Podcasts about when russell

BLK Business History # 1Herman Russell X RCIE Herman J Russell Herman J. Russell, the founder, and former chief executive officer of H. J. Russell and Company was a nationally recognized entrepreneur and philanthropist, as well as a highly influential leader in Atlanta. Over the course of fifty years, Russell amassed one of the nation's most profitable minority-owned business empires, turning a small plastering company into a construction and real estate conglomerate. When Russell stepped down in 2004 as head of the company, he left the leadership mantle to his two sons and daughter, although he continued to serve as the company's chairman of the board. The RCIE Launching in 2019, honoring the great legacy and visionary business leadership of Herman J. Russell, The Russell Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (RCIE), will be the largest center in the country, driven by community impact, devoted to empowering African American entrepreneurs and small business owners. www.RCIE.org For More information and to support Black Businesses please visit BlkBusinessHistory.com This is a JustEldredge Media Production. Support this podcast

When Russell was a little boy, his Nan gave him a key to her house. What he did with it was probably not what she expected...

Russell Goldsmith is a multiple award-winning and Tony Award nominated Melbourne based Sound Designer, Composer, Producer and Audio System Designer. If you have seen theatre around Melbourne you have almost certainly heard his work. When Russell is given a script, he says he always asks himself “What’s missing from this work?” “As a sound designer or composer or as a kind of sonic dramaturg, all I ever seek to do is to fill in the gaps as to what is missing.” “Sometimes that gap is at the apex of the play, other times it’s at the margins of the piece and just holds it up and supports it or introduces an undercurrent of mystery or harmony or joy.” Russell is happy if an audience is unaware of his influence throughout a play saying he doesn’t like to be prominent and that he likes to “hide in the margins.” “Some of the greatest experiences I’ve had in this business have been sitting in an audience on an opening night next to my composer compatriot trying to figure out whose work that is. “There’s something really delightful about collaborating with someone so intricately it’s impossible to delineate whose work is what.” Russell has been a continual innovator in the field of creative sound design and we are happy to have him discuss how he works and why sound is such an incredible medium for storytelling.

When Russell re-launched his expert secrets book I had a crazy idea to jump to the top of the contest leaderboard’s… And it worked! I detail exactly what I did on this episode

I thought it'd be cool to document what is happening during our 7-day launch of OfferMind Masterclass. The good and the bad…   One of the biggest reasons I've noticed people don't have success with launch campaigns is NOT because your…   Product isn't amazing   Offer isn't good enough   Sales message isn't doing its job   ...it's literally the way that the campaign is brought to the market.   A lotta times, your products are already good - it's just that you don't have a launch mechanism, and you don't understand what a funnel really is…   ...and that's why you don't make a lot of money.   So here’s how I’m gonna help you:   What I’m about to do next is a little bit different - it’s in 3 different sections that span 7 days   PART #1: I’m gonna walk you through a simple 7 Day Launch that I used to sell my OfferMInd tickets - I’d never seen anyone one sell tickets like this... so I thought I’d give it a go.   PART #2: Is kinda a mid launch check in to give you an update on how things are going - what’s working and what’s not!   PART #3: Reviews the campaign as a whole - how did it go, what I learned, and what I wish I done better?   HOW TO LAUNCH A PRODUCT HOLLYWOOD STYLE   You can learn a lot from Hollywood - if you watch the way that they bring movies to the market  you’ll notice that the pre-sell is EVERYTHING!   If the first time you ever hear about it a movie is on the day of its launch - that's a HUGE failure!   You often see weekend box office sales hit 100 million dollars - that wouldn’t happen if there wasn’t a lot of pressure built up ahead of time.   … and yet many marketers often have a ‘build it and they will come attitude’ and they launch their products without putting any thought into the campaign.   I want to show you how to STOP leaving money on the table!   CHANGING BELIEFS At the core, markers change people's beliefs. However, the act of marketing, (a lot the time), revolves around creating campaigns…   And...   CAMPAIGNS ARE A DYING ART!   I love Frank Kern's most recent book called Convert…   Frank says, “These are campaigns... and I believe the campaign is dying.”   … and I was like, “I DO TOO!”   (Many times, I’ve ranted about people are forgetting what campaigns are - and that they think a campaign is just a Facebook ad)   So I want to show you how we launched the OfferMind ticket funnel by creating a ton of noise, Hollywood style campaign...   My subtext is that I hope this will incentivize you like crazy to join my programs - because we actually do what I'm teaching.   I'm not just re-teaching stuff that I heard from somebody else - we're actually actively doing this - which is very important to me.   CREATING A (PROPER) LAUNCH CAMPAIGN   The first time I ever learned this strategy was when I was working at ClickFunnels. Russell was hanging out with Brendon Burchard, and Brendon has this thing called The 7 Day Launch.   Now, this is Brendon’s thing, and you should totally go learn it from him…   I'm just gonna teach you briefly how I'm using some of the launch principles to sell tickets to OfferMind.   If you guys went to Funnel Hacking Live a couple of years ago, and you remember the documentary funnels, it’s very similar to that funnel style.   At the time of this going out, OfferMind tickets are available - so if you go to offermind.com you can get tickets, but we're expected to sell out pretty quickly.   I'm psyched about it - so go to offermind.com to see if there are any tickets available.   Now, back to the Hollywood launch…   I realized that if I just saying: “Hey, OfferMind Tickets are available…”  is kinda an anticlimax…   … and I don’t want it to be that way!   You see, marketers are event throwers - whether the event is physical or not.   I'm NOT saying you have to pull out the stops and throw an OfferMind to be a marketer,  that's not what I'm saying at all...   However…   To be a good marketer you have to be good at creating pressure, and then releasing it in a single direction. Anyone who can do that... has A LOT of power.   CREATING A PRE-FRAME   Recently, I went Jeff Walker’s launch event, and I got so excited just during the first half of the first day, 'cause honestly for half of the first day, Jeff did nothing but pre-frame the entire crowd.   I didn't know you could pre-frame that long, and frankly, it was very impressive.   The event is three days, and eventually, Jeff sells you into his Launch Con Program, and ‘cause I'm a Funnel Hacker, I bought the program to see how it works.   I love Jeff Walker - the book Launch plus DotCom Secrets is what finally helped me create success.   There’s a BIG lesson because I learned about funnels and launching rather than product creation.   Anyway, at Jeffs event, I took two full pages of notes of watching what he was doing… and for two-three hours, he did nothing but pre-frame.   The entire first session was just pre-framing - it was crazy nuts!   At the same time, I was thinking through different campaigns that have worked incredibly well...   I got a 2 Comma Club Award for a project I did for Russell using the 7 Day Launch campaign…   (It was for the first Two Comma Club Coaching Program where I helped organized Russell's stuff a little bit.)   … so I was like, “Why don't we ‘launch’ OfferMind tickets using the  same funnel!”   As OfferMind is a two-day event,  I don't have the luxury of spending half a day pre-framing…   So instead…   I decided to use the 7 Day Launch strategy to NOT only launch the tickets but to also to act as a pre-frame.   So that's what I’m gonna show you now.   I want to teach you the campaign and show you how we used it.   THE 7 DAY LAUNCH - PART # I:   The 7 Day Launch kinda looks like this…   Now, as we move forward, there's gonna be a few things that it would be advantageous to watch on YouTube.   If you go to salesfunnelradio.tv it’ll take you to my YouTube channel where you can watch if you want…   So there's…   Monday   Tuesday   Wednesday   Thursday   Friday   Saturday   Sunday   So, what I did was I created a single page funnel - I added a second page, simply because I added a share element from UpViral - but you don't actually need to do that.   The first time I built one of these funnels was for the Experts Secrets Masterclass   There was an Experts Secrets Masterclass that we used a 7 Day Launch for, so I was like, “Why don't I do an OfferMind masterclass?”   … and so offermindmasterclass.com was born.   PRODUCT LAUNCH # DAY ONE   So on MONDAY, I built the page and promoted it.   My goal was to have 2,000 people registered.   To start with we did one email drop and one Facebook Live, and we got about 700 people registered.   Then I had the rest of the day to keep promoting - so, day one, promote, promote, promote.   PRODUCT LAUNCH # DAY 2   #More promoting… PRODUCT LAUNCH # DAY 3   About a week and a half ago, I did an Ask Campaign where I asked everybody in the thescienceofselling.online group, “What do you struggle with when you're creating an offer?”   I had no idea how reactive that would be.   BOOM! There were 150 comments and HUGE awesome sample data!   I had no idea some of the things that people were struggled with in Offer Creation…   So I took the top five topics and split them into session content.   The first two sessions were on day #3  at 10:00 a.m and  2:00 p.m.   PRODUCT LAUNCH # DAY 3   Session #3 is at 10:00 a.m the following day   (I'll come back to session four 'cause that's a little different - but it's still 2:00 p.m on day #3)   PRODUCT LAUNCH # DAY 4   Sessions #5 and #6 are at the same time the following day     My pitch is for the Masterclass is:   “Come watch me as I film my next course OfferMind Masterclass live in front of a live audience.”   … I’m answering a lot of the questions that people have had as they've gone through last year's OfferMind event recordings.   What's powerful is that this not a top-level Ask campaign anymore, it's getting more detailed.   People are like, “Hey, about this scenario, where does that work?”   ...and I'm like, “It's a good question - you're not the first to ask that. I didn't realize that was a general question. Here's the answer.”   So in these five sessions, I'm just teaching and answering questions. I already have content planned out. It's NOT just a straight Ask Campaign styled course - I already know what I'm gonna teach.   However, the Ask campaign validated and helped fill in holes that I wasn't thinking about.   Sessions one, two and three, I'm breaking down a lot of vehicle, internal, and external related beliefs.   BACK TO SESSION #4   Can you guess what session #4 is gonna be?   A: It's gonna be a whiteboard webinar.   Q: What's it gonna sell?   A: OfferMind   I'm using 7 Day Campaign structure to launch the next thing in my value ladder -  which is OfferMind.   I believe everybody should come to OfferMind -  it'll shortcut tons of stuff in your life...   So session #4 is a webinar….   It's NOT a traditional webinar, I'm gonna do a share from my whiteboard - there are no slides, nothing else.   There's an offer that I created around getting a general ticket for OfferMind and I'm just gonna take that offer, and put it on this whiteboard and sell it.   It's really fascinating because this is a live class meets a webinar funnel.   PRODUCT LAUNCH FOMO   During this masterclass, I'm gonna teach for three days for almost six hours each day.   Part of the strategy is that people are NOT gonna be able to be with me the whole time.   It's a lot of content for me to teach, but in reality, there’s barely enough time for me to teach ALL the things that I want to.   it's gonna be a long time, and it's gonna be some of my best stuff - kinda an abbreviated OfferMind. And here’s the catch…   After the launch ends, I'm NOT gonna sell this masterclass in other places… (it’ll probably be a $300 - $400 OTO or upsell some low-end funnels), but it's not gonna be something that I sell generally…   So my pitch will be:   “Go get OfferMind, and get this course for free - ONLY until Monday at midnight.”   PRODUCT LAUNCH # DAY 5   After the webinar,  the sessions are still gonna be teaching and answering questions, but the stories I’ll tell are to help break additional vehicle, internal and external related false beliefs.   They’ll also be reminders that:   “Hey if you want this course, you can get it FREE when you buy OfferMInd.”   Recordings are not gonna be available.   The replays get taken down each day at midnight   PRODUCT LAUNCH # DAYS 6 & 7   At the end, there’ll be the scarcity urgency closeout sequence that you normally would put at the end of any webinar…   So for Saturday, and then for Sunday, it's all the sequences that are pushing them out…   Then Monday at midnight, BAM, it's done!   CREATING NOISE   For this to work,  I have to create a ton of noise!   My Offer business has an email list of over 15,000 people... and I'm pinging all of 'em - we're hitting all cylinders on this.   For three days people can watch me film my course   Then to keep the course for FREE - they have to get an OfferMind ticket.   Finally, the course will then be taken down, and no one else will get it.   The beauty of this is that it’s true urgency and scarcity. I hate fake scarcity and urgency, it's stupid - this is real.   https://media.giphy.com/media/QYQ3PZ9UHje3S/giphy.gif   OfferMind only has seats for 1,038 people, and there's already way over that on the waiting list.   Sooo…   That’s the end of PART # I…   Now we’re going to PART #2:  to find out how EVERYTHING is going.   THE 7 DAY LAUNCH - PART II:   Welcome to PART #2 of me documenting the 7 Day Launch for the OfferMind Event funnel.   Oh my gosh, I'm not gonna lie, I'm so freaking tired.   I have one of those Oura Rings -  and one day, I spent 800 calories just teaching … and another, I think it was close to 1,300. It’s ridiculous!   My voice is hoarse and croaky…   This on top of the One Funnel Away challenge, “Oh my gosh, I am wrecked.”   I've had to call a few audibles throughout this... and that's always expected in anything you launch, ever.   So let me just bring you through my studio setup real quick here…   The first time I ever watched Russell create and do a 7 Day Launch, he had this amazing camera crew, and there were all these people running around, all over the place.   There was this big ole' crew going down, and it was awesome -  it was impressive!   We have a picnic table with some boxes, and my laptop sitting on the top.   The room is a mess 'cause we had to restructure it real fast.   Then we have these ring lights, this backdrop light over there, and another light that's just pointing into the corner - so that everything looks kinda level on the actual Sales Funnel Radio backdrop.   We have a boom arm that's being held by a bunch of weights from the garage to weighing it down ‘cause the little clamp on the side wasn't quite big enough…   The place is wrecked!   You’re probably thinking, “Man, he's a freakin’ pig.”   ...and, yep! In the middle of launches, I stop adhering to general cleanliness standards.   In the middle of a launch, you do all sorts of crazy stuff. You go the extra mile to make sure crap happens.   THINGS ARE NOT GOING TO PLAN Today, I was supposed to launch the actual OfferMind ticket funnel, but as I started looking at the last few things needed in order to actually finish it, I was like:   “There's no way. There are too many small particulars for me to launch this comfortably right now.”   If I just go one more step further, it'll make it easy for us to manage, and that's what I want.   Which means, again, I'm only gonna sleep a few hours because I'm gonna go finish the event funnel.   I have a funnel team, but I'm finishing is that last 20% that sucks to finish.   These are my notes on what I need to finish for the OfferMind funnel... and there's A LOT.   This is actually how I started doing it while I was sitting next to Russell…   Take a piece of paper and draw the funnel Grab a different color and inside of each of the boxes, I’d write down what needs to be finished before the funnel’s ready.   ...and that's kinda the pattern I go through to see what need to be done. I’ve just barely brought them through how I've developed and designed a sales message and offer at the same time using My Core Offer Model, XAVIER.   When Russell did the 7 Day Launch, session #4 was when he did his big drop... but I need one more night - I gotta finish this, these last few pieces here.   I'm hustling hard to finish it.   SIMPLIFY TO WIN I'm in the simplification phase of funnel launching.   You start by thinking, “I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this,” and now, I'm in the phase now where I'm like:   “Okay, that was a cool idea, but it's completely unrealistic now.”   The first three sessions were just deep dive teaching, and then I was planning to finish the funnel in the one hour break I gave myself each day…   *IT’S NOT GONNA HAPPEN* So we're gonna do it tomorrow morning.   We’re gonna hide some elements so no one knows they're there, and finish 'em later, so we can just launch.   That's totally what we're doing right now, and that's exactly how we're handling it.   So in installment #3, I will tell you how it went! What is kinda ninja, in the OfferMind Masterclass, (as I'm teaching how to go create a sales message and an offer), I used the example of:   “Let's act like I'm trying to pitch you guys into coming to OfferMind!”   So then I asked:   “What false beliefs would you guys have if I said you should come to OfferMind?”   Then I broke and rebuilt their beliefs throughout the whole thing... it was awesome.   About halfway through,  someone was like, “Wait, you're doing this on us now!”   ...and I was like “Ha, gotcha!”   THE WHITEBOARD WEBINAR   Tomorrow,  I'm gonna tape pieces of paper on my whiteboard to hide the offer, and literally, do a whiteboard webinar selling OfferMind.   It's gonna use EVERYTHING I've taught them up to this point. It's this awesome culmination - I'm really pumped about it.   We’ve had 200 people consistently live with us every single session, (there’ve been two sessions per day), but what's fascinating is that within like six hours, there are another 1,000 views per session - it's been crazy.   Last night, before I went to bed, I took the videos down at midnight, ('cause I said I would), I want there to be real scarcity and urgency.   I hate fake scarcity and urgency.   … there were 3,000 views from yesterday's two videos!   All I'm telling you guys is that if you're gonna go in and do this kinda thing, all you need is …   A Boom Arm   A Box   And... A Coulton   Look at him over there...   Coulton's don't grow on trees.   He's been moderating and kicking out all the psychos with small mind syndrome - so that they get outta my life and my audience FOREVER.   He's the heavy that kicks people out when they become jerks on the chat:   “Wow, this doesn't work,”  and I'm like, “Yeah, you're gone.” I'm not even gonna go there.   Coulton’s top takeaway so far...   “Simplicity is key. Just the clarity that everything has come through with you teaching it, to all these people, like it just shows that it works”   Cool stuff!  I'll kick this back on in probably about 24 or 48 hours to document the aftermath of the whole thing.   PART III   This is PART #3 of me documenting the 7 Day Launch, and I wanna show you guys what happened…   It was Super Successful.   First of all, let me tell you how completely exhausted I was by the end. It took me two or three days to recoup.   Normally, when I'm talking on stage, it wouldn't take me that long... but I mean this was really aggressive speaking.   When it was all said and done, I think I spoke for about 15 hours in three days, and I was finishing a funnel in the evenings -  so it's not like I was totally relaxing or anything…   I'd go sleep a few hours, and then I would get up super early to finish the funnel - so it was A LOT.   So I'm actually gonna walk through what actually happened.   MY LAUNCH CAMPAIGN STATS   Okay, check this out...   *This is between the dates of April 17th to the 24th 2019*   You can see that it actually performed quite well - it did everything I hoped it would.   What's interesting is the cart value was actually higher at the beginning of the launch. Towards the end of the launch,  it actually started dropping - which is kinda fascinating.   This is NOT the first time we’ve launched these the OfferMind tickets - there are more tickets sold beyond that…   We're actually about double that as far as seats sold.   This morning, I got a message from Russell, (which was really cool), saying that this was the 7th highest grossing funnel in all of ClickFunnels yesterday -  so it certainly worked.   We made a lotta noise and a BIG ole' splash.   https://media.giphy.com/media/3kxqLmAVaGvHAmgs6d/giphy.gif OFFERMIND TICKETS There are actually four different ticket prices, and then a bump...   if you look, you can see that some people have a discount, (here are the discount ones right here, across the bottom), what's interesting is that not a lot are taking the discount.   There are actually more people buying without the discount  - which I thought was fascinating.   These two here, that it says bundle, (right where my fingers are), that is is that’s a phone call that we're giving away for free.   So people put in their information, and we're gonna chat with them.   Significantly more people are choosing to get the phone call than not.   ... which makes sense, right?   It's actually funny to me when they say, “No.”   On a few of 'em, I'm just gonna call 'em live - I thought that'd be kinda fun to call 'em live, 'cause I don't think they're expecting that.   So as far as the actual bump goes, which is them buying the funnel…   (This funnel cost me 17 grand to build, only because I got a sick team and they're really good, which also means they're very expensive).   … you could buy the funnel (and get the thing that cost me a lot of money) for 147 bucks - which is really cool.   I am shocked that's only 19%. I thought it would be closer to 30% - so it’s a little bit lower than I thought it would be... and maybe it's just that we're so inundated with the share funnels nowadays…   … but this is NOT a normal funnel - so I don't know.   I was a little bit shocked by that, but eh, whatever.   Let's see, looking at the VIP offer, VIPs are going quick, (this is not reflective of the other VIP tickets that already sold in the past)...   So a 41% take rate is pretty insane!   Next, the Capitalist Pig ad book…   So there's an ad book that we're offering, 13% for a second OTO, it's actually not bad either.   Soon there’s gonna be an additional product on top of this; I don't have it turned on yet, it's a two pay option that we’ll turn on very soon - so I think that should increase that.   So it's going well…   On top of that, I have a Thank You Page Webinar, and so of 97 people who have bought a ticket, four have gone in and purchased - which is still pretty good…   It's a $1,500 thing, and they get a 50% off coupon with it.   It's a pretty powerful campaign that we ran.   One thing that I will mention that's been fascinating is that:   The moment the campaign was over, pretty much all buying stopped, and this just attests to the principle that if you build it, they WON’T come.   … that's like the stupidest line on the planet.   I was doing some consulting with somebody, and they vehemently were very much about that phrase: “You know, Stephen, if we just build it, we know they'll come.”   I thought they were joking, and I didn't know that they were dead serious, and I started laughing.   I was like, ‘Yeah wouldn't that be nice if that was true!”   I had no idea that it was the CEO, and some of the major people in the company, and I was straight up laughing at his face, and then I explained myself, I said, “That's NOT true!”   We got another sale today, which is great, but like one sale today verses like the 96 that came in in the last couple…   They're not small ticket prices either - that's almost six figures.   Actually, with the other funnel, we've collected well over six figures for this now. It's a popular event, we're really excited about it. We got a lotta cool people coming - it's gonna be fun.   It's just funny, the moment the campaign's over, the buying stops. It's still open, it's still up, but the buying stops.   https://media.giphy.com/media/yIxNOXEMpqkqA/giphy.gif So the next thing we're gonna look at:   What other campaigns can we run?   Running Ads   Doing a summit   I have offersummit.com, and I'm gonna go get the big who's who of the industry to come in and teach us how they create their offers - that should be probably June and July-ish.   Anyway, there's a lotta like smaller to like micro things…   I'm gonna piggyback on the back of other affiliate promotions… there are secrets... I don't wanna tell you guys everything ;-)   ... just watch what I'm doing.   But it's just fascinating, this has really pushed back to the lesson the moment the campaign's over, the sales stopped the sales - that's buying behavior.   And so when someone's like, “I don't know if I wanna do scarcity or urgency,” I'm like, “Well, be prepared to not sell anything.”   As far as the lives, there was always about the same 200 people on with me every session... but by the time 12 hours had passed, it had been watched almost 2,000 times per video.   People loved it, they ate it up.   I had a lotta big friends, who are larger than I am, reach out and they're like, “What is it that you're doing?”   I got a lotta people I respect reaching out asking me questions. It was validating.   So, anyways, it went really really well, and we got a lotta noise from it.   Everyone and their mom heard about it   We did a 7 Day Launch to launch tickets - I hadn't seen anyone do that, so I was excited about it. It was hard work, but it's one of the easiest campaigns to run.   Energy wise it was challenging because you teach like crazy, but it was still one of the easiest things for me to go pull off -  it's a single page funnel.   1,800 people, I believe ended up joining the list. That’s huge.   30% of the traffic came from shared referred traffic, not my list. We found that out by using UpViral. So not only did it expand the list, it expanded those seeing me.   On weird thing, since it was on YouTube, it was actually a lot of people who are not normally in my audience... I think if we’d used  Facebook, I would've gotten more of the hot audience to buy.   Almost 100 people of the 200 who were live with me bought.   ...that's a pretty good sale rate, right!  I'm happy with that.   Once we finished the actual training, we went through with three day urgency scarcity closeout period just like what you would do on a webinar, and just as expected…   Day 1: the cart opened, and boom, big old blast the sales.   Day 2:  kinda nothing - which is usually what happens.   Day 3:  it's like shoosh - another huge amount of sales coming in.   Anyways, it was fun, it was cool. I learned a lot from it. We’ll definitely do it again. A highly effective way to teach, but also sell at the same time.   Most of the time, webinars don't have that luxury; teaching is a liability inside of webinar *usually, so it was cool to be able to pull that off.   So anyways, cool stuff guys.   If you guys, anyway, I would love to have you guys come to OfferMind.   We’ve got... I don't know if I'm allowed to say it…   You know what, I'll bring certain people on the show to introduce a lot of the speakers to you.   I am now actively, (and hopefully they see this), I am actively going to go and BEG absolute killer giants, like Mark Joyner, and Bill Glazer to come speak.   I don't know if they're going to yet, but this is me calling my shot before they've said “Yes.”   So, in the next month here, by the time this goes out there, hopefully, they’ve agreed.   BOOM!   If you're just starting out you're probably studying a lot. That's good. You're probably geeking out on all the strategies, right? That's also good.   But the hardest part is figuring out what the market wants to buy and how you should sell it to them, right?   That's what I struggled with for a while until I learned the formula.   So I created a special Mastermind called an OfferMind to get you on track with the right offer, and more importantly the right sales script to get it off the ground and sell it.   Wanna come?   There are small groups on purpose, so I can answer your direct questions in person for two straight days. You can hold your spot by going to OfferMind.com.   Again, that's OfferMind.com.

