Podcasts about what steven

Steven Van Belleghem Show Notes   Steven Van Belleghem is a global thought leader in the field of customer experience. His passion is spreading ideas about the future of customer experience.   Steven believes in the combination of common sense, new technologies, an empathic human touch, playing the long-term game and taking your social responsibility to win the hearts and business of customers over and over again.   Steven is the author of multiple international bestselling books including ‘The Conversation Manager', ‘When Digital Becomes Human', ‘Customers the Day After Tomorrow', ‘The Offer You Can't Refuse' and a technology thriller called Eternal.   Questions   Could you share a little bit about your journey in your own words, share with us how you got into this whole field of customer experience. And just a little bit about why you think it's so important to the success of a business? So in one of your more recent books, The Offer You Can't Refuse, you focus a lot on the importance of what you should focus on as it relates to the new generation of customer expectations. Three of the things you mentioned are ultimate convenience, partner in life and save the world. So could you share with us just explain to our listeners, what that really means, explain those concepts to us and why it is, as a business owner? Those are some things that you should really be paying attention to. So we have to really, really focus on ensuring that we are able to manage the expectations of our customers, do you find that customers' expectations have changed a lot since the pandemic? Could you give us maybe one two or three tips that you recommend to our listeners who are business owners of small, medium as well as managers in different organizations, across different industries. Maybe one, two or three things that you think they need to pay attention to, that would be an emerging innovation or an emerging expectation of customers within the next three to five years. Could you share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? Could you share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you? Can you share with us; do you have anything that's going on in your life right now? Or one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about, it could be something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people? Where can listeners find you online? Do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote because it kind of gets you back on track and gets you refocused if it is that you feel derailed or off track in any way, do you have one of those?   Highlights   Steven's Journey   Steven shared that he started his journey in his childhood, his parents had a small photography store in Belgium, that's where he lives in Europe. And looking back to how they've run the business, he came to the conclusion later on that they were obsessed with their customers, they were always talking about their customers, they were always trying to find solutions and they were also very innovative in the way how they reached out to customers and he's talking about the 1980s, so it's a long time ago. But they were working with database marketing already back then, they were they were working with personalized marketing and they were really trying to give people a smile on their face when they left their store.   And for him, that was like the most natural thing in the world. It's only when he grew up and when he went to other places that he started to learn how exceptional that was to be in a place where the customer is your most important inspiration and the reason why you get up in the morning.   So that's how he got basically almost injected with an obsession for customers in his DNA and in the way he was educated by his parents and he still believes that today.   If you look to the success or failure of a company, it is just linked to the fact how excited and how happy customers are, how well you have managed to exceed their expectations, how excited they become of what you've done for them, that defines your success or your failure. And then everything else that you do is a result of that and everything that you achieve is a result of how you treat your customers.   And he's convinced that he's obsessed with that, this is what his research is about, that's what he tries to do in his own businesses and it's a part of who he is.    The Concepts of the New Generation of Customer Expectations   Me: So in one of your more recent books, The Offer You Can't Refuse, you focus a lot on the importance of what you should focus on as it relates to the new generation of customer expectations. Three of things you mentioned are ultimate convenience, partner in life and save the world. So could you share with us just explain to our listeners, what that really means, explain those concepts to us and why it is, as a business owner those are some things that you should really be paying attention to.   Steven shared that in his latest book, The Offer You Can't Refuse, he tried to build a model with different components and each of those components bring value to the modern customer.   And the whole bottom line is actually just having a good product service and a competitive price and that's still of course, extremely important, without that you cannot make customers happy but it's the minimum the amount, it's not how you positively differentiate yourself.   And then in today's world, especially after the big digital jump forward that we've seen in the last 14 months, digital convenience has also become the new normal, it has become a commodity, if you have it fine, if you don't have it, your organization is suffering.   So digital convenience is seen as the most natural thing in the world, so it's not a positive differentiator anymore, it becomes a negative one when you're not playing that game. So that's not how you win, that's your ticket to get on board of the train but that's not how you win.   And then the question is how do you win?   And then he plays with those two components that Yanique mentioned, partner in life, which is about bringing positive change in the life of the customer. This is not about how can we sell more to our customers; this is how we can bring more value in their life. This is not about optimizing your customer journey, it's about optimizing their life journey of customers, and being part of their life journey in a way that you proactively bring value to them, that's what a partner in life is all about.   And then that last element, change the world, save the world, he recently talked about changing your world because if you're a small company in Belgium or if you're a small company in Jamaica, probably those companies cannot change the world but they do have the possibility to change their world, change your world, every organization has strengths, doesn't matter the size that they have, this even goes for an individual.   Everyone, every business has strengths that they can leverage to contribute to a better world. And to add value to society in a way that goes beyond sustainability, he's also talking about social value, he's talking about the ethics that you apply in your own community. And if you work with that, you can actually make a difference.   And there are more and more people who expect that from organizations, there are more and more people that want organizations to take the responsibility.   And then you have like four components, good product service price, as the lowest part of it, the digital convenience, partner in life, changing your world. And those four components individually, they bring value to a customer but if you figure out a way, how to bring that story as one storyline, as one experience towards your customers, where you connect those four elements, that's when you create what he calls the offer you cannot refuse for your customers.   The Changing of Customers' Expectations Since the Pandemic   Steven shared that he believes that on the elements that he just talked about, he feels that we made a big jump forward that it almost feels like we stepped into some sort of Time Machine.   If you take digital for instance, the latest study that he has seen from McKinsey actually mentioned that we made a jump of seven years into the future in terms of behaviour, without a pandemic, it would have taken seven years to bring us where we are today so that is changing expectations, that obviously this is changing how we look at things and what we expect.   But also look at the top of the model, changing your world. He thinks the pandemic was for many of us a wakeup call, that we suddenly valued much more the things we had and that we used to take for granted. And more and more people are worried about the future of our planet, not just in terms of sustainability and climate change but also the increase in poverty that we've seen because of COVID unfortunately. The higher demand for health care solutions to deal with the next pandemic and how we can avoid that and how we can be more ready for that. Those are all questions that are now on top of our mind that wasn't so 15 months ago.   And the way that people look to organizations has changed in that perspective that they also understand how companies can bring value in their life, how companies can bring joy into their life and they expect these companies to keep on doing that and they expect these companies to proactively try to become part of the solution of some of those global challenges that we're facing.   And all of that was already happening before 2020 but it all stepped into a time machine. And many of the trends that people like you and me have been talking about in the last couple of years are now suddenly a reality. It's like the day after tomorrow became today, that's the feeling that he has.   Tips for Emerging Expectations of Customers Within the Next 3-5 Years   Me: Could you give us maybe one two or three tips that you recommend to our listeners who are business owners of small, medium as well as managers in different organizations, across different industries. Maybe one, two or three things that you think they need to pay attention to, that would be an emerging innovation or an emerging expectation of customers within the next three to five years. Because I know you said we've advanced digitally about seven years ahead of our time. But what are maybe other things in the customer experience realm that don't tap into digital, there's that human aspect as well that you think the organizations need to focus on that you think will become as an emerging need within the next three to five years?   Steven agreed and shared that the human part of the customer relationship will become more premium than before the pandemic.   We always thought digital would replace humans and he thinks the conclusion is that that will never happen.   There's this old economic law of scarcity and it learns us if something becomes scarce, it actually increases in value, well, the human part in a customer relation has never been lower than today.   And because of that, we value it more than ever, and being helped by a human in real life is more premium than ever before. He doesn't know how it is in Jamaica right now, but in Belgium, the restaurants are closed, they have to live from takeaway food or have to take care of their own stuff, and that's fine.   But sometimes you miss the hospitality of a restaurant, that there's a friendly human there that actually tries to give you a memorable time, a good time that you can enjoy life without having to worry about anything else, that's what humans do, that's not what machines does.   Machines will take care of the convenience and the efficiency in our life and that's fine. And if companies don't have that they're in trouble, but most of them understand that and are building that convenience.   But the winners, in terms of customer experience will be the ones that have most empathy in their organization. Because understanding what people want, how people feel, and anticipating to that, that will be the crucial skill that will make a difference in the next couple of years.   Me: So you touched on a topic that I get asked all the time when I have different training sessions, doesn't even matter what level they fall in the organization, whether they're level one frontline staff, or they're level four, let's say you're a C suite type of individual in the organization, empathy. What is empathy? In your own words, based on your own research. And can empathy be taught? Or is it something that you have to learn? Does it come as a learnt experience kind of thing? Because people ask me that question all the time, “These people lack empathy, I don't know what else to do. I put them through all of these different certification and training programmes, they're just not doing what we want them to do with our customers.” How do you get your team members to that point?   Steven stated that this is a crucial question, he gets it quite a lot as well. And the question is, is this the responsibility of the team members? Or is this the responsibility of the senior leader?   And first of all, there are a number of people who don't have any empathy whatsoever and they don't know how to work with other humans. And they're really bad in delivering a good customer service and that percentage of people, which he believes is a very small percentage, but they do exist, that percentage of people cannot be trained, they will never be capable of helping customers in a fantastic way. So probably, they will have to look for another job where they're not involved customers, because they don't have the capabilities for that.   And then you have a small group of people that has a natural talent of doing these things wonderfully no matter which context they're in. The majority of us humans, we have the potential to listen to customers, to anticipate, to proactively help them and show a positive intent and that's what people really like to see, a positive intent.   Steven shared that that large group of people mainly behaves based on the leadership style that they have in their organization. He'll take it to a completely different market.   Take soccer players, isn't it strange that sometimes the soccer player is scoring goals like crazy and is the best player in the team in Team A, and then that player gets sold to Team B, and it's a total disaster. It seems like he cannot score any goal anymore. Is that the fault of that player? Or did that player lose his trust and capabilities because he arrived in a different context?   And he thinks this is what is crucial. He's an optimist and he believes that the large majority of all people that are working in an organization want to help customers in a positive way, because that gives you positive energy back.   So the question is, why don't they do it? And the answer usually can be found in the fact that they don't feel safe in their own environment where they are not sure what the management is expecting them to do, where they're not sure if they are allowed to help that customer. Because the day before the senior leader said, “Yeah, you help the customer but that was very expensive for us to help that person. And now we have to pay $50 extra. Hopefully we have more clients, otherwise we're going to lose money.” If an employee hears that, they think, “Oh, my God, if you help a client, we're losing money and my leader becomes really angry. So I'm not going to do that next time.”   So they change their behaviour based on what they hear and feel from senior leaders and the fact that you feel safe or that you don't feel safe, determines if you will show the behaviour that customers expect. So for all your business owners that are listening, the first step before blaming your employees is just look in the mirror and ask yourself, “How can I change my behaviour to make sure that my employees feel safer to act in a positive way towards customers?”   Me: Wow, that is a very, very, very good answer. And I like the way you framed it in terms of taking responsibility for what are you contributing to how that person is feeling and how that person is behaving rather than saying it's their fault, it's their responsibility. Really, really a great response!   App, Website or Tool that Steven Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business   When asked about an online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Steven shared that for him personally, that is probably WhatsApp. He uses WhatsApp all the time and he thinks it's so convenient to communicate. He uses it to communicate with his clients, of course his family and friends, but also with his clients. He uses it to find jokes, but I use it to get inspiration and they have these inspiration groups that they share stuff with each other. So he thinks that's the one that he would miss most. He asked Yanique what's the one app she cannot live without.   Me: The one app that I absolutely can't live without in my business? I asked that question all the time and I don't think I've ever had a guest ask me back that question. I guess for me, the one app that I probably couldn't live without is maybe the Notes app on my phone and my computer. I'm an Apple user, so all of my devices are synced across, my phone, my MacBook and my iPad, and you may go somewhere and you see something and you take a picture, or maybe it's just to reference maybe an article that I want to write or maybe a topic that I'm looking for a particular guest on this particular area. And it just allows me to consolidate all of my thoughts and all of the things that I want to jot down in one place and I don't need to go back to my computer after I'm on my phone at the supermarket, for example, or at the beach and then copy and paste that information because it already synced across all devices, so I can jump on to the next device and click on the note that I wrote there, and I'm able to reference it. So, it's made life more convenient and seamless for me. And I think that's one of the reasons why I am definitely a loyal Apple customer because I find that they're always finding ways to make people's lives easier.   Steven agreed and shared that that's what they do best. And he's with her, he's an Apple user as well and he also loves to use the Notes.   Me: And Notes has really evolved over the years, now you can like do scans in there and you can doodle with the Apple Pencil, or even a regular, one of those pens that has the tip that you can use on the phone. If you're an Apple user, let's say for the last five to seven years, and you see how they've evolved Notes, it's really has become a tool that is not just to jot things down, but you can, as I say, save pictures in there, PDF, signatures, write with your finger or with a pen, it has become so indispensable that you really value it very much. So I would say that's probably the one app that I absolutely couldn't live without in my personal or professional life.   Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Steven   When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Steven shared that it's been a while but he thinks the book that has the biggest impact to really open up his point of view on how customers make decisions to buy something, at the decision making in their buying process. It was a book came out in the late 1990s from Geoffrey Moore it's called, Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers. And it's a book that speaks about the adoption cycle of customers. And one of the conclusions is that the marketing and the communication that you use to convince the innovators and early adopters in the market, and that creates the early success.   The communication that you use there should be completely different than the communication and the approach that you use to reach out to the early majority. Because this first group is excited about technology and new features and stuff like that. The early majority is the opposite, they're afraid of new things. So, they need to be convinced that everything is easy to use and safe, so they don't want to hear all the specs and everything like that, it's a different kind of communication.   And a lot of new products fail because the people who make them think that everyone is an innovator or an early adopter, and because of that, they just focus on that and they have an early success, they think, “Okay, we're on a roll,” and then they fail. And they fall into chiasm between this first and second group. And I read that in the late 90s and of course, if you would read the book today, the examples and stuff like that are completely outdated. But he believes the theory, the model that is used in that story is still very relevant today. And that was like the first business book that he read that really had a big impact on him.   What Steven is Really Excited About Now!    When asked about something he's doing to develop himself or his people, Steven shared that it actually started last year, he had a hobby, a dream project that got a little bit out of hand. It was always his dream to write a fiction book, a novel thriller. And Yanique mentioned it in the introduction in the beginning of the podcast. He wrote a thriller, it's called Eternal. Unfortunately, it's only available in Dutch so far, that's his native language. But he got really excited about it and he was really scared because he has been writing business books for years, he has written five of them and he's very thankful for the success that he had with them. And he's getting a little bit used to that whole process and how it goes, but then when he launched this new book, this fiction novel, he was scared to see what the reactions would be, he was so nervous. And now when the first reactions came in and they were positive and people were actually reading it and buying the book for Christmas gifts, he was really, really happy with that.   And then the publisher got really excited as well. And then they asked him, “We know that this is a hobby that got a little bit out of hand. But what do you think about the idea of writing three books in the series instead of one?” And he's currently working, he's finishing the manuscript of the second one, he does that in the evenings, early mornings, I does that in the weekend, I does that in between, but he really loves the writing process. And it's given him a lot of pressure on the one hand, but on the other hand, he's also enjoying that he can do something completely new. So he's excited and still nervous about this project.   Where Can We Find Steven Online   YouTube – Steven Van Belleghem Instagram – Steven Van Belleghem LinkedIn – Steven Van Belleghem Twitter – @StevenVBe   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Steven Uses   When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Steven shared that he one of those, it's a quote from Churchill actually, he's a fan of Sir Winston Churchill and his quotes. And one of his favourite quotes is, “Success is the consequence of failure after failure after failure without losing your enthusiasm.”   Me: And that has definitely helped you over the years.   Steven said absolutely and he was very fortunate he had a good time so far, COVID was a challenge in the beginning but then he said they need to fight back and make sure that the business keeps on going. And that actually worked. And moments like that it really helps to be focused and to keep that mindset positive and motivated to keep on going even if you don't have short term results with that.   Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest   Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners   Links   Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers by Geoffrey A. Moore   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience   Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.”   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Steven is cofounder and CEO of Cameo, the world's leading marketplace for personalized video shoutouts. The company recently raised a $100 million Series C at a valuation north of $1 billion. Steven graduated from Duke University and worked in finance and entertainment prior to launching the company in 2016. [0:59] - What Steven learned from his early entrepreneurial ventures [5:01] - Mindset shifts between the finance and tech industries [6:49] - The importance of not wasting time early in your career [10:29] - Cameo's origin story and its direct-to-fan business model [15:48] - Challenges of scaling an early stage business [18:27] - Evaluating talent and building a strong team [22:44] - Expanding Cameo's offerings [26:19] - Steven's thoughts on Bitcoin and BitClout [31:24] - Geographic influence on new businesses --- homeofjake.com

