type of results and if they start asking you, they might start asking you details about, "Well, why are you an expert at this?" I might go into different ways to create audiences and as I'm telling them hacks and things like that, I'll be writing those down. Then, I end up leaving that behind with them, so it's something nice that we leave behind. But typically, the only three things that I need to know is is there a need? Is there a timeline? Is there a budget? That goes for whether I'm working with somebody in the government, so whether I'm working with a Fortune 10 or a new startup or an individual. Steve Larsen: That's amazing. That's amazing. Holy crap. That's really cool. It's neat to see how you pulling off on their ... I mean, I always tell people, "The customer's not always right, the customer's not always right." Whoever said that phrase was just totally wrong and not in business, or read about it in a book or something. It's call to see you sifting and sorting out people like that. James Smiley: Yeah, and there for time, I know we're going to be cutting close here, do you want me to share how to structure the price tag? Steve Larsen: That would be awesome, actually. That's a big question I've got for it, as well, yeah. James Smiley: Yeah, so I've learned this over the years. When I was in my 20s, I would always screw this up. When I got in my late 20s, early 30s, I just started figuring out, now I feel like I've really crystallized this, so what you want to do, especially if you're an individual consultant or running a small agency, is number one, you're going to probably laugh at how similar this is to what you guys do. It's actually the same exact psychology, just a little bit different on how you present it. But the first thing I do is I'll say ... So, if I were working at such and such a company ... So, a live example would be when I was at AT&T, I was in what's called the "high-po" program, the high potential executives program, so I was on a fast track to be an executive in the company. Essentially, around October of this year, I left a couple of years ago, but around October this year there was a high likelihood I would be at a VP or some type of executive or something like that, as long as I was progressing, right? Steve Larsen: Sure. James Smiley: So what I tell them is, that kind of a job ... So I left that and I say, "Now, that's a 300 to $500,000 a year job." That's kind of where I start, you know? It's really important that when you present that figure of what your true full value is, it's important that they believe it, okay? When I was younger, I used to just zoom by it and I was kind of embarrassed. Like, if you can't anchor off of that, because that actually becomes your high price tag, where then you start doing a price drop, right? Similar to what all these guys do, what you guys teach. You want to anchor off of what's your absolute highest value, and be honest. If you're a $80,000 person, say you're 80. If you're a 100, say you're a 100. If you're 50, say you're 50, but so you anchor off that and then so in their mind they're going, "I want that result, but crap, I can't afford that." Then, the next thing you bridge to is you say, "So not only am I at least a 3 to $500,000 employee, but you look at some of my competitors who offer this service," and trust me, there's always going to be someone who's more pricier than you, than me, right? So you say, "Some of competitors and you may know these guys, this guy or this guy, they charge 400 to $600,000 for this service. In fact, just to have this meeting could be $2000." Now, they're going, "Dude, this was a great meeting but I don't have that kind of meeting," but they have to believe that you're worth it or that somebody would actually pay you for that, okay? If they don't believe- Steve Larsen: How are you doing that? Yeah, how are you anchoring that? James Smiley: You set it up in the very beginning. From when you come in, when somebody says ... I was meeting with, a sales meeting with Siemens' CO not that long ago and I don't know the guy. A partner of mine brought me in and he sits me in, I'm the youngest guy in the room and he looks me dead in the eye, shakes my hand with a big old smile, he says, "James, tell me something about yourself." Just right away, no introduction, "Tell me about" ... That's very common, right? Steve Larsen: Sure. James Smiley: The last thing you want to do is go through your resume. They're not actually asking you, "Tell me your resume." The thing you want to say is what are your results. What are the things you've done that are huge, the big headlines. That's where, instead of saying, "Well, when I first got into technology," you're losing the sale already. The first thing you want to say, "Well, what's really cool is I sold this deal and had this partnership and I've been able to help these logos, and I've been in this publication, or I have a book." You want to almost give your sales pitch, like your value proposition to the world, you know? Like what are your big headlines? In the very beginning they're going, "Wow, this person's pretty high level. This person is much more high level than our marketing managers." Steve Larsen: That's interesting. You're not necessarily telling the origin story, but you're telling ... You're in the testimonial phase of what you've done. Okay. I'm just putting it in my head where you're going, okay. James Smiley: Yes. The only thing I teach people to talk about, I've told hundreds of sales reps this, the only thing you want to share is your results. You want to share what you've done, who've you've helped, what their ROI was. Don't talk about, "I've been in the industry for 22 years." No one cares about that stuff because most people have been in the industry for XX amount of years. Steve Larsen: Sure, especially if the CEO, if they're like, "Yeah, I've been here forever." James Smiley: Yeah, yeah. That's not impressive and I would say the same thing in terms of how you fill out your LinkedIn. If you're not established in the industry, don't make your LinkedIn a resume. Make your LinkedIn from top to bottom, all about results. You'll see a significant difference in the type of people that want to engage with you, and so yeah, do you want me to come back to the price tag thing? Steve Larsen: Oh heck yeah, yeah. This is awesome. I'm just trying to keep you going. I don't want to turn it off. This is awesome. James Smiley: Yeah, this is fun. I'm going to anchor on a super high price tag that I'm worth as a full time employee, working at a corporation, working 40 to 60 hours a week, whatever that is, and then I'll bridge it to, "Okay, this is what my competitors are worth and this is what they charge you, and hey, you might even talk to one of these guys, right?" A lot of times they're like, "Yeah, I've heard about them and man, this is way too pricey." Then, I'll start to back it into typically, I would charge $150,000 for something like this. When I present that, I'm saying, I start off with, "In order for me to drive 1.2 million dollars of new sales revenue" or whatever that is, right? I actually try not to lean as much on revenue. I'll lean more towards a different metric. I'll try to anchor on a different metric like, "In order for me to double your leads, in order for me to 4X your leads, or in order for me to take your cost per lead to this number," right? I'll try to stay off of the revenue number now. I learned that when I was really young. I used to just talk about revenue, but it's better to talk about something slightly different, something that's a little bit more easily measurable for something that I can deliver. Then so I'll say, "In order for me to do this, you think about the impact and what that could do to your revenue, how it could double, triple your revenue, how it could make you" ... I won't say this directly but essentially I'll hit on something like, "How it could make you look better to your boss, to your board, how much more money you can get from your VCs," right? I'll hit on that. Then, I'll say, "In order for me to do that, it's a deal at $150,000." Now, I've established like, "Okay, there's a price tag," and now they're like, "Oh crap." The very next thing I step into, and you have to snap to this quick is, "The only thing we need to know together here is do you want this result? I f you want that, I can always find a way to help you pay for it." Once you say that line, now they're like, "Oh cool. Awesome." They're with you, right? Now they're like, "Okay, help me pay for this." That's where you can break it into different structures, where you can do ... If I can, I'll try to do half up front and then take the rest and divide it over six months or 10 months or whatever you want to do. Make sure you have a good contract there, so if they cancel, there's a ... We try to do a 60 day out, so if they want to cancel today, they still have to pay two more months, so we'll include a lot of those clauses in there. They can't just drop us on a dime. We tell