I believe heavily in models, patterns, formulas, and systems. However, there's one thing that will always trump a model…   I’m NOT a very creative person.   When I first started in this game, one of my BIGGEST challenges was finding a prolific idea that would generate income.   Have you ever struggled to produce an idea that makes money? I totally did.    I carried around a little black book to jot things down in…   My lack of creativity seemed to be sabotaging me. I didn’t know how to create stuff.    People would ask, “Stephen, what idea do you have?” And I'd be like, “Crap, I don't have any ideas. I just don't.”   … they'd look at me all confused, “...but, Stephen, you're doing all this stuff?”    *THE PLOT TWIST*   One of the reasons that I struggled with ideas was because I kept trying to come up with something that was completely fresh.    The Truth is…   Very few people on this planet know how to do that…   And here’s the Good News...   You don’t need to be a creative genius with a head jam-packed with originality to succeed in this game!   I’m probably gonna say somethings that’ll surprise you - especially if you’ve been following me for any length of time...    But I haven't been able to put this into words until now.    PRINCIPLES OF BUSINESS   I think the BIGGEST thing that can cripple you is when you start comparing yourself to entrepreneurs that have already been playing the game for a while.   When I first started working at ClickFunnels, I’d compare myself negatively to Russell and some of the Inner Circle Members, and that was a dangerous, stupid road to go down.   A lot of them had already…   Practiced Building Systems. Built Marketing. Created structures that let them move more freely. They had leverage.   They could do things without following as many models… which meant they could do things that a new entrepreneur can't.   … and that was one of the things I had to get over.   What was interesting was that I started looking at what they were doing in a different light…   “I SEE PATTERNS”   I'm an observant guy; it's one of my unique abilities... and one of the reasons why I can do what I do.    So I was sitting observing all this stuff, and I started seeing a pattern.   Let me share it with you…   It doesn’t matter whether it’s…   Offers Funnels Sales messages Whatever…   When you start out, you follow the yellow brick road. You follow the path that's already been paved, but eventually, the road stops. So the question is, how do you behave when there are no more bricks?   I’m guessing that you’ve probably heard me talking about the importance of following models and frameworks, and that’s still 100% true.   However, I started asking myself questions like:   When do you stop following models and frameworks? All the hack... when does that end?    … because if we were only able to hack, nothing NEW would ever be created.   Do you know what I'm saying?    So when the yellow bricks are done, it's your turn, as a marketer, to take the path one step further and build something different to what's already been done.   ENTER THE CRAZY ZONE   Let me tell you a story…   Back in the day, I’d sit next to Russell, and suddenly he would have an idea... which meant he'd go like this, “Uuuuuh!!!!”   And we all knew that meant, ‘get up and run.’    So we'd sprint barefoot over to the whiteboard, and Russell would start having these premonitions, kinda these visions...   “Oh my gosh! What if we did this? We could do this, this, and... Oh, my gosh! What if we do this?”    He'd start drawing them out… and we'd start coming up with offers.   (We'd usually brainstorm an offer or a funnel first.)    CREATING THE FUNNEL HACKER COOKBOOK   This is exactly what happened with the The Funnel Hacker Cookbook.   I helped write a good chunk of the book - especially the last bit which is specifically about what funnels to use in different industries.    That was my assignment; it took me FOREVER!    I went through all the...   Major industries that use ClickFunnels Different funnel types Way to use each funnel type in each industry    When Russell came up with the idea for the book, he’d started by saying:   “Oh my gosh! What if we were to make a book that walks through the major funnel types....  it could be like a cookbook with recipes.”   And then Dave would say something... and we'd all be like, “Oh yeah!”   Then I was like, “What if you took adult Legos…” ‘cause that's how I taught in the 2 Comma Club Coaching Program.   Next, someone would say something like, “Yeah! We'll give em’ Russells pajamas too! Yeah, that sounds awesome.”   We’d start to go to these crazy zones...    Eventually, we’d go back and start taking out all the stuff that was too crazy.    Alright…   They're NOT gonna sleep in Russell's pajamas… His wife's NOT gonna make 'em breakfast... No one gets to use his toothbrush... there's gonna be people who will probably say yes to that which is creepy. So definitely NOT!   ...and we'd back it way-way down.    That’s when I started to realize that we were no longer just following frameworks.   To a certain extent, we’d adhering to frameworks; paths and systems that had already been proven out…   But then, we'd use a combination of methods that would take things into a prolific zone.   It had a lot to do with the way we'd brainstorm; we'd go to the nut zone to make something truly amazing.    Then we'd go back and remove all of the nutso-crazy stuff, and add another brick at the end of the path.   What's cool about this is it helped me see that Russell wasn't necessarily always following the same models...    So I started applying the same principles to the way I build funnels.    WHAT TRUMPS FRAMEWORKS?   Q: What trumps models? There's something specific that trumps models and frameworks…   Can you guess what is it?    Compared to a lot of people, I don't have a huge company or a huge team, but we do pretty well... why is that?   I know why…   And it's not something I've really been self-aware of long enough to be able to teach about before, but it's something that I started doing…   Everything else I've been teaching is very much true, but there's this element on top of it that has allowed me to trump frameworks and models.    The Answer is…   *PRINCIPLES*   Principles trump models.    That's the biggest thing that I've realized.   The reason no one can really hack me out of my own markets is that I don't hack that much anymore. I just combined things that already existed in a way that has never been done before.    … and PRINCIPLES allow me to do that!   For example   I came up with a publishing funnel that works really really well. How I do my Dream 100 campaigns. No one did it how I was doing it.   We’ve had 37 out of 87 people reached back out to us in two weeks with our Dream 100 campaign... that's insane.   No one taught me how to do that.    Do you see what I'm saying?    Principles Trump Models.   Principles Trump Frameworks.     HOW TO DISCOVER YOUR TALENTS   The more I’ve been on this path, the more I’ve realized that it has to do with self-discovery… as you go further and further down this path as an entrepreneur, you discover MORE of yourself and your talents.   ... you have ‘em.    If you're like, “Oh, I don't have talents,” just hang on. Suck it up, and understand that you'll find 'em as you move forward.    I'm still finding mine.    The thing that I’ve realized, (and that I've been discovering) is that:   I'm really freakishly good at modeling something that works and that’s been proven, but my unique ability is being able to take principles from frameworks and combine them in a way that’s never been done before.    This is one of the reasons why my stuff has worked so well in the past...  that and my ability to simplify and teach.   I suck at a lot of other stuff, but that stuff... I'm really good at.    USING PRINCIPLES I always hate it when someone approaches me and says, “Promote my product.”    Someone said that to me this morning. I'm like, “I'm not gonna promote your product just cause you ask. I've got my own promotion calendar I'm following.”   I don’t want to do that to anyone, so for or my Dream 100 stuff, I was like:   Let's write a webinar, and instead of selling the product, let's sell me to the influencer.    I came up with a way to drip out literally a sideways webinar across my Dream 100 campaigns.    I even used the same principle to pitch Russell to keynote at OfferMind.   Guess what…   It worked really freakin' well!   My Publishing Funnel, I kinda made that up too...   I took the Soap Opera series... I made the cool free bait... Then I made it an intro to the value ladder.   ... that's the way I designed it. It worked really freakin' well too.    It feels like I'm tootin' my own horn... this makes me feel really awkward, but I'm trying to illustrate the principle.   PRINCIPLES MAKE MONEY    My Affiliate Marketing stuff has almost done $200 grand in the last year -  just from ClickFunnels.   I don't consider myself an affiliate marketer…   Q:  So why is it working so well?   A: Because I've taken principles from other models... and principles trump models.   My aim is NOT to be like, ‘Look how cool I am,’ that's not what I'm saying at all.  I just want you to realize that...   Principles Trump Models.   IT’S ALL ABOUT TIMING   Here’s how it works...   When you're starting out, you follow models because you should…   My little girl is gonna start learning how to ride a bike without training wheels soon.   She's started by following the model we all know works well for learning how to ride a bike.   Pretty soon we'll be taking off the wheels, and she'll be off on her own. Then she'll discover things on her own that she wasn't taught.   There are certain elements that can be designed… and there are other elements that must be discovered.    They're both right; it's just about timing.    Learn the model... because the model's your shortcuts. The model is a decade and a days worth of learning. Eventually, you get to a point where the model stops being so constricting. You’ve learned the principles, and instead, it becomes like Legos or Play-Doh…   The model what keeps you on track in the beginning, like the frameworks that I talk about.    (Which by the way, someone was like you talk about this framework, but you never teach 'em. Yeah, I do. That's what OfferMind is. It's two days of me teaching straight up frameworks.)   You follow the framework until it stops being constricting and turns into Lego and Playdough... and then, you can go figure out what it is that causes this success in that scenario.   Does that make sense?    BREAKING THE HACK-LOOP   I think some people get stuck in a hack-loop. You should hack. Definitely... *meaning model.    You model all the stuff that's happening out there... but eventually, the apprentice starts to turn into more of a master.   Suddenly you have more assets... because things become malleable and they're not so constricting.    In the One Funnel Away Challenge, what I'm teaching is ‘models.’    I'm teaching frameworks. I'm teaching concrete things that cause cash.   The process in OFA is:   Learn Practice Gain confidence, # I can actually do this.   Then the biggest question I get asked, “Well how does it work for me?”   My answer is...   Stop worrying about it. You'll figure that out as you move forward.   Once you gain confidence, you’ll start doing things that you weren't taught because of principles that have worked in other scenarios.   ...you’ll start doing things that are not explicitly taught.    That’s the reason why I haven't been hacked out of my own markets.    STAYING CATEGORY KING   I'm the category king in two areas; one was completely accidental, and then the other was by design.   There are two reasons why it’s still working so well:   It's kind of a land grab. I've moved really really fast, and I'm gonna do a podcast episode about that. (OfferMind will never be free again... but why did I make it free the first time? It was by design... it was on purpose.) I believe the real reason why I've not been dethroned, (besides just being first and grabbing a market share in people's minds), is principles.    I'm NOT necessarily hacking that much anymore. I still hack, but I'm NOT hacking frameworks or models. I'm hacking principles.    If I give people a piece of content ahead of time that's truly valuable, they're more likely to buy something even more expensive afterward.   *THAT’S A PRINCIPLE*   I'm trying to get you to understand is how malleable this game actually is.    DISCOVERING THE PATH So yes, hack, but don't get freaked if you want to do something that you haven't been taught...   You might be further down the path than you think.    Yes, it's about frameworks, but after a while, you’ll start doing things that you haven’t been taught... but that you’ve discovered.   When you get good enough in your industry, you're gonna start taking different elements from your red ocean  and piecing them together in unique ways.   You’ll add little glazes from other industries and gurus who don’t teach explicitly what you teach, but who have a principle that you can apply.    You take EVERYTHING, and combined it in a way that did NOT exist before to create a freakishly insane, amazing, “Oh my gosh I can't believe he did that,” kind of thing!   THE PRODUCT BIG BANG THEORY   I'm NOT actually that creative. I'm not.  One of the false beliefs I had to get over in my life was that I needed to be creative to succeed.    I used to call it The Product Big Bang Theory. Where you have this product idea - “ Boosh! Bam!” ... outta nowhere!   In fact, I wrote an e-book, (which I never released it) which talked about Product Big Bang Theory versus Product Evolution.   Product Big Bang Theory is NOT something that really exists, but we often compare ourselves to those kinds of ideas…   “I don't have those kinds of ideas, Stephen.” Yeah, I didn't either… that's why I'm trying to tell you this.   I learned principles and how to pull things together that already exist in NEW ways to create something that didn’t previously exist.   The things themselves already existed, I just put them in a way that hadn’t been done before.    It's the principle of the orchestrator...    I don't know how to play the trombone. I have no idea how to play the violin. I don't know how to build music stands I have no idea how to make that stick to conduct with   ...but I know people who do. They already exist.   I'm just using things that already exist in ways that have never been done before.    Follow the models; they’ll shortcut you tons of time. You’ll gain fluidity, confidence and the ability to move freely inside those frameworks. Then eventually, you can break out of 'em and pull in things in a unique way.   I don't think I've EVER taught this before, and not on purpose... I just didn't realize.    INCREASING MY SPEED   I'm not good at coming up with stuff that's never existed… but I am good at combining stuff in a way that’s never existed before.   What’s allowed me to do that more with a faster pace is the realization that principles trump models.   Models still matter. However, once you focus on principles, you’ll start to get these cool insights that make you look like a creative individual.    I didn't start that way.    When you start learning different principles they expand the model to make it more than what you learned initially.    One of my BIGGEST breakthroughs was realizing that I didn't need to be a creative genius. Just follow the models, and the principles come along.   A lot of times you don't see the principle at first, and you're like, “Why am I doing this?”   It’s like the Mr. Miyagi thing: “Daniel-san, just keep painting the fence, or sand the floor, or whatever…”   A lot of times we don't learn the principle until we've been doing the model for a while.   It's hard to really grasp the principle if I just come out and say, “Principle.”    … which is why the execution of the model is necessary to help you discover the principles within.   BOOM!    If you're just starting out you're probably studying a lot. That's good. You're probably geeking out on all the strategies, right? That's also good.   But the hardest part is figuring out what the market wants to buy and how you should sell it to them, right?    That's what I struggled with for a while until I learned the formula.   So I created a special Mastermind called an OfferMind to get you on track with the right offer, and more importantly the right sales script to get it off the ground and sell it.   Wanna come?    There are small groups on purpose, so I can answer your direct questions in person for two straight days.    You can hold your spot by going to OfferMind.com.   Again, that's OfferMind.com.

Wisecracking mercenary Deadpool meets Russell, an angry teenage mutant who lives at an orphanage. When Russell becomes the target of Cable -- a genetically enhanced soldier from the future -- Deadpool realizes that he'll need some help saving the boy from such a superior enemy. He soon joins forces with Bedlam, Shatterstar, Domino and other powerful mutants to protect young Russell from Cable and his advanced weaponry.--- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/lqdhro/messageSupport this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lqdhro/support

The talent of Russell Nash was recognised at an early age, when he joined the famous Sylvia Young Theatre School. Perfecting his art with roles in television, theatre and as a model, he was a busy professional performer before he had reached fourteenth birthday.Lionel Bart personally cast him for the lead as Dodger in the highly acclaimed musical Oliver and many lead roles followed in both theatre and film.After further training at the Lee Strasberg Studio in the USA, Russell returned to London to form a band and a career as a composer was launched with tracks written for All Saints (I Feel You, from their Platinum album Saints To Sinners) and artists of the day such as Shola Ama. When Russell found himself unexpectedly dropped by his record label, he headed for southern Spain and there, amidst mountains, the Mediterranean and Moorish landscapes he quickly learnt the language and culture of his new home. He now has a thriving recording studio and teaching academy. Over the past few years, this quirky, contemporary composer and performer has co written an entire musical, composed songs and music for film, theatre and commercials whilst singing and playing out both professionally and just for fun in hidden venues where the walls reverberate with Flamenco passion and the Andalusian heartbeat that makes his soul smile.Support the show (http://patreon.com/IanRutter)