This week, the boys find themselves submerged in a full motel bathtub, holding a very slippery toaster oven. James hosts a high-stakes game of “What Steven is This?”, where the loser is forced to watch a randomly chosen Seagal movie from the past. Dylan shocks the world by pulling out a visit from Steven’s Forum Friends. And hey, if you don’t want to see a ragtag team of homophobes save the world, why are you watching a Steven Seagal movie? Don’t forget to send us hate-mail at Stevendestroypodcast@gmail.com!

Steven’s Wallace is a Banff and destination wedding photographer with a passion for film photography. Today we talk about Steven’s love of film, why the film vs digital debate is garbage, and great tips for new photographer looking to get started in film photography. In This Episode You'll Learn: How Steven got into photography What Steven struggled with most in the beginning and how he overcame it How Steven started shooting weddings Why the film vs digital debate is useless Stevens film photography workflow How Steven edits film and digital photos together to create a cohesive look Where to develop your own film Some great beginner cameras and films to start with Resources: Banff Wedding Photographer Steven Wallace’s website Read why Steven loves shooting film Studioc41 Podcast Steven Wallace on Instagram Join The Beginner Photography Podcast Facebook Community

Tony was crosswalking in an area of Davenport, IA, called -Five Points- when Steven pulled into the parking lot and said, -I'll stop and talk to ya----Steven -31- is a pastor's kid. According to Steven, he came to genuine faith in Christ when he hit -rock bottom,- after a divorce.--Tony role-played a witnessing encounter with Steven to given him an opportunity to communicate the gospel. What Steven shared was more akin to Mormonism or Catholicism than the biblical gospel.--The two switched roles, which gave Tony the opportunity to communicate the gospel to Steven. Steven said he believed the gospel he heard from Tony, but had his eyes opened to the reality that what he had shared with Tony wasn't the gospel.

Subscribe to How To Trade ItOne of the biggest myths that Steven Brooks hears is that “In order to make more money I have to risk more money.” Because of that, traders feel that they have to risk a lot. But Steven believes you can make more money by risking less. In his experience, success in trading has little to do with your strategy. Steven believes that profits are a result of trading in your comfort zone. What does he mean by that? How do you find and stay in your comfort zone? Listen to this episode of How To Trade It to learn more!You’ll want to hear this episode if you are interested in...[1:07] The importance of a positive mindset[4:53] Determine your emotional threshold[12:54] How to trade in your comfort zone[15:08] When do you raise your comfort zone?[16:07] 3 myths that traders believe[20:55] How Steven built discipline[26:54] What Steven’s trading process looks like[33:21] How Steven helps traders[34:44] Get a FREE guide from StevenResources & People MentionedFREE eBook: 7 Myths About Becoming a Consistent TraderConnect with Steven BrooksSteven’s MasterclassSteven's WebsiteConnect With Casey StubbsWebsite: https://caseystubbs.comYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/TradingStrategyGuidesYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/caseystubbsTwitter:  https://www.twitter.com/caseystubbsFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TradingStrategyGuidesLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/caseystubbsNewsletter: https://financeandmarkets.com/Subscribe to How To Trade ItSupport the show (https://caseystubbs.com)

When he hears the word ‘changemaker’, we imagine someone’s who’s predestined to take on some special role in following their inner calling. What Light has found through having dozens of these conversations is that changemakers are often just like us. Today’s guest is Steven Reed, a childhood friend of Light’s and someone who, back in 2019, became the 57th mayor of their hometown of Montgomery, Alabama. What's significant about that is that Mayor Reed was the first Black mayor in a town that was, for a brief period of time, the official capital of the confederacy. It was also the place where Dr. King launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott in the 1950s, the place where Rosa Parks was arrested 65 years ago for her participation, and the home of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where Dr. King began his career as a minister and an activist. Montgomery has a very rich history and, for that reason, Mayor Reed's election made international headlines. In today's episode, listeners hear about Steven’s unlikely journey of leaving Montgomery for business pursuits, trying to do the traditional thing by becoming a financial analyst, his failures as an entrepreneur, and why he decided to become the change he wanted to see by running for office – first as a probate judge, even though he did not have a law degree, and then later as a mayor. Find out why most people think they cannot run for public office and how, believe it or not, you are more qualified than you think. This fascinating conversation might inspire you to get more involved in local politics and become the change you want to see in your area of the world, so make sure to tune in today!Key Points From This Episode:Steven reflects on his favorite toy as a child, and why he enjoyed it.The history of the Reed family in Montgomery, Alabama, and their political ties to the city.How much of this history of activism was casually shared with Steven as he was growing up.Steven’s love for football and his dream of becoming a player or coach when he got older.What it was like growing up in the cradle fo the confederacy in such a politically aware family.His decision to follow in his brother’s footsteps and attend Morehouse College in Atlanta.One of the tenets Steven learned at Morehouse: Not only push yourself to be your best, but push the community and culture beyond that.How he defined success at that point in his life – to bring his mindset to corporate America.Choosing business over political science thanks to his generation of opportunities.A work ethic philosophy he inherited from his dad – “Ain't nobody going to build you a temple and make you high priest.”Steven shares his main takeaways from his three years as a financial analyst.Realizing he wasn’t as numbers-driven as others and leaving for management consulting.How Steven came to learn real-world entrepreneurial experience in a non-traditional way.Steven talks candidly about some of his entrepreneurial failures and discouragements.What Steven’s dad taught him about removing ego and pride from business ventures.Learn about Steven’s first foray into lobbying and the reasons he chose to get into it.The 2008 speech Barack Obama gave that changed the way Steven viewed public service.Who Steven has around to support and guide him in his decisions and his role in that group.The combination of inspiration and frustration that led him to take the risk of running for probate judge in Montgomery.Steven explains how people mistake mediocrity for excellence when it comes to politicians.Why Steven believes he was elected as probate judge – given that the tides were turning.Find out more about the controversial decision Steven made to issue same-sex marriage licenses as probate judge in 2015.The process of runnin

What Steven did next...the Soder-bangs look at Soderbergh's slightly confounding second and third films. Both period pieces, but wildly divergent from sex, lies, videotape and totally different from each other. Was he using Hollywood cash to learn filmmaking? Who was cutting Jess Bradford's hair? Add us to your favourite podcasting app so you never miss an episode. We will be progressing chronologically so no excuse not to play along. With love the Club Soderbergh team.