them, "Look, you're a big company." Every partnership will end at some point, every one. You're never linked at the hip with a company forever, so the contracts are set up to help you make sure that when those departures happen that everyone's on the same page. What I'll say is, "You don't want me just to leave and all your ads are running and all this stuff, right? The clause is something that makes it a smooth transition for both of us, to make sure that you're covered, that you guys have exposure, those kind of things, added risk, just because maybe I find a better client." I wouldn't say it like that, but you know, whatever... Yeah, and then a lot of people will ask you in the contracting process about, they'll say, "Well, I don't know if I want a commitment. I want it month to month. Do you do month to month?" I will say this, I'll say, "I don't and here's why. One is if there's no commitment, I can drop you like a dime because there's a lot of you. There's only one of me, but there's a lot of you, so you have to- Steve Larsen: Great line. James Smiley: Yeah. So, I may not say that directly, but I'm just trying to be quick here. I'm going to turn the table there and say, "Do you just want me to leave?" That's where they're usually like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah. We want some type of commitment. We don't want you to just run off to our competitors," right? Steve Larsen: Yeah. James Smiley: So yeah, that's something I'll do in the contracting process as well, is try to make sure that I'm not just going to get left out in the cold, protecting myself, protecting my revenues so it's more predictable. Most companies are not just going to drop it all upfront unless they're more government related, those kind of things, or if you're backing up on their fiscal year they might just drop some cash like that. But yeah, I mean, most of the time they're going to want some type of structure and so the best is to do half upfront if you can. It's very typical in contracts to see that. The next best would be make them pay some balloon payment upfront, and say, "Guys, you guys know, to set this up, it's a thousand times harder to set it up than to maintain it three months later, so I need to make sure I'm not running on a negative." I always say things, when it comes down to cost, the big thing you want to inject is, "As you can imagine, I've got a million people. I can go down to all your competitors, they would all want to work with me on this. I just need to make sure that I'm paid so that this keeps my attention, so my attention's on it." That's actually true. Steve Larsen: It is, 100%, yeah. James Smiley: It's so true, yeah. Like, when you're getting paid $500 or $1000 a month, you're like, "$1000, I'm trying to get to 12,000," it's so small, right? Steve Larsen: Yeah, it is small. James Smiley: But if somebody's paying you 5000 or 12,000, it's a much bigger deal, right? That's one thing that I'll try to inject, is you're paying to make sure that my attention stays on it. I'll inject that. Another thing, if I'm having problems closing or adjusting price is I will bring up that what you're really getting here, I'll talk about corporate positions, "Is you're getting a marketing manager, you're getting online strategic digital marketing VP, and you're getting a salesperson. Think about if you were to hire those people. Like, just the hiring process would cost you five figures or more, multi five figures, just to hire them," you know? Steve Larsen: Sure, sure. James Smiley: Then you're like, "Then you've got to maintain them, then you've got all the different things that come in with employees." Then I'll even throw it out. I'll say, "Look, if you want me to find you those three people, I know three really good ones. I can help you bring them on." They're looking at that price tag going, "Forget that." Those are some of the things that I do to try to work on price justification but if you can get down to selling them on the result and then you've set them at ease and say, "Look, my only job now is to help you. Let's work together to figure out how to pay for it, right?" They're like, "Yeah, let's have that discussion." Steve Larsen: That is so cool, because then you're not standing in there being the bad guy. Instead of standing forward face to face with them, now you're standing side by side. Oh, my gosh, that's awesome. That's cool. James Smiley: Yeah. It works. Steve Larsen: I mean obviously you're selling throughout. The sale's never going to end, even after you've made the end, the sale continues obviously, but when do you know that you have them? James Smiley: I know I have them when ... That's a great question. To me, I've learned it's more of a gut feel over time. I just get this gut feel like, "This one's going to work" but I think the reality of that is when I've got the decision maker, I've got agreement on time, on need, time, and budget, and the person is like anchoring with me on all the big anchors. The result, my value, my ultimate value. Like, when they're anchoring on those two things and they're sold on it, they're like ... I'm trying to close a $150,000 deal right now, and I've had the CEO tell me multiple times, because I'll throw it out there, I'll say, call him on his cellphone, "Hey man, are we going to sign it?" He's like, "Well," he's like, "Man," he's like, "Yeah, I need to get this done. We need to get this done." I'll say, "The other option, man, honestly, you can hire me out right. I will entertain that. If you want to bring that kind of contract forward." The first thing they do is go, "Dude, I can't afford that." I'm giving them a bargain, right? Steve Larsen: Sure, sure. James Smiley: Yeah, so when I know I've got them there, I've got them. The last thing I'll say is, it's a fine line between ... You want to keep pushing, you want to make them commit to, "Okay, cool, why don't you think about it and let's set up a meeting for Friday where we can finalize this?" You want to give them an end date. That's where the scarcity and all those kind of things come into play, and I will absolutely, 80% of the time they're going to drag their feet. It just happens, right? People don't want to be on the hook for signing a 100,000 or a 200,000 or a $50,000 deal, and there's always a level of unknown any time you sign a deal. It doesn't matter how good you know, what kind of testimony someone has, there's a level of unknown. You're like, "I don't know. I mean, I hope the guy does what he says, but I don't know." There's a level of risk that they're taking on, so that's why they drag their feet and it's important to ... Like, what's that saying in the seven highly habits? It's like, "7 Habits of Highly Effective People," it's like, "It's more important to understand than to be understood." The reason they're dragging their feed, you have to understand that. Most of the time it's because they don't want to be on the hook if something goes wrong. Steve Larsen: Which is why you set the positioning of being next to them, helping them pay for it. I'm assuming that helps like crazy. James Smiley: Yes. It's huge there and then also, as days go by, I'll say, "Hey man, as you know, we have marketing systems, automation out there, 24/7, 365. Just to let you know, I've got to move my business forward like you do every day, and so I've got some more leads in this area. I just want to know, how does it look? What's your level of confidence here that this is going to happen in the next week or two?" Steve Larsen: Oh, good question. James Smiley: You know what I mean? Steve Larsen: Yeah. James Smiley: That's a good gauging question, and so you need to inject, I just love when you guys talk about scarcity. Because I've been doing that my whole life but I've never called it that. It makes it so clear. Like, it's a word that you can always go to at the end of a sale. Like, "What do I need to do to create some scarcity and some urgency in this guy's mind?" You know? Steve Larsen: Right. That's interesting. Scarcity without saying, "Hey, I'm so hard to get a hold of that we should jump into bed together," you know what I mean? James Smiley: Yeah. B2B, most people are going to see through that stuff. You need to be genuine, for sure, yeah. Steve Larsen: That makes sense. Man, oh, my gosh, I wish there was more time. I have to actually leave and actually go build, but I'm blown away. This is insane. This is so cool. I've never had such a clear understanding of how someone actually pulls the funnels off in B2B. I've got another buddy who does them as well, but this is insane, though. You've gone through and just to recap, I always take notes every time I interview somebody, just because I learn so much, man. Especially, holy crap, this has been amazing. So obviously you went through how to structure the five to six figure price point, the price tag, and the deal, with the needs, timeline and, "What's the budget for this?" And actually start getting the money there. I love the process, the actual funnel itself. That's amazing... Every