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

Boom! What's going on, everyone? It's Steve Larsen, and this is Sales Funnel Radio.   Today I'm going to teach you guys how to win affiliate contests. Not as hard as you'd think.   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 this episode. Okay, two quick things real fast. So you guys saw a little bit ago, I went in and I was promoting really hard the 30 Days book.   I was able to win this affiliate competition, which is really fun. I sold 375 books and got first place. There was an offer created around that. There was a special thing that you guys got from me when you bought the book through my link; I gave a free ticket to the OfferMind event along with a bunch of other stuff. It was really really cool. It was sexy. Very exciting to get that kind of a thing.   Just last week, I threw the event, and what was cool was I knew Russell was selling this thing called 10X Secrets while the event was going on.   Now, I did not have any time to promote Russell's cool thing. I like promoting Russell's stuff, he's got obviously fantastic stuff, obviously. I don't need to tell you that. But I realized, like crap. I don't have time to promote this thing.   Then Miles, he helps run a lot of the affiliate stuff over at ClickFunnels, sends me a message and he goes, "Hey dude, I just want you to know that because of sticky cookies, you are in 16th place. If you get in the top 10, we're going to take you on a private yacht from Miami down to the Bahamas right after the 10X Growth Con in February." I was like, "Are you serious? I didn't know that was the prize. That's crazy!"   It was Thursday night that he told me that, and it was closing in two days. I was like, "Holy crap." And so what I did, and guys, there's a point to the story here and I'm not just like rrrrr. I want you to know the story...   I went in, and I was like, "OK. How can I provide value?"   This contest had already been going on for a week - which means all the people who were really looking forward to purchase, all the people who wanted to purchase, have most likely purchased from the get-go.   Which means I have to sell a portion of the audience that was not planning on buying it. You guys hear what I'm saying? That's a harder sale. I was like, "Oh, crap!"   So what I did is, and this is the big lesson here... I decided, like,"OK, what if somebody bought 10X Secrets through my affiliate link, what problems do I cause for that individual?" What problems does that cause when they buy 10X Secrets? What else might they want to know?   I was like, well, funnels, right?   10X Secrets is all about selling. Russell's the funnel guy, but that product is all about sales specifically. Specifically, stage selling.     When you learn how to do that skill, it's very powerful. It's one of the reasons my funnels work really really well. It's one of the reasons why I do what I do. I can do what I do because I study stage selling.   Funny enough, selling in a funnel is like very similar to selling on a stage. As far as the delivery, they're a little different. The way you speak, the way you present, the way you're talking and pointing and all this stuff. Like that's its own skill set. But the psychology, it's very similar of what you're doing.   So anyways, I was like, well, what else do they need? What else would somebody need if they bought 10X Secrets through my link? "OK, funnels."   Well, I got this cool product called My Funnel Stache.... What if I just let people choose one of those funnels? So every asset I have about the webinar funnel,  e-com funnel, supplement funnel, or info product funnel. Whatever it is... there's lots of them.   And I will give them the training on how to build it.   I'll give them the share funnel, so it's pre-built.   I'll give them the email sequence. I'll give them the video that shows them the strategy of what makes it work.   There's all this stuff. I was like, "OK, cool, that's sexy. That's really sexy." But what else?   And I started thinking through, and I was like, "What if I sent out some leftover OfferMind swag to people?" We had some extra swag leftover - and this is the kind of swag we had:   We had a water bottle. This is the famous, iconic orange water bottle that a lot of you know.   A lot of you guys will be on my live funnel builds and watch me, I always have this thing with me. A lot of you guys ask me where I get it, where I have them.   So we talked to Nalgene, and they custom created some with Sales Funnel Radio on the bottle - which is kind of cool.   And so I was like, you get the bottle. (Actually, I can't remember if we did the bottle or not. Anyway, it's part of the swag.)   The notebook - it says Sales Funnel Radio across the top.   The cool branded pen.   I write a lot, probably more than you guys think I do. I listen to books and podcasts, and stuff like that less than you guys probably think I do, and I write probably more than you think I do. There's a big lesson in that.   So anyway, we got this sweet notebook for them, so people can take notes - because I know I talk a lot - and talk fast.   Then there's the famous Capitalist Pig shirt that everyone loves. On the back, it says Sales Funnel Radio.   My favorite is to wear those in airports and busy public places where I get the most dirty looks.   There's the "It's Monday, Baby” t-shirt.   If you guys follow me on Instagram at all, you guys know the story behind this - which is pretty awesome. "I love Mondays! I hate Fridays."  I reminded everybody of that on the back. Right? "Woohoo, Fridays suck. But wait for your Monday." Fridays suck, OK?   Anyway, so what I did, is I went, and I said, If you buy, (just follow me on this for a moment.) I said, if you buy 10X Secrets through my link, I'm going to give you the:   #Capitalist Pig shirt. #Monday, Baby shirt. #Notebook. #Pen. # I'll let you guys choose a funnel from My Funnel Stache. #I will give you all assets I have around that funnel.   I went from, I think, 1500 in sales, something like that, to 13,000 in sales in two days. And I ended up taking fifth place in the whole contest. Not bad for just swooping in the last few days, right?   I'm excited; I'm going to get to go on a private yacht cruise with the top 10 other affiliates in ClickFunnels. We're going to go to the Bahamas and anyway, I don't know any more details besides that. I'm excited about that!     I used the same principles that got me to be the number one with the 30-Days contest.   If I had planned a whole campaign around it, I actually could have maybe; I don't know, done at least number one, two, or three. I could have definitely gone a few more spaces. It was the last two days. That affiliate contest had been going on for almost ten days by that time.   What I want you to understand is...   I love affiliate marketing, first of all.   Think about this for a moment. Do you think people get more distracted by the creation of the product or selling the product? The creation of the product! All the time!   Everyone I coach, they're like, "Stephen, what products should I sell? What should I do here, what should I do here?" They get so distracted by the making of the thing that they spend almost no time studying and obsessing over how to sell the thing.   What causes money to go into your pocket? Now, obviously, the selling does. I'm not saying to not make a product that's not amazing. But what I'm saying is, "It takes more effort and energy to craft a campaign and a sales message and an event, whether it's online, offline, whatever. Right?"   The feeling of the event. More effort and energy to create a sales message than it does the product. You understand what I'm saying? I'm just going to pause there for effect when I say that. It takes more effort. You should be spending more time creating the sales message, the actual hook, the story than you do the offer. It's not a linear relationship there. It's massively asymmetrical, OK?   And so the reason I love affiliate marketing is because affiliate marketing is amazing training grounds for marketing skills.   If you're like, "Stephen, I've never launched a product on my own...  or every time I launch one, it doesn't work very well." Man, maybe take like a step back and go practice some affiliate marketing. That's why I created the program, Affiliate Outrage.   If you guys have ever checked out affiliateoutrage.com, it's a completely free program.  I'm not pitching a thing in that program. The reason I made it is because affiliate marketing is like training wheels.   You don't have to go make the product; you don't get distracted by that. All you do is you flex the muscles of how to sell stuff constantly and how to build campaigns around it.   How to actually go sell stuff. How to actually make the dollar turn.   Those are the skills that you actually need to go create.   How did I be number one for the 30 Day book? It's because I know how to market, not just make products.   How did I get number five in two or three days, right before the whole thing closed up?  I swooped right in; I was exhausted from the event, "All right, let's just do it." Bam! Number five. How?   It's because I know how to sell stuff.   I'm selling other people's products. You guys would be shocked. My list is not that big compared to the other people that I beat in the actual contest. It really isn't. So how the heck am I still getting top ten all the time? How is that happening? That's like a huge lesson in this.   When we at Traffic Secrets event down in Phoenix, it feels like a month ago now, it was crazy. When we were down there, wow, it was like a month ago. Anyway, when we were down there, Russell said something that I want to recap, so you guys all understand the power of what I'm talking about here.   He said, "Usually you make a dollar per month per person on your list. So just get more people on your list."  If you're bad, that's the metric.   When you start to learn a lot of these skills and a lot of things like that, then you start to make two dollars a month per person on your list per month. Then it's three; then it's four.   I think I do seven to eight dollars per person per month on my list. And it's because of how I'm doing it.   Now, I know I'm going to go list build more. I've got cool strategies coming down the pipeline. It's just for me; it's the next phase that I'm going into. I'm always list building. I've got lists all over the place, which is great. Probably too many. It's a little bit convoluted in a few places.   ...But what I'm trying to say is like, you have to understand, the reason I can flex these muscles in these different areas is because I know how to make a very attractive sales message and a very attractive offer to pair with it.   It doesn't matter if it's my product or somebody else's.   If I don't control the cart, if you're selling somebody else's product, like a lot of you guys, you're commission-based salesman, you're in MLM or affiliate marketing, right? Does that make sense?   Whatever it is, you don't have control over the actual checkout process.   There are several angles I think of in this scenario:   #What problems do I create for an individual if they buy that product through my link?   # How can I solve that follow up-based problem with a product?   #  I could give them that. I have this; I could give them that. I have this; I could give them that.   So now, when they buy through my link, they get all these other things as well. Boom! I just out-valued every other person in the contest.   Multiple times that's how I've done what I have.   It's not about, "Buy through my link." It's about how can I outvalue everybody else who also is trying to give people their link? Does that make sense?   It's a big deal when you understand that, OK?   Because everybody else is promoting like this: "Here's my link! Buy through my link! Oh, man, I got this link, and you should buy through it!" So like, “Why? What's the difference between you and somebody else?”   So what you do is you create an offer around the other person's product. Make an offer around it.   A lot of you guys know the story, right, when I was doing door to door sales, I was going out to this area, and I was ticked. The day before I was not having a good day. It was super hot, and I'm hiding in this McDonald's area. I was selling pest control. It was so hot. I was like, "Maybe I should sneak over to McDonald's that's right there because of the AC?" I wanted to cool off.  I walk in there and funny enough, like half the rest of the team is already hiding in there along with my boss.  I was like, "Oh that's funny."   This guy walked up to us inside that McDonald's and just asked to buy. He was like "Hey, can I buy?" And we were like, "Yeah." We all stopped for a second and looked around. We were like, "No, you should buy. No, no, you be the one that buys. You haven't had a sale yet today; you go ahead, you get it." We were friends and family.   So finally, my boss pointed at somebody, the lucky person, and said, "Here you go, you take the sale." So they closed the sale, easy lay down sale right there. That never left me, because as we walked out of that McDonald's and we went back to keep selling pest control door to door, I realized that to that customer, there was literally no difference in who he chose.   It was the same sale, right, the same process. We were in the same uniforms. We had the same script. We had the same stupid cheesy jokes in our script. Same fulfillment. There was literally no difference in who he chose.   Guys, affiliate marketing is no different, OK? Which is a huge advantage if you understand this one principle I'm trying to teach you guys right now.   If you just understand that the game is about out-valuing somebody else. It's not about price. They can get the same product from like 100 other people. Tons of other people, OK? Instead, just outvalue everybody else.   So one of the things I like to do, like I was just saying, I like to think through and go like, "OK, what are all the follow up problems that I create for an individual if they buy that product through me, and what can I add in so that they get all those bonuses when they buy through me?"   There was a time when I built 89 funnels two times to fulfill on Russell doing this exact thing that I'm talking about right now. I watched him stand up, and he wanted to promote somebody, it was when I first started working at ClickFunnels. Stu McLaren was selling a program called Tribe. Some of you guys have probably heard of that.   When Russell promoted Tribe, he created an offer. He said, "Hey, when you buy through my link, I'm going to give you this and this and this and this and this and this because I see that Stu is teaching about membership areas which is super cool, well this thing I have goes well with membership areas. And I'll give you this, and I'll give you this, and I'll give you this, and I'll give you this."  I was like, “Cool.”   As part of that, I had to build 89 funnels x2 separate times to fulfill and deliver what he had given inside of his affiliate offer. Does that make sense? That's exactly what I'm talking about...   You're just riding on the additional problems that get created when somebody buys a product.   Whenever you sell something to somebody, you're not just solving a problem. You're also creating new problems. Which is fine, it's great. You just solve the follow up ones with more offers, you actually can sell more and make more money.   Does this make sense, what I'm telling you guys? Because I don't want to get like too in the weeds here around this.   The easiest way to dominate and destroy affiliate games is to understand this one principle.   If I have just a little bit of time, I will do what I just said. How can I solve the follow up problems that product will create? How can I solve it with products, and can I bundle it with that person's thing?   So when somebody buys through an affiliate link of mine, I can see it. It's in Backpack. I can log into the affiliate area and ClickFunnels. Boom, I get an Excel spreadsheet of everybody who's purchased from me and then I just email them the bonuses, or email them the ticket for OfferMind like I did, bam! You know what I mean? It's real easy. Super simple.   If they don't have access to that, I just tell them, "Screenshot your receipt and send it over to me and I'll send you the bonuses."   We just did that for 10X Secrets. That's how I killed it. I was expecting to sell like 12 packages. I sold 62, OK? Sixty-two people bought through that link. "Woo! Holy crap, OK?" We're going in, and we're fulfilling, we're shipping out all that stuff and doing all those things the next couple of days here, which is exciting. But that's how; just outvalue the other person.   I love this topic; it's a super fun topic.   Affiliate marketing is a great way to spread your wings and practice flexing your marketing skills muscles where you don't have to work on building the product.   One of the other reasons why this stuff has worked for well for me is I don't like to make a business out of affiliate marketing. I don't. It's like icing on the top. I'm not in the business of promoting other people's stuff. I promote my stuff. So I'm very careful about what I promote.   I only promote other people products when I know they are freaking incredible and they pair well with what I do. You guys get what I'm saying? Don't just go promote a whole bunch of people's stuff. I don't do that. I don't like to do that.   There's a method that I use to go and dominate in the affiliate space:   #Step number one: create an affiliate-based offer - Put their product in your offer and then toss in a whole bunch of your own stuff that you'll give them when they buy through your link. Boom, now you have an offer. You are now out valuing everybody else who's promoting that product.   Number two: Create a story around each one of those bonuses   So I'm gonna walk you through this here real quick, OK. Let me find it here real quick here. I'm inside of my ClickFunnels stuff here.   So what I like to do is I like to create a story around each one each one of the things inside of the offer I created for them. Because now I've got to promote it.   So if I have this cool affiliate-based offer, and I've got all these bonuses that are coming from me, I just got my computer out here, right, oh and this sticker, too, these are cool stickers we've got, barely created for them.   Check this out...   So I wanted to promote 10X Secrets. So my offer was:   # I'll give you some leftover swag # I'll give you whatever funnel you want from My Funnel Stache as well as all the assets that come with it.   Does that make sense? That was my offer. So what that means, I have two storylines.   #1: I have a storyline about swag. #2: I have a storyline around Funnel Stache.   So in my head, I knew, "Well, I've got like two days to promote." (I think I had three.) Anyway, it was two major days, but one was like a half day when I realized like "Oh crap, I should be doing this." (No, I had Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Okay, no, it was three days.)   So what I did is:   #Number one, I was just like, "OK, here's the offer," and I did a post on Facebook. I wrote out the post, and I was like, "Hey, if you guys don't know, 10X Secrets is going on. If you guys want to, here's my offer." I went live on Facebook talking about what they were going to get.   "You're going to get this," and I walked around my office showing them physically what they were going to get. That's very powerful, that's very important, alright? It's a physical aspect to my offer, OK? So I walked around, and I was like, You're going to get:   #This shirt #this shirt. #the water bottle #the notepad   You're also going to get:   #Stuff from My Funnel Stache - the best offer.   So I walked around, and that's like step one. Just announcing the offer. You'll get sales just from that.   #Number 2:  I take my Facebook post, the description, and I go, and I send it as an email to my whole list. I remind them, "Look, this is going to end soon."   The next day, (remember now I've got two more storylines.)   >The first storyline was just announcing the offer. >I have two major bonuses in there which means I have two stories I should tell.   The first story I told was about swag.   #Number 3:  I think the story I told was about how the offer of mine came about and why this shirt came about. Especially the Capitalist Pig shirt, right. How that Capitalist Pig shirt came around, and why does that make sense? That's why I did it that way. That's how it worked so well. There was a story about that; it became the story for the next Facebook post.   #Number 4: Then I copied it and sent it as an email with a link to go buy, with a call to action. "First, what you going to go do? Go buy through this link. It's my link. I'm just telling you it's an affiliate link.   Number two, send a screenshot to my team right here of your receipt. Number three, inside that screenshot, when you send the screenshot also tell us your shirt size, your address so we can ship stuff out to you.   Then tell us what funnel you guys want, all the assets for that that I have, and I'll blast it out to you as well. Ready, go! As a reminder, this ends Sunday at midnight, OK?"   Very standard call to action - that was it.   #Number 5: The next day it was Sunday, it was the story about the very next piece. The funnels, OK? I was like, "Well, how do I tell Funnel Stache stories in a way that people haven't heard yet?" So I started looking through assets I already had that I forgot that I had. That the audience will most likely forget that I had as well, OK?   A lot of times, guys, when it comes to affiliate stuff I'm just reusing stuff that I already have. A lot of times I'm not creating things that I don't have. For me, I'm going to spend my creative power on my stuff. However, for affiliate things I can just bundle up cool stuff. You know what I'm saying? So this is the post that I wrote talking about Funnel Stache, I said:   "Here's my client checklist. Some of you guys may have seen this. So here's my client checklist.  My early days of funnel building were ... interesting.   I'd take on anyone for any reason. At some point I was building for eight, eight different companies at the same time: skin care, toys, statues, supplements, political stuff. Yup, that was a crazy one. Different programs, et cetera.   I had no filter, no requirements, no qualifiers to work with me. Actually, my only requirement was whether or not someone had money to pay. My friend, that is not good business practice. I was a good funnel builder and hustling hard, but not at the right stuff."   Notice I'm not coming out saying, "Buy through my thing!" There's a story, right? I've told you the backstory. I've told you a wall. Internals, externals, like I'm hitting all the stuff right? So now I'm leading you into a spot where there's an epiphany, "Oh my gosh, there are actual qualifiers of who should be inside of my affiliate stuff."   ...Okay, I'm going to go faster here, so this episode is not crazy long. But I want you to see just behind what's going in my head when I'm promoting somebody else's stuff - because two times in a row now, right, number one, I was number one for the 30 Days book and then I just didn't have any time. Last three days I just swooped in and was able to make fifth place - which is awesome.   But there's a method to how I'm doing this, and I don't think people know it. I don't think people are seeing what I'm doing. So what I thought I would do in this episode, is anyways, it's a little bit longer. Hopefully, that's cool with you guys.   So I said, "I was a good funnel builder, hustling, but at the wrong stuff. About two years in, I left college, I became Russell Brunson's funnel builder, and I started creating a checklist of things I needed to know about a company before I ever agreed to build a sales funnel for them. Here is that checklist."   I'm leading with serious value here. Am I promoting my stuff yet? No! That's big.   So then I walk through the checklist:   “There are 11 things that I walk through here. You need to look at this, look at this." I explain why in each one of them. People were like, "Holy crap." It got shared, it got commented on - it went all over the place. It was really really cool, the checklist.   Then I said, "I realize this list leaves a lot of you guys out. I can't build for you, or you're not in a scenario where I get to actually build for you, right? Your goal is to match your funnel building skill level with the correct client for you. So with that in mind, here is my gift to you...   About 12 months before I left ClickFunnels, I started building sales funnels in front of live audiences so they could ask their questions while I did it. The response was amazing. I kept doing it. I now have a collection of the best of the best sales funnels just as we would build them at ClickFunnels. I'd like to give one of them to you."   (... I mean, come on, guys, that's awesome copy. It's amazing. This took me about an hour and a half to write...)   I also want to give you:   #The course on how to build the funnel and why.   #The strategy of when to use it.   #The prebuilt shares funnel.   #The email sequence.   I'm also going to give you guys some of my leftover OfferMind swag.   #The famous "Capitalist Pig" t-shirt.   #The voice losing "It's Monday, Baby" t-shirt.   #Sales Funnel Radio journal and pen.   #I'm also going to pay for the shipping for you.   I was looking at my commissions when everyone would buy one of them, and it's like $118. My guess is it's not going to cost that much money to ship it, and then also less all of the costs of the swag; I'll actually be making money still on promoting this thing.   However, I'm willing to lose a little money to gain speed. Does that make sense?   I'm going to pick up more sales by losing, and I'm totally fine with that, I just wanted to be in the top 10, OK?   "How to get your gift: Simply buy Russell's new stage sales and closer training 10X Secrets through my affiliate link here.   Step number two: send a screenshot to goanswerme.com, which is the support link I have.   Step number three: just tell me your address, shirt size, all the stuff, we'll cover it in here.   Here are some of the funnels that are in there:   #Hiring funnel. #Auto-webinar funnel. # E-com funnel. #Free plus shipping. #Event funnel. # Membership funnel. #Publishing funnel. #Supplement funnel.   Sound fair? Awesome. Just do steps one through three now.   Russell's ending his 10X Secrets offer tonight at midnight - you have 12 hours left."   Does that make sense?   Fifty-eight comments came in, and people were going nuts and commenting, "Boom, I just bought. Boom, I just bought. Boom, I just bought. Boom, I just bought."   #Number 6: The next thing I did, which was very very masterful on this, is I exported all the people who had already purchased, and I said, "Congrats " to these people for already purchasing. There's this huge list of people who've already been purchasing.   Huge social proof, right? Same psychology as you would have inside of a funnel. Does that make sense? So that's a huge move, and I do that all the time now. So that people see like, "Oh I'm not the only one doing this."   #Number 7: Then I tag the people who've been buying from me, so it pings them. "Oh, Steve Larsen just mentioned you in a comment." Like, what? They will go to that post. They will read it and say like, "Woo, yeah, baby." Massive social proof. You guys get what I'm saying?   #Number 8: Then I'll take that post and blast it to all my email list one more time.   Guys, that's how I run affiliate stuff. You don't get to sidestep marketing just because somebody else made the product and gave you a link to sell it with. You do not; you still have to create marketing. It's no different than if it was your product or not. Build a campaign around it, OK?   So:   #I told three stories. #I made an offer.   What did I have? What were the assets I already had that could solve follow up problems they're going to experience when they buy the other person's product?   When they buy 10X Secrets, what are some questions they'll have? Oh, you know what, I know Stephen does a lot of stage speaking. What if I got some cool swag that he has that's left over. Cool. I already have that, awesome, done. Cool. Sweet. I can do a lot of cool things with that already.   What if I was able to send them out some funnels? Boom, done, awesome. "Which one are you going to choose?" Package the offer together.   One story is about the offer itself.   >Next story about the next bonus.   >Next story about the next bonus.   If I had longer, I would:   > Keep adding bonuses and stories with calls to actions. >Additional social proof. >Re-downloading the list of people who have bought from me. >Putting it back out inside the email and inside of the actual comments area of the Facebook post. >Take that post, push it out in an email.   Over and over and over and over and over. Pressure, pressure, pressure. Boom, here it comes! Here comes the ending, close close close, whoa, right!   And that's exactly how I do it, and that's exactly how I've always done it.   If I had even more time, I would go get Russell Brunson on a podcast, or whomever I'm promoting... I'd start getting that person on publications and interviewing them to make content around it.   You saw me do that with the 30 Days book. That's why I had so much noise.   I put my own content, my own money behind creating content for it. I just want you guys to know more about the affiliate game. It is not, not, not about just grabbing an affiliate link and sending some traffic to it.   Does that work? Sure. Are you going to make a lot of money? In my mind, doubtful.   Build an offer around the product. Build an offer around the other person's product and then go tell stories with a call to actions behind it. Super simple. A really easy way to do it.   I'm nervous to tell you guys this - because I've had a lot of fun being in the leaderboards like crazy for a lot of stuff.   Anyway, very very exciting.   Hopefully, you guys have enjoyed that episode. If you did, please please please go to iTunes and let me know and rate the podcast. That helps me like crazy, helps the show a lot. It really means a lot to me.   Those of you guys who have already done that, "Thank you, guys, I appreciate you guys being in this and watching this episode. Look forward to seeing you guys in the next leaderboards for anything you promote."   Boom, just try to tell me you didn't like that.   Hey, whoever controls content controls the game. Want to interview me or get interviewed yourself? Grab a time now at stevejlarsen.com