Guest’s Background: Steven Dixon is an Award Winning business person who has started Companies throughout various Countries in the World and has built them into thriving Million Dollar businesses. Starting his business journey as a 26-year-old with less than $500 in his bank account, Steven struggled and battled through the first 3 years of his business life. What Steven lacked in education and resources, he more than made up for with his undeniable commitment to succeed. Today Steven works alongside some of the finest business people within Australia and around the Globe to continue learning and implementing the skills and techniques that have provided proven results. Through the various programs in B4B (Breakthrough4Business) Steven is able to deliver the best of what he learns into simple and manageable programs where he can walk beside you and take your business to the next level. Website: www.b4b.academy System Steps: Step 1: Think it up. Step 2: Hand it off. Step 3: Make it real. Step 4: Make it better. Step 5: Ask for feedback.  Support the show.

Steven Jenkins knew someone who had experienced domestic violence. He wanted to help others who had experienced the same so he decided to volunteer at a local domestic violence shelter. What Steven would come to learn was the database the shelter was using was inadequate and the staff was spending too much time on data collection when they could be helping people at the shelter. Here’s the story of how Steven set out to solve that problem, and how he turned a volunteer position into a full time job and eventually a business.For more information about Side Hustle to Small Business visit www.hiscox.com/side-hustle-to-small-business

Occasionally, you have a deal that goes bad and earnest money is on the line. What Steven found out that was most common in disputes is that the buyer does not qualify for the loan. Even though there is a loan contingency there is nothing specifically in the contract that most of us (realtors) use and it is a GLVAR form. That says, “if buyer does not qualify for the loan” and they are pasted their contingency the buyer can lose their earnest money. Steven seen a situation where the buyer was still in their contingency and seller did not want to return it back buyer. Thanks for watching! Subscribe to our channel to get the updated market trends each month for Las Vegas, and other great real estate tips and news! Tune in every Tuesday at 9am to 101.5FM & 720AM, KDWN, The Talk of Las Vegas to hear Las Vegas Real Estate Now! Call Harvey for all of your Real Estate needs: (702) 203-1165. Check out radio show website: https://lvrealestateradio.com/ Check out real estate website: https://brownblankfeld.com/

In this episode of Lindzanity, Howard sits down with friend and founding partner at ViaWest Group that specializes in commercial real estate investments, development, and property management. They talk about where commercial real estate is going globally, within Phoenix, and how Wework has changed the business.  We hope you enjoy this episode of Lindzanity! If you would like to be notified when new episodes are released go hit the subscribe button and leave us a review. Thank you for listening! Show Notes: - How did Steven Schwarz start ViaWest Group? - Why did Steven Schwarz move to Phoenix? - What is "Sexy Money" - How is the Phoenix real estate market? - What is Howards take on the Phoenix real estate market? - What is "absorption"? - Pace at which Phoenix is "absorbing" - What Steven is worried about in the market - What other cities does Steven like working in? - How did 2008 effect ViaWest? - How did ViaWest get out of bank trouble? - How did they start raising capital? - What is Wework? - What are problems with owning office space? - How has Wework improved the business office model? - How does Wework push innovation? - What is an "Opportunity Zone"? - Who does Steven trust to learn info from? - How do people invest with ViaWest? - How does Steven invest personally Connect with ViaWest Group and Howard: http://www.viawestgroup.com/ Howard Twitter: @howardlindzon Instagram: @howardlindzon Follow along on Howard's Blog: http://howardlindzon.com/  