time that we teach somebody, "Hey, if you want to start going," like right now, in Two Comma Club Coaching, there's been a few people who have asked, "Hey, can I sell a $10,000 price point off of a webinar?" Most of the time, we usually say no. Like, by that price tag, you need to start getting them out. You've got to change the selling environment. You need to go and separate them from behind their computer and go get them somewhere. The fact that you say that first of all, the lead's coming through LinkedIn usually, then through some maybe auto-webinar, you're booking a call, and you're pushing them to an event where you're a traveling roadshow so, "Catch me because I'm leaving" kind of thing. Oh, my gosh, that's so cool, because you're changing that selling environment. Anyway, I have so many notes that I'm putting notes on my notes in between lines, so I can't even decipher them all no the spot right now but I will very shortly. Man, this has been fantastic. James Smiley: Yeah. I mean, I appreciated being able to share with you guys. Steve Larsen: Where can people find out about you? James Smiley: Yeah, thanks for that. JamesSmiley.org is the main site to go to. We're going to be doing, there's just been so much demand in the past couple months. Really, I would say last three or four months. I had a big press release and just different things, and I've had a lot of people say, "How do I do that?" We're going to put something together to start coaching people and helping them get into this. I'm really into personalization which is kind of my style, so I'm not going to do a traditional, "Hey," like most people would probably do it. Just, "Buy my online course" or something. We're going to do it a little bit more personal, but because I think if you're going to get into this space, that's where your head needs to start going no matter what. We put together some resources at JamesSmiley.org/sales, and there's a playbook that we've put together. This is a playbook that I used when we IPO'd a company called TeleNav. It was 350 million dollar a year revenue SaaS company. It was one of the most successful GPS technology companies out of Silicon Valley, but when I came in, I was the sixth employee and when I left there was like 400 employees. I ran sales from Los Angeles, all the way to the other side of the country, and so this kind of goes over how did we go about that process and how did we go about closing all those big deals and getting all those big partnerships done. It's really become a playbook for people when they go into a meeting. It tells them how you talk through the price tag, how do you even start generating B2B leads, and another cool thing that we just went ahead and put in this playbook is there's a PowerPoint presentation that's a template. It's like 100 slides. We had a big market research firm put this thing together, and so whenever I need to make a pitch, I'll go in there and grab three or four slides, and the graphics and everything is amazing. We actually paid $7000, we literally paid $7000 to have this thing made about two years ago. I'm just going to give that away in this playbook so you'll know how to generate leads, you'll have a really slick way to do your presentations so you'll look super professional, just slap your own logo and your own feature function benefits, and your results in there, and we'll teach you the system of how to close. One of the biggest things that you guys need is credibility, and if you're not an author, what I'm going to do is I'll include in here as maybe like a bonus, is I'll co-author a book with you, which is very likely to be an Amazon Best Seller. I've got a couple of those. Steve Larsen: Whoa. James Smiley: At least you'll be, you'll get the home study course, you'll get one on one time with me in the mastermind group, and then you'll also be a co-author of a best seller that you can use that as your business card, you know what I mean? Going into businesses- Steve Larsen: Wow. James Smiley: ... saying, "Oh yeah, by the way, here's something I wrote on Facebook ads. Here's something I wrote on online automation," or whatever. I'm hoping that's just a killer value and people would sign up for that, so that's... Steve Larsen: Good. Awesome, man. That's huge. James Smiley: Yeah, so hopefully that adds a ton of value to people who are trying to figure this thing out. It's at JamesSmiley.org/sales. You know what's just funny is like my passion truly is to help people and especially entrepreneurs. Like, that's where I came from, and one of the things that I started telling people last year when they started asking me about this is is, you know, I bet you when people first got into Facebook ads or they first got into whatever, that there was all this unknown, right? Steve Larsen: Right. James Smiley: But then a couple months later they're like, "I got this." That's the same thing here. I mean, once you get your first one or two down, you're going to feel like this is easy. The process becomes a lot easier. Steve Larsen: That's awesome. Well guys, thanks so much for listening, and thanks so much for James as well. The B2B expert, sales rep trainer, script writer, event thrower, sponsor getterer, pro bass fisherman. James Smiley: Woohoo. Steve Larsen: It's been amazing. I really appreciate it, and guys go to JamesSmiley.org/sales and get frankly, one of the coolest things anyone's ever given away on this show. Oh, my gosh, I'm going to go there right now and go opt-in as soon as we're done. Anyways, thanks so much man. James Smiley: Okay. Appreciate you guys, have a great day. 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.  

The post Episode #122 – Why And How I Canceled My Email appeared first on DotComSecrets.com Blog - Weird Marketing Experiments That Increase Traffic, Conversions and Sales.... What the last 24 hours have been like without my personal email address... On this episode of Marketing In Your Car Russell talks about how he got control of his email and his Voxer account and how that helped his stress level and why he hopes it will give him more time to spend with his family. Here are a few of the interesting things you'll hear in today's episode: How many emails Russell was getting a day and why that caused him to finally, after 12 years, kill his email address. Find out Russell's solution to being Voxed by clients at all times that were causing him to disengage with his family. And find out if Russell has yet achieved his goal of spending more time with his kids than he does at work. Listen below to find out how Russell cleared some of the stressful clutter from his life. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for reading Episode #122 – Why And How I Canceled My Email, originally published at DotComSecrets.com Blog.

What the last 24 hours have been like without my personal email address… On this episode of Marketing In Your Car Russell talks about how he got control of his email and his Voxer account and how that helped his stress level and why he hopes it will give him more time to spend with his family. Here are a few of the interesting things you'll hear in today's episode: How many emails Russell was getting a day and why that caused him to finally, after 12 years, kill his email address. Find out Russell's solution to being Voxed by clients at all times that were causing him to disengage with his family. And find out if Russell has yet achieved his goal of spending more time with his kids than he does at work. Listen below to find out how Russell cleared some of the stressful clutter from his life. ---Transcript--- Hey everyone. This is Russell, and welcome to “Marketing in Your Car.” Hi, everyone. Late night, just got back from the grocery store, heading home, and I want to tell you about something cool that I think I'm doing that I want to recommend to you guys to do, I think. [laughs] I'm pretty sure I am. I'm kind of stressing out about it right now, but I think that after I get through the withdrawal symptoms, this process is going to be awesome. As some of you guys know, we just had our book launch, Click Funnels launch, a baby, we have our live event coming up. We just moved offices, and we're about to move our house. All this change, and all these things, and it's been insane keeping up with everything. On top of that, we have all the normal things that we have to do, right? And for me, as some of you guys know through our coaching program, I give our higher-end clients access to me through Vox, so I get Voxers all the time. There's just all these things that are pressing on me, and it's like it's getting to the point where it's hard to bear, all of it, and so I've been trying to think, “How do I structure things differently so that I can get out from under this pressure?” I remember Dan Gable, who, those of you guys who know wrestling, he's like the Michael Jordan of wrestling. One time someone asked him about pressure, “How do you deal with all this pressure that's on your life?”, or they asked him if he believed in