Boom! What's going on everyone? It's Steve Larsen. This is Sales Funnel radio, and today I'm going to talk to you about how I found my VA's.   What's up, guys? Some people have asked, "Hey what's a VA?"  I'm talking about virtual assistance, I'm talking about how I found my team.   Now what's funny is, I remember sitting at a few events and I would watch these guys who had made 2 Commas through their sales funnels. And there was this interesting correlation that I saw as would watch these guys.   Someone would get up,  and they'd take the picture with the award "Yay!" (mine's over there.) And they'd take the 2 Comma Club picture and they'd be like, "Check it out! This is so cool!" And the next person would get up and they'd do it again. "Woo, what's up!" They'd take the picture; "I finally did it, yeah!" Which is really, really cool.   But I started noticing this very interesting thing about all of them - I can't help it, I'm kind of a pattern junkie.   I started looking and I was like, "What do each one of these people have? Like why is it that that guy can do that?" Right. "Why is it that that guy can do that?"   And I'm not trying to be like weird or whatever, but there's a lot of them that stand up and be like, "I think I can build a funnel better than that guy can in his own category, but he made a million bucks." Right. "Why didn't I?" You know what I mean. It's important to ask those questions.   And one of the things - amidst many of the things - one of the things I started realizing was that all these people had, (that I did not at the time), was a certain mentality. I was lacking in this area.   Growing up, I'll just tell you guys, this isn't to get all sad and sobby or whatever, but I didn't know what I was good at. And growing up, a lot of times entrepreneurs don't. They don't know what they're good at for a little while.   I always tease a few, but it's kind of like the X-men. Like you're still trying to figure out your powers. And I hate the mystic crap that people try to lace around entrepreneurship. It's not mystical, okay, it's business. It's giving value and getting paid for it.   Entrepreneurship is not mystic, you're not like a godsend to humanity to go bless, anyway. You know what I mean? You know the mentality I'm talking about? You see around a lot of times. That irks me a little bit, okay?   But anyway, right, I was young and I was like, "What am I good at? What am I good at?" And as I started getting a little bit older into my teens I started realizing that I had an ability to focus hard and go sell stuff.   I had a very intense fascination with the act of selling. And I started learning more, and there's a lot of self-discovery involved with entrepreneurship, I decided like, "Oh my gosh." I started learning how to learn and I got addicted to it.   I started saying things like, "Well I'm gonna learn that, and I'm gonna learn that, and I'm gonna learn that, I'm gonna learn that. And I'm gonna try and be the best at this, and the best at this, and the best at this, and the best at ..." And I like, "I'm gonna learn it all baby! Bring it on!"   And funnily enough, that's like the exact opposite of what each one of these entrepreneurs onstage were doing. And I was like, "Well what are they doing then? Like how does this actually work?" And I remember I was sitting next to some extremely successful people and one guy he leaned back and he goes, "Yeah. I have no idea how to drive Facebook ads."   And I was like, "Are you serious?"  I didn't know either, but it shocked me that the guy didn't know because that's where I saw most of his stuff. I was like, "Yeah," he's like, "Yeah I just outsource it." I was like, "Huh. That makes sense. You really have never done one ever though? wow. Hmm."   Even I have massively failed at least getting one out the door. And I was like, "What's the issue? Huh."   And then the next guy was like, "Yeah, I didn't write my own book. I want to make sure I actually write my book, I'm writing it right now. But he's like, "Yeah I went through and I just dictate it over the phone or whatever and somebody writes it while I'm speaking."   And I start that way when I'm doing it, a lot of guys do. And then I like to go back again and rewrite again. I'm too much of, I do like the art of writing a little.   But anyway, so one thing that started fascinating me though is the incredible obsession each one of these guys had at having a team. That was it. The thing that they all had that I didn't.   I was focusing on being a Renaissance man. Being a Renaissance man has never made anybody a ton of money, okay? To a certain point, it's great to know how to do a little bit of everything, to a certain point, to a certain degree. Especially when you're brand new and you gotta wear a lot of hats, okay.   But there comes a point when you've gotta stop doing that right. And so the thing that all these guys had that I didn't was a team ...   And when I suddenly realized that, that's when I actually started getting into things like affiliate marketing. I started getting cash in and hiring out tasks that I could have done but should not be doing. Does that make sense?   So this episode's a little bit different - I took one of the lessons - well parts of it - from Affiliate Outrage. It's a free program. This is towards the end of the program.   I wanted to go through and share with you guys my strategies for finding good people for the team - because I've wasted a lot of money on bad talent. There was no talent.   So anyway we're gonna cut over here, I hope you enjoy it.   There are several strategies that I walkthrough for how to find good people, and how to vet them out. Is this an actual employee that you're bringing in? I'll show you how to do that kind of stuff.   Specifically, I want to share with you guys how I found VAs. So these are people that you're not going to hire, but you need to have specific talents for things that you need to be done.   So anyways, I'm excited about this. Let's go cut over there. This might be a little bit of a longer episode, but I think that's okay.   Pay close attention to this. This could save you literally time and money with the wrong person.   So anyways I hope you guys enjoy this, thanks so much, let's cut over now. What's up, guys? I thought it would be cool if we go through and do a lesson today on how to find good people for your team.   A team is something I like to ... it's so funny...   I know there's a lot of people who go back and forth on this like, "You're so stupid for doing it by yourself. Okay, well, if I don't have cash flow I'm not gonna go into debt to get a team, right?   So that's why I started doing affiliate marketing, and then when I had a little bit of cash from the affiliate sales, I would go and get good people.   But then this is super choice cash, I mean it's really protected special cash, so I don't wanna go just blow that.   So how do I find good people? I totally get that, right? Some of you guys might be feeling that like how do I get good people then?   In college, I wasted a lot of my own money on bad VA's - like just tons of 'em - just 'cause I wasn't a coder. Sometimes I needed a website, or I need this, or I need that ...   There was this one time I spent $500 on this guy who said that he could put together a very simple thing. It was garbage. I mean holy crap it was so bad. I wasted money. I wasted money on bad writers, bad image people, bad...   The issue was this. In pretty much every single platform,  you can find a good virtual assistant... Places like upwork.com or freelance.com or Fiverr. Don't try to hire talent on Fiverr.   I like Fiverr for really tiny stuff. Why? Because it's five bucks! Like how good a talent can you get for five bucks?   It was the way that I was  finding people that was not good.   So two things here:   I just wanna share you guys real quick how I find people. It's actually very, well, pretty much the same strategy.   When I need somebody for a specific job that has to do with a creative thing, you know what I mean? Like "Hey, what's up, creative person? I need you to go make this image, or make this video intro, or outro, or make this, this jingle or voice over..." Stuff like that. I will go in, and I will just try and get a someone real fast, pay $50, $100, $200, $300 to go and do this thing.   When it's somebody that I'm wanting to bring onto my team, (whether or not they're a 1099 or they're actually W2) - the process for it is actually very similar. But one's just more intense than the other.   So to get a creative, okay? If you're like "Hey, I'm building this funnel, I wanna find somebody for this, this and this."  Freelancer is the best. Freelancer.com is amazing. If you guys go over to bestmarketingresources.com and scroll down, you'll see my video on how to get good people.   This is a big topic, right? So you'll see my video on how to get good people, and then what I wanna show you...   If you use the link to get a freelancer account, I think they give you $15 credit or something like that.   It's my affiliate link of course, but anyways, you get a little goodie for that.   There's a really good book called... I remember the sub-headline... It's called A Whole New Mind. It's called Why right-brained thinkers will rule the future... or rule the world." It's something like that. It's a fantastic book.   If you think about where we are right now and you're like, "Stephen, what does this have to do with getting a team?" It has a lot to do with it.   Are you farming right now? Unless it's by choice, probably not.  Are you going to a Well every day to get your water? I doubt it, right?   There are so many things in life that are already taken care of for us.   In the past, fortunes were made by supplying the basics of life. Fortunes were made that way, right? Let's get power to you. Let's get internet to you. Let's get water, food, let's get shelter, let's get ...   You're not building your own house most likely, right? There are systems created around the basics of life.   It makes the argument that because of that those are very left-brained ideas. What's logical, "Why I should go and make a system to bring water to my house?" That's a logical thing.   And so it says, because so many of the logical things have been taken care of now, the future is ruled by those who can be right-brained thinkers - those who are the creatives. Those who can sit down and say, "Hey, you know what? I've got this idea."  That's why right-brained thinkers rule the future.   I know that's one of the reasons why I do so well with my stuff is because I try to be creative, right? I wouldn't say I necessarily was at the beginning of my life, but that too can be a learned trait.   In the book, it goes on to say, "You've gotta figure out to be creative." So the problem is that you wanna make sure that you get someone on your team who is creative, right? Who's actually good at what they do, right? I still believe in capitalism baby, woo. I want the best of the best in every area of life.   So how do you find a good virtual assistant? How do you find a good freelancer to come and do this task or that task for you?   Following the capitalist rule... I stopped just going and trying to find somebody who was awesome. Instead, I created contests. This is literally how and why I was able to do what I do. Because while I was working a job, I had these rock stars getting these things done for me - which was paid for by affiliate cash.   So that's why I'm trying to help you guys understand this thing. So one of the things I did though with this is I went, and I grabbed ... funny enough Upwork doesn't even do the same work. They may have added it in the past little bit but, anyway ... freelancer.com is my favorite because they are the only one that allows me to actually create a contest...Freelancer facilitates the contest.   So what I like to do, and I'm like "Man, I need somebody to create images for me." I still do this, guys. I've got a bank of people that I'll go back to because of this process. This is the process. I had somebody complain to me once, "But that sounds like it's gonna take a few days." I'm like, "You're not gonna spend a few days finding somebody who's really good. What's wrong with you? C'mon, right?"   So this is what I do. It's all automated, but freelancer is the only platform I know of that automates and facilitates this contest process.   So what I do is  I try to make sure to overpay a little bit in these contests. So these contests run like this: I don't have to pay you unless you are the contest winner.   So here's what I do. I say, "Hey, what's up everyone?" ...Let's say it's an image and I just need a simple cropping done and put on the background of something else.   Something really, really easy and photoshopped. Something I could probably take my own time to go do, but I'm not an expert at it so why would I do it? So I don't.   So instead, in Freelancer I can put a contest up that says, "Hey, I need this image." I usually do a little screen record. "I need this image placed on this background, with this stuff cut out. It's a contest, and if you win the contest, I'll give you $100." $100? What? That's part of the strategy. You understand?   I make sure to overpay a little bit for it. Why? Because it attracts a butt load of people to me, right? Lots of the freelancer people they start jumping on and jumping on and jumping on and jumping on. They start submitting this image.   I make the contest a week long, and then what I do after that is I make sure that in the contest, I've got my critiques set to public - so that everybody else can see all the other submissions, and everybody can see my critiques.   For the first five days is I am pretty harsh in my critiques. I'm not saying I'm rude, but I'm not mincing words:   "I hate this. I hate that. I love this. Change that. I hate this. This is terrible. No, nothing like this at all. Why did you do this?"   Frankly, I'm very forward about it, and I don't wanna say rude. I'm not rude about it, but I'm forward because I know hundreds of other freelancers are watching my comments. They're watching my critiques.   And what's funny is 'cause it always happens away. I always do it for a week. I  do a week long, and I'm publicly critiquing just once a day, hard, heavy. Public critique, public critique, public critique. I'm like, "Holy crap, this is terrible," or like, "No, whoa, not this at all. Are you kidding?"  I'm super forward, and I'm giving feedback back on the critique.   Well, everybody can see that in the contest. Everyone sees it. Everyone gets notified of it.  The funny part is that on the last two days, the real talent will swoop in. The real talent swoops in, they see the comments, they see my critiques, and then they'll make just this incredible stuff, and I'm like, "Where have you been? I've been trying to find you in all of Freelancer and all of the freelancing world, the entire VA world. Where have you been?"   During the last two days, I'm even more interactive, and I will farm out the top 10 people and keep interacting, keep interacting. "Yes, I hate this. No, I don't like that." Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Back and forth, back and forth, and then it's always within the last 12 hours just the most incredible work comes through, and I only have to pay the top one.   I did this once on a t-shirt and I had ... was it a t-shirt or an image? I can't remember. There was over 200 submissions. 200! It was cool 'cause the last little bit right, the last few hours, the real talent came in, the true designers. Just really gifted people, I could tell. They came in and I only had to pay the top person, but now the next time I needed a t-shirt done, I just went to those top three. I can go back to them afterward and just go straight to them, rather than a contest.   Does that make sense?   I literally filtered out hundreds of people that weren't good. I've done that whenever I need an image. I don't have to keep doing it because I found who they are, right?   That's literally how I created the graphic for Sales Funnel Radio - with me pointing at my shirt. It's through a contest. That's how I came up with that. The t-shirt that I have for "Hey, Steve." That was a contest.   A game, an actual coder. I found ... that actually was a "Help with freelancer" themselves. It's like an extra $10, and they helped me find out a good person. I love freelancer for that reason.   So number one, the biggest way to create and grow a team is you gotta understand, I use contests. I use 'em heavily. Not just when I need a freelancer position. I actually use it when I am hiring out for team members as well.   So when I found my incredible Facebook traffic driver, and you guys know that story if you're this far in the training. You guys know that story of me hiring Sema. You guys have learned it from Sema. It was literally a contest, and she won.   Then after that, I was like, "Holy crap, you're Dan Henry's traffic guy, too." That's crazy. She's very, very talented, but I found her because of contests.   I don't give a crap about resumes. It's what peaks my interest initially, but who I actually decide to have a long-term relationship with, it's based on contests. Who makes it rain? Who can make it happen? I want those kinds of people, and so I make sure I get people who can do that.   I use contests regardless of whether it's on the freelancer platform or not. Usually, I try and use though because there's great talent on there. You just gotta find 'em. Then in the future, you don't have to do it again.   A few caveats with this whole thing:   In college, I was taught to hire for the sake of building a business before creating revenue. That's backward. That's dumb. Don't do that. In my honest opinion, that is some seriously terrible advice. College taught me some great things. That was not one of them.   If you guys have ever watched my podcast, I've talked about the beginning of this year what really happened to me. There was like $200 grand almost that came in, just bam, real fast, but my business structure wasn't there to support the revenue coming in.   I had never considered that a funnel was not a business until like two or three years ago. I was like, "Yeah, well I built the funnel, so therefore I got the revenue," that's it. Like, "No, no, no, you still need a business to support the revenue." Support, itself. Fulfillment. Maybe you gotta get out there and actually do shipping stuff.   Maybe it's high ticket - like you're gonna fly out to them. What are the processes? If I handle every single customer complaint different. If I handle every single Dream 100 package totally different... I'm not saying you shouldn't customize.   If I handle every single purchase differently. If I handle every single aspect of every single thing I do, every time different. I don't have a business. I am the business. Does that make sense?   So I can have a funnel, but if there are no systems, there's no business. And so that's exactly what I'm trying to say here.   So I don't care about this whole like go build a team thing. Don't do it until you have freaking revenue. Otherwise, you're gonna go into debt. That's why they teach "Go get a loan, go get business loans. Go build a proposal to get a loan." Why? What does that money do? That was asked: "What are you gonna do with this money?"   The scary thing is when you find out that money that you've taken on is to build a business structure only. That's freaking scary because it means that you literally have no proof of concept. There's no proof of concept. There's nothing.   So what I'm trying to say is you guys gotta understand, don't go build teams for the sake of people saying you need one. Hire when it hurts. That's my whole thing. I hire when it hurts. Which means I gotta run hard. I'm totally fine putting a little sweat equity - which I'm totally known for doing. I'm cool with that.   I'm not telling you not to get help. I'm not telling you that you should be the one to do all the aspects inside of your company - but until you get revenue, man, I would not go out and hire people. I mean, for real, don't go hire people.   When it comes to team things though as far as like or creatives, I'm not gonna go take the time to learn some aspects of Photoshop that I know some other guy could just ... I could pay him $50 for and just have him do it, right? You see what I'm saying? Right.   You know Russell does all his doodle drawings? I went, and I found this awesome doodle drawing guy on freelancer to do some very similar things for a workbook I was putting out. It was a huge process to find him, but when I found him... I go back to him all the time now. He's awesome. He's super cool, and he does all my doodles for me now.   Anyways, I want you to know when it comes to creatives or when it comes to anything,  just 'cause I can do something...   There are several schools of thought with this. Yes, the business should not all be you eventually. It's fine if it is for a while -  in my opinion. If you're just standing up, you're just barely getting revenue coming in - I don't know why you'd ever go hire somebody? All your revenue should be back into putting into getting more sales, right? So eventually don't be the business. Don't be the business. Don't be the only one running the business. Get a team, get a system running. Totally, 100% love it.   In contrast to that,  I believe that you should hire when it hurts. That's something that Russell always told me when I was there with him. He said, "Hire when it hurts, hire when it hurts, hire when it hurts." Meaning if you can handle it, keep doing it.   A lot of companies died because they hire too quickly. Seriously, that's one of the major reasons why companies die quick is because they hire too fast.   To caveat that again with a third point,  just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should be doing it.   As I said, I'm not gonna go learn crazy things in Photoshop just to pull off this one image.  I'm just gonna go hire a dude. You know what I mean?   What I'm trying to help you guys understand, is that the trick is seeing what task needs to get done and asking yourself, "Is this a task that I can do?" Or "Is it a task I should do?" You know what I mean? You're trying to figure out what scenario to go for. "Am I just gonna pay $50 for someone to get it done for me in the next 24 hours, or should I just do it?"   Guys, entrepreneurs wear a lot of hats at the beginning, that's totally fine. It's the reason you love your company so much. It's the reason I love my company so much. It's the reason I'm very babyish of it. I have given much family time to the business instead of my family. You know what I mean? Because I'm wearing a lot of hats.   As things have grown, I've found other places,  people, and systems that take over aspects of it for me. But you gotta ask yourself....   The fourth point to think about is, "Is this a revenue-generating activity?" If it is, you should do it. If it's not, don't do it. Is the image you need to go get created, is there potential for it to bring revenue in? If the answer is yes, okay that's fine. But it doesn't mean you should do it. Maybe you could just go pay someone $50 to get it done, or run a contest and find out who that person is? You understand what I'm saying? I'm trying to teach several different schools of thought...   I run my entire process of this thing, I call  Red Dot, Green Dot. I think entrepreneurs are really good at writing massive task lists, and that's cool. But the problem is that bogs you down, it stresses you out, and overloads you. Some things should be getting done, you never get done because they're important, but not that important. You know what I mean?   So I like to list out all the things I need to go do, and then I'll do a red dot, green dot. There are several planning systems that I use. This is the one I really a lot.   I just list out all the stuff and be like, "Oh, green dot. That's the one that makes me revenue, sweet." If it's a big green dot, I do it during the parts of the day that I know I'm most fresh. Usually, for me, that's like 7 am to 1pm.   I do the small green dots in the evening or the afternoon. They're still revenue generating - just not as big, right? A big green dot, that's like script writing, certain aspects of funnel building, or doing sales videos where I need to be fresh, I need to be awesome, I need to be hopping on. Does that make sense?   A red dot is something that needs to get done, but it's literally a cost on the business. I should never be doing those roles. An easy way to do it, and the way I did it for quite a while, was a red dot, green dot. Is it a green dot or a small green dot? What's the red dot? If it's a red dot, don't even worry about it. Most of the time, you really don't need to worry about those things. Unless it's like, set up an LLC or something that's truly foundational, but I guess technically that's revenue generating, that's why you're doing it.   So I hope that helps. I hope that helps with the whole team building thing. I just wanted to do a lesson real quick on how to actually find good virtual assistants, on how to find them and how to source things out.   I'll tell you, I just wanna finish with this real quick. I'll tell ya something that Dana Derricks told me:   He and I were chatting on Voxer one day, and he said one thing that's really helped me out is... At the beginning you're probably the one doing support, that's fine. Especially when you're wearing a lot of hats. After a while, you don't wanna be doing that. It's not revenue generating, but you may not have the revenue to get rid of it and buy back your time. You know what I mean? So just keep going on it, that's totally fine.   ....But one thing Dana told me, that I thought it was really cool, he said, "I always make sure whenever I'm about to go do a process, that I do it the hardest, most arduous way possible. Because when I do that, I make sure to document what I'm doing.  Then I literally have the system that I need to hire someone to do." He's like, "I make sure I do it the hardest way."   It's completely 180˚ of how most people react to pain or any kind of discomfort or growth. Like, "I don't wanna do the hardest way! Are you kidding me? Don't make me do it the hardest way." But he's the exact opposite, man.   He's like,  "Do the exact opposite, do something the hardest way the first time, do it a few times to document your system, document the process and now you have the system."  You'll know exactly what to hand off to somebody to buy back your time and replace you. I thought that was very, very key and really cool that he said that.   Anyways, guys, hopefully, that's helpful for ya. I just wanted to tell you a little bit about that.   So as you start to grow and start to get cash coming in. Honestly, strategically, what I would do, start thinking about what it is you really wanna go sell?   Affiliate products are incredible. A lot of people make a fortune just selling other people's products. It is a lot more fulfilling - both to your wallet, but also to you - to have your own product.   So as you're kinda beginning to stockpile cash, you're trying to figure out what you wanna go sell or whatever, it's just, it's important to think about that kinda stuff.   I've never seen a 2 Comma Club winner do it on their own - EVER! They might be the solopreneur, but they got a team. They at least got an assistant, a support guy, a high ticket seller, you know? Stuff like that. A fulfillment guy. You know what I mean? A sales guy. Does that make sense?   They're the ones still running it, but they got the team below them doing all the dirty work making sure the stuff gets done so they can keep selling. You know what I mean? I've never seen a 2 Comma Club winner EVER get it solely on their own. Where they're doing every function of the business, Yeah, right, Yeah right! That doesn't happen.   So just know as you start to get cash in...   I know a lot of you guys may not have money right now. That's totally fine, but as you start to get cash coming in, start thinking, "Where do I wanna drive the ship? Where do I wanna go? How do I wanna make this happen?"   And as you do that, hire smartly. Hire slow. Hire very slow. Be very careful of who you're bringing in. Be very careful what they do. Are you actually hiring a skill or just a heartbeat? Are you hiring a skill or just a heartbeat?   And with those few things in mind, use red dot, green dot,  so that you know you what you should be doing. Can someone else be doing it? Do you have the revenue to do it? Maybe you don't. Go sell something else then, right?   Anyway, super cool guys. And hopefully, this is a helpful lesson for you. I said that was the last thing, but this is the last thing here.   When Russell was getting Tony Robbins to speak at Funnel Hacking Live. He's not cheap, okay? I'm legally not allowed to tell you how much it was, but it was an absolute crap ton amount of money. It was a huge amount of money.   I know that Russell follows a principle called, "The question is not how do I do this? It's who already knows how to do it?" It's not what? it's who? It's not how? It's who. "Who knows how to do what I need?"   And what was interesting is instead of going like, *SHOCK* "Tony, you want that much money? What?" And freaking out about it, he said, "Okay, how can I afford that?" He could've paid out of his own pocket, but that's not the point. He's not gonna use his own cash. Instead, he asked, "How can the business pay for it?" So he added a few extra things to the event to pay for the thing he most wanted.   There was a guy who taught me once. He's the man actually. He's Don Hobbs. I was on a call with him, and he said, "Stephen, the question you need to start asking yourself as you're leaving ClickFunnels - this is a little bit after I had left. He said the thing you need to start asking yourself, "How can I hire people that I can't afford?"   When you can hire people that you can't afford it means that your vision of what you're trying to take down is big enough, but also realistic enough that it's attracting actual talent.   If you look at the list of people that I have had on this course so far for you guys, I could not pay all their fees together in a lump sum - there's no way, there's no way. I sold them on coming to do this because of the vision, and because of what I'm actually trying to get done.   When you actually go and start grabbing people in, when it's actual growth time, you need to make sure that you're hire slow, and you're hiring people that you actually cannot afford. Because when you do it that way, you're actually gonna be protecting your vision. You're gonna be hiring people who actually invested in what you're doing. What are they doing in the nighttime hours? What are they doing in the evening hours? What are they doing, right?   Man, I'm still building ClickFunnels dream even though I don't work there. I'm 100% invested in that. I know I am, right? I'm 100% invested in the products that I sell because I change people's lives. I know I am. And when I find people that are aligned like that, it's a huge deal.   So I make sure I go, and I grab... like that's why we hire slow. And you try and find people based off of talent, not how much they're gonna say like, "Oh, well, I'm this much money." Well if the vision is big enough, it's cool enough, and it not just like far-fetched, then you're gonna have a great time because you're gonna start attracting amazing talent to you that scratches your back and theirs. It might mean a partnership. It might mean that you just give them some revenue.   I hate it when somebody approaches me and says, "Hey, I got a great opportunity for ya, Stephen." You think I need another one? I got plenty. I'm trying to manage the opportunities I'm finding on my own. I don't need any more opportunities.   When someone walks up, they go, "Stephen, I got this great idea. Dude, here's the idea.  If you go build it, I'll give you like 50%!" And I'm like, "Huh. You know what's fascinating? I could just go do that on my own and keep 100% of it." Right? Ideas are nothing, guys. Ideas are not assets. "I got an idea." So? It's worth nothing. I don't even care what the idea is. Right?   That's why I was laughing at Shark Tank. They're like, "Well, I haven't actually sold anything yet." Then you have nothing. Even if you're holding the freaking product. You have nothing. Ideas are nothing. They're nothing. There's no value attached to an idea. Show me an idea that was sold for a whole bunch of money without some asset attached to it? It doesn't happen.   So when you're going out, and you start getting actual team people to start joining you, you need to make sure that what you're actually offering to somebody to come and join your thing, has everything to do with selling 'em on a vision.   Make sure that you've got assets. Are you gonna sell something? Ideas are nothing. So make sure, anyway ...   There's a podcast episode, I ranted about this a while ago.  I think it's like 100 episodes ago, but it just makes me laugh. So anyway, rant over. Rant's done.   But I just want you to know how I find VA's. How I find freelancers. How I find people to join my team. That's how I find 1099 versus W2 - it's because I'm trying to make sure that it's aligned with my vision, that they're people that will add constantly to the vision.   Guys, I worked way more than nine to five for Russell. Holy freaking crap, right? I'm totally cool with that. No contest. He spent zero time indoctrinating me into the culture of ClickFunnels. No time. I hit the ground running. No training. Tweaking? Sure. Stuff that he wanted me to change? Absolutely. But I was there to run. I produced day one.   So when it comes down to actually hiring people, there's no better way to do that than hiring from your own audience - 'cause they're sold on the vision, they know who you are.   If you're like, "Man I don't have an audience yet." That's totally fine. That's exactly my point. Then don't hire someone (like an actual W2) for a while, that's totally fine.   Hopefully, this hasn't felt like it's been all over the place! There's a lot of nuggets that I dropped.   I'm trying to help you see that when it comes to it, the sales funnel, the sales cycles are different from a business, and a business cycle. You're gonna be the one most likely doing both for a little while, and that's okay. Eventually, you shouldn't be doing both. You need to hire when it hurts. That's probably gonna be a little uncomfortable in the beginning. It is for everybody. That's okay.   Somebody told me this great quote: "It'll take longer than you think, but not as long as you fear."   So when you're jumping out you're gonna feel alone. You are alone. No one's around you. That's okay. But when you start to hire, man, it is methodical. It is not easy to work for you. It's not. It shouldn't be. You shouldn't just take anybody on. That's why I went ... that's why I still go the VA route forever -because it works.  I got my content team. None of them are W2's. They don't need to be. I still pay 'em a lot of money. But I sold them on the vision. They get crap done and problems solved I didn't even know were problems.   They're sold on the vision. They understand where I'm going. I'm trying to be a voice of clarity against a lot of gurus that are out there because I've actually done a lot of it. It's not just theory, you know what I mean?   Anyway, and when I find people who are not just willing to accept but also wanna protect and grow the same vision, it's like, "What do you want? Yes, come with me. What is it that motivates you? Okay, Tony Robbins, you want that much money? Okay,  I'm not gonna say no. Instead, let me figure out how to pay for that."   So this might feel like a little bit of rant, and maybe it is a bit, but I want you to understand when it comes down to the hiring thing, I'm very opinionated on this topic - because I wasted a lot of money for a lot of years until I made it hard to join my team -whether it was a $50 image or a big thing.   Guys, thanks so much. Hopefully, it's been helpful to ya. Again, please reach out. We got just a few more lessons that I wanna drop out to you as far as making it all work for you as an affiliate  - to make you money - and then we'll be done.   If you got value out of this, promote my stuff. This is my free stuff. You can imagine how good the paid stuff is. The products are good. I'll take care of your customers. I'll take care of any traffic you send over to me.  I really appreciate it. Guys, thanks so much and I'll talk to you later. See ya later, see ya in the next lesson. Bye.