How to Buy a House Cheap Transcript: Steven Butala:                   Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit:                            Hello. Steven Butala:                   Welcome to The House Academy Show, entertaining real estate investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala- Jill DeWit:                            And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala:                   Today, Jill and I talk about how to buy a house cheap. Jill DeWit:                            This is episode zero. Steven Butala:                   This is episode zero of our new House Academy Show- Jill DeWit:                            I love it. Steven Butala:                   And in a strange but not unplanned way, we're about to record episode 1000 this week for our Land Academy Show. Jill DeWit:                            Yes. How funny is that? Steven Butala:                   When you see all those goose eggs up there... when I see them I'm like, "Are these guys brand new?" Jill DeWit:                            Exactly. Steven Butala:                   "Another real estate show?" Jill DeWit:                            Here we go. Steven Butala:                   It turns out Jill and I have combined tons and tons of experience. Since the '90s, we've been buying and selling real estate. Lots of land and lots of houses and we've had a company called Land Academy for years, since 2015. Incredibly successful. Our members buy and sell land right alongside us. At their urging, we started this company called House Academy and, consequently, this podcast. Jill DeWit:                            It's because we've been buying and selling houses at the same time, people got wind of it, and now we're here sharing that with everyone. What's next? Who knows? Steven Butala:                   Our whole approach is very different. If this is the first time you've ever listened to any of these shows, our approach, it's worth listening to. Our approach is very, very, very unique and we offer a lot of tools and a lot of membership things that are quite honestly changing people's lives. Jill DeWit:                            Well, it's access to professional-level tools that you can't get in other places. That's the reality. It's like if you're new in our world and you don't have the connections or the money to access some of the assessor data and other things that we'll talk about as these shows progress, it's hard to get started and so that's why we created House Academy so you not only have access to all of that, but then you've got the inside information of our years of doing it so we can help you ramp up quickly. Steven Butala:                   We're the only licensed providers of all three major assessor database data companies- Jill DeWit:                            That's true. Steven Butala:                   And because we negotiated a fantastic deal with all these companies, it's very, very [crosstalk 00:02:17] inexpensive to use them. Jill DeWit:                            Exactly. Steven Butala:                   We own our own mail company and there are a lot of different professional-grade tools that high-level commercial real estate acquisition people use every single day through us, so this is not a startup or a run-of-the-mill "I wonder what these schmoes have to say?" There's none of that going on. Jill DeWit:                            Who is the schmo?" Steven Butala:                   "Well, I wonder what that schmo is doing with that woman? I wonder what she [crosstalk 00:02:43]- Jill DeWit:                            "Why is that schmo talking like that?" Steven Butala:                   Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members in the houseacademy.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit:                            Jeff asked, "How long does it take to find a house to buy?" Steven Butala:                   How long does it take, Jill? Jill DeWit:                            Days/weeks. It's just getting the offers out. Steven Butala:                   Here's my question, Jeff. Jill DeWit:                            That's it. Steven Butala:                   Do you really just want to buy one house? Jill DeWit:                            That's true. Steven Butala:                   It's all a system. Jill DeWit:                            That's true. Steven Butala:                   For every 3,000 offers that we send out via direct mail, and how we do it is a very sophisticated mail merge type thing, sophisticated but not difficult, mail merge scenario, for about 3,000 if you do it correctly, you're going to buy a house at about 70 to 75% of its current value. Not ARV. We're going to... Jill DeWit:                            We'll have a whole week on ARV. Steven Butala:                   Yeah, and why you should never even say that. In fact, I'm not going to say it again. We don't [crosstalk 00:03:42]- Jill DeWit:                            It's so funny. Steven Butala:                   We as residential real estate investors don't presume what the people we sell it to can sell it for. We can tell with an incredible amount of accuracy, let's say it's worth 300,000 bucks and we want to buy it for 260, that's the business we're in. How long does it take to buy a house? You set the system up, you learn how to do it right, and from the time that you get the direct mail campaign... it's an offer campaign, it's not, "Would you like to buy this house?" It's none of that. Jill DeWit:                            Right. No postcards. Steven Butala:                   It's, "Hey, John Smith, homeowner 123 [crosstalk 00:04:22]- Jill DeWit:                            Post sticky notes- Steven Butala:                   "Main Street. We want to buy your house for 280,000 bucks. We can close in a couple of weeks and here's why and how to do it. Here's all the other properties that we've dealt with and here's our whole group. This is for real. We're real people." It takes about two or three weeks for the offers to get right in front of that owner, and then from there it takes less than 30 days, cash in, cash out. Jill will explain when we talk about how to buy a cheap house here in the meat of the show, explain how to get financing and all that other stuff. Of all the things that you've ever incurred, all the issues you've ever incurred, bottlenecks in buying and selling real estate, we've seen it all. Jill DeWit:                            I agree. Steven Butala:                   If we haven't, our members have and we can call them. Jill DeWit:                            Thank you. Steven Butala:                   Today's topic, how to buy a cheap house. Jill DeWit:                            This is why you're listening. Seriously. Steven Butala:                   It sounds a little different. We're getting used to it, too. Jill DeWit:                            Totally. You want to talk how to buy a cheap house? Steven Butala:                   Well, like I alluded to in the question, it's all in a system, and so I'm not sure why anybody would want to buy just one cheap house. Jill DeWit:                            True. Steven Butala:                   Maybe four- Jill DeWit:                            Somebody do. Wait a minute. We have people in our world that do that, by the way. Steven Butala:                   Just buy one cheap house- Jill DeWit:                            Time out. Steven Butala:                   And that's it Jill DeWit:                            Let me just tell you, coming from my side of the business over here where we do sales and programs and all that stuff, we really do have people that come in that they only want to use our program to buy their dream cabin or their dream ranch or their dream place to park their RV or hunt or fish or whatever. There is some of that going on, so you can use this, but what's great about it is you can use our tools and resources and spend your time and find your three favorites and then drive your wife out there and pick the one you want to buy. That's what some people do. Not to change your whole thing, but I'm just being honest. That's what some people do and then you just say "thank you". Jill DeWit:                            What often happens is, which is kind of funny, we've had people that started down this path and the next thing you know they're like, "You know what? Actually, that wasn't that hard. I picked the one I want and I bought three more and now I'm just selling them because you guys taught me how to do that. Now, that's going to pay for the one I just bought." That can happen, too. Steven Butala:                   Exactly. Here's how you buy a cheap house step by step. If you're a note taker, this is the time to take notes. You always laugh when I say that. Jill DeWit:                            I don't think anybody does. They have recorders. They do screenshots anymore. I don't think anybody really takes note. Steven Butala:                   You don't think they take the lead of the pencil and- Jill DeWit:                            No, I'm... Steven Butala:                   Tap it on their tongue. Jill DeWit:                            I'm very sorry to break that to you. You know it's 2020 next year. Steven Butala:                   I'm very aware of that. Jill DeWit:                            Okay, thank you. Steven Butala:                   You have to choose a market first, and so let's say you choose a market like Mesa, Arizona. I'm just going to use a random example. This works in every single market that there is and here's why. There's 10, I just happen to know this, but there's 10 zip codes in Mesa, Arizona, and you want to take all the zip code data from that existing market, all 10 zip codes, and look at... line it all up on a spreadsheet. Look at days on market, month-over-month days on market, new properties listed to sold. Steven Butala:                   There's a bunch of statistics that you want to look at and you want to pit these zip codes against each other. One is going to come one or five or three or some number of those 10 zip codes is going to jump out at you and it's going to say something like this. "Well, this zip code, the average days on market last month, were 15. All the rest of these zip codes are 40, 30, 80, 70." Jill DeWit:                            Exactly. Steven Butala:                   I like lower days on market. There's several statistics you look at. How many properties are listed that month? How many properties were sold? You can take, if you're the data crazy type person, you're going to love this part of it. I personally love this part of it, and you're going to see that there's three clearly, in all these statistics you look at, three zip codes that really work. We call that The Red Green Yellow Test, or Red Yellow Green, Green Yellow Red, everybody uses a different [crosstalk 00:08:38]- Jill DeWit:                            I know. Steven Butala:                   When they ask in our group. Jill DeWit:                            Exactly. Steven Butala:                   That's number one. Now, you've got three zip codes to send offers to. You pull the data and you got to make sure you get the mortgage data with it and all that, which we've made that incredibly simple. Step one is to pit these zip codes against each other. Step two is to pull the ownership data of all the house owners. Jill DeWit:                            Which we supply. Steven Butala:                   You want [crosstalk 00:09:04]- Jill DeWit:                            It's through DataTree. We use DataTree [crosstalk 00:09:04]- Steven Butala:                   DataTree. Yes, we're [crosstalk 00:09:05] licensed providers of DataTree. Jill DeWit:                            It's no secret. Steven Butala:                   The assessed data, and then it's got mortgage data and a bunch of other sources of data in it as a line item, and then you scrub that data down and take out the things that you don't... who logically shouldn't get an offer. One of the first things I do is scrub the data down. I remove everybody with a mortgage. That's just how we do it. We have several members who have different concept about that and different methodologies, but it ends up taking about half the data out. Now, my strike percentage in this mailer is going to get great. It's going to get better and better and better with each step from this point forward. Steven Butala:                   You've already taken out the seven worst zip codes in Mesa. You're working with the three best zip codes. Now, you're only working with the people who don't have a mortgage. Now, let's take it a couple of steps further. There are people who have LLC-owned properties in that market. You can choose to just send it to them. We choose to send it to just about everybody who doesn't have a mortgage and just kind of see what happens because the data is real cheap. We've made it cheap for you. Then, and here's the key to how to buy a cheap house, you take all the algorithms and line them up in a line item for realtor.com, redfin.com- Jill DeWit:                            Zillow. Steven Butala:                   Zillow, Trulia, DataTree- Jill DeWit:                            Redfin. Steven Butala:                   RealtyTrac. There's [crosstalk 00:10:25] five or six of them, and you literally input. There's lots of different ways to do it. Input those fields and price with what you think that house is worth right now or what all these incredibly [crosstalk 00:10:37]- Jill DeWit:                            Average- Steven Butala:                   And complicated... Yeah, exactly. If Zillow and Redfin and Trulia, all those, the rest of them are coming in and you average all six of them out and it comes up with a number like $278,000, that's what the market really believes that that property is worth right now. You have to decide what type of profit margin you'd like to price and send them an offer below that number. Arbitrarily, let's just use $30,000 or $40,000. They're going to get an offer for 30, 40, or $50,000 below what all of those algorithms believe that property is worth, which by the way, that's why we take... it's taking a big example. If you're a statistical person, it's a huge chance that this is going to be very, very correct, Jill DeWit:                            It's a couple thousand. Let me just make sure. It's not 100 or 200, it's thousands. Steven Butala:                   Thousands. Jill DeWit:                            Don't worry, we're not asking you to sit and go, "Are you proposing that I take 5,000 ownership scenarios and input six lines and look them all up?" Nope, we have a solution with that, and we'll talk about that [crosstalk 00:11:47]- Steven Butala:                   It's very correct. Jill DeWit:                            At another time. Steven Butala:                   We make it... This whole thing [crosstalk 00:11:47]- Jill DeWit:                            We handle that for you. Steven Butala:                   Done correctly, this whole thing may be able to take you an hour if you're really going slow. Now, you've got it correctly priced. You've got, like Jill said, there's 5,000 logical candidates in there, and we own company called Offers 2 Owners. You get all that to them- Jill DeWit:                            They do the data and put [crosstalk 00:12:07]- Steven Butala:                   And they get it in the mail for you. You will buy a house, and we've proven it over and over and over and over again. Jill DeWit:                            Let me back up on the one piece that that was just saying you know the price. What Steven was saying is, you have all this information and what you're doing is you're actually using that. You took their $270,000. You was like, "Hey, I'm happy to make $30,000 and get out because I want to pass it on to the next guy", which is what you're trying to do here. That owner is going to get a real strategic offer from you for $248,962.21 and you're ready to close in 10 days. You're all cash. We'll go into that more later and that's how it goes. That's what you're sending them, not a postcard, not a "Hey, whatever", even though [crosstalk 00:12:56]- Steven Butala:                   You're sending them an offer. Jill DeWit:                            You're sending them an offer, so when they're opening up your... it's an offer in the mail and they know what you're willing to spend. The key for me is, they know where you stand and you know when they reach out to you that they're not just going to throw you a random number. "Yeah, I want to sell. I think it's worth half a million." We'd never want to go there. That's what this is weeding out and that's why this is so important. Steven Butala:                   It's really efficient. Our ways are very [crosstalk 00:13:25]- Jill DeWit:                            Very efficient. Steven Butala:                   Very efficient. Jill DeWit:                            You got to have [crosstalk 00:13:27]- Steven Butala:                   What you never want to do [crosstalk 00:13:27]- Jill DeWit:                            Data cheap, and you got to have all the... you got to get all the information cheap. You have to have cheap mail, and we have all of that figured out, so that's why this works. Steven Butala:                   In my opinion, what you never want to do is send a letter of interest, which is really why I think there's a lot of confusion out there about direct mail, why some people have not experienced the success that we have using direct mail because I think they send letters of interest. "Hey, I'm really interested in buying your property located at 123 Main Street. Why don't you give me [crosstalk 00:13:56] a call?" Jill DeWit:                            Some just say, "Hey, dear customer, I'm interested [crosstalk 00:13:58] in buying- Steven Butala:                   Dear resident. Jill DeWit:                            Or homeowner [crosstalk 00:14:02]- Steven Butala:                   Postcards or all that stuff, so if you've had a bad experience with direct mail or you've heard somebody talk about it that way, these are direct offer campaigns. It's different than direct mail. Jill DeWit:                            Exactly. Steven Butala:                   From there, here's a great new suit. You bought a [inaudible 00:14:18], it's real inexpensive. The three best zip codes in Mesa. Everyone who owns a house in an LLC or owns multiple properties or is got a dumpster in front of their house, which we'll talk about in a couple of episodes, those are the people that are going to buy the house. There's not this mystery of let's see what's going to happen. Jill DeWit:                            I love it. I think we explain how to buy it cheap. Coming up in a few shows, we'll talk about what to do with it, how to close on the deal, where your buyers are, all of that. Steven Butala:                   Well said. Jill DeWit:                            Thank you. Steven Butala:                   Join us next time for the episode called Why Steve Butala and Jill DeWit Started House Academy. That's us. Jill DeWit:                            We answer your questions posted on our online community at houseacademy.com. It's free. Go get an account. Steven Butala:                   You are not alone in your real estate ambition. Jill DeWit:                            Sorry, I [inaudible 00:15:13]. You were going to keep on going and I'm like, "Hey, this is only episode zero. We have a lot to say. He's going to say, 'Episode zero is going to be four hours long', and we're just going to talk about everything", but no, we won't. I know you're excited and I'm glad. Steven Butala:                   Exactly. Jill DeWit:                            By the way, I'm excited. Wherever you're watching, wherever you're listening, please subscribe and rate us there. We are Steve and Jill [crosstalk 00:15:37]- Steven Butala:                   We are Steve and Jill. Information- Jill DeWit:                            And inspiration- Steven Butala:                   To buy undervalued property.   If you enjoyed the podcast, please review it in iTunes . Reviews are incredibly important for rankings on iTunes. My staff and I read each and every one. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at steven@BuWit.com. The BuWit Family of Companies include: https://BuWit.com https://offers2owners.com https://landinvestors.com https://houseacademy.com https://landpin.com https://parcelfact.com https://countywise.com https://deedperfect.com https://houseacademy.com https://ownersdata.com https://houseacademy.com I would like to think it’s entertaining and informative and in the end profitable. And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes.