pressure, and he said, “Well I believe in it. It's there. I just don't choose to put myself underneath it.” I was thinking about that. I feel like I've been putting myself under enormous pressure, [laughs] and I have this horrible problem where I just say “Yes” to everything. I want to do all these things, because it's completely exciting to me. So I've been trying to weave things out and trying to simplify my life and everything. Anyway, over the last 24 hours or so, I've made some big jumps, like some crazy huge leaps, and I want to walk you through them, because again, I'm in the withdrawal process right now, and it's stressing me out, but I think it's going to be really good, long term. First off, the first step was email. I had to get control of my email. I have had the same email address for like 12 years. Everyone in the world has it. I'm on a million newsletters, a million different things, and right now, on average, I was trying to measure between that. I use a service called Sane Box, which takes all your junk and tries to filter it out and get rid of it before it gets to your inbox. But even with that, I get over a thousand emails a day hit my inbox, and between that and Sane Box, it's about 3,500 emails a day. It's insane. I don't even know how…if you ever emailed me and I didn't write back, that's probably why I didn't. It just gets so overwhelming, and every time I walk in, I'm just sick to my stomach. I don't even know what to do, and it just never goes away. It just keeps growing and growing and growing.[laughs] I've been so scared to not have it, like, “What happens if I miss an email? What if I don't see something?”, and so because I'm checking my phone a million times a day because email's coming in so fast that it's pushing emails off the screen, and I don't want to miss anything. Anyway, there's all this stress that comes from it. So my first thing I decided to do was I needed to kill my email address, which was crazy. I set up a new email address, and then I was like, “Well, I don't want to just tell everyone my new email address, because I'm going to start getting a million emails.” So what I did is I set up an auto-responder thing on my old email address, and I'm still going to have Kelsey, my assistant, go in each day and just browse, and make sure that I'm not missing anything super important like bills or things like that, who knows, whatever could come through. But now there's an auto-responder for emails on my old email address that pops up and says, “New email address — how to contact me inside.” You open it up, and it basically says, “Hey, I was getting 3,500 emails a day. I can't keep up with it. But if you're awesome, and I'm assuming you are, and you want to contact me, then this is how you can do it,” and I push them to a form to fill out. I push them to a Wufoo form, and basically the Wufoo form says, “What's your name, your email address, your Skype number, and what's your question?” When someone goes to that form, they don't have my new email address, but they can fill it out, and then I get that. Wufoo emails me the form that they got, so the form pops into my email address that says Name, Email Address, Skype, and their question. I look at that question. If it's something for me, I can respond if I want to, or if I don't, I can forward it to Kelsey or to Brent or to someone on my team to take care of it, and that person never gets to me. If it is someone that I want to hear from, then I can respond back to them, and then that person's got access to my inbox. I did that on Friday, before I left. It's Saturday night. It's been 24 hours, and it's been stressing me out because my email inbox only has three emails from people who've actually got the thing, filled it out. Two of them I didn't want to respond to, so I forwarded them to someone else, and then one of them was someone I wanted to. I responded to them, and that was it, and it's crazy. I even went back to my old email box, scanning through to make sure I'm not missing anything, but for the most part it's really refreshing. There's no one contacting me, and it's kind of stressing me out because of that, which is kind of cool. The next thing was Voxers. I've got my high-end clients on Voxer, which used to be really, really easy, but as we've grown, it's gotten more and more, and so I always try to get back to people really, really fast, and the problem is that means I'm answering Voxers all day long, all night long, all the time, and I just needed to get more control over that. So what I did is one of my friends from our Mastermind group — his name's Joe McCall — he bought me a new iPhone while we were there, which was super cool. He gave me this brand new iPhone, and so I turned this into my new iPhone. I've got a new install of Voxer on it, and I just gave this one to close people that I really needed to communicate with, people that I want instantly, like I need to have the contact with my wife, my team, things like that. The other phone, I kept on my Voxer conversations, and I kept it at my office. I didn't even bring it home this weekend. I don't even have it. People are probably Voxing me, and I don't have the ability to respond back to them. I'm going to respond back to them on Monday when I get to the office, and then I'll just have that at the office, and I'll do client work there, and then when I'm home, I don't do client work there anymore, which is kind of cool. That was the next barrier that I put up, and then the next thing is, my assistant Kelsey's been my assistant for four or five years. She's been doing the support role and assistant and things like that. Now I'm trying to make her more of an assistant. Each day, she comes in to my office, and the day, gives me a write-up of what's happening the next day, tells me what's in my inbox, who I've got calls with, what's happening. She's been kind of controlling my whole life. She's been checking my emails. She's trying to put up as many barriers around me and take care of me, so I don't have to stress out. She gets my lunches now, all these kind of things, so I can focus on what I do best, which is what brings the money in. The next thing I'm going to try to start doing is I'm going to try to start — because I don't know about you guys, but at the beginning of the year, I set a goal. One of my goals was to spend more time with my kids than I do at the office. So far, I haven't done that yet, but these are the first steps to get me to that point. Next, I'm going to start trying to spend more time in the mornings with my wife, maybe take her to the movies once or twice a week in the mornings. Spending more time with my kids — coming home a little earlier. Anyway, I'm trying to get this under control, and it's hard for me. I don't know if you guys are like me, serial entrepreneurs. This has been a hard, painful process. I totally keep checking my phone, and there's nothing there for me. There's no one to talk to, which is good. I've got to focus on who I love the most. As I said, I'm going through withdrawals right now, but I think, hopefully, in a couple of days I'll realize that nobody really needs to talk to me, that I'm going to be okay, and I will go have a chance to be more present with the people that I love and that I care about, and things like that. Anyways, it's kind of cool. I'm excited for it. It's painful right now, but I think it's going to be good, and I just want to recommend for you to do the same thing, to start putting up some barriers. Start making some rules. I remember Alex Mendosian, one of my first mentors, and one of the smartest dudes — just an amazing guy. I remember him telling me probably five or six times over the last 12 years, I've heard him speak about retiring your email. Once a year, he'll offer you an email address. I've never done it. I've been so scared, and I finally am doing it. I'm finally getting out from under that pressure, like Dan Gable said. So I can focus, and I can create better. I can be better, and be more, and I'm excited for it. I hope that this gives you guys permission to do that, to turn off your email. It took me a while to figure out the right way to do that, and I think that that way that I figured out works. It's really smart, and I think it's working really good. Again, we're basically vacation auto-responder messages back to them. It tells them to fill out a form. The form gets sent to me, and I decide if I want to respond or forward it to somebody else, and it's really simple and easy to do, and something that I recommend for you guys to test out and to try. Anyway, hope that helps. I am home with the groceries. I'm going to go in and be with my wife and my baby, Nora, who's probably still awake. Everyone else had better be asleep. [laughs] I appreciate you guys for listening. I hope things are awesome, and if you don't have your tickets to the Funnel Hacking Event, go and get them. It's going to be amazing. FunnelHacking.com is where you can get them at, and outside of that, I appreciate you guys, and we'll talk soon.