Wisecracking mercenary Deadpool meets Russell, an angry teenage mutant who lives at an orphanage. When Russell becomes the target of Cable -- a genetically enhanced soldier from the future -- Deadpool realizes that he'll need some help saving the boy from such a superior enemy. He soon joins forces with Bedlam, Shatterstar, Domino and other powerful mutants to protect young Russell from Cable and his advanced weaponry. This is our review of Deadpool 2. Enjoy!

Why Dave Decided to talk to Tony: Tony Grebmeier is man of passion and the true definition of a team player. Although his journey to self-fulfillment wasn't easy- he has managed to turn his company into an eight-figure business: ShipOffers. Alongside his two best friends, Doug Roberts and Gil Gerstein, Tony shares his wisdom on how they are able to manage their business and friendship simultaneously in a healthy manner. Tony elaborates on company integrity being the fundamental importance when starting a business. He also goes on to discuss the importance of building healthy company culture, and everyone understanding the value they bring to the table . His vision to help others achieve more is what makes Tony happy. Tips and Tricks for You and Your Business: Communication with partners: (4:27) The keys to communication and the importance of having an honest relationship. Getting to know them. Prioritizing your teams strengths  (5:35) Structuring team player roles to fit his/her strengths, optimizing performance. How to build and develop a team: To Do’s  (21:00) Quotable Moments: "The most important thing about being an entrepreneur is figuring it out. Not being the person willing to quit when it gets tough." "Your imagination is the only thing that your limited by when it comes to ship offers. If you can think it, and you need help creating it, we have a team of people that we work with, that can get you to that next level." "If you want something bad enough you will find the time, or you will find an excuse." "People are following a leader and you are the leader of your organization, so go first!" Other Tidbits: Going into business with friends: (1:55) What Ship Offers is and provides. (10:15) Ship Offers Products: (12:46) Drainersanddrivers.com (19:52) Links: FunnelHackerRadio.com FunnelHackerRadio.com/freetrial FunnelHackerRadio.com/dreamcar ---Transcript--- Speaker 1:     00:00           Welcome to funnel hacker radio podcast, where we go behind the scenes and uncover the tactics and strategies top entrepreneurs are using to make more sales, dominate their markets, and how you can get those same results. Here's your host, Dave Woodward. Right everybody. Welcome back. Speaker 2:     00:19           Mrs [inaudible] gonna be fun, but different types of podcast of things. At times I have the opportunity of interviewing these amazing guests I have on my show and sometimes I think the actual pre interviews are better than the post interviews. But with that said, you can't hear what I just spent time talking to most amazing man in the world. I love this guy to death. He's helped me personally in my own life going through some crazy stuff right now. He's the CEO of shipoffers. Shipoffers has been around for 17 years and uh, been inc 5,000 company for last four years. I want to welcome to the show, Tony. Welcome. Welcome, welcome. Speaker 3:     00:54           Thank you so much. It's absolutely an honor to be here and yeah, sometimes you get those recordings from the beginning show and you're like, I just want to share with the world, but let me just give you the good stuff you're in for a real tree because I'm honored to be on the show and I can't wait to see where we go. Speaker 2:     01:07           Well, thanks Tony. Tony, Tony, I've been one thing I can tell you about Tony. This is a man who is probably the most honest and pure guy with massive integrity who works from the heart and yet who runs a huge, huge company and yet at the same time is always out there giving and I know you guys are listening, are going to infer a super treat, but first of all, I would encourage you guys to go look at Tony on facebook, connect with them. Tony, Greg Myer Dot com. It's t o n y g R E B Mei e r.com and shipoffers.com. This is a guy who I'm excited to have you on the show today and really one of the things I want to dive right into his, one of the things you've started this company 17 years ago and the part I most fascinated by is you started with to your other good friends and you're still friends today. Speaker 3:     02:04           So many people don't go into business with their friends because they've heard everybody say like, it's never going to work out. What's really crazy is if I back up even earlier, 1996, one of my friends who's my business partner called me and said, hey, uh, silicon valley, I was working. He was working for a company designing websites. The first website I ever designed was for Pixar. It was called toy story and it was 1996, 97 and he goes, Hey, do you want to meet in Vegas? I got an opportunity for a business I wouldn't see if you're interested. I didn't even have a chance to hang up the phone today. You'd be like, what are you trying to sell me? Is there something that you're going to pitch to me like, you know, it's so different in the times. So I met in Vegas and one thing that was true was he said, Speaker 2:     02:47           Hey, I bet you we could figure this out. Speaker 3:     02:50           And that's exactly kind of my path to being an entrepreneur is just trying to figure it out. My two childhood business partners and friends I with one of them growing up when I got kicked out of the house for getting my ear pierced when I was 15, 16, he was the friend that I went and moved in with. Um, we started our company with $5,000 in Van Nuys, California in 2001. And uh, I've always, I think that thing is the most important thing as an entrepreneur is being willing to try to figure it out. Not being the person willing to quit when it gets tough because as you know, running click funnels in any kind of engagement or environment, things get crazy. Like software doesn't work the way it worked one day and then all of a sudden you're like, I didn't change anything to be willing to figure it out. Speaker 3:     03:31           And so for 17 years we've been figuring this thing called business together. Um, we have a tripod philosophy. All three agree or we don't do it. So have to say yes. One says no, we still don't do it. Um, I think there's only been two fights and I started both of them in and they're childlike stuff. Like, Hey, close the gate at the end of the day. And I'm like, no. But I was the first car out. Like, yeah, that's probably why you need to stick around and close the gate. I'm the real basic stuff. Um, my best man was the guy who called me up in [inaudible] 96 and my wedding coming up on 20 years of marriage, 17 years in business, watching my kids grow up here. And everything that I get to do is about connection. And you know, getting on this morning, you know, we, we talk about the tough stuff, we talk about how to let an employee go today. Speaker 3:     04:17           It's the toughest stuff, but that's life and what can we do from it. And we talked about the most important thing is communication and that's what we have to have is clear like perfect communication with partners, especially when you're in a business and making money and honoring and serving your customers who believe in you. And so, you know, it's the tough conversations that have to be had, but the thing that has lasted 17 plus years, as I say, if you find good people that you're honest with and they're able to be honest with you, why not go into business with them? Right? I've, I've got my nice, great playing basketball with them. They never, they never dated my girlfriends. So like the part I love most about Tony is just how poor you are. You're just so real. And I just want to. Things I loved hanging out with. Speaker 3:     05:05           You have the option of spending time with your tmc and live. And to an extent, it's all about people and people's what matters most to you and business to just kind of a byproduct and things that takes place on the back end. Yet at the same time shipoffers has been extremely successful. So if you don't mind, can you kind of help bridge the gap from how do you work with your best buddies and everything else and yet still have a lot of success in business. Sure. We all knew exactly what we were good at going into it. So I'm. Doug was really good with finances Grad graduating from pepperdine with his MBA and so he knew that he could handle the funding side of the business. I'm Gil was, you know, working in a, at a company that designed websites. So he was designed. He had also worked at mattel designing hot wheels. So I knew that he knew specifically what to do to design really cool products and services for us. And then I was like the guy like if you needed it done, just give it to me. Right? There's something to be said about that if you want to do and give it to a busy person. I've always been a salesman. I think that's the thing that I remind myself up. I was fired from one job, gave my brother an ice cream cone at the boardwalk. That's a whole nother story. Speaker 3:     06:16           And I've tried so many different things and I always love seeing how I can grow as a person. And so when we all get into a room, we all have strengths and we all have opportunities to grow and I really work at, okay, doug and be transparent. Where is it that I need to improve and help me because I can't see my blind spots, but you guys can see you and share with me and highlight them for me. And then all right, I need to go do the work, you know, go to a seminar, go read a book or pray about it, go do the work. And so for 17 years we've been doing that. Um, I don't see my business partners a lot when we're outside of the office. I mean, they spent 40 hours by the time I'm, I want to go home, I want to spend time with my kids and my wife, um, I live in the neighborhood with one of the, one of my business partners, Doug. Speaker 3:     07:02           I've seen him twice in six months in my neighborhood and just kind of tells you like, we all have different lives. My, my generation is 10 years ahead of where they're at, raising their kids. They're like eight and under my kids are 17 and 19. Almost going to be leaving the house soon. But the one thing that's been so easy for us is we just roll up our sleeves and get dirty and the end of the day love each other. And I think that's the lesson of life that I would love to encourage anybody in a business relationship is, you know, there's this little simple principles, you know, love God and love people. And if I remind myself to love people no matter what, even when it hurts, um, what lesson is somebody teaching you today is that maybe I need to ask deeper questions we were talking about before the show of what's really going on when there's a problem in the office. Speaker 3:     07:47           When someone comes to the office, Sat, did I even ask how their weekend was? And then go deeper from that. Like, Oh, you know, I went to a couple of birthday parties, ask questions. Like, was it fun? Like, did you enjoy it? Like how many times did you want to leave? And like start getting to get them to open up because we all show up with a bunch of stuff that we're not talking about. We just show up. And then Monday morning it's work mode. Friday, it's like paycheck times go celebrate. So I spent 40 hours a week of really looking at my business partners through a unique lens which their wives don't get to see them, vice versa. Like, it's. So I, I love it and I've always encouraged my friends if you can trust them as far as you can, throw them, if you, if you know their mothers, got to know your partner as well and you got to meet them so that you understand them because uh, my one business partner, his mom calls me his elbows, my one business partner, his elbows and another one that says, hey, you know, I like this kid. Speaker 3:     08:44           He's good. And I lived with them. So I've gotten to know my business partner's families and that's, I think is a really important thing to kind of funny. I actually was at a, I met Russell's parents, gosh, probably about six years ago was the first time and then we happened to be together just this last weekend that dad is Salt Lake City. When Russell received the entrepreneur of the year for a tech company down there, it was just fun sitting next to them at that table. Sharing that moment were six years ago. It was like, man, if my kid ever going to figure this thing out. And so we've been through a lot together and it's been fun. It was neat seeing his dad. I remember when two years ago we started with doing some work with Robert Kiyosaki and Russell. His Dad really could care of lead but really wasn't as excited about what Russell is doing as much as he was about rich dad. Speaker 3:     09:34           It was the very first book that his dad had given Russell to read and so I had the optimum getting his dad and Russell and rich dad's podcast and that was like the highlight of Russell's dad experienced with his son as far as business goes. They'd spent a lot of time to get as far as wrestling, all that kind of stuff. That was the first business. And those are the things that matter the most. And you're right, it's nice when you know, when you know your partner's families and the parents is just an added bonus. So I appreciate your mentioning that. So tell me, for those people who aren't familiar with ship offers, tell them what ship offers is. I mean obviously we integrate with you guys love working with you. What, what is it that ship offers? Does ship offers, provides products and services to marketers online in the health and wellness space or Bible space and personal development space. Speaker 3:     10:22           So we even started printing books on demand, so just give you some of the ideas of the services that we have and what do we do is we provide you the opportunity to test. Just think about like having somebody to test something without spending a lot of capital upfront to go see if it's gonna work or not. So we have a bunch of products that you can incubate and test to see if you can sell online, back in funnels a lot of clients through click funnels and we give you the chance to put your label on them and we ship them to your customer and at the end of the week or whenever our payment terms are set up with you, we send you a bill and we do those transactions every single day. A couple of million times a year for our customers worldwide. We're in 34 different countries that we shipped to and it's just one of those companies that I love like so many people need money upfront, like tons of money, like no, and I'm like, no, I actually know this service works and this industry works because I was on the other side in 2001 when we launched. Speaker 3:     11:15           We were taken from a lot of fulfillment companies and products based companies that they could care, you know, nonetheless about us. All they cared about was the money and we made a decision to say, look, why don't we create a business that gives people tools and resources to help them to win? And that's like the click funnels thing, right? You're giving tools to people to win and then you developed all of these assets to support it because you believe in it. So for 17 years we've been pouring assets and infrastructure in to helping our customers to win. And you said something very big in the very beginning that you gave me praise. I'll take it, but I don't deserve it. What I do deserve is that at the end of the day, my integrity matters and I have to remind myself that I'm a a business based on integrity and I have to show up that way. Speaker 3:     11:58           So when you call us on the phone and you're like, Hey, I'd love to integrate with you. We say, hey, tell me about your business and I need you to be transparent because the reason is I'm going to bet on you once we say it's a good fit for each other, like I need to know that you're thinking tomorrow. You want to be here and five to 10 years down the road, so many people in this day and age just need to make money today and they move on and I don't have time for that, so don't waste my time. Don't waste your time. We'll figure you out. Just be the person that says, I want to be here tomorrow, next month and next year, and I want to build something that I want to leave as a legacy. I don't think click funnels is just a once and done business. It's a legacy business and that's what ship offers is really as a business that's helping so many people, not just the people who work here in our team, but people all around the world running small, incubated small businesses, medium sized businesses, and larger outfits as well. Speaker 2:     12:45           So more detail to it as far as what types of product. Actually Speaker 3:     12:49           testosterone boosters, Krill oil, fish oil, if you're looking for weight loss products, if you're looking for workout products and you can literally slap your name, we have 50 products. You can put your name on 50 different products and we'll mail into to your customers today. Um, it takes us about a week to integrate. If you're doing a lot of volume, it's because you know, you have back in restrictions and things that you need. Um, our, our Apis, adaptable to pretty much any system on planet earth. But the products are easy. I mean, when I look at it, we just launched Quito. Quito is like the hot new craze, right? Um, so everybody wants Quito products and then we have Quito products and tomorrow if it's Garcinia back to what it was four years ago and we can create anything to. So if there's something that you're selling and you're like, oh, I'd love to do this. Speaker 3:     13:35           We have the ability to formulate products where you knock off products, custom formulate. So I mean it's really like your imagination is the only thing that you're limited by when it comes to ship offers. If you can think it and if you need help creating it, then we have a team of people that we work with to help you kind of get to that next level. And I, I mean I've seen some pretty amazing stuff. I mean I, I've been around this industry since 96 so I've seen a lot go on online and I love the fact that everyday I come into the office to play and get creative and see what we can do together. Speaker 2:     14:07           Basically I had the opportunity to either white labeling your products or formulating their own products or basically just trying to figure out what they can do next and that work in your team to kind of create something if the camp. Speaker 3:     14:17           Yeah, and you can send us your products, like we don't even have to make it. You can send it to us and we'll do the fulfillment for you. I mean that's what I've always loved is that people just send me products that are like, I'm totally happy with my manufacturer. I love where I get my products from China. I just. I'm looking for a reliable fulfillment company and I'm like, logistics is what we do. Send it to this address. Tell me how many pallets are coming and we'll take care of. Speaker 2:     14:37           Oh, I love that. I think the part that these days is we see a lot of people who are trying to do the Amazon thing, but once they grow up and they move on from the Amazon and they figured out, you know what? I got to find some way of actually owning my customers. I got to find a way. Actually controlling the product, controlling the delivery that a service like yours is ideal for that because that's their whole game is to own the company, to own the product and the client and to be able to work with a company like yours to fulfill that. Speaker 3:     15:05           Yeah, and we don't market to your customers and a lot of companies are using this as a scare tactic, but there's a lot of companies out there. If you go look in their privacy policies and their statements, they're reusing your data to retarget and market to their customers. That's not what we are. We're not marketers. That's why our slogans easy you market. We do the rest. Speaker 2:     15:28           I love that. So as you take a look, as far as you know where you guys are going in, and I know he kind of started off in health and fitness thing. You also mentioned pod, so you're. You're doing print on demand as well. Speaker 3:     15:38           Yeah, we're playing in the book or Eda, which has been so interesting. People who were in his inner circle are using our services and one of the things I've realized that I'm like, you guys want this stuff cheap, Russell's hey, get this book out as fast as possible. So we're playing in that arena and it's so much fun. Um, I'm writing a book, so obviously I've been spending a lot of time, money and resources trying to figure out how to do it. And our team's like, hey, we figured it out. So we've been printing books on demand. We drop them in a poly bags or if you needed a certain type of way to show up, we do high end stuff and low end. So meaning your budget really dictates what the delivery looks like on the other end. But I'm a believer in helping you to showcase your customer and give them a really amazing experience. So you create the wow effect. So you want them to come back. So many marketers are like one and done and move on and I'm like, you can do that, but if I could show you and it doesn't cost you much more, you can actually create a customer returns often and is coming back and sharing with their friends once you be interested in learning how we do that. Oh, I love that Speaker 2:     16:39           golden nugget secret. So I think the key here is if you are not familiar with ship offers, reach out to ship offers. So S, h I, p o f f e r s.com. Reach out Tony and he's more than happy to connect you to help you guys out. I know it's only one thing you were talking about is you've created a course, a click funnels page. Speaker 3:     16:57           Yes. What's the course called? It's called drainers and drivers. And if we just talked for like 30 seconds on what does drainers and drivers look like or mean to you? It's going to be different for each and every one of us. However, if you ever wake up Monday morning and you have to go into an office, that could be a drainer, but what happens if we could actually figure out why it's a drainer and turn it into a driver and realize that the end of it, you're making more money, you're having more fun with your friends and your family and life looks better. That's what drainers and drivers is. It's an opportunity for us to go through a five day mini course videos, worksheets. You just go through it, grab some information. I'm with you for five days and then hey, at the end of it, now you have some framework that you can use for all areas of your life. Speaker 3:     17:39           I use it for hiring people. When I'm interviewing somebody to come in and start a new position, I say, Hey, can you list your last three drivers and three trainers that your last business so you get them to open up and start talking as tools so you can begin to see, and I love it. That drainers and drivers flip all the time. Something that's driving you today will be a drainer tomorrow, and you're like, I'm going to quit my job. No, you're not going to quit what you're doing. I know that your click funnel's experiences. Amazing. Moneywise yet, let's take a step back. What's really going on is that you've got a lot of stuff in your life that's kind of not on the right course and we just