This episode is for basically anyone who loves movies! Steven E. de Souza did not just write Die Hard, he also wrote classics like Commando, Running Man, and 48 Hours among others. We of course ask Steven about the Christmas aspect of Die Hard, but also much more about the movie, writing for big action stars, the origin of "Yippee ki yay ..." and more. We hear great stories from the sets of these classic action flicks, get unique perspectives from Steven and even learn a lot about writing in the process! Topics discussed include ...-Why Steven says Die Hard is, in fact, a Christmas movie (1:50)-If Steven recognized it was a Christmas movie as he was writing it (9:20)-The "mistake" Steven made while writing Die Hard (10:15)-The origin of "Yippee ki yay" (11:20)-Is Die Hard 2 a Christmas movie? (14:30)-Steven's take on Game of Thrones and what the GoT scripts say about Dany's turn (16:30)-An "emotional jump" in writing (18:10)-Writing for top action stars including David Hasselhoff! (22:20)-Schwarzenegger! (25:30)-Stallone! And why some actors weren't interested in the John McClane role (29:30)-What Steven's kid said to him after seeing Die Hard for the first time (31:00)-Meeting Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte before 48 Hours (31:40)-Writing Street Fighter (33:00)-Denzel! (35:00)-Why he had to remove jokes from Beverly Hills Cop 3 (38:00)-A final thought on the legacy of Die Hard (40:00) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Social media can be an incredibly valuable tool for growing your real estate business, but most realtors and agent teams fall short by focusing on themselves and posting the same old uninspiring content. To win online, you have to connect with the people in your target market. So, how do you build rapport with the community through social channels? What types of videos build the most engagement? How do you create quality content, even if you can’t afford an in-house media team? Steven Amaya is the entrepreneur behind Amaya Group Real Estate, one of BombBomb’s Top 10 Real Estate Video Influencers of 2018 and the REAL Trends 12th-ranked team in the state of California. Steven’s team is known for their focus on community ties, and A|G’s social media content makes them the best local guides in Moreno Valley. Today on the podcast, Steven joins Oliver to share his definition of ‘the human touch’ and explain how A|G uses media to connect with the community. He offers insight around marketing with video, describing the types of footage the team shoots and the advantage to filming client testimonials. Listen in for Steven’s advice on taking advantage of Instagram stories and learn how to grow your business with hyperlocal social content! Key Takeaways [1:26] Steven’s definition of ‘the human touch’ Relate to people in target market Identify avatar and focus around that [3:49] How A|G uses media to connect on another level IE Foodies + IE Scenes to highlight community Unplanned interviews (e.g.: Day of the Dead) [7:26] Steven’s real estate journey License right out of HS (3 homes first year) Got into flips, wholesaling until recession Joined Coldwell Banker, top agent in 12 months [10:45] Steven’s insight on marketing with video Don’t make it about you Necessary in showing local expertise [13:28] The types of videos A|G shoots General brand awareness Community highlights Client testimonials Real estate tips, process [17:14] How A|G makes it easy for clients to leave reviews Email campaign (links to Google, Yelp + Zillow) Provide bullet points and keywords 10-minute video shoot, ask for feedback [21:49] Steven’s advice for agents without a media team Use free apps (e.g.: Canva, iMovie, SMOVE, etc.) Take advantage of Instagram Stories [24:01] What content is winning in Instagram Stories Day in life of agent Funny GIFs, ping pong in office [27:11] Steven’s tips for growing your business with media Don’t make it about you or real estate Focus content on client experience + community Don’t overthink, ‘just do it’ [28:22] What Steven wishes he’d known when he started Surround self with super-successful people Be yourself 1,000% Connect with Steven A|G Group Real Estate A|G on Facebook A|G on Instagram A|G on YouTube IE Foodies IE Scenes Connect with Oliver Big Block Realty Oliver on Facebook Oliver on LinkedIn Resources A|G’s Day of the Dead Video A|G’s Pushed in the Pool Video BombBomb Canva iMovie SMOVE