What the last 24 hours have been like without my personal email address… On this episode of Marketing In Your Car Russell talks about how he got control of his email and his Voxer account and how that helped his stress level and why he hopes it will give him more time to spend with his family. Here are a few of the interesting things you’ll hear in today’s episode: How many emails Russell was getting a day and why that caused him to finally, after 12 years, kill his email address. Find out Russell’s solution to being Voxed by clients at all times that were causing him to disengage with his family. And find out if Russell has yet achieved his goal of spending more time with his kids than he does at work. Listen below to find out how Russell cleared some of the stressful clutter from his life. ---Transcript--- Hey everyone. This is Russell, and welcome to “Marketing in Your Car.” Hi, everyone. Late night, just got back from the grocery store, heading home, and I want to tell you about something cool that I think I’m doing that I want to recommend to you guys to do, I think. [laughs] I’m pretty sure I am. I’m kind of stressing out about it right now, but I think that after I get through the withdrawal symptoms, this process is going to be awesome. As some of you guys know, we just had our book launch, Click Funnels launch, a baby, we have our live event coming up. We just moved offices, and we’re about to move our house. All this change, and all these things, and it’s been insane keeping up with everything. On top of that, we have all the normal things that we have to do, right? And for me, as some of you guys know through our coaching program, I give our higher-end clients access to me through Vox, so I get Voxers all the time. There’s just all these things that are pressing on me, and it’s like it’s getting to the point where it’s hard to bear, all of it, and so I’ve been trying to think, “How do I structure things differently so that I can get out from under this pressure?” I remember Dan Gable, who, those of you guys who know wrestling, he’s like the Michael Jordan of wrestling. One time someone asked him about pressure, “How do you deal with all this pressure that’s on your life?”, or they asked him if he believed in pressure, and he said, “Well I believe in it. It’s there. I just don’t choose to put myself underneath it.” I was thinking about that. I feel like I’ve been putting myself under enormous pressure, [laughs] and I have this horrible problem where I just say “Yes” to everything. I want to do all these things, because it’s completely exciting to me. So I’ve been trying to weave things out and trying to simplify my life and everything. Anyway, over the last 24 hours or so, I’ve made some big jumps, like some crazy huge leaps, and I want to walk you through them, because again, I’m in the withdrawal process right now, and it’s stressing me out, but I think it’s going to be really good, long term. First off, the first step was email. I had to get control of my email. I have had the same email address for like 12 years. Everyone in the world has it. I’m on a million newsletters, a million different things, and right now, on average, I was trying to measure between that. I use a service called Sane Box, which takes all your junk and tries to filter it out and get rid of it before it gets to your inbox. But even with that, I get over a thousand emails a day hit my inbox, and between that and Sane Box, it’s about 3,500 emails a day. It’s insane. I don’t even know how…if you ever emailed me and I didn’t write back, that’s probably why I didn’t. It just gets so overwhelming, and every time I walk in, I’m just sick to my stomach. I don’t even know what to do, and it just never goes away. It just keeps growing and growing and growing.[laughs] I’ve been so scared to not have it, like, “What happens if I miss an email? What if I don’t see something?”, and so because I’m checking my phone a million times a day because email’s coming in so fast that it’s pushing emails off the screen, and I don’t want to miss anything. Anyway, there’s all this stress that comes from it. So my first thing I decided to do was I needed to kill my email address, which was crazy. I set up a new email address, and then I was like, “Well, I don’t want to just tell everyone my new email address, because I’m going to start getting a million emails.” So what I did is I set up an auto-responder thing on my old email address, and I’m still going to have Kelsey, my assistant, go in each day and just browse, and make sure that I’m not missing anything super important like bills or things like that, who knows, whatever could come through. But now there’s an auto-responder for emails on my old email address that pops up and says, “New email address — how to contact me inside.” You open it up, and it basically says, “Hey, I was getting 3,500 emails a day. I can’t keep up with it. But if you’re awesome, and I’m assuming you are, and you want to contact me, then this is how you can do it,” and I push them to a form to fill out. I push them to a Wufoo form, and basically the Wufoo form says, “What’s your name, your email address, your Skype number, and what’s your question?” When someone goes to that form, they don’t have my new email address, but they can fill it out, and then I get that. Wufoo emails me the form that they got, so the form pops into my email address that says Name, Email Address, Skype, and their question. I look at that question. If it’s something for me, I can respond if I want to, or if I don’t, I can forward it to Kelsey or to Brent or to someone on my team to take care of it, and that person never gets to me. If it is someone that I want to hear from, then I can respond back to them, and then that person’s got access to my inbox. I did that on Friday, before I left. It’s Saturday night. It’s been 24 hours, and it’s been stressing me out because my email inbox only has three emails from people who’ve actually got the thing, filled it out. Two of them I didn’t want to respond to, so I forwarded them to someone else, and then one of them was someone I wanted to. I responded to them, and that was it, and it’s crazy. I even went back to my old email box, scanning through to make sure I’m not missing anything, but for the most part it’s really refreshing. There’s no one contacting me, and it’s kind of stressing me out because of that, which is kind of cool. The next thing was Voxers. I’ve got my high-end clients on Voxer, which used to be really, really easy, but as we’ve grown, it’s gotten more and more, and so I always try to get back to people really, really fast, and the problem is that means I’m answering Voxers all day long, all night long, all the time, and I just needed to get more control over that. So what I did is one of my friends from our Mastermind group — his name’s Joe McCall — he bought me a new iPhone while we were there, which was super cool. He gave me this brand new iPhone, and so I turned this into my new iPhone. I’ve got a new install of Voxer on it, and I just gave this one to close people that I really needed to communicate with, people that I want instantly, like I need to have the contact with my wife, my team, things like that. The other phone, I kept on my Voxer conversations, and I kept it at my office. I didn’t even bring it home this weekend. I don’t even have it. People are probably Voxing me, and I don’t have the ability to respond back to them. I’m going to respond back to them on Monday when I get to the office, and then I’ll just have that at the office, and I’ll do client work there, and then when I’m home, I don’t do client work there anymore, which is kind of cool. That was the next barrier that I put up, and then the next thing is, my assistant Kelsey’s been my assistant for four or five years. She’s been doing the support role and assistant and things like that. Now I’m trying to make her more of an assistant. Each day, she comes in to my office, and the day, gives me a write-up of what’s happening the next day, tells me what’s in my inbox, who I’ve got calls with, what’s happening. She’s been kind of controlling my whole life. She’s been checking my emails. She’s trying to put up as many barriers around me and take care of me, so I don’t have to stress out. She gets my lunches now, all these kind of things, so I can focus on what I do best, which is what brings the money in. The next thing I’m going to try to start doing is I’m going to try to start — because I don’t know about you guys, but at the beginning of the year, I set a goal. One of my goals was to spend more time with my kids than I do at the office. So far, I haven’t done that yet, but these are the first steps to get me to that point. Next, I’m going to start trying to spend more time in the mornings with my wife, maybe take her to the movies once or twice a week in the mornings. Spending more time with my kids — coming home a little earlier. Anyway, I’m trying to get this under control, and it’s hard for me. I don’t know if you guys are like me, serial entrepreneurs. This has been a hard, painful process. I totally keep checking my phone, and there’s nothing there for me. There’s no one to talk to, which is good. I’ve got to focus on who I love the most. As I said, I’m going through withdrawals right now, but I think, hopefully, in a couple of days I’ll realize that nobody really needs to talk to me, that I’m going to be okay, and I will go have a chance to be more present with the people that I love and that I care about, and things like that. Anyways, it’s kind of cool. I’m excited for it. It’s painful right now, but I think it’s going to be good, and I just want to recommend for you to do the same thing, to start putting up some barriers. Start making some rules. I remember Alex Mendosian, one of my first mentors, and one of the smartest dudes — just an amazing guy. I remember him telling me probably five or six times over the last 12 years, I’ve heard him speak about retiring your email. Once a year, he’ll offer you an email address. I’ve never done it. I’ve been so scared, and I finally am doing it. I’m finally getting out from under that pressure, like Dan Gable said. So I can focus, and I can create better. I can be better, and be more, and I’m excited for it. I hope that this gives you guys permission to do that, to turn off your email. It took me a while to figure out the right way to do that, and I think that that way that I figured out works. It’s really smart, and I think it’s working really good. Again, we’re basically vacation auto-responder messages back to them. It tells them to fill out a form. The form gets sent to me, and I decide if I want to respond or forward it to somebody else, and it’s really simple and easy to do, and something that I recommend for you guys to test out and to try. Anyway, hope that helps. I am home with the groceries. I’m going to go in and be with my wife and my baby, Nora, who’s probably still awake. Everyone else had better be asleep. [laughs] I appreciate you guys for listening. I hope things are awesome, and if you don’t have your tickets to the Funnel Hacking Event, go and get them. It’s going to be amazing. FunnelHacking.com is where you can get them at, and outside of that, I appreciate you guys, and we’ll talk soon.