need to bring some awareness to it. Once you get awareness, then you'll say, all right, now I've got a six month plan. I can't wait for that date. Now I'm going to go full time in my click funnels life and my business and things are gonna. Be Better. So we help you to map out that plan so that you don't feel overwhelmed when you look at your life. Speaker 2:     18:30           So how does a guy who's running the logistics company create a program called drainers and drivers? Speaker 3:     18:36           Great question. So I'm all about community. And so what was really clear three years ago was, um, I had a lot of people around me who wanted to figure out how we could work together and, and I, and it was too tough because I have only so much throughput during the day. So I created a community which is called a be fulfilled. I created a podcast around beef fulfilled and that slogan has been on our wall in our company for so many years, which is be fulfilled. And that's all about being fulfilled in your life. And what I also came to the conclusion was, as people were struggling and we, you know, you look online and you hear about it, things are happening in our world. And I found the time because I made it intentional. I set time to say no, what's the biggest way that I can impact the world? Speaker 3:     19:22           Because my time is limited. So I wanted to use one of the most amazing platforms in the world, which is click funnels. I wanted to use it. I had something live in about an hour and I've been able to play in that world so often that I'm working on my second course or they're called purposeful living for success and that's, you know, built as a six week program and I realized that if you want something bad enough, you'll find the time or you'll find the excuse and the time for me is now the time for you is now, so I just got drainers and drivers.com one day called my graphics designer and say, can you design this? Yes. I said, I want to live like this. Yes. I was in Cleveland at a mastermind, 2:00 in the morning. I couldn't sleep. I recorded 10, 10 videos really, really quick. I scrap five, put up five. The course was live. Took down the next morning and gave everybody a handout saying, the course is live because if you want something bad enough, you'll find a way or you'll find an excuse and I'm tired of making excuses and I want to help people not make them in their life. Speaker 2:     20:20           Oh, I love it. Thank you again. I appreciate your giving that out to everyone here. Again, drainers and drivers.com. Definitely go check that out. Um, I know that I literally could spend days talking to you. I've had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with you on a boat. Let's be realistic. Stuck in the middle of the San Diego Harbor. Couldn't do anything, but I think one of the great things about the way you communicate and work with people is even in your own team. I haven't, I haven't, I don't know all of your team as well as I met some of them, but you're always about as a CEO, helping build them and, and develop them and if you don't mind those who are listening, who are trying to build their own team, what are some of the things that you've used in your life? They'll build your team to where you have such. You have a lot of a players on your team which is tough to come by. Speaker 3:     21:11           So first and foremost, which may hurt to hear this is what are you waiting for? You need to be the example because remember people are following a leader and you are the leader of your organization. So go first and I heard this many years ago and it never really, really, you know, like went off for me, but I was at a seminar and they said, be the first to pop in the room. Don't be the last kernel to get burned, right? Be the first pop, go first and just go. And so I admit a lot of my faults to the world, you know, you follow me on facebook, you know that I've, I've struggled with suicide. I've struggled with alcoholism and struggled with marital issues, have struggled with finances. I struggled with a lot of things and I realized that my path isn't the same for everybody, but the one path that I know to be true is you have to be the example. Speaker 3:     21:59           You need people to like see you. Like I'm not jumping on a camel until I see someone jump on a camel. Like it's just not something that I want to go and try to do. But if you show me that you bring out a ladder and you show people how they get on top of a camel, or they show the people how to get top of the elephant, you lead by example. So you have to be the example and that's the one thing that I tell my team how I lead in my house. That's how I work with my wife and my friends. I'm like, you look, I know there's days that I don't want to show up for life. I really just want to sleep in bed, pull the covers over my eyes and say somebody else do it. But I signed up for this opportunity and people are counting on me and when I know that and I draw strength from a lot of amazing places and resources, I have great coaches and mentors around me who in constantly. Speaker 3:     22:43           You're encouraging me. That inside me is greatness. And that's what I want to encourage anybody listening right now. You don't have to be a leader of a big organization. You can be a leader of yourself. Just remember that you have greatness inside of you and that for you to activate it, it's Kinda like saying to yourself, today's the day, now's the time, let's go. And, and even if your belief is 100 percent solid, it's least something to draw from. And so I, I love to tell people just like I'll tell you that I love you man, and I know that at times life is not fair and we go through some seasons and it's ups and downs, but I know one thing to be true is that you're not alone and that there's tons of people and resources at your fingertips. Numbers you can call and if you've heard anything today from how I speak and I know I don't necessarily always follow every question to a team give. Speaker 3:     23:33           The perfect answer is that I really care about people and that's the one investment that I've made to make sure is very clear in the organization that we run, is that my commitment is to. And I signed that today as a declaration when we were talking about vision as a company. I said, my commitment is to you. What's your commitment to and then everybody got up and wrote their commitment on the board and I said, I hope that you understand what vision that what you wrote should be the same commitment you have here as you do in your life, and if not, then let's begin the process. My door's open. Walk in. Let's figure that out. I'll roll up my sleeves. All invest my time will come in early. Stay late. You've got to be willing to invest in your people because why do people leave? Because people investing in them in other places and they're beginning to lose interest in you and I love having people that have been with us 17 years and I love having people who have been with us six months and I love having people who have a story along their journey to share is that the company stands for something. I asked you, what do you stand for when you're looking at your people and put them first and watch how everything else begins to fall into place. Speaker 2:     24:43           Drop the mic on that one. The one. I appreciate that. It's been one of the things we've looked at click funnels, it was we met a couple of weeks ago and we're basically doing a full org chart thing. No rustling sitting there going around 180, 190 and at the time it rolls it out and it's two, oh five and the next three weeks it was like, whoa. All of a sudden you find this little tiny idea that we got started with his grown, but the thing that we've held true to is what you mentioned and that is you gotta invest in people and we try to make sure we always hire just a players the best we can. We try to make sure that it's a culture fit. We're really big on its culture. You don't mind just next few minutes here, could you just help us kind of identity you take one a matter of time. When you talking about culture, what's it mean to you and how do you make it work in your business? Speaker 3:     25:40           Remember how we were talking a little bit about going and meeting the parents, hanging with them and getting to know them. I actually want to get to know you outside of work and my mantra and my philosophies are simple. The way that I think my methodology says says something really, really basic and I want you to get this date because I think it's applicable to you and then your org chart and everything that you're doing, turn your org chart upside down and where do you stand? The bottom, supporting this massive, you know, infrastructure, right? Yes. It started out as a little idea, but it's grown. It's blossomed just like every year when the Golden State Warriors, because that's my team. Congratulations. Thank you. They think about the season. They don't go, well, let's go take this year. Right? They think, okay, we have all of these people and what makes up the Golden State Warriors is not just the players that you see on the court. Speaker 3:     26:30           It's all of the coaches, the staff, the trainers or the people back the tickets, like everybody doing everything that you can't see and that's the thing that I have to remind myself about shipoffers is I may be the CEO and I may have great partners that give me the platform, but behind the scenes I have a team and that's like the team aspect that has helped build our culture. Our culture is built on vision, clarity, so we have kindness, we have improvement, right? We have integrity. Like I don't want people who don't want to be here, so I have a statement. If you have a clock in, clock out mentality, this isn't the place for you because some days it may be early in some days and maybe late and along the way we've make it last and I may have to pull up my compass and figuring out the direction we're going again. Speaker 3:     27:14           And if you really want to test your people, don't pay him for two weeks and see their integrity. See if they should go up, see if they're going to give you their time, their consideration and everything they've got for you and then do it for another two weeks and then now you've got a month. And. All right, am I really the right person to lead this? So I'm all about culture. I'm all about getting to know my people. I love to take them out to lunch. I love to text them on the weekends. I've had a couple people who've dealt with death in the last couple of days, family issues, and I want to know my people. I want to know the people who actually signed up to go and jump on board and See our vision right and where we're headed and what we're doing. So my buy in has to be just as much as your bio in mind. Speaker 3:     27:59           Maybe have to be just a little bit more because I have some experience around it. The people here come from all walks of life. They've been through all difficult situations growing up in the ghetto, growing up fatherless, uh, you know, environments and, you know, didn't know their mother. And I've seen, I've seen it come from different countries, worked oddball jobs to get here and I don't care who you are, I care about what you do when you're here. I don't care what happened to you, I'd love to get to know it, but I need to know who you are here and what is it that you want help with. So the last piece that I tell everybody that we hire, everybody we bring on, I said, we're a stepping stone for your greatness. We're here to help you learn enough stuff. And when you're ready, you'll take steps to go where you need to go. Speaker 3:     28:47           Um, I told every person that has ever worked for our team. I said, I'm a stepping stone to where you want to go. Allow us to be that and give us what you can while you're here and I'll invest everything I can into you while you're here as well. And, uh, I love it. I mean, I'm a new guy. Just came on as our director of sales. He left the company that he was at for nine years managing 109 people. And uh, my friend Vinnie Fisher and his company helped us find this person and it's like, I found, I think I really do. I think about like, I'm going to be an empty Nester here in a year replacement, I don't want to say it too loud because he's in the other room, but there's something magical about when you invest in people. And I asked him the other day and I said, you know, how you doing here? Speaker 3:     29:37           He goes, man, I can't believe it. I go, why? He goes, I actually remember that I have a life again. And it's not that there was anything wrong where he was at. He just sometimes we get lost along the way. And so culture for me is, is really talking to your people, talking about the good stuff, talking about it, the bad stuff, and getting ugly with them and talking about the stuff that really matters. And uh, you know, when you notice that a person is not doing their job, pull them aside and tell them. And I've been known to do that and I've been known not to do that. And I kicked myself when I realized, man, if I would've just had another heart to heart, maybe it would have mattered. But culture is it. I mean if you don't have good culture, you, you're definitely probably have some other issues in your company. Speaker 2:     30:15           Well, I appreciate that. I know we joke around all the time as far as this idea as far as cold and really trying to build that type of a really tight knit organization. Not only here at inside of a company but also with our customers. So I appreciate that. I totally understand that. Speaker 3:     30:33           Do you have an iphone or do you have an android? Iphone. So I can only address iphone users because that's all I have. So if you're an android maybe you should tune out some of the stuff. I have a big believer in. It may not be the best product in the world, but it's got some amazing things that have created culture. The facetime, the quick easy swipes, the shareable stuff, the things that are easy to attract, their store looks amazing. And then other companies try to, you know, copy their store, like how many people have tried to go and copy click funnels throughout the years. But you can't be click funnels because there's a culture there when you went to funnel hacking live, when I've been out of the last four years and I'm so happy that I got a chance to showcase this last year. You're looking around, they bought into culture. They believe in what you guys are doing. That's why I said yes to the podcast, why I say yes to this because it lines up with my culture, my fit of like I want to do things where I know the people on the other end are going in the same direction and they have a buy in 250 staff. It's phenomenal, but it still took one, two, three, four, five to come up with a vision to go then implement the vision for the rest of the company. They all had a buy into your culture. Speaker 2:     31:45           Well, I appreciate that. I again, I can't thank you enough, Tony. I become a dear friend and I appreciate especially just how just raw and pure you are. Speaker 3:     31:58           That's why my podcast that I launched last week and talk inside my other podcast is called raw and uncut. I think. I think we need less editing. I think we really just need to go and try and be okay that it didn't work out, but be willing to get back up, fail fast, get up. If it doesn't work and you know eyeballs aren't buying what you're selling, then maybe it's time that you just figure out why. Why it's not selling? Is it really it's not converting or maybe your message isn't very clear and I want my message to be clear to anybody listening today. No matter the path that you're on, no matter where you're at in your life, know that you matter. You have greatness inside of you. People like myself and Dave, Karen, love for you as a human being. Know that we want to support you on your mission and your journey, but I need 100 percent buy in from you. First. I need you to believe in yourself and if your stock Speaker 3:     32:52           maybe just go take drainers and drivers.com and allow that to be the highlighter that just begins to show some of the things. I'll find a way to connect with your audience. I'll find a way for them to reach out and connect with me. I'm a big believer in community is essential. I think we were created for community and connection and so many of us as entrepreneurs, we sit alone in our room and we're building something for the world and we forget that we are very disconnected and slightly making some adjustments. We start connecting and then when you go to funnel hacking live, you've realized that you have a huge community around you. Go ask a question in the facebook group sometimes watch how fast that thing fills up with answers. You are not alone, so stop sitting in the stands waiting for somebody to come along and save you. Speaker 3:     33:39           Go do it yourself and know that you need to ask questions like when you needed to go to the bathroom and elementary school you raised your hand. I want you to get back to raising your hand and know that people are willing to help you, but don't be an asshole. Be the person who actually does it. When they say that's what they want. So remember, you're at where you're at for a specific reason. Now if you don't like where, yeah, do something about it. You're not a tree, as Jim Rohn said, you can grow and I want this message that I share with the world every single day of my life is I want you to be empowered to know that it's opportunity is now no opportunity wasted, so don't waste anything that we're talking about today and saying, oh, I'll do it someday. There is no Sunday. Today is the day. We're not promised tomorrow. We're not promised next week or next year. We're promised right here, right now. And what you can do in this moment Speaker 3:     34:28           is Russell says, is your one fall away, right? You're one funnel away. You're one phone call away, your one email or a text from changing your entire life. So allow this podcast, this message, anything that you've heard today to resonate with you and if you don't resonate with you, guess what? I don't resonate with everything I hear either, but I think about one thing when I'm listening to somebody. What's the lesson that they're sharing? And I hope my lesson today has all been about awareness. Getting gaining more awareness in your life is the essential ingredient to living a fulfilled life. Well, with that guys, we're going to let this end checkout shipoffers.com and make sure you also go to, yeah, drink drainers and drivers.com. Again, drainers and drivers.com. Shipoffers.com. And by all means fine Tony on facebook, reach out to him is one of the most amazing men you'll ever meet on facebook. I'm on facebook, so yeah. Speaker 4:     35:30           Hey everybody. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to podcasts. If you don't mind, could you please share this with others, rate and review this podcast on itunes. It means the world to me where I'm trying to get to as a million downloads here in the next few months and just crush through over 650,000 and I just want to get the next few 100,000 so we can get to a million downloads and see really what I can do to help improve and get this out to more people at the same time. If there's a topic, there's something you'd like me to share or someone you'd like me to interview, by all means, just reach out to me on facebook. You can pm me and I'll be more than happy to take any of your feedback as well as that. There's people like me to interview. I'm more than happy to reach out and have that conversation with you. So again, go to Itunes, rate and review this, share this podcast with others and let me know how else I can improve this or and do to make this better for you guys. Thanks.

Hosts Phil Svitek (@PhilSvitek), Marisa Serafini (@SerafiniTV), and Demetri Panos (@DMovies1701) discuss Deadpool 2 (2018) Review! Wisecracking mercenary Deadpool meets Russell, an angry teenage mutant who lives at an orphanage. When Russell becomes the target of Cable -- a genetically enhanced soldier from the future -- Deadpool realizes that he'll need some help saving the boy from such a superior enemy. He soon joins forces with Bedlam, Shatterstar, Domino and other powerful mutants to protect young Russell from Cable and his advanced weaponry. HELPFUL LINKS: Website - http://popcorntalk.com Follow us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/thepopcorntalk Merch - http://shop.spreadshirt.com/PopcornTalk/ ABOUT POPCORN TALK: Popcorn Talk Network is the online broadcast network with programming dedicated exclusively to movie discussion, news, interviews and commentary. Popcorn Talk Network is comprised of the leading mem --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Firefist? You Sure You Want to Go With Firefist? This week on the podcast Johnny and Brian are talking about the Merc with a Mouth's triumphant return tot he big screen with Deadpool 2. Plus… Man of Steel Comic News, the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season finale, and more! Deadpool 2 (2018) Summary Wisecracking mercenary Deadpool meets Russell, an angry teenage mutant who lives at an orphanage. When Russell becomes the target of Cable — a genetically enhanced soldier from the future — Deadpool realizes that he’ll need some help saving the boy from such a superior enemy. He soon joins forces with Bedlam, Shatterstar, Domino and other powerful mutants to protect young Russell from Cable and his advanced weaponry. Cast & Crew Directed by David Leitch Produced by Simon Kinberg Ryan Reynolds Lauren Shuler Donner Written by Rhett Reese Paul Wernick Ryan Reynolds Based on Deadpool by Fabian Nicieza Rob Liefeld Music by Tyler Bates Production Company Marvel Entertainment Kinberg Genre The Donners’ Company TSG Entertainment Distributed by 20th Century Fox Budget $110 million Box Office $324.6 million (as of episode release) Cast Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson / Deadpool Josh Brolin as Cable Morena Baccarin as Vanessa Julian Dennison...

Brett and pappy spoil and review the latest Marvel movie Deadpool 2 starring Ryan Reynolds! Wisecracking mercenary Deadpool meets Russell, an angry teenage mutant who lives at an orphanage. When Russell becomes the target of Cable -- a genetically enhanced soldier from the future -- Deadpool realizes that he'll need some help saving the boy from such a superior enemy. He soon joins forces with Bedlam, Shatterstar, Domino and other powerful mutants to protect young Russell from Cable and his advanced weaponry. Release date: May 18, 2018 (USA) Director: David Leitch Budget: $110 million podcastspoilers@gmail.com Screenplay: Ryan Reynolds, Paul Wernick, Rhett Reese, Rob Liefeld, Fabian Nicieza Producers: Ryan Reynolds, Simon Kinberg, Lauren Shuler Donner Story by: Rob Liefeld, Fabian Nicieza

Main Review:  Deadpool 2 (2018) Wisecracking mercenary Deadpool meets Russell, an angry teenage mutant who lives at an orphanage. When Russell becomes the target of Cable -- a genetically enhanced soldier from the future -- Deadpool realizes that he'll need some help saving the boy from such a superior enemy. He soon joins forces with Bedlam, Shatterstar, Domino and other powerful mutants to protect young Russell from Cable and his advanced weaponry. Trailer Corner: MOWGLI  Scores -  Jack - 6, Ben - 4.5, Trevor - 6 Overview- 5.5/10 Check us out on itunes or on our website at www.tsucanshed.com Music: http://www.bensound.com    