Boom!   What's going on everyone? It's Steve Larsen, and this is Sales Funnel Radio. Today, I'm gonna teach you guys some of the most common mistakes when it comes to opt-in pages.   I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.   The real question is, how will I do it without VC funding or debt - completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer.   Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business - using only today's best internet sales funnels. My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. What's up, guys?   I'm excited for today. I'm excited for this. I actually, I've been looking forward to this one. I created recently a whole course about opt-ins - it's a free course! If you go to freeoptincourse.com, there you go. There's the golden nugget of the entire episode.     Freeoptincourse.com takes you through a live funnel build that I did to teach people how to get an opt-in. Now you might laugh at that a little bit. You know, it's like, "Hey this is sales funnel radio." The whole thing starts with the opt-in though - this is a give and take relationship.   I remember in college I wrote an e-book, actually two of them. I was so excited. I went and got this e-book written. I got it back from the ghostwriter, and I didn't like it - so I rewrote the whole thing. I was so pumped about it.   This was pre-ClickFunnels, I was using WordPress to build essentially a funnel.  I didn't know how to do that though, so I was like hacking out (with the little coding knowledge that I know) WordPress. It was so finicky, it was terrible.   It was another one of those experiences for me where I was spending inordinate amounts of time putting together this funnel. It was crappy, and I kind of knew that. And I was like, "Ah, maybe it'll still work though." I patched together a payment processor. I patched together an email autoresponder. It was really hard. I was so stoked about this thing.   This was back in the day when I believed that a sale happens because of the product. If you guys have been following me at all, you know that's not true.   The sale happens because of a sales message, not the product. Those are two very different things.   No one buys because of the product. They buy because of the message.   Well, this was before I knew that. This was before I knew any of that stuff. I was so stoked. This e-book was targeted at students, which was first of all stupid because they're all broke.   I spent all this time putting this thing together. I think it took me two days just to create the sales letter to just to get people to opt-in or whatever. Guys, I launched this thing, and nobody even opted in.   I had so many failures with this stuff way back in the day.   I was excited guys. I was proud. I was like, "Yeah, check this out. This is my product". I knew it was really good - it was the reasons why I was doing so well in school. I was putting awesome knowledge in this thing. Honestly really really awesome.   But I was so convinced that the product is the reason you opt-in. I was so convinced that the product is the reason somebody buys.   So what I wanna do real quick is I wanna walk through the more common mistakes that I see when it comes to creating opt-ins.   If you can't get opt-ins, you're already dead in the water. Especially when it comes to putting a sales funnel on the internet - you're already dead in the water.   If you can't even get somebody to opt-into your free thing, how you're gonna get them to buy?   So what I wanted to do is I wanted to walk through... I wrote a little list here, so you'll see me look up and down here a few times, but I wrote a little list here just thinking through like, "Yeah, these are the most common things that I see as mishaps for why people opt-in or not opt-in."   A little while ago, somebody sent me a message, "Hey will you critique my funnel?"   So just so you guys know, I'm always willing to critique somebody's funnel. If you guys want me to do that, you can go to stevejlarsen.com. Stevejlarsen.com is where I can critique your funnel. I sell one-on-one hour coaching sessions. We can dive through whatever you want to. ...So there was a guy that I was doing it for, and it was a bunch of fun. I really enjoyed it.  I love these guys. They were so cool. Mad, mad admiration for them. It was some guys over in Hollywood. And it was really really fun. And they worked with a lot of actors. Any, anyways it was really cool.   So they sent me out this squeeze page. And I start looking through this squeeze page and their funnel. And the very first thing that I noticed was how many places I could click. And I started looking through the page. (And, you know, I'm not gonna say who it was or whatever) I was looking through it, and there were so many places that I could click. There were so many places that  I could exit. That's one of the defining differences between what a funnel versus a website.   Let's think about this. If I have a squeeze page; the goal of the squeeze page is to get someone's contact information so that you can continue to market to them, upsell them, serve them, and add value.   If you're not adding value they're gonna unsubscribe anyway. So make sure you're always adding value. However, you're gonna go in, and you're gonna grab somebody's email.   Well, the thing is, if I go and I get on a page, and you can look at your squeeze pages now. You can look at your opt-in page. And if you guys don't know what I'm talking about, a squeeze page, an opt-in page, landing page, those are all kind of synonymous terms. Reverse squeeze page/ landing page.   There are subtle differences between all of them, but the main premise, the main idea is you're going to get somebody to give you their email address, or some contact info to start the marketing relationship. That's really all it is.   Well, I was looking at this guy's squeeze page, and the problem was that it wasn't a squeeze page -  it was a classic website that happened to have an opt-in box on it, and they were treating it like a squeeze page.   They were driving a lot of traffic. These guys were spending a ton of money driving traffic to this page. Off the bat, I immediately knew what the problem was.   I was looking at their conversions rates, and I was looking at all this traffic coming in. I was looking at their numbers. And the numbers were telling the story.  I mean they were having like maybe 1%- 2%, of people opt-in for the free thing. That's like, "Something is wrong." You should be getting at least 30% in my mind for a good squeeze page.   I was looking at Affiliate Outrage. It's a free program. Is it a squeeze page? It is. You might be like, "Well Steven you have a full course you're offering on the back." Yeah, but it's still a squeeze page. I just looked, 71% opt-in rates just in the last week! It's been launched for a while - so it's very exciting to have those kinds of numbers.   A lot of my other squeeze pages right now are getting around 62% opt-in rate. I have another one right now; it's like a content funnel. Anyways, it's different. But it's got, it's got a 40 something percent opt-in rate. Which is crazy you guys. Super cool.   There are principles behind this. And the first principle I want you guys to know about is that one of the biggest mistakes people make, classic mistake, is: "It's not a squeeze page." They build a website page.   Meaning, I go on the page, and if you have links at the top, that's not a squeeze page. You just built a website with a funnel editor. You can totally build a website in something like ClickFunnels. I've done it, I've done it a couple times now.   If you have more than one exit from the page, meaning; they should either have to put in their email address, and press submit - or literally close the tab. That is a landing page. Squeeze page.  I'm gonna call them "squeeze pages." Kind of synonymous though. That's like the classic classic blunder though.   At the bottom, when it comes to all the legal terms and stuff, I literally put terms and privacy. That's it. And a copyright. That's it. You know. A business address.  I put the legal crap on there. But besides terms and privacy, I don't put anything else on the bottom. I definitely don't have anything on the top of the page.   The only way to move forward is to give their email, or whatever contact you're asking for. That's how a squeeze page works. It's the definition of it - it squeezes. Give me some info, and I'll give you some sweet value. That's like the classic number one blunder. Now if you've been a funnel builder at all, you're like, "Duh, Steven I get that."   Number two, the one that I see people mess up the most is there's literally just no curiosity. That's it. I look; there's no curiosity. The headline, you've not asked any open loops. The headline is not giving any kind of alluring promise. There's no alluring promise to it. The headline is like the most important aspect.   The first time I ever build a squeeze page was with my buddy in college. He and I were doing an affiliate marketing thing. We decided we were gonna leave a class and never come back 'cause it was so boring. We spent probably three hours just on the headline. It almost got to a frustrating pace. It was like, "Come on; we gotta move along faster." But like we really wanted this thing to work.   At ClickFunnels we spend two to three days just on the headline It's that important. So if you're just writing 'em on a whim, that's typically the biggest reason I see that people's squeeze pages don't work. They might just have one exit - which is great, it's what you should have - but there's no curiosity on the page.   You've literally have answered every one of the questions that you brought up on the same page, therefore why should I opt-in?   You wanna increase your conversions? You wanna double conversions? The easiest thing to do is to go in and make open looped statements where they're like, "Hey, what is the answer to that?" It calls out the right person, so they have to opt-in. It's like, "Yes, show me more!" Or "Yes, I wanna know." Or "Yes, give me that free report." Or "Yes, I want the free course." Does that make sense? It's the curiosity.   Curiosity drives the human brain nuts. We have to have closed loops. It drives us crazy. In western culture, everything down to our music and our melodic tones resolve - because we need that closure.  A lot of eastern music doesn't. It's totally western culture to have closure.   We need closure. Even if it's not real. Even if it's fake. In our lives, people seek closure. Man, that's human psychology. You can use that. So I create curiosity in my squeeze pages, primarily through the headline.   Open it up, and say like, "Are you getting the most out of blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank? Click down below for the free report. Click right here to take the quiz. Oh, here's your quiz results. Do you want the quiz results? Email/ button!"   As soon as I stop the camera right here that's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to finish a sweet quiz we're putting in front of one of our funnels now.   And that's how I know it will work is because I ask an open-ended question and people can't handle but to actually try to pursue the answer. That lets me get their stuff. That lets me start pushing through the funnel and begin the marketing relationship.   Curiosity. Stop telling all of your stuff on the squeeze page. That's not the reason it exists. Remember the function that it exists for. A squeeze page only exists to start the relationship. Not for you to teach all your stuff or make you look like a rockstar.   Number three, this is a classic blunder, it kind of ties into the second one. Too much info. Just too much info. Way too much information. You're telling all kinds of stuff throughout it. You're literally bathing them in information. There's selling the opt-in, but then there's just like, telling stuff.   If you wanna go see some good examples, again, these are free courses, but if you go to affiliateoutrage.com, watch how hard I'm selling the opt-in. It's a big page. I know it's a big page. But you can see I'm selling, it's a squeeze page. I'm telling a little bit more information than I would normally ask somebody to do, but watch what I'm doing. I present an offer:   There's actually a full offer on that page - for something that's free.   There is social proof up the butt. There's so much!   There are testimonials.   There are video introductions to all of the course creators, and all of the people who are in there.   BUT... it's very open-ended. I'm not actually resolving any of the questions that I bring up in there. I'll ask questions like:   "Well, Steven, how much is this?" "It's free, click here to get it."   "Well, Steven, how long is this available?"  "Don't really know. Just kind of testing it out. People have really gotten a lot of results from this. Until then, make sure you get it, so I don't close it out."   And it goes back, goes back, goes back, goes back. Opt-in, opt-in, opt-in, opt-in.   Here's the issue; so many people instead of continuing to create open loops throughout the page, they start teaching on the squeeze page, and then they wonder nobody's opted in. I   t's all about scarcity and urgency. It's all about creating that curiosity. The easiest ways to do that? "Man, don't tell them too much. Don't tell them too much."   I had the incredible opportunity to go hang with Trey Lewellen for a little while. Trey, I and his awesome girlfriend were all hanging out. And we were working on his webinar funnel. And he had an incredible squeeze page. It was extremely short. It was literally a headline, an opt-in, and a button. That was it.   The headline, an input field, and a button. That's all he had on that front page. And it was cool to see how high his numbers were.   And that works really really well when you're talking to a hot audience. When people know who you are. And it works really well, it can work in general, like it depends on what you're doing. Like I don't wanna just say like this big blanket statement; "Oh, small squeeze pages that don't work very well." Or "They do work well." I'm not gonna make a blanket statement. Every scenario is different.   But by simply going in and adding in a few testimonials or adding in the Facebook comments element so people can comment straight on there and it stays on there for all the future users who will visit that page - that's all native in ClickFunnels. That's really really powerful.   He showed me some screenshots back, and they had like a 50% increase in opt-ins because of it. It was crazy. I can't remember the exact number but it was outrageous. It was a huge increase in the opt-ins.   And, anyway, so I want you to know like, there was hardly anything on the page. He opened the loop. There was an input field and a button. That's it. That's like the classic squeeze page.   The next thing I already alluded to it, is social proof.   Guys, there's been some very fascinating launches in history where somebody will go in, and they'll sell a course with this massive sales letter with all the sales material. And they'll make tons of money. And it's like, "Wow! cool." And they'll close out the cart. Then they just focus on the students that came in; getting them results and gathering testimonials.   Then they'll reopen the cart with no sales letter, just the huge sickening amount of testimonials and social proof. And they'll do just as much money with that page as they did with the sales page. Social proof is massive. Massive.   You guys wanna know the cool way to get social proof? Go do a free course. What I'm saying is, you could literally just go like on Facebook for two hours and teach something. Pull that video. Download that video. Boom! Now you got a course.   Go to your audience,  and say, "Hey, I'm gonna make that a $57 thing in the future. If you want though I could give it to you free now. I'll give you the recording. Give you also some other cool things,"  - make a little mini offer out of it.   "So it'll be $57 or literally, just take out your phone, flip it sideways, and just tell me what that's meant to you. Tell me what value you've gotten from me in the future, or in the past. Tell me, answer the question what's it like to work with Steve?"   I've done that multiple times now and gathered easily probably 50, 60 testimonials in a week. And then I just go and I'll liter 'em throughout my pages. I know my stuff is good.   One of my squeeze pages on a site right now, I've brought it from 45% opt-in rate up to 65%, and it's maintained at 62%. And one of the biggest things I did was I just added a huge amount of social proof. Huge amount of social proof. And that was it. That was really one of the only major changes I actually added to the page. That was it.   Social proof is massive. And it's a very easy thing to do. You don't need tons of it. But if you can get like two or three that's perfect.   So you got your headline, you got an input, you got a button, some social proof. Done. And that's it.   Lots of curiosity. Some scarcity and urgency. I recommend putting a countdown clock on there. Make it an evergreen countdown clock. Countdown clocks make people do crazy stuff. Just put it on there. You don't even have to explain it. You'll get more opt-ins. It's true.   So anyways, I recommend also with your guys' squeeze pages that what they're opting in for is so obviously valuable that giving you an opt-in seems like child's play. And what I've noticed is when I do that it starts to increase the reciprocity they feel for me in the future.   So anyways, just to run through the list again:   #Number one, classic example is somebody who doesn't really understand funnels yet will come in and there's just too many exits. Way too many exits.   I recommend using something like an exit pop. I don't care. "What Steven, you want exit pops?" Yeah, I don't care about bothering people one more time before they leave - I may never see them again. An exit pop. Works miracles.   I love exit pops. It definitely increases my conversions by a lot. Exit pops are awesome. Too many exits.   #No curiosity. You literally are telling everything. It's all about creating open loops. That's what gets them going.   #Too much information. If you are gonna put a lot of stuff in there and if it is gonna be a big one, like I was saying, you can go look at affiliateoutrage.com to see this format that I follow.   The more of those kinds of things I added in my conversions went up.   But everything I put on the page has to do with back to the opt-in. I'm not selling the thing down the road. I'm just selling the very next step I want them to take. opt-in, rather than, "Hey, there's a course down the future that's gonna be this amount" Or "Hey, why don't you get coaching from me?"   I'm not selling that crap. I'm only selling the very next step. Just like in an email. The email doesn't sell the product, it sells whatever link is in the email, and then they click on the link, and they go to the page. Then the page sells whatever the very next step is.   Too many people sell the thing that's down the road rather than the next step. Easiest way to kill your crap. Don't do that.   Same with the squeeze page. You're just selling the opt-in. That's it. The page sells the opt-in. The page sells getting their email address. The page sells getting and going and clicking to the very next step - not what's on the next step. It just that step.  So too much information.   #Having no social proof. Which is, I just let you know a cool way to go get it.   # Not having a countdown clock.   Those are classic very easy ways.   #Videos can help, but sometimes I see the way people create a video is an actual hinder to the opt-in. I don't recommend having a video for your opt-in. If your thing requires some explaining to do, maybe, but man it's gotta high pace. It's gotta be exciting to watch. I don't recommend having videos.   Affiliate Outrage is probably the only one where I have a video; it took me a while to craft it and make it feel the way it did. Anyway, it's not a normal thing for me to go do because most of the time I find that videos on squeeze pages slow down the rate of opting in. They slow down the rate of consuming, and so I'll put a video on the next page.   If I'm doing a reverse squeeze page, if you don't know what that is go look at The Funnel Hacker Cookbook, then maybe you'll put a video on there. But it's not a normal play for me. It's not a normal thing that I  do.   So, if you're like "Hey, I can't get more opt-ins" and if you have a video, just take the video off and just try it. You know do a little split test and see what happens? You most likely will get a higher opt-in rate 'cause it won't slow the momentum down so much.   Anyway, guys, hopefully, you found this list helpful? I know this was a little more of a tactical episode here, but just know that this is a pretty basic skill in the funnel building world.   If you wanna be a funnel builder, get good at creating squeeze pages and list building. That's really what it is. Lists are the only asset on the internet, not the funnel, not your product, not your sales message - it's the list.   The list is what will save you if the bottom falls out from under something.   The list is the real asset on the internet. Not the product, not the sales message, none of that. All that stuff is transferable. You can take those other places. The list though that's the real thing that you want.   So if you wanna be a funnel builder, you gotta get good at opting in. You gotta get good at getting people to opt-in. You gotta get good at delivering value up front. You gotta get good at pulling people and helping them realize, like, "Oh, logically I see what I should give you my email."     Anyway, so I just hope this is helpful to you. Go back to your squeeze pages, and use the list I  went through to look at your squeeze page and play devil's advocate. Like, "Man, yeah, you're right, this does suck."   Make sure it's mobile-optimized.   A lot of times it's harder to create a converting opt-in page than the actual order page. It's such a delicate place. It's the first time a lot of people will even see you or hear about you or know who you are. That's why I spend so much time on them. Even though, a lot of times, there are not many words on it. It's such a delicate first encounter. You have to make sure that it's awesome.   So that's why I wanted to make this episode for you guys today.   Make sure you go back, check this stuff out.   The funnest thing to go do is start running through people's pages for them for free. Last story here, then I'll end...   I can't remember who it was; it was someone related to Harmon Brothers. In the same building that they work out of. And they had this, crap I can't remember, this was a long time ago. I decide, I just wanted to start building more relationships.   So I literally opened up my computer, and I started going to these different pages and funnels that I could tell were good, but not quite there yet.   They weren't funnel builders, but they had a good product, and I just started recording my screen critiquing people's pages. Then I would just send their support the critique and wait to see what happens.   It wasn't uncommon for me to start getting feedback from CTOs, saying "Wow, that was really helpful. Thanks so much." Like, "Oh, yeah, ain't nothin’. By the way, I'm Steven, how you doing?" And that was a really easy way for me to go in and actually create a lot of relationships. I did that a lot.   I don't think I've ever told you guys that. Anyway, it's fun. Just go practice. Do it to your own stuff, do it to other people's stuff.   Hopefully, you guys enjoyed the episode. Talk to you guys later. Bye.   Aww, yeah! Hey, obviously a funnel's already dead if you can't get even get anyone to opt-in.   So I spent four hours teaching an audience how to get high opt-ins when they work, when they don't work.   If you want access to that member's area, where you can watch those replays, just go to freeoptincourse.com to create your free members account now.