Two guys joined our “Inner Circle” on the same day, one quit. Where are they at now, 12 months later?… On today's episode Russell tells a story about a friend of his, Mike Stazyk, who took a risk and how it paid off. He also talks about why taking risks is important for growing your business and how to set Lead or Gold deadlines. Here are some interesting things you'll hear in this episode: How Mike Stazyk took a risk by spending his college tuition on something that could make or break his business. Why Mike's friend who didn't take the same risk is still struggling with his own business. And why setting Lead or Gold deadlines is important for growing your business. So listen below to hear an interesting story about a kid who went from knowing nothing about marketing to making it big by taking some risks. ---Transcript--- Hey everyone! It's Russell and it's literally three in the morning right now. I'm driving home, and this is another very special, exciting episode of Marketing in Your Car. All right, so I guess it's three a.m., I've just dropped someone off at the Hyatt place, and I wanted to tell you a story about him. So his name is Mike Stanzic. Some of you guys may know him. If not, you should get to know him, he's amazing. But Mike, he's here in town because we're trying to film a kind of promotional video with him, talking about our coaching program, and just kind of hang out with him and have a good time and it's been really cool, and I wanted to tell you guys a story about him because it's pretty impressive. Actually, I'm going to tell you two stories, and these two stories are going to illustrate why he is successful, and why — if you're struggling, if you're struggling to be successful right now at this time in your life — you need to look at what he's doing, and it'll help you understand what you need to do to get where you want to be. So Mike was a college kid. He had dropped out of college and was like trying to figure out what he wanted to do. I think he said he had like $23,000 in his bank account that was meant — that he had saved up for his college tuition. He went to this Tony Robbins event, and at the Tony Robbins he met this guy, and they kind of became friends and stuff, and Mike didn't know anything about Internet marketing. He was involved in a network marketing program but didn't know anything about Internet marketing, and this other guy was big, like had been studying Internet marketing. And so after the Tony event, they were driving home, and they were just kind of talking, and this guy was telling Mike all about Internet marketing and how it worked and all these cool things, and Mike was like, “Well, I could use that for my Internet marketing business.” And anyway, his friend basically said, “Hey, there's this guy. His name is Russell Brunson, and I wanted to join his coaching program. It's really expensive, but it's going to change my whole life, and I think you should join it, too. We should join it together. It would be awesome!” And so Mike got excited, and said, “Okay, let's do it. Let's join this thing together,” and so they joined. And so, anyway, so this is the next Monday, so next Monday we get a phone call at our office from the buddy, and he signs up for our $25,000 Inner Circle Program, and then like four hours later Mike calls up and signs up for the $25,000 Inner Circle Program. And I guess what happened, you know, Mike told me the story now, is that his buddy was like, “Hey man, I'm going to do it! I'm going to do it!” And he's like, then he called Mike, “Hey, I did it! I sent the check in. The money is going, like I'm in, and you need get in, too.” So Mike is like, “All right, I'm in,” so he went in and actually did it. Wrote a check, sent it in. Got involved in the program, and basically, yeah, he got in the program. And then, Mike called the guy back like later on that day or maybe it was the next day and to talk about it, and the guy was like, “Aw! I couldn't afford it.” Mike is like, “What?” He's like, “Yeah, I couldn't afford it.” He's like, “Are you kidding me? You couldn't afford to like… Like you just told me you sent a check. Well, I wrote a check based on that.” Like he said, “I send my college tuition on this thing. It was like every penny I had in my bank account.” And the guy was like, “Sorry I can't do it,” and so Mike was like stuck at this point, and, you know, the buddy called us and canceled. But Mike had stayed in and basically Mike was like, “You know what? I committed to this. I can't… I got to do it.” So he went through and did it. He showed up at our next Mastermind meeting or our first workshop, as green as green can be. The guy didn't know anything about Internet marketing or anything. And we started the Mastermind group and there's 18 people or so in this group, and each person is supposed to get up and present their business, and before I started it, I said, you know, “Does anyone want to go first?” And Mike jumps right up and stands in front of the room — doesn't know anything about anything! Stands up there, starts drawing a picture of his supplement that he sold through his MLM, and said, “This is what I have,” and that was it, and so we started working on this thing. Man, he just jumped in and just worked hard and spent the next four months, building out his first funnel and launching it. Making some money, and then kept going from there and ended up learning how to drive traffic, and just kept growing and evolving. I've been watching him do this stuff, and anyway he came today, he was kind of talking about what he's doing. I didn't realize his last week alone he made 10 grand. Last month I think it was close to like 30 grand or something crazy like that, and what was interesting is that he told me that his buddy, the guy that had signed up and then canceled, basically had just reapplied for school because he's frustrated and his business hasn't grown. He's just stagnated and he was going back to school now to figure out Option B, and it was just kind of cool to see this tale of two people, right? Two people who started at the exact same situation, both made the same commitment. One followed through and one didn't, and where is their life at now? What's the difference? You know, what's been happening, and it's just kind of cool to see that. And just to kind of like put you in perspective of like the type of person that he is, he was telling me a story tonight that he wanted do this partnership with this guy that he was going to be calling, and it was for this mortgage broker thing. The guy told him, “Hey, you need to start cold calling mortgage brokers,” and Mike was like, “All right.” So he grabbed a phone book and starting cold calling mortgage brokers. He didn't even know what the pitch was but started dialing numbers, and saying, “Hey, so we've got this thing…” And didn't even know what it was, and was trying to like explain this thing, and he didn't even know what it was. The first one went and it totally bombed, so Mike called the guy back, “Hey, it bombed, but this is what I said…” And the guy is like, “Well, that's not what we're selling. This is what we're doing,” and so he kind of tweaked it. Anyway, he kept dialing, and just cold calling mortgage brokers out of a phone book; selling a product he didn't even know what it was, just because the guy said, “you need to do it.” And he just jumped in and did it and did it and did it and boom! And eventually landed like four or five mortgage brokers in this deal, and just did it, and I was telling him how impressive it is for me. Like he's the kind of person when he just moves forward and he hits something, and then he just keeps moving forward, he keeps moving forward and he keeps moving forward. And I told him how rare that is, like people don't just do that. Like most people, they start moving forward, they hit something and they stop, and then they stop. Maybe they'll move forward again, they hit something, they stop. And the reason why he's successful is because he doesn't stop. When he hit something he keeps going and he keeps going. He doesn't let fear or excuses or no money or whatever, he doesn't let the fact that he doesn't even know what the product is, stop him. He just goes and goes and goes and goes, and I look at this kid now, 20… I think he's 22 or 23-years-old. You know, he's ten years younger than me, and this is a guy who's got the world on his fingertips. He can literally do whatever he wants now. Because he just brute-forced through this, he understands funnels and traffic, and I've seen him build funnels now for himself and other people, and he's learned the process and it's just… it's amazing. And so, I wanted to share that story, first off, because it inspired the heck out of me, and hopefully inspires the heck out of you as well. I hope that it makes you guys look at yourself, and then kind of look internal and look at like what are the things that keep you from moving forward sometimes? You