Action Movie Anatomy hosts Ben Bateman and Andrew Ghai break down Deadpool 2 (2018). Follow Action Movie Anatomy on Twitter: @AMApodcast Deadpool2: Wisecracking mercenary Deadpool meets Russell, an angry teenage mutant who lives at an orphanage. When Russell becomes the target of Cable -- a genetically enhanced soldier from the future -- Deadpool realizes that he'll need some help saving the boy from such a superior enemy. He soon joins forces with Bedlam, Shatterstar, Domino and other powerful mutants to protect young Russell from Cable and his advanced weaponry. HELPFUL LINKS: Website - http://popcorntalk.com Follow us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/thepopcorntalk Merch - http://shop.spreadshirt.com/PopcornTalk/ ABOUT POPCORN TALK: Popcorn Talk Network is the online broadcast network with programming dedicated exclusively to movie discussion, news, interviews and commentary. Popcorn Talk Network --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Interview with Steve Durie Hugh Ballou: Greetings, it's Hugh Ballou. Another episode of The Nonprofit Exchange live, it's Hugh Ballou and Russell Dennis. Russell, how are you doing today out there in beautiful Colorado? Russell Dennis: After a snowfall last night, the sun has come back out. Everything is beautiful out here in Colorado. Hugh: Love it. People on the podcast can't see it, but you've got a shiny head. Is that part of the sign, or is that just the light over your head? Russell: All of this glare helps keep the focus off of the shadow here with all of the gray hair in it, so there is a method to my madness shining the light here. Hugh: I see that. Russell, the real person. We have a guest who is also a resident of Colorado, but he is a new resident of Florida. We are going to hear from him in just a minute. Today's topic is protecting your culture by doing effective vetting of the people you're bringing in, be it volunteers or paid staff. Steve Durie, welcome to The Nonprofit Exchange. Steve Durie: Thank you, Hugh. It's good to be here. Hugh: So good to have you. Tell us a little bit about yourself, some background, and how did you arrive at what you're doing now? Why is it important to you? Steve: I have been doing this for 15 years. Where it started was when I was actually volunteering in youth organizations with my kids. My question was: Aren't you going to run a background check on me? They're like, No, we don't do that. We trust everyone. Previous to that, I had a lot of database experience in a consulting company in consulting on justice projects, that is, how to share criminal data. I took that knowledge about sharing criminal data and my passion for keeping my own kids safe and know that I was going to be working as a volunteer and turned it into a business 15 years ago. My kids are a little older now, and my wife Laura and I have a special needs son. He is an adult; he is 31. But he is also extremely vulnerable and needs protection. He doesn't live at home anymore. And that is a constant worry about Tommy, whether the people who are working alongside him are safe. It does transcend not just our children in their youth, but into any vulnerable population. That is a broad brushstroke is anybody who is vulnerable, and we can look at each group individually as to how to best screen someone and check them out if we are working with children, youth, or vulnerable adults, or elderly, or single people. There are a lot of different. Vulnerable populations who may need our work. Hugh: Absolutely. It's really good to know about people. In the work that Russell and I do through SynerVision, we help people build their strategy out. Part of that is competencies. We have created a new paradigm that replaces the position description, and the first of four colors is the competency. When you look at somebody's competency, you also want to do a background check so that you can validate what is on their resume, that they actually do that. Are there some hidden things in there? Finding out about the people. What is their performance going to be? Role and responsibility? If it's financial, there is another level of compliance. I used to live in a town of 30,000, and one year, there were two nonprofits that had treasurers make away with $750,000, trusted friends and community members. They didn't do an adequate background check or have safeguards in place. The third color is the culture fit. If somebody has a history of conflict or abuse, you don't really want them spoiling your culture. The fourth color is expectations, but the vetting the person, competency, not only are they clean, but they also fit the culture. There are lots of reasons in any kind of enterprise to do the background check. I think it's especially important when we are dealing with people who are compromised, like your son, like children, like older adults. There are lots of opportunities for people to abuse the system. You have worked with nonprofits so far, have you? Steve: Our focus of the company SecureSearch is with the nonprofit community. It's been over 15 years; we have served over 10,000 nonprofits as their partner for screening their staff, their volunteers, and their board of directors. We are a full-service company. We can do anything, from resume verification to child awareness for those who work with children. Hugh: Resume verification. I heard a guy one time, and his resume said he went to Yale and studied finance. I found out later he didn't graduate. People make up things on their resume. That's a new piece of data. Are nonprofits any more vulnerable than for-profits? Is there an attitude of difference there? You told a story about you being a volunteer, and you ask about the background check. They said we trust people. Do you find that to be more common than not? Steve: I find that to be pretty common in the nonprofit culture where they are really hungry for people to serve and to help. With that, sometimes they actually push aside the fact that these people may have a nefarious past. They are looking to quickly onboard them, get them into a position. They are happy to have a warm body. They are happy to have the skillset the individual brings to the table. Referred by a close friend or family member, so they are not even thinking about screening them, especially if they are not working directly with a child. When they are working with a child, it's more in our consciousness that we should put the best people with these kids to keep in faith. But what about people who are just working alongside one another? The workplace violence conflict. We need to focus on making all of our communities and all of the workplaces as safe as possible. It's the responsibility of the organization to do so. But nonprofits, because of their compromised budgets in some cases, they are spending their money elsewhere to maybe grow their projects and they are not really thinking about the people, if they are safe in the environment they are working in. In corporate America, it is common, and in the nonprofit arena, it is not as common. We are here as a voice to raise the awareness that everybody should be doing this, whether you have one employee or thousands. Hugh: You and I met at a conference last week, CEO Space. Had I met you—I came in late in the week because I had conflicts—and said, “Hey Steve, what is it that you do?” and you say, “I do background searches,” and I say, “I have a nonprofit. Why is it important for me to do that?” How would you respond to me? Steve: As a nonprofit? Hugh: If I say, “I have a nonprofit. Why is it important for me to do that?” Steve: You touched on this. It's about reducing risk and reducing liability. Liability is big. It all ties into the overall image in the community they're serving. It's protecting their image. It doesn't have to be their first priority. The first priority is protecting those who are part of their organization. You have to look at the entire hierarchy of your staff from your board of directors down to your volunteers. Oftentimes, there are people in between the upper board and the volunteers who are just coming on who get missed. They didn't think it was important to screen them. Really it's about lowering your liability and lowering your risk, or at least managing your risk. You can't be a risk-free organization; that doesn't exist. It's about, how do you take steps and utilize your budget dollars to minimize your risk as much as you possibly can? Hugh: Russell, you and I interface with a lot of nonprofit leaders and boards. I find there is a lot of boards that aren't up to speed on how to be the board. They think about being in charge of governance sometimes. They sometimes realize they are responsible for financial oversight. I don't think boards realize they have a liability whatever happens. Do you find, Russell, in your work that boards are blind to this element as well? Russell: I have talked to people who really don't have a core grasp of the notion of having liability insurance for the board of directors officers as they are putting these things together. They don't understand how critical that is and what risks are involved. A large part of the problem is people don't know what they don't know. Nonprofit leaders, these are people centered in the idea of making the world a better place and service to others. They are more prone to take people at their word as opposed to doing any sort of digging. They may not think there is a big risk associated with bringing a person on. It's nice to be able to take people at their word, but it depends on what kind of work you're doing, who you're serving, the assets of your organization you're protecting. It never occurs to people there may be a scurvy elephant roaming around the zoo. You have to have a look at who you're dealing with. People aren't always who they say they are. That is just the reality of it. It's important to look at these things up front because if you don't have a person who is not in integrity in there in the first place, you don't have to figure out how to get rid of them later on when you could have problems. The reputation of your organization could be at stake. You just have these horror stories. There was a veterans' organization a few years ago that saw their reputation fall apart because the CEO was playing games with the books. Always you have to think in terms of protecting yourself with your regulations, with internal controls, with the way money and other assets are handled. More important, how you deal with the people you serve. You can really get in a lot of trouble easily and quickly without in the least bit intending to. Hugh: Steve, did that shake loose any thoughts for you? Steve: Yeah, it actually did. I do believe that nonprofits feel that the people they bring in have the heart for what they do. If they have a heart for what they do, then they are probably good people. I really think that is a mistake a lot of them make. Taking that assumption because they say they believe in what you believe in, they have the passion for what you have a passion for, that doesn't mean they have the same background you have. A lot of people are trying to use their influence they currently have in the community, it could be a leader in the community, to find their way into a vulnerable group. That is the MO of a pedophile is to build up trust in everybody around them, including building themselves up to be leaders in the community so that everybody seems to trust them, and that is when they can get to the vulnerable children and build relationships without anybody thinking twice about it. Screening is not going to catch everybody, only if they have been arrested or convicted of something in the past. It's only one part of the puzzle for keeping not only your organization safe, but those that you serve. It goes much more beyond the background check. I don't think anyone can feel that they have that warm fuzzy feeling now that I have implemented background checks. I'm good, I got a green check mark for that person, I can just let them go. That is a wrong approach. You really need to have a conscious community around that everybody is the eyes and ears of the organization. We all have to keep our eyes on who we're working alongside. If they are doing something we believe is incorrect or harmful to the organization or to those who serve, to make sure we all feel empowered to report those things, especially for physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, whatever you might see. It's up to us to report it. Hugh: There is another realm that Russell talked about with having your policies and procedures up to date. You just pointed out, we have to pay attention. That is part of our responsibility as a leader to see what is in front of us. I never realized people who are—and it makes sense if you talk about it—a pedophile positions themselves in a place of trust and then continues to validate that, so they throw people off guard. No, it couldn't possibly be true. I have known people in that position before, and they were busted. Eventually you got caught. How long does it take and how many people do you hurt in the process? At least do your background check, which also helps relieve your liability. I'm sure some of the companies that Russell talked about that issue board insurance require a background check so they have less liability. I didn't warn you: When Russell comes in, he asks you the hard questions. I'll ask you easier ones first while he formulates the hard ones. Give us an example where people were trusting, and it really created damage. Then you came in and maybe you helped them get a process in place to prevent it in the future. Without naming names, what are the kinds of things that people should be alert to?   Steve: There are so many stories. Some have been recently in the news that everybody is aware of. One is USA Gymnastics with Dr. Nassau. Building trust, not only from the organization, but with the parents of these young children in the gymnastics program, and then going on to abuse them for years without ever getting caught. Sandusky at Penn State, same thing. He was able to testify with his peers that showering with young boys was just about cleanliness. They are always going to try to lie about who they are and have somebody believe it. They are masters at it. They never take any responsibility for their actions. It's that narcissistic behavior on the pedophile side. Another story has nothing to do with a criminal record. This was a nonprofit organization that had drivers and they were doing deliveries. One of the individuals when we met with them, and we were on site for this one, he was in the state of Colorado, but he had a Tennessee drivers' license. He said he had been here for four years. I asked him why didn't he have a Colorado license. He said that he lost his license in Colorado from too many speeding tickets, so he had to go to my parent's house in Tennessee to get a license. He is volunteering for an organization that drives one of their vehicles. People can get around from their past and get away from their past, whether it's criminal behavior or not. It could be resume fudging. That happens more than you know, especially for certain positions, for executive director positions, finance positions, COO type positions, where they can say they have a Master's degree in finance. They really just have a Bachelor's, or they never finished college. They put it on their resume for years, and nobody questioned it. There are stories where the CEO of RadioShack, and RadioShack is falling from grace, but the CEO never had his Master's degree in business, never had his MBA. It was a reporter who figured it out and started reporting on it. Then he resigned or got let go. Same thing with the president of the business school of Harvard. She had miscommunicated on her resume that she had a Ph. D, and she never did. Organizations that we all know about and have heard about, down to around the corner with businesses in your neighborhood or possibly even your organization. It's important to vet the higher-end positions in your organization. It's not just about the volunteers. I can go on forever about why it's important for the volunteers, but anybody working in your office, making sure you are looking at embezzlement or money laundering or anything that deals with your budget, your finances, your books, make sure those are always intact and that you are bringing on the best people. Background checks don't always catch everybody. They may never have been arrested before. I am going to go back to what Hugh was talking about with the pedophile. Eventually they get caught. That's not true. They never get caught, and they die with their secrets. The average pedophile molests 137 children in their lifetime without ever getting arrested for it. That is where the training is more important than the background check and being aware and keeping their eyes open. Hugh: Wow. I guess there is some people who will be polite and they think it's not polite to do a background check. Have you come across that? How do you respond to that? Steve: For the last 15 years, we have dealt with that. I don't know exactly where that really stems from other than they feel like it's unkind to ask someone to sign a consent form to do a background check. They are giving of their time, and I feel like I am invading their privacy if I ask them for this information. But you have to think about your organization and its reputation and why you have that organization set up in the first place. Then you have to make sure you bring on the best people. You just need to frame it differently: we are a culture of safety instead of just being haphazard about who we bring on. I think that everybody who comes on board would feel more confident with the person sitting next to them, with the person they are running an errand with to Office Depot if they are going in the same vehicle together. You will have a higher level of confidence that the organization did the right thing before you came. Hugh: Where is the person who said, “Oh, I don't want to be impolite to them,” so they back down from not realizing they are being impolite to everyone else in the culture. I don't want to make trouble, but if they don't do that, they will make trouble for everybody else. What about the person who says, “I don't have time for that?” That sounds like too much trouble. Steve: The one issue with nonprofits is wearing so many hats and being so busy. I think that sometimes the background check seems like a daunting task, especially if they have never done them. First, I have to vet a company. I don't know where to go to trust somebody. I don't want to do all the paperwork. I have enough things going on. I don't even understand background checks. How am I going to do this? I don't have a Human Resources background, nor do I have a HR director on staff. That is where SecureSearch makes it a little unique. We can come in understanding that that is one of your pain points on not having enough people to do all of the tasks you have to do. We made everything paperless. Not only are the consent forms, but also the entire process of signing up is paperless. Everything is the click of a button. The applicants, whether they be your board of directors, staff, or volunteers, they do all of the data entry. All you're doing is sending an email invitation. Simple as that. Hugh: Wow. If I came to you and said I have ten volunteers and I need to take them through a background check, then you'd give me a consent form for them to sign, with permission to do that. Steve: The way you phrased that is interesting, that you give them a consent form. It's actually against the law for us to provide a template consent form. We provide samples. All consent forms are the organization's form. It's not my form. We provide a sample, but it is really up to each organization to go through legal counsel and make sure everything is in there that needs to be in there and that it meets their federal and state laws. We try to do our best with our samples to make sure they are good, but you should only use that as a framework. Hugh: Before you can do the background check, I have to have them sign a form though. Steve: Yes. That form can be in paper, or it can be through our paperless volunteer and applicant portal that is called Search My Background that we have. If everything is in the portal electronically, and they sign a signature box either with their finger on a mobile device or the mouse of their computer. That signature will map to all the documents in the system so that everything is signed and everything is provided to the applicant. Hugh: Where I was headed with that, and I thank you for the clarification on the language, where I was headed with that is I would say I have my ten volunteers and I need to run them through the process. Would you suggest to me that I do it on myself as well? Steve: Well, somebody should run one on you. But if you want to at least have something in the “file,” whether it be a digital file or a file folder in a lockable filing cabinet, having your own in there is a good idea, especially to report to the board that if you are the executive director, it started with you. Sometimes you can be surprised on what you might see on your own. We had an executive director in Minnesota who had a small nonprofit. I think it was five or ten volunteers based on what he told me over the phone. This was quite a few years ago. When I was small enough and able to see the background checks coming in on a regular basis, I pulled it open and said, “Oh, I talked to that gentleman on the phone.” He signed up and ran his background check; he had three pages of felonies on his own. He never ran another background check with us. I think he was curious as to if his own background check would come up and expose him as a customer. There was nothing I could do to share it with the greater group of that organization. There is a lot of risk out there. It can start with that executive director. I don't think the executive director should be the one running the background check; it should be pushed by the board that the executive director have a background check. Hugh: Absolutely. Nobody should be exempt from it. Everybody should go through it. The founder, the executive director. Steve: Everybody. Hugh: Great. We are almost halfway through this interview. Russell, I'm sure that you have formulated a great question for our guest. Russell: As I was saying earlier, a lot of people don't know what they don't know. I think it starts with going from a place of what do I know, what have I been told, what don't I know, and where did the information I get come from? How do I know what I know? I think my first question would be all quality information. How can you get quality information to make sure that what you're hearing can be verified? Steve: That is a really good question. There are a lot of background screening companies in the U.S, thousands really. Everybody approaches business differently. Some are very small, that concept of working out of your garage, and they might not have a website. They might be in it just for the profit. There are lots of different data points to put together a good background check. The problem I see with the nonprofit side is they are learning on these database products to be the be-all end-all product because it's fast and it's inexpensive. They think because somebody might be calling it a national search that it truly is. But it isn't. I like to think of the database searches as a net. If you can picture the map of the United States and now you're casting this net across the United States, what is the net made up of? Holes strung together is the way I'd like to put it. I want you to remember that while it might be national—we call it multi-state—there are going to be holes. In some areas of this net there will be tears and huge holes versus tightly knit holes in other areas. You have this product that a lot of the nonprofits like to order because they think it's national, they think it's an easy, inexpensive way to launch into the background checks, and they don't realize the risks that are still going to be there. They are not conducting what we call a best-in-class background check. Nonprofits have to be careful. To answer your question about data, we take three different aggregation data points from the database and merge them together, eliminating the duplicate points. Other companies will buy data from these aggregate groups of data, and they will hang it on their own internal servers and ping against that data for months before they refresh it. That's how you get the $2 background checks for some of these large nonprofits. I'm not saying everybody does it, but in order to reduce the cost to meet what an expectation might be for a nonprofit, which is cheap, these organizations are going to give you bad and old data. We refresh our data every week, in some cases like the sex offender registries, for some every two weeks. But the oldest refresh we have is 30 days for our entire database. Again, it's a merge of three different data points coming together. We didn't get into this business primarily to make a profit; we got into this business to protect those who need to be protected. Russell: That's it. It's setting that intention right up front. When you talk to people, you have to set an intention up front about what it is you're doing. When you talk to people who might be new that we need to help, but understand we are going to be looking into some things, asking you questions for the sake of transparency, and direct about it. Who, what, when, where, why, and how? We keep our questions as open in that way as we can so that we get some meaningful information. I think that people who have things to hide may balk a little bit at this directness. Somebody is fidgeting, and they are talking about how much time this is taking, why you need to know that. In my head, that will be a red flag. What say you? Steve: A hidden benefit of the background check implementation is the bad ones kind of leave in the guise of night. They don't come back tomorrow. You actually said, “Hey, we take it seriously, we are going to have a consent form for you to sign. We will call your references. We will check in on who you say you are.” That's another thing, references. If you are not calling references, whether you outsource it to an organization, I recommend doing it internally so you can hear the nuance of the phone, the pregnant pauses of someone being asked, “Is this somebody you would bring back into your organization if you could?” and they go, “Hmm, well, I don't know about that.” If you outsource that, it's hard for somebody to put that into words on a report. I recommend if you have the time to do it yourself. If you have the money, you can outsource it. References are just as important as the background check. The background checks of course can be criminal. They can also verify your resume, education, employment. It's not always just looking at their criminal records, but making sure they are who they say they are. Hugh: While you are on that track, what kinds of background checks are there? Go over that again. Steve: There are lots of different types of background checks. We want to get nonprofit organizations to stop thinking about using the database just for looking for a criminal or a sex offender. Because of the analogy I used with the net with all the larger holes and tears, you need to look at each applicant holistically. Instead of where your organization is serving or based and the geography and how that might look in a database search, you need to look at the applicant. John could be a resident of one place for his whole life, and Mary has lived in seven different places in seven years. Mary, you are going to have to do more on because there are possibilities that the database has missed where Mary lives, they weren't up to date, and you are going to add a county courthouse search or a statewide repository search if it exists, like it does in Colorado. Other states have that, too. You are going to need to start with a foundation and then lay additional due diligence on top of that to get a good profile for each applicant instead of one size fits all. The criminal side, you break out into two different things. We have state and local crimes that you find in a database. You have the sex offender crimes that are in the sex offender registry. Then you will have crimes against the federal government or federal-related crimes. A lot of people think of these as the white-collar crimes, the Bernie Madoffs or the Martha Stewart crime where she got involved in the stocks. Yes, but inter-state kidnapping is also a federal crime. Money laundering and profiteering is a federal crime. Any building on federal lands. A lot of organizations and companies lately neglect ordering a federal criminal search. That can come back to bite them if they don't search it. There are a lot of other things, too. Motor vehicle searches, I mentioned. Credit reports we can do. You can do the education verification. International criminal and credit. Motor vehicles. We have 165 different services available to any organization, and most organizations look at about five. Russell:What are some of the training opportunities? Part of the challenge is training nonprofit leaders or other people about what the benefits are and the dangers of neglecting to do due diligence. In other words, what are the things that you're doing to assist people to understand the value of it so that they actually have this awareness? It's one thing to bring somebody in. Somebody could slide under the radar after you have done your search. Maybe something changes. People need to have an idea of what sort of things they need to look out for to make sure that everything is good. What training do you folks give nonprofits an opportunity to take advantage of so that they have a better sense of when they may need some help digging into something? Steve: We actually have a very specific training program that I actually founded. It's called Safeguard from Abuse. With a focus on the vulnerable populations that a lot of nonprofits focus their energy into those communities, it is a 75-minute online and also on a DVD training program with a certificate of understanding for those that pass the test on all of the different types of abuse, not just the sexual abuse, but neglect, physical, and emotional abuse, diving deep into what they are, diving deep into how to recognize when a child is being abused. So many organizations have that fear of having a sexual predator in their midst, so we do focus more time and attention in their personality traits, their grooming behaviors, understanding the personality of that pedophile. The most important thing is raising the awareness overall through the training, but empowering each person who goes through the video to be a mandated reporter and to understand that they can't help if they put their head in the sand. They have to be empowered to report, and they have to understand how to do so is very important. The awareness training is important. My example that I like to use is Russell, you want to buy a new car. You have a brand of car in mind, and you're getting in that car and heading down the road. All of a sudden, you start to see that car everywhere. It's now in your awareness. It's always been there, just like the characteristics of people who harm kids. They're still doing it in front of us; we're just not aware of it. We didn't raise our awareness level high enough to see what's always been there but invisible to the eye. It's really what we focus on is what we see. What we focus on we become as well. We want to make sure that we can train enough people to end child abuse, or at least if we can save one child, it's all worth it. Russell: Every time you buy a new car, everybody buys the same make, model, and color that very same day. I was thinking about all of these things. There are people who are listening to this, and they may be leaning back in their chairs thinking, No, I never did any of this stuff up front. Now I have 60 people. How do I know that I don't have somebody like this in my midst right now? Is there some type of organizational audit or assessment that you can do? Steve: We can definitely help. What you're saying is I gotta go retro. I have to go back to day one, and anybody who is still with me, screen them. That seems like an invasion maybe, or a daunting task, or maybe you're just thinking, I'll start with the next person. Now you will set yourself up for some difficulties being fair and equitable. If it's just Susan who just walked in the door but you did not go back five years ago and do this, once you implement the strategy, you have to implement it at any level and go back and do everybody. Starting top down is a good approach. Start at the top, and push down through the hierarchy of individuals in your organization. It's about resetting the reason for why you're doing it. You are resetting the fact that you have this new program that you're implementing. Our insurance company wants us to do it. Most insurance companies want you to do it anyway. If you have to put it on something else, you can just say it's a new requirement. It could be just your organization's requirement. Once it's a new requirement, it's a requirement. Everybody has to do it. Russell: Having everybody do it ensures that you don't have somebody out there who wants to take you to court saying they're being singled out because I'm a woman or I'm black or I'm over 50, or just anything they can pull out to say why it doesn't apply. We talked about that comfort level that people have. I don't want to offend or put anybody out. How do you help people who decide to do something like that do it in the face of the apprehension that they may have and the fear of offending somebody, implementing it seamlessly? What are some of the things you do to help people through that? Steve: That's a good question. We help organizations put together a background screening policy. It's all about policies. Sometimes you might have a policy- With those who work with kids, you might have a child protection policy, for example. But even in that child protection policy, they don't talk about background checks. So we need to weave in another layer of policy, and that is who do we screen, why do we screen them, how often do we screen them, and what do we order? Really it comes down to being comfortable enough with your organization and communicating that you do have policies. It's part of your mission and vision, wherever it is that it fits in, to make it that important. You can make it unimportant and be at risk and have everyone at risk, or you can make it important and be an advocate for safety and make your organization. It's all about preserving that organization. Amp up your image; it will help you and the community. Hugh: Both of you are talking about people not knowing what they don't know. There is a side that people are so close to it, you're so involved in it, that you're so blind to it because you are focusing on the day-to-day and the relationships. You're blind to all of the liabilities. Having someone like you that is skilled to discuss policy procedure with I think is really a high benefit. Is that part of your service that you offer? Steve: We offer that at no charge. Phone call conversations, any time someone wants to talk to me. It's very individual. Each organization is very individual, and I can't just say, Here is a template. We like to discuss what your organization looks like, the different roles and responsibilities you might have, the silos you may have, the offshoots of your organization you may have, and drill down. Like I mentioned, it's not a one-size-fits-all. Based on roles and responsibilities, you will be ordering different types of services. You may order motor vehicle for one, you may need to look at a credit report for one, but it won't be for all. We want to make sure that you understand that as an organization, what's available first of all, why you should order it, and then implement it. Now it's part of your policy manual, and now it can be handed off if you were to leave the organization. If you are in charge of this role, and now you are leaving or retiring to go do something else, you can now hand it off to someone else and they won't have to reinvent the wheel. It's important to do it on the front end, but we'll help. Hugh: Your link for people to find you is SecureSearch.com? Steve: It's actually not. I wish I had that. It's SecureSearchPro.com. Hugh: That's better. Steve: We have SafeguardfromAbuse.com. Hugh: You have been talking about databases, and people can do a database search. Say more about that for people who don't know what you mean by “database.” I think of a database as where I keep my CRM, where I keep my contacts. Say more about that and why it doesn't really cut the mustard. Steve: Okay. A lot of people think that there is one central place to go to do a background check in the United States. Just go to the FBI. They think there is something in some place to go. That is a fallacy. We are a disparate country. Our systems do not communicate with each other. What you have in Colorado doesn't communicate with what's in Virginia with what's in Florida, even though we think that's the case. Another fallacy is that a social security number is all you need to find a criminal record. We don't find any criminal records using a social security number. That's a myth. We use the social security number to find out what the person might be: what names they have used, what addresses they may have used, information sources. The databases, because we have this disparate system where counties don't communicate with states sometimes and counties don't even communicate with each other, all of these groups work in silos. Their information or their data is also stuck in that silo. You have to search that silo to find that information. In some cases, these silos of information raise their hands and say they will share. There are companies called data aggregators to say, I will pull from this county, I will pull from that county, and this department of corrections wants to give me that information. They compile it all together. They go out to my industry and say, “Do you want to buy my information?” I was talking about having three of these aggregators that I purchase information from and weave it all together because they will miss some in one and miss some in another and I am hoping I can fill in some of the gaps. This is not 100%. Again, it's that net with holes. It's as good as it gets. We search over a billion records, but there are so many holes and gaps in this data. That is where the database comes in; it's a base of data. There will be holes that you can't rely on as your only search. We can consult on the best approach. The best approach is you have to look at three different things. First, your due diligence, why you do what you do, why you want to screen in the first place. Do you want to protect the vulnerable? Is it because your insurance company made you do it? I don't care what it is. We have to understand what the impetus of your diligence is. Then we need to look at your organizational budget and say what budget dollars do you have to work with. Do you need to go find more budget dollars from another bucket in order to cover something like this? You want to implement it as soon as possible. The third is your comfort for risk, or your risk tolerance. That is already comfortable with your organization name being in a newspaper because you didn't do a background check, and now you brought in a pedophile into your organization. Or does that make you cringe and keep you awake at night? What does your legal counsel say? What does your insurance company say? We need to bring those three things together and create a unique, sustainable program for your organization. That may be very different from the organization I talk to tomorrow. That's okay. It's unique to you and sustainable and something you're comfortable with and can move forward with in your organization. A long answer for a simple question. Hugh: It's a complex question, a complex situation. I have met people who think they can just Google somebody's name and find out all kinds of things. What's the fallacy in that strategy? Steve: Did you have consent to do it, first of all? Every applicant has their legal rights. They have to provide you consent to really do a background check on them, especially if you want to use it. If you just want to be the armchair neighbor and check in on a neighbor, you have the legal right to do so. If you are going to bring this individual on board and have them fill out paperwork to be a volunteer or member of the staff, you have to get their consent. You can't just go to Google. The data out there is only as good as the data out there. If you're not buying it and it's free, there is a reason it's free. If you're spending $59.99 to get the rest of the report, they gave you a little bit, and the rest of it is behind the scenes, that is just database information, and that is way more than you ever need to pay. You need to do a database search for only $15. It's something you need, and something you need to build on, so you want to make sure you make it affordable on the database side so you can grow it and add the county courthouse searches as necessary. Russell: There are some things out there that are robust. I have probably used some of the things as a revenue agent for IRS. It's not off the shelf, and it's not cheap by any means, but it's good stuff. It's important to do that. You get what you pay for. A lot of these databases that you describe pop up if you do an online directory search for the Yellow Pages, or something like that. These things get offered to you all the time. Steve: It's the free data available to everyone that they compile. Not everything is going to be in there as I mentioned. It will be fraught with holes. They make it look good. They put a shiny website together, and you see moving parts. It's like they are searching as deep as they can go, and I will get every tidbit of information I need in seconds on one of these companies. You have to be careful with what you do. Everything needs to be validated at the local level. Anything from the database, any red flag, has to be validated at the court or the point of origin of the information to be accurate; otherwise, you are not supposed to see it anyway. That is why you want to work with a consumer reporting agency. SecureSearch is a consumer reporting agency. We are a member of concern consuming reporter agency, making sure we do it the right way and making sure we do validate everything at the local level before you as the customer gets to see that information. Hugh: We are coming to the last part of our interview, Steve. SecureSearchPro.com is where people can find out more. What is the differentiator? What makes this business different? You mentioned there are lots of others out there. Why are you different from them? Steve: That's a good question. The first thing is the information we have to share with you is through years of experience. We have veterans in the industry on staff who run our customer service department, who run our operations, and who run the executive office. That's number one, lots of experience. Two is we have a heart for the nonprofit sector because we understand you are wearing many hats. You don't have time, and you may not have the skillsets. You can feel comfortable with us. We are going to answer the phone. We will talk to you. You won't be alone in this process. We will be there to answer any questions you may have throughout the process, and you will have someone you can work with, whether it be me, you can always work with me directly, or anyone on my staff. We also don't have a single salesperson on staff, so you will never be “sold” anything. We only have consultants, so we will be asking you questions and making you recommendations for best practices. You won't hear from us five million times; we won't pound you until you buy. We wait to hear from you again if you'd like to do this with us. That is what makes us different. We have a heart for the nonprofit, the integrity of our data we are purchasing, and the integrity of the system we have and the compliance of our system and processes is what set us apart. Hugh: That's strong. It sounds like this service is incredibly expensive, thousands of dollars, to do a background check. Is that true? Steve: No, that's actually very far from true. Depends on the organization you're working with. Our pricing model is geared toward the nonprofit sector, so we are extremely affordable. We actually have scalable pricing for those who have high volume discount programs. A background check, I would say that a good budget, if you want to do it right, for the criminal and sex offender and fill in all the gaps, is budget for $50 a person. It doesn't mean it will always cost $50 a person; it may cost $15 for some, $22 for another, or $85 for another. It could be all over the board. But I would budget that to make sure you have enough allocated funds for a good solid program. A lot of people are going to ask if they need to do background checks through the fingerprint process, too. No, you don't. You can get good information that is disposition-based. Disposition is what happened in court, information from a secure search without ever having to do fingerprints. If you are getting government funding or state funding, they may make it mandatory, so you have to do it. But we can still make sure that the fingerprint arrest record—and that's all it is, an arrest information source with biometrics, and not everybody gets fingerprinted when they get arrested—that the courts dismissed it or said it was a guilty verdict and enhance the arrest record database you search. Hugh: Good. Thank you for that complete answer. This has been a very informative interview, and I'm sitting here thinking about all the organizations that I know about that have fallen short. We are going to make sure we will put a recommendation in our work that they do this early on. I think it's that important. As we are tying up this really good interview—Steve, thank you for the time today. It's been exceptional—what impression, what challenge, what thought do you want to leave in people's minds? Steve: I guess my question is: What image do you have of your own organization? How do you look at your own organization? Do your process and your people align with it? If you are worried about that and you want to lower your risk and your liabilities as an organization and maintain the image you want to have of your own organization, it doesn't cost a lot of money, it doesn't take a lot of time, you don't have to learn how to do it. We do everything for you. Just reach out to us. There is no charge to sign up or for a free consultation. Talk to one of our advocates. We're here to help; we're not here to sell. We hope to hear from you. It's something you should definitely take a look at. If you're doing the background checks now, we can talk about if you are doing them the right way. If you're not doing them, we can help you along the path. Hugh: Russell, thanks again for being here and being by my side. Steve, thank you for a wonderful interview. Thanks everyone for listening. Steve: Thank you very much. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wisecracking mercenary Deadpool meets Russell, an angry teenage mutant who lives at an orphanage. When Russell becomes the target of Cable -- a genetically enhanced soldier from the future -- Deadpool realizes that he'll need some help saving the boy from such a superior enemy. He soon joins forces with Bedlam, Shatterstar, Domino and other powerful mutants to protect young Russell from Cable and his advanced weaponry.