During your troubles you’ve got two options, run away or lean in. On this episode Russell talks about something his friend and former employee Steven Larsen said to him in passing, but had a big impact on him. Here are some of the awesome things to look forward to in this episode. What Steven meant when he told his sister to lean in, instead of giving up. What would be different in Russell’s life if he hadn’t chosen to lean in at different times. Why you should always lean in when times get hard instead of walking away. So listen here to find out what would be different in Russell’s life if he had walked away instead of leaning in. ---Transcript--- Good morning everybody, this is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I just dropped my kids off at school and now we get to hang out. Hey everyone, I hope you guys are doing amazing. I am trying to get on a better rhythm of doing podcasts consistently. I had this really weird thing where like I’ll get in the mood and I’ll do like 10 in a row, and then I’ll get out of the mood and I won’t do some for a while. And I’m trying to get more consistent where we get two or three a week. So I apologize for my inconsistency, but I’m grateful for you guys and for listening in. And hopefully you get good stuff each time. You know, it’s been fun doing this now for 500+ episodes, and if you haven’t gotten the Marketing Secrets black book yet, go to Marketingsecrets.com/blackbook. Some of you guys know that Julie Stoien and I went through, and she listened to every episode and took notes on them all and then rewrote them into a book of the top 99 takeaways from this podcast. So to shortcut your life a little bit, go and get those, print them out, that’s what everyone’s been doing, printing them and reading them. But it will catch you up on the Marketing Secrets, the last 5 years of the best and most important ahas and things like that. That’s a freebie for you guys. But today I had a specific thing I wanted to share with you and I’v ebeen wanting to talk about this for a little while, but life’s been a little crazy right now, trying to get done some big projects. This month of October is crazy, I’m speaking all over, flying a bunch of places, we’re doing an event for Two Comma Club X members and a whole bunch of other things. Rebuilding the whole company structure, anyway, I could go on and on. But it’s so much fun. I love what we do. I love that we get to play this game every day. Anyway, what I wanted to share with you guys today, it was kind of fun, Steven Larsen was in the office the other day. Some of you guys know we launched the One Funnel Away Challenge, which has been nuts. We had over 7500 people sign up for it. It’s 100 dollar challenge, so 7500 people paid $100 to be a part of it, and every day for 30 days Steven jumps on and yells at everybody and pushes them forward through some curriculum that we’re taking people through. Again, it’s called the One Funnel Away Challenge, a lot of you guys are part of it. If you’re not part of it, then it’s because you didn’t pay attention to the 30days.com launch we did recently. Anyway, for all you guys who are in there, it’s been so much fun. It’s been fun though because Steven comes into the office everyday, which I miss having him there, he used to be there every day. You know he had to go out and start his own business and all that kind of stuff, which I am proud of him for. Just teasing, it is really cool. But I am really grateful to be able to pull him into that because it’s fun to see him everyday and see him in his element where he’s jumping on it, and training and motivating and pushing, just doing his thing. It’s amazing. This new program though, this One Funnel Away Challenge is going to change a ton of people’s lives and I’m excited for all of you guys who are going through it. But I digress, the reason why I’m telling this story is, he was in the office and we were talking aobut a bunch of stuff, and we were actually talking about the Two Comma Club X coaching program, which is something we sold at the last Funnel Hacking Live, and I think we had 650ish people join it. And it’s not a cheap program, it’s $18 grand a year or $1800 a month. And a lot of people came in at $1800 a month, which obviously is not a cheap investment, but at the same time, I talked about when we sold it, I was like, “It’s less than half the cost of a crappy employee.” And you’re getting access to all these coaches and all these things. So far we’ve done three or four events, I’m doing a two day event this month that only they are allowed to come to. It’s expensive but it’s also super cheap, you know what I mean. And we’re talking about some people that had dropped out of it for whatever reason. And some people have dropped out for legitimate reasons, I totally understand that. But the story I wanted to tell you today was interesting, was about Steven’s sister Marie. She joined the program, and she was probably in a group of a bunch of people that probably shouldn’t have joined. I think for some people it was as much money as they were making at the time, and they still just jumped in because they saw the vision, they wanted the thing and they jumped in. And it was interesting, Steven was telling me this story that like two months into the program, I think it was the second or the third month, the next $1800 a month payment came up and she was freaking out. And had kind of a thing like, “Oh my gosh, I’m not making enough money for this. I can’t do this, I need to drop out.” And she told Steven, “I can’t do this, I need to be out of it.” And Steven listened to her talk about all the reasons why she needed to drop out, and he listened to it and after she got done saying all the reasons why she should drop out, then he said, “Or you should lean in.” And that is the message for you today, “Or you should lean in.” What does that mean? You should lean into it, instead of freaking out, “oh, I can’t handle this.” Let’s lean in and double down and go all in. And when you do that’s when amazing things happen. And to Marie’s credit, she did. She leaned in and during that time got through the scary bumpiness and launched her business and right now her business is doing somewhere between 8 and 10 thousand dollars a month, which is amazing and insane and so cool. She’s helping people launch podcast. It’s like my podcast, if I was working with her  I would record this and send it to her and she would just somehow make it magically show up on iTunes right. My brother does that for me. But that’s what she does for people now and she’s killing it. But it’s because during the turbulent times of backing out and running away, she leaned in. I want you to think about everything great that’s happened in your life. For those who went into sports, think about the hardest times, the times..I only know wrestling because that’s my world. But the times where I needed to cut weight or I had to go get someone who was really, really tough, or I lost a match or whatever, those are the times you want to quit right. You’re like, “I’m out.” And back out and walk away from it. But it was in those times that instead of backing out, I leaned in and had success. Yesterday, it was kind of fun, we were working on a video and I was like, “I need my old wrestling matches from back in the day.” So my brother, Scott, he had them all on his hard drive so he dumped them all onto Google drive, so I was looking at all these old videos of me through high school and college wrestling. So I was kind of going down this jaunt down memory lane, and I saw in there the match my junior year where I lost to this guy named Nick Fresquez, the very first match of the season. And I remember this because we recorded it, but I think my mom accidently recorded over it or something like that, but we had a 22 second clip of that match and it was when Nick did this move on me that was the move he beat me with. And I remember my dad used to watch that 22 second clip over and over and over and over again. I’d come up during the season, I’d wake up in the morning and he’d be upstairs watching it and he’s like, “Russell come here, come here.” And he’d sit me down on the carpet and he’d show me how the move worked and we would drill it, and go to the wrestling room later and drill the move. Man, we must have watched that 22 second clip of my loss like a thousand times or more during that next four months of the wrestling season. And we’d practice it and practice it and practice it. And yesterday I found the match of me winning the state title, and we’re watching it and seeing as I did that move, the same move he did on me to beat me at the first of the season is the same move I used on him to beat him in the state finals. And I was thinking about that, I was like, in context of this whole concept that Steven shared with me about leaning in, I was just like, man, if I hadn’t leaned in to that, if I would have been like, “Oh my gosh I lost to him.” And had fear and all these things, then I never would have been a state champ, which man, life circumstances since that moment that brought me to where I am today, all hinged upon that moment. It’s kind of crazy, if we were to go back in time that far. Right so in sports, the times it was the most painful and scary and the things I freaked out about the most, is when I leaned in, when greatness came. I think about marriage, I love my wife, I love my kids, but marriage isn’t easy. I thought it was going to be. I’m not going to lie, if I was to go back to Russell 20 years ago, I was struggling through life just waiting to be married, then everything will be good. And my marriage has been amazing , but man it’s been hard. And I think my wife agrees, it was way harder than we thought. And it’s those times where it’s hard where it’s like, man it would be so easy just to like, back out. “I can’t afford the monthly payment.” Boom, back out. But instead I leaned in. I was like, I love her, I’ve committed to this, I’m doing it. And because of that is how we’ve made a marriage that wasn’t just good, but a marriage that’s great. I think about it in business, how many times I could tell you the stories of me building a company and crashing it, and building and crashing it. I’m working on, we’re doing this event in Utah, the Dry Bar Comedy club in two weeks, or I guess it’s a week and a half now. I want to make an outline of the history of my business, so I went to the good old way back machine and went to try to find every single funnel that I’ve ever built. And I forgot how much stuff I’ve done, how many software products we’ve launched, how many info products, how many courses, how many viral sites, how many list building sites, it’s crazy. I haven’t finished the list yet, I’m already at ten pages of links to funnels that I built. And these aren’t just like, every page in the funnel, because I can’t in the way back machine. Way back shows you snapshots of your websites back, as far back as the way back machine was created. If you never used the way back machine by the way, you should go. Go to archive.org, in fact, do this for fun. Go to archive.org, that’s the way back machine, type in dotcomsecrets.com, my site, and go look at the history of my site, you’ll see every variation of Russell over the last ten years on that site. Every blog I launched on there, everything. But it’s fun to see the back, the history of these things. So I went to way back machine and was trying to find all these things, and you can’t see the upsells or downsells, so I can just find the landing page of every funnel I’ve ever created in my life, and it’s ten pages now of funnels. And I’m going through this and I’m laughing at some. Some of them were the worst ideas ever. Some that completely bombed. Some that I spent literally millions of dollars on that never went live. In fact, there were two or three that I found that I was sick to my stomach. I was like, I spent four years of my life, I had six full time developers I was paying a million and a half, two million a year for these guys, and none of these ever saw the light of day. I’m like, ugh. Some of them were the pre-cursers to clickfunnels. I remember clickdotcom.com was the pre-curser to clickfunnels, and I saw this thing. That was one that we literally spent, I’d say conservatively at least a million and probably closer to two or three million we spent on that thing. I found all the screen shots, all the everything, but it never went live. Nobody ever saw it. But had I not leaned into that and tried to build that, we wouldn’t be at Clickfunnels today. I think there are like 5 different software programs we created that were all pre-cursers to Clickfunnels. One of them was an RSS auto-responder, one was a desktop auto-responder, one was a funnel building software, one was a shopping cart. All these things that I tried to build that failed. I found this site, champion sound, this is like, I was in the brinks of bankruptcy, literally. I had just had to fire 80 of my employees and we moved from a 20 thousand square foot office to a 2 thousand, I had 150,000 in IRS back taxes that I owed and I was trying to figure out how in the world to save the company and save myself from bankruptcy. And If I would have gone bankrupt, I still had all this outstanding coaching liability. So I would have destroyed my reputation. So I was on this thing where if I would have given up I would have gone to jail and destroyed my reputation. So I was like I can’t give up, I have to lean in, I’m being forced to. I remember I had, I was on Flippa.com, trying to buy a website, trying to figure out my future, and at like 2:00 in the morning I saw this site called Championsound.com, which you should plug that into the way back machine, you’ll see what it is. Anyway, it was an email, text message auto-responder fro bands, and I was like, “Oh my gosh this could be the greatest thing in the world. I could start this thing, we could sell it to bands, and I could re-launch or clone the site and launch an email/text message auto-responder for dentists, and chiropractors, and I was like, “This is the future of my business.” So I leaned in, took 20 thousand dollars I didn’t have, bought the website. And then what’s crazy, when we tried to make it go live, or after I bought it and they tried to transfer it to me, they’re like, I gave them access to my server, and they’re like, “No, I need a server that can run Ruby on Rails.” I was like, “What’s Ruby on Rails?” they’re like, “Oh, it’s like a different language.” I’m like, “What?” I’d never even heard that word before. And I remember none of the development guys I had on my team at the time knew Ruby on Rails. I tried to hire people on Odesk to do Ruby on Rails, and I couldn’t find anyone that could do it. Man, after three or four months of trying to find somebody who could edit the software, after they installed and then left, and then all these things were broken, it wasn’t working, all the customers were angry and it was horrible. I literally, after that three months that I was like, “I just wasted 20 thousand dollars that we didn’t have. Just shut it down.” The servers were like a thousand bucks a month too, they were super expensive. They just shut it down. And I was packing up my bags for the day and was walking out, and as I walked away from my desk, I stopped for a second and I was like, “Wait a minute, I wonder if there’s anyone on my list who knows Ruby on Rails?” which is a stupid thing to say, because at the time my list was a bunch of business opportunity seekers, and they weren’t programmers or developers, but I had that thought in my head. So I walked back into my desk, I leaned in, sent an email to my list saying, “If you know Ruby on Rails, I’m looking for a partner.” And that email happened to land in the inbox of somebody who had bought my micro continuity product five years earlier and happened to be on my email list. But because my subject line said Ruby on Rails and partner, he saw that and he said, “I’m looking for a partnership with a marketer, I know Ruby on Rails.” And it was Todd Dickerson who responded back. And anyone who knows my story, knows that Todd is my cofounder of Clickfunnels, he’s the one who built it. And had I not bought Champion sound, had I not leaned in with the last bit of money we had, if we had not tried to get it to work, if I had not instead of giving up, had I not sent an email to my list…if I hadn’t done all these little things, that email would have never landed in Todd Dickerson’s inbox, and Clickfunnels wouldn’t be here today. So my message for you guys today, I know that in all areas of your life there’s up and downs, and typically when everything’s up in business, something going to be down somewhere else. Sorry guys, they’re blowing leaves behind me. When you’re up in business you’re going to be down in your spiritual life. When you’re up in your spiritual life, your business is going to go down. Or you’re up in personal health your business will collapse, or your marriage will collapse. There’s always going to be ups and downs and I don’t think anyone has ever had it where everything is perfect all the time, if so life would be too easy. So it kind of cycles like that. And I say, you know whatever season of your life you’re in, where you’re in that hard time, instead of running away from that hard thing, do what Steven said to Marie, and lean it. Yeah you could, you could walk away. Yeah, there’s a million reasons why you shouldn’t do this, but you know it’s right, you know it’s good, you committed to it, so let’s lean in instead of step away. And if you do that I promise you greatness is just on the other side of that. If Marie wouldn’t have leaned in, where would she be today? Would that company ever be there, would all the people she’s serving now, would she be able to serve them? Probably not. If I wouldn’t have leaned into sports, would I have become a state champ and an All-American, and wrestled in college, and ended up in Boise where I needed to be to be able to create Clickfunnels. In my marriage, all the hard times where I wouldn’t have leaned in, would I be where I am today with my amazing wife and my amazing kids? I got the coolest kids in the world. Last night we were downstairs because we are re-doing our bedroom, so we’re sleeping down in the basement right now, and on the big screen I wanted to show my wife a video, so I showed the video and then we stared looking at all the videos in our camera roll. And then somehow, I don’t even know how this works, but somehow on iTunes, on the big screen tv, they had all these clips from way back in the day, that somehow got save to iTunes or iCloud or I don’t know, something. So we’re watching these videos of our kids from back in like, like Aiden who is 8 years old now, there’s videos of him when he was like a newborn. And there’s this one, he’s probably, I don’t know, maybe 3 years old, and he had on Ellie’s swimsuit, so it’s like a pink and purple swimsuit and he’s dancing. And we’re like crying/laughing last night watching him dancing and in the video Collette’s like, “Aiden someday we’re going to send this to your wife.” And he in the video is like, “Mom, why don’t you send it to her right now?” We were just dying laughing at him in his little stick legs dancing in her swimsuit. And we’re sitting there just laughing our faces off and I was like, man, there were so many times in this marriage where either of us could have walked away. So many times in our relationship, and we’re like sitting here and just laughing at that and realizing how happy we are and how grateful we are for each other and how grateful we are for our amazing kids. But that didn’t come from stepping away from the challenge, it came from leaning in. So there’s the message for today, thank you Steven Larsen for sharing that with me the other day. He said it kind of in passing, but it had a big impact on me and  I wanted to share it with you guys. And hopefully that will help someone in your moment of struggle in any area of your life, just remember to lean in. Thanks so much and we’ll talk to you guys soon.