know, it's kind of funny, on the flip side of that I had a phone call today with another person who joined our coaching program, who signed up, went through the initial program. Went through my initial consult I do with them, where I kind of steer them in the right direction. I map out a business model, a funnel for them, and gave them everything on a silver platter, and then for two months he didn't do anything. And then, two months later he calls me and is like, “Hey, so I haven't done anything. I can't remember what you wanted me to do. Can we do another call, so that you can re-explain to me what you told me two months ago?” I was like, “No, like if you didn't take notes, if you're not paying attention, I'm not going to do it for you again.” Like, and then, the guy said like, “Oh, well, if I can't talk to you on the phone, I want a refund for my money.” All these things, and I was like, “Dude, like two months ago I gave you a business model on a silver platter. Since then you've had the ability to Vox me any time you want. How many times have you Voxed me? Zero. “You've had a chance to inbound call my two business partners every single week. How many times have you inbound called them? Zero.” You know, and it's just this guy who's frustrated and upset, and look at him versus Mike, what's the difference? Okay, one person doesn't make excuses. One person doesn't let… I don't know what would get in the way. One person doesn't let any… just moves forward, and knows that success is right there and just goes and grabs it. Where another person, I don't know if he's been there for two months. He hasn't been working, that's for dang sure, and now wants to blame it on me or blame it on whoever and it just drives me crazy. And so, I want to make sure that you guys are more like Mike. Not like Mike's friend, or not like the other guy that I'm talking about. Don't be that kind of a person, you guys. I want you to be successful. So anyway, I hope that helps. It's three in the morning. I'm so tired, I don't even know if anything I said even makes any sense, but that's how it works. So, you guys, if you've come to my events before or heard me talk about this, I talk a lot about a concept called Lead or Gold, where when I set goals or have ideas, I always set what I call a Lead or Gold Deadline. And that story comes from — I heard John, John Carlton, and Gary Halbert tell the story years ago, where they talk about how like the Mexican mafia, how when they need something to happen, right? They go to the government and they say, “Hey, we need to change this law, so that we can get more drugs,” or whatever, right? And the government is like “No, we can't do that. That's stupid. Like we'll never do that.” They say, “Okay, that's fine.” And then, that night they'll break into the government leaders' homes and they'll jump, you know, come and grab them and hold a gun to their head, and hold the gun in one hand in a bag of gold in another hand and say: “Hey, you know what I talked about earlier today? You need to change it, right now, and you've got two options: Number one is lead, and you're going to die. Or option number two is gold, where you're going to take my bribe, and those two options, Lead or Gold.” And when those are your options, Lead or Gold, it's pretty easy to take the gold, okay? And so for me whenever I try to get something done in my business, I set what I call Lead or Gold Deadlines. Like this has to happen, right now, and I do not deviate from it. I set these deadlines in there. In my mind, they are Lead or Gold. I will die if I do not create this deadline, and that's why I'm out at three in the morning. Because I set a Lead or Gold Deadline on a project that I'm doing tomorrow, and it's 3:09, and I'm finally getting home because my Lead or Gold Deadline, I had to hit it. I didn't have the opportunity to weasel out of it. And anyway, that's one thing I do, you guys, to help me be successful and help make sure I get stuff done. So anyhoo, I'm home. I'm done. I need some sleep because I've got to be up in four hours to go and give the presentation I just finished a few minutes ago. But I appreciate you guys. Thanks for hanging out with me tonight. I hope that you got something from this podcast. I appreciate you guys. Go out and conquer, go serve the world in your way. Change somebody's life today, and if you do that, all the stuff we talk about is going to be worth it. So thanks, you guys, I appreciate you, and we'll talk soon.

Two guys joined our “Inner Circle” on the same day, one quit. Where are they at now, 12 months later?… On today’s episode Russell tells a story about a friend of his, Mike Stazyk, who took a risk and how it paid off. He also talks about why taking risks is important for growing your business and how to set Lead or Gold deadlines. Here are some interesting things you’ll hear in this episode: How Mike Stazyk took a risk by spending his college tuition on something that could make or break his business. Why Mike’s friend who didn’t take the same risk is still struggling with his own business. And why setting Lead or Gold deadlines is important for growing your business. So listen below to hear an interesting story about a kid who went from knowing nothing about marketing to making it big by taking some risks. ---Transcript--- Hey everyone! It’s Russell and it’s literally three in the morning right now. I’m driving home, and this is another very special, exciting episode of Marketing in Your Car. All right, so I guess it’s three a.m., I’ve just dropped someone off at the Hyatt place, and I wanted to tell you a story about him. So his name is Mike Stanzic. Some of you guys may know him. If not, you should get to know him, he’s amazing. But Mike, he’s here in town because we’re trying to film a kind of promotional video with him, talking about our coaching program, and just kind of hang out with him and have a good time and it’s been really cool, and I wanted to tell you guys a story about him because it’s pretty impressive. Actually, I’m going to tell you two stories, and these two stories are going to illustrate why he is successful, and why — if you’re struggling, if you’re struggling to be successful right now at this time in your life — you need to look at what he’s doing, and it’ll help you understand what you need to do to get where you want to be. So Mike was a college kid. He had dropped out of college and was like trying to figure out what he wanted to do. I think he said he had like $23,000 in his bank account that was meant — that he had saved up for his college tuition. He went to this Tony Robbins event, and at the Tony Robbins he met this guy, and they kind of became friends and stuff, and Mike didn’t know anything about Internet marketing. He was involved in a network marketing program but didn’t know anything about Internet marketing, and this other guy was big, like had been studying Internet marketing. And so after the Tony event, they were driving home, and they were just kind of talking, and this guy was telling Mike all about Internet marketing and how it worked and all these cool things, and Mike was like, “Well, I could use that for my Internet marketing business.” And anyway, his friend basically said, “Hey, there’s this guy. His name is Russell Brunson, and I wanted to join his coaching program. It’s really expensive, but it’s going to change my whole life, and I think you should join it, too. We should join it together. It would be awesome!” And so Mike got excited, and said, “Okay, let’s do it. Let’s join this thing together,” and so they joined. And so, anyway, so this is the next Monday, so next Monday we get a phone call at our office from the buddy, and he signs up for our $25,000 Inner Circle Program, and then like four hours later Mike calls up and signs up for the $25,000 Inner Circle Program. And I guess what happened, you know, Mike told me the story now, is that his buddy was like, “Hey man, I’m going to do it! I’m going to do it!” And he’s like, then he called Mike, “Hey, I did it! I sent the check in. The money is going, like I’m in, and you need get in, too.” So Mike is like, “All right, I’m in,” so he went in and actually did it. Wrote a check, sent it in. Got involved in the program, and basically, yeah, he got in the program. And then, Mike called the guy back like later on that day or maybe it was the next day and to talk about it, and the guy was like, “Aw! I couldn’t afford it.” Mike is like, “What?” He’s like, “Yeah, I couldn’t afford it.” He’s like, “Are you kidding me? You couldn’t afford to like… Like you just told me you sent a check. Well, I wrote a check based on that.” Like he said, “I send my college tuition on this thing. It was like every penny I had in my bank account.” And the guy was like, “Sorry I can’t do it,” and so Mike was like stuck at this point, and, you know, the buddy called us and canceled. But Mike had stayed in and basically Mike was like, “You know what? I