We've got some great insight into intellectual property law with attorney Steve Fairchild. It may sound boring, but as authors, it's important we understand at least a little bit about the law. We start things out with an overview of what's encompassed in intellectual property, and then it really gets fun! In Episode 76: How biology degrees relates to intellectual property How Steve gets his clients Can you use the term "lightsaber™" in your book? Does I.P. law translate to other countries? Finding an I.P. attorney...and do you need one? What's the difference between an I.P. attorney and an agent? When does copyright exist? Do you need to file your copyright with the copyright office? What happens when your work has been pirated? Can I.P. law be funny? How Steven actually informed an episode of Suits--and how they got it wrong! What Steven finds frustrating in fiction about the law Bunny trails! Do I need to copyright my idea formally with the copyright office? Fair use law Steve's advice on courtroom scenes Steve's favorite movies about legal stuff Links: Steven R Fairchild author Steven R Fairchild, attorney Living Ashes Turkish Star Wars Redshirts by John Scalzi Godzilla scene from Austin Powers: Goldmember Erin Brokovich Joy

After a long hiatus, we are back to give you updates on happenings at the villa from record snow storms to our latest guests.  But most importantly, the amazing experience we had — and hope to continue to have — with a guest chef at Villa Cappelli. Topics we cover: We hosted our annual Thanksgiving dinner at the villa where we cook the turkeys in the wood burning oven Why Italians love our mashed potatoes Our guest chef Teresa who we had visiting us for a month and half How we started our special international food nights at Villa Cappelli Our Teresa, from Pasadena, California, found us through our friend Hillary How this lead us to want to develop a program at the villa A chef can come and stay at the villa for a week or month or whatever works and help us create these special events If you are interested or know anyone who might be interested, please send them to our Facebook group Villa Cappelli Guest Chef or email us info@villacappelli.com Some of the first special night's drinks included: Villa Cappelli Margarita Invented in 1941 in Mexico, when one afternoon, a bartender made a special cocktail for Margarita Henkel, the daughter of the German ambassador. Includes tequila, triple sec homemade lime juice, homemade sour mix, salt. Villa Cappelli Margarita   Recipe Type: Drink Prep time: 5 mins Total time: 5 mins Serves: 1 Margarita Ingredients 2 oz Tequila 1 oz Lime juice 1 oz Cointreau or any orange liquor Salt (optional) Instructions Rub the rim of the glass with the lime slice, then roll in salt so the glass is rimmed with the salt. Fill with ice. Shake the other ingredients with ice, then pour into your glass. Garnish with a lime slice if you like.      Brown Derby This cocktail inherits its name after the famous hat-shaped Los Angeles diner where it was created. This refreshing drink is made with bourbon, honey, and grapefruit juice. Brown Derby   Recipe Type: Drinks Prep time: 2 mins Total time: 2 mins Serves: 1 drink Ingredients 1.5 oz Bourbon 1 oz Fresh grapefruit juice .5 oz Honey syrup Instructions Add all the ingredients to a shaker filled with ice. Shake, and strain into your glass. Garnish with a grapefruit wedge or twist.   California Collins Mixologist Ryan Fitzgerald created this drink for the San Francisco Slow Food Festival. It's made with lemon verbena or lemon grass, gin, apple juice and soda. California Collins   Recipe Type: Drinks Author: Villa Cappelli Prep time: 5 mins Total time: 5 mins Serves: 1 drink Ingredients 8 fresh lemon verbena leaves or one 1 1/2-inch piece of lemongrass, tender inner white bulb only, crushed Ice 2 oz gin, preferably Junípero 2 oz unfiltered apple juice 1 oz chilled club soda Instructions In a collins glass, gently muddle the lemon verbena leaves or lemongrass bulb. Add ice and the gin and apple juice, then stir well. If using lemongrass, discard the bulb. Stir in the club soda.     Some of the first special night's dishes included: Croqueta de Prosciutto Prosciutto, made from by Paul's cousins in the hills of Pisa, infused in bechamel sauce, then breaded and fried. Tartare di carne di cavallo Horse meat with lemon, capers from our garden, red onion, roasted peppers, and raw quail egg. Soldadito de Pavia Fritters of salt cod, potatoes and parsley served with a lemon cream sauce. These "little soldiers" were traditionally served to the sailors to support them during the fighting. Teresa secret for the Soldadito was to use egg whites in the recipe, so they came out nice and fluffy They use bechamel in Italy to make lasagna, but Paul's mother refuses to use that. She uses ricotta instead. How it's difficult to find salt cod in the United States It's a winter dish here in Italy How you can eat salt cod "raw" after soaking it and getting out the salt out What Steven doesn't like about salt cod One of the specials from the second night: Funghi a la Plancha Grilled mushrooms with chimichurri sauce and fried quail eggs. The chimichurri sauce as the key here. Sooooo good! Paul continued with a sushi night How Teresa did an amazing job of using ingredients that were within the Italians taste profile but presented in a totally different way How the Italians really liked the idea of a having a "foreign" chef How someone at one of the nights said in Italian that the food "was not working for her" and how I misunderstood that How Steven is NOT a good waiter What we did for the Christmas holidays Teresa's on New Year's Eve The massive snow storm we've had here this winter How it's one of the coldest winters on record in Italy How a lot of our citrus trees got ruined Our guests the Mangolds and our friends from NYC Kurt & George How we deal with the cold here at the villa Cirveche Horse tartar Paella

Find Clients That Would Benefit From Your Strengths: Nicole chats with (name, title, company): Steven Horowitz, a partner at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton. Strengths/habits that have led to success: Listen and be aware that clients with similar business issues may have different interpretations of a successful outcome. Growth strategy: There is a great deal of randomness in acquiring clients including being in the right place at the right time. Tactical best practices: Build on the strengths of your firm and use them as an entree for cross selling. Success Factor: Law firms are organized by specialty while clients are unlikely to make intellectual boundaries. Lawyers and law firms that are intellectually flexible can most effectively respond to the client business problem or goal. What Steven enjoys about his work: Helping young lawyers learn what the client cares about and where they can compromise. Last word: To build a relationship opt-in to verbal communication – it’s difficult to develop a relationship by email. Steven Horowitz Bio

A few months ago, we had an amazingly popular podcast episode with , author of "". During that podcast, Steven mentioned another book he co-wrote with Peter Diamandis (famous founder of the ) called "". Frankly, I thought this other book sounded like a bit of an airy-fairy, positive thinking, (cue Lego movie soundtrack here) type of a book. But then, over the course of just one week, three more people recommended this book to me, including . So I figured I should probably read it. And I did. is based on a contrarian view that exponentially growing technologies and other powerful forces are conspiring to better the lives of billions on our planet, that the gap between the privileged few and hardscrabble majority is closing fast, and that this is drastically affecting human access to everything from water to food, energy, healthcare, education, and freedom. In today's podcast, you're going to learn why Steven believes that the future of health is better than you may think, and how you can help make all this a reality. During our discussion you'll learn: -What the pyramid of abundance is... -What Steven means about your stress levels when he says "if it bleeds, it leads"... -How you can grow enough food to feed 9 billion people using vertical farming, skyscrapers "growing food in water"... -Creative ways to get the world's population more protein... -Where "synthetic life" like algae come in for creating biofuel... -A special new kind of toilet that can power your house with your own feces... -How a Star-Trek like Tricorder and a Lab On A Chip would work... -Whether we can actually use genetics to stop obesity... -What the next steps are, and how can you can take action... Do you have questions, comments or feedback about the book ""? Do you disagree with Steven? Leave your thoughts at !