committed to this. I can’t… I got to do it.” So he went through and did it. He showed up at our next Mastermind meeting or our first workshop, as green as green can be. The guy didn’t know anything about Internet marketing or anything. And we started the Mastermind group and there’s 18 people or so in this group, and each person is supposed to get up and present their business, and before I started it, I said, you know, “Does anyone want to go first?” And Mike jumps right up and stands in front of the room — doesn’t know anything about anything! Stands up there, starts drawing a picture of his supplement that he sold through his MLM, and said, “This is what I have,” and that was it, and so we started working on this thing. Man, he just jumped in and just worked hard and spent the next four months, building out his first funnel and launching it. Making some money, and then kept going from there and ended up learning how to drive traffic, and just kept growing and evolving. I’ve been watching him do this stuff, and anyway he came today, he was kind of talking about what he’s doing. I didn’t realize his last week alone he made 10 grand. Last month I think it was close to like 30 grand or something crazy like that, and what was interesting is that he told me that his buddy, the guy that had signed up and then canceled, basically had just reapplied for school because he’s frustrated and his business hasn’t grown. He’s just stagnated and he was going back to school now to figure out Option B, and it was just kind of cool to see this tale of two people, right? Two people who started at the exact same situation, both made the same commitment. One followed through and one didn’t, and where is their life at now? What’s the difference? You know, what’s been happening, and it’s just kind of cool to see that. And just to kind of like put you in perspective of like the type of person that he is, he was telling me a story tonight that he wanted do this partnership with this guy that he was going to be calling, and it was for this mortgage broker thing. The guy told him, “Hey, you need to start cold calling mortgage brokers,” and Mike was like, “All right.” So he grabbed a phone book and starting cold calling mortgage brokers. He didn’t even know what the pitch was but started dialing numbers, and saying, “Hey, so we’ve got this thing…” And didn’t even know what it was, and was trying to like explain this thing, and he didn’t even know what it was. The first one went and it totally bombed, so Mike called the guy back, “Hey, it bombed, but this is what I said…” And the guy is like, “Well, that’s not what we’re selling. This is what we’re doing,” and so he kind of tweaked it. Anyway, he kept dialing, and just cold calling mortgage brokers out of a phone book; selling a product he didn’t even know what it was, just because the guy said, “you need to do it.” And he just jumped in and did it and did it and did it and boom! And eventually landed like four or five mortgage brokers in this deal, and just did it, and I was telling him how impressive it is for me. Like he’s the kind of person when he just moves forward and he hits something, and then he just keeps moving forward, he keeps moving forward and he keeps moving forward. And I told him how rare that is, like people don’t just do that. Like most people, they start moving forward, they hit something and they stop, and then they stop. Maybe they’ll move forward again, they hit something, they stop. And the reason why he’s successful is because he doesn’t stop. When he hit something he keeps going and he keeps going. He doesn’t let fear or excuses or no money or whatever, he doesn’t let the fact that he doesn’t even know what the product is, stop him. He just goes and goes and goes and goes, and I look at this kid now, 20… I think he’s 22 or 23-years-old. You know, he’s ten years younger than me, and this is a guy who’s got the world on his fingertips. He can literally do whatever he wants now. Because he just brute-forced through this, he understands funnels and traffic, and I’ve seen him build funnels now for himself and other people, and he’s learned the process and it’s just… it’s amazing. And so, I wanted to share that story, first off, because it inspired the heck out of me, and hopefully inspires the heck out of you as well. I hope that it makes you guys look at yourself, and then kind of look internal and look at like what are the things that keep you from moving forward sometimes? You know, it’s kind of funny, on the flip side of that I had a phone call today with another person who joined our coaching program, who signed up, went through the initial program. Went through my initial consult I do with them, where I kind of steer them in the right direction. I map out a business model, a funnel for them, and gave them everything on a silver platter, and then for two months he didn’t do anything. And then, two months later he calls me and is like, “Hey, so I haven’t done anything. I can’t remember what you wanted me to do. Can we do another call, so that you can re-explain to me what you told me two months ago?” I was like, “No, like if you didn’t take notes, if you’re not paying attention, I’m not going to do it for you again.” Like, and then, the guy said like, “Oh, well, if I can’t talk to you on the phone, I want a refund for my money.” All these things, and I was like, “Dude, like two months ago I gave you a business model on a silver platter. Since then you’ve had the ability to Vox me any time you want. How many times have you Voxed me? Zero. “You’ve had a chance to inbound call my two business partners every single week. How many times have you inbound called them? Zero.” You know, and it’s just this guy who’s frustrated and upset, and look at him versus Mike, what’s the difference? Okay, one person doesn’t make excuses. One person doesn’t let… I don’t know what would get in the way. One person doesn’t let any… just moves forward, and knows that success is right there and just goes and grabs it. Where another person, I don’t know if he’s been there for two months. He hasn’t been working, that’s for dang sure, and now wants to blame it on me or blame it on whoever and it just drives me crazy. And so, I want to make sure that you guys are more like Mike. Not like Mike’s friend, or not like the other guy that I’m talking about. Don’t be that kind of a person, you guys. I want you to be successful. So anyway, I hope that helps. It’s three in the morning. I’m so tired, I don’t even know if anything I said even makes any sense, but that’s how it works. So, you guys, if you’ve come to my events before or heard me talk about this, I talk a lot about a concept called Lead or Gold, where when I set goals or have ideas, I always set what I call a Lead or Gold Deadline. And that story comes from — I heard John, John Carlton, and Gary Halbert tell the story years ago, where they talk about how like the Mexican mafia, how when they need something to happen, right? They go to the government and they say, “Hey, we need to change this law, so that we can get more drugs,” or whatever, right? And the government is like “No, we can’t do that. That’s stupid. Like we’ll never do that.” They say, “Okay, that’s fine.” And then, that night they’ll break into the government leaders’ homes and they’ll jump, you know, come and grab them and hold a gun to their head, and hold the gun in one hand in a bag of gold in another hand and say: “Hey, you know what I talked about earlier today? You need to change it, right now, and you’ve got two options: Number one is lead, and you’re going to die. Or option number two is gold, where you’re going to take my bribe, and those two options, Lead or Gold.” And when those are your options, Lead or Gold, it’s pretty easy to take the gold, okay? And so for me whenever I try to get something done in my business, I set what I call Lead or Gold Deadlines. Like this has to happen, right now, and I do not deviate from it. I set these deadlines in there. In my mind, they are Lead or Gold. I will die if I do not create this deadline, and that’s why I’m out at three in the morning. Because I set a Lead or Gold Deadline on a project that I’m doing tomorrow, and it’s 3:09, and I’m finally getting home because my Lead or Gold Deadline, I had to hit it. I didn’t have the opportunity to weasel out of it. And anyway, that’s one thing I do, you guys, to help me be successful and help make sure I get stuff done. So anyhoo, I’m home. I’m done. I need some sleep because I’ve got to be up in four hours to go and give the presentation I just finished a few minutes ago. But I appreciate you guys. Thanks for hanging out with me tonight. I hope that you got something from this podcast. I appreciate you guys. Go out and conquer, go serve the world in your way. Change somebody’s life today, and if you do that, all the stuff we talk about is going to be worth it. So thanks, you guys, I appreciate you, and we’ll talk soon.