It's been awhile since I've done any Q&A on "HeySteve"... I'm kinda already in the Q&A zone this week so I just kept on goin'. Woo! What's up, everyone, good morning. My name's Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now here's your host, Steve Larsen. All right, all right, all right. Man, I'm kind of just a happy, excited individual in general but particularly this last week has just been such a personal win, it's just been so awesome. Many of you guys know I went and I got to speak on Russell's stage for three days, it was crazy. Oh my gosh, it was so much fun, I had a lot of fun with it. It was ... A lot of guys know we just launched the Two Comma Club Coaching Program and it's been awesome, it's been a lot of fun. We had hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of people join in and ask for Two Comma Club Coaching training, all the material. Those people who also purchased it they came for ... The last time we opened it, just this last week they came for three days. We went through their messaging, we went through their webinars, we built a funnel out, we built the sales portion, we indexed stores, it's really intense. The first day we went from I think was about 8:30 in the morning and then we'd leave at about six. Not bad, right? There's no breaks, we don't take breaks the entire day. We let everyone out for lunch once just to grab some food but besides that there's no breaks, there's nothing else. The second day what happens is we get up and at 8:30 everyone's back in there and then it was me. I went from 9 am to midnight. It was crazy. Russell came in and he taught a segment of it but man, we were on there for 17 hours. That's a ton of energy. I've always thought, "Oh my gosh, this is going to be such a ... I'm going to be exhausted," but I didn't realize how much. At the end of the day I was like ... The whole day is built around just us trying to help you get your slides done so you can do a webinar. It's very intensive and we stop slide by slide, by slide by slide... We walk around the room, we're like, "Hey, that doesn't look right or switch this or change the messaging to this or switch this word around or okay now pitch it to that guy over there," you know what I mean? It's like, it's intense and it was a whole lot of fun. What I wasn't expecting is how incredibly sore my body would be just being on stage keeping high energy, keeping big, loud, and proud, and keeping my hands all over the place. You know what I mean?... I didn't expect that part of it. I remember I laid that night at about 1:30 in the morning by Russell and I did a little strategy session for the next day. I laid down to go to sleep and my feet just started throbbing, not like, "Oh, they're sore," they actually hurt. I said, "Oh my gosh, I truly am an indoor animal now because I'm not used to ... that would not phase me in the past." Anyway, it was great. The next day I got and we went again from about 9 am to about six, five or 6 pm. It was great. We went through and people had all their stuff done. Anyway, last time we did this the people who actually implemented it and got out there, they'd make 19 grand on their first webinar. Another lady, she already did 700 grand, $700,000 in the last two months since she launched it, when we did this event last time. Anyway, this was a great event... When Russell invited me to come teach part of it, it was really honoring. I was shocked he asked. I was like, "Are you talking to me?" He's like, "Yeah dude, you know this stuff so well come teach it with me side-by-side." I was like, "Okay, cool." It was a lot of fun, just super honoring, very, very honoring... Anyways, that's what's been going on... My dad flew out and we had him over and he was doing that also for his webinar. Anyways, it was just a really, really good experience but I feel like I've been in recovery mode. It's Saturday right now and this all just happened just this last week. Then Friday we had all these people who joined the Two Comma Club Program. There's a two week program that we put you through before that you can even come to Boise so that you can be prepared for it. I had my first Q&A session over the phone, it was over Instant Tele-seminar. These guys went in, they got ... It was about 70 people on the phone with me and I was on for three hours straight. It was crazy. It was so funny because at the end of the day I walked back into the room where Russell was and I sat down at my desk there. Russell was like, I think he started laughing, he goes, "Hey, how you doing?" I was like, "It's going really, really well." I didn't expect ... I was like, "I have so much more empathy for how you feel after your events, that was really intense." A solid 17 hour day, another eight hours after it, I only slept ... I went to bed at 5:30 in the morning a few days before the event started just because I was preparing, I was trying to get ready.  I got a pretty big home office here, at least floor space-wise. Man, I was walking around and I was teaching as if people were in the room. I was getting really intense, really animated. I got whiteboards all over the place, I was drawing stuff out, doing all the things that I would to help concepts sink in deeply for when I was going to actually be on stage and teach. One thing to note, it's another totally different thing to teach it... Anyway, so that's what's been going on with me. I'm so sorry, I feel like I haven't been, I guess I have launched a few podcasts lately but I realized after I was doing the Q&A session I was like, "Wait, I have a Q&A session of my podcast and I haven't done that in probably ..." I don't know, it's been probably 30 episodes at least. I went and I looked at the app that I use for people to ask questions to me. Now, if you guys don't know what I'm talking about go to salesfunnelbroker ... Sorry, salesfunnelradio ... salesfunnelradio.com. Scroll down a little bit, there's going to be a green button on the right that says record voicemail. You can record a voicemail question and it'll be straight across your browser, it's really awesome. It'll email the copy to me and what I do is I kind of vet the questions to see which questions could apply to everybody. Those are the ones that I place inside the podcast. I'm going to do that. I lined up about one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. I lined up about seven questions so I'm going to play the questions so you guys all hear it and then I'm going to answer them real fast, does that sound good? This podcast might go a little bit longer than normal but it's only because I have not done a hasty segment of this podcast for a very long time and I'm so sorry. It just hit me while ... I got so tired in the middle of my three hour Q&A session yesterday I actually sat on the floor for a while with my laptop answering questions. Russell came in and Melanie came in and they were handing me snacks and treats because I was just going, and going, and going. It was really fun. We had people from all across the world on there, it was so fun. Anyway, so let me play this first question here. I'm just going to kind of shotgun fire over several of these questions, that sound good? Cool. Al right, that's the plan. Let me put the first question here. "Hey Steve, how's it going, it's Adam here, 20-year-old college student out of U Mass. I just had a quick question for you. You had mentioned before how you started off by providing a free service where you would build sales funnels for companies that were already established. I kind of want to take that same approach as I have a pretty in depth knowledge of how to use ClickFunnels. I've been using it for a while now, I know all the tools inside of ClickFunnels. I use actionetics setting up email sequences, all that fun stuff. I kind of want to take the same approach where I provide a free service to go into a company and build a sales funnel for them. I was just wondering if you can give me some insights on what approach I should take. I feel like that would be really beneficial for a lot of others out there. Thanks for your time, I really appreciate it." Hey Adam, that's a great question. There's a lot of ways to do it. If you don't have any ... Okay, let's start with this. It's all about results. If you've never built for anybody ever then you need to do it for free. You got to get out there and you have to do it for free. That kind of sucks a little bit but that's how it's going to work. Do it for free because this is now very much a results based economy. What you 100 other people can do in their immediate area. They may not know it but the moment they realize it, it's like, "Oh my gosh, why are you different?" The way I actually got started was I just started ... I was like, "Okay, what industries do I want to work in?" There's a little bit of a checklist I used to actually get started with the stuff. The thing that I started doing was I said, "Okay, number one. I want to work in an industry where there's a lot of money that flows into it and it's a normal thing to do so." You think real estate or cars, people expect to spend a lot of money in those areas. I wanted to spend ... What's nice is if I was to get them an extra two or three sales a month that would change their whole business. Rather than going for something worth really low ticket eCommerce drop-ship style where there's hardly any margin in it. If I was going to go choose and try and prove myself to a market like that I'd really have to increase volume to show massive improvement. Does that make sense? It's the power of the high ticket. That was the first criteria that I was looking for. The second criteria that I was looking for was that they already needed to be in business with a customer base. I did not ... I did the startup game for so long just going person to person, startup to startup. Great, super, awesome to do that but you know what? It was really, really hard because if for some reason the sales funnel didn't work the first time we launched, and half the time Russell and I launch a funnel it doesn't work the first time. We have to see what happens and we make tweaks and then launch it again. Usually that's when it starts to really make money. Does that make sense? These guys would come back and be like, "Oh my gosh, you must not know how to build funnels." I'm like, "Actually no, you're a startup and you haven't proven your market, you haven't proven your model, you haven't proven your product, your business isn't proven. You don't even know what you're doing." They thought the funnel was the business and that's not true at all. Anyways, if you're going to go do that, what I did is I just started making a list of the industries I wanted to go do that stuff in to fit those criteria. Then all I did is I ... Go to Google, search locally different businesses with those industries. I literally started shotgunning this email out or I'd go find them on Facebook. I'd be like, "Hey, I know this is weird ..." If you say that then people for some reason put their walls down. If you don't say that then they're going to be like, "This is weird," so you just call it out. "I know this is weird but I build these things online called sales funnels and I just wanted to know if I could do it for you. I know it's totally out of left field but I love the industry, I love ..." You can talk about their business specifically so they know that it's not spam. This works really well on Facebook Messenger by the way also... "Hey, I really, really want to be able to show the market that I know what I'm doing in this area. Let me build what I call an internet sales funnel for you for free, it'll come out of my pocket. I'm literally just trying to get results as big as possible for anybody right now. Could I do it for you? It will be completely free to you. The only thing I ask is that when it works, only pay me if it works. If so, I would love to get a video testimonial." That's how I did it and I shotgun blasted that style of message to tons of people and I started getting a response. It's funny, any time I wanted to get into a new industry, I still do that. I did that probably a couple months ago. It was before I moved to our new office but I was thinking about going into the real estate area. I was like, "Okay, who can I go build for for free?" I just started blasting the same message across so many platforms that I think Facebook thought I was spamming people, which I kind of was because I was trying to get my message out there and ask who I could build for for free. That was basically it. I got back great people. A few days later I was building for free for a lady who was a realtor to prove myself in the real estate niche. Anyways, that's how I would do it. Hopefully I answered your question, Adam... All right, and there's the next question. "Hey Steve! I just wanted to know do you do your own graphics or do you outsource it? If you outsource it what's your process, how do you do it? Thanks, have a great one. Love your podcast." That question was coming from Greg Grimsley and that is a great question. Graphics-wise, if you've been in any kind of funnel building you know that graphics is a heavy part of it, graphics, and video, and copy, which is pretty much all web pages in general. Yeah, you got to solve that problem. I do my own graphics. I 'm pretty sure you're talking about those little funnel box graphics that I made. Yeah, I made those, I used the Adobe Illustrator for that. One of the things that I learned from Russell sitting next to him is he is so good at taking complex things and turning it into a simple picture. When you can do that your ability to teach is going to go through the roof. Sometimes what I'll do is .. I still do it. I got whiteboards up here over on the side and if there's something that I need to explain better I will draw a picture. It's one of the major reasons why half of his ... He's got a lot of pictures in his books and that's why he does it. It's on purpose, it's not just because ... It's so that we can explain things that otherwise would be very hard to see without a visual. A lot of times what I'll do is I'll sit down and I'll draw the picture. If you're not personally a graphics guy, man you can go on Fiver or Freelance.com or whatever and go and pay someone to make a little graphic out of it. If they charge you more than 50 bucks they're probably charging too much money for you. Anyway, that's how I do it though and that's how I do it. I use Adobe Illustrator. I was a layout head editor and designer in high school and I've kind of always just liked layout and design so I do it myself. If you don't have that skill that's fine, that should not stop your progress. All right, this next question comes from Art Boyd. "Hey Steve, Art Boyd here! I do have a question for you. First off I want to say you're amazing, I listen to all your podcasts. You bring tremendous value to the marketplace and I just appreciate all that you share with us. My question is this, how come you give away your free click funnels website that you spend over 200 hours on? Why are you giving that away for free and not charging for it? What's the real marketing ninja tactic that you're using that pays you on the back end? Let me know, I appreciate it man. Talk to you soon, thanks." Hey, that's a huge, huge ... Thanks for bringing that up. The reason I do it is because of, well really two different things. Okay, how many times do you go to a ... Have you ever been to a used car salesman? You go to a used car place or a new car place or any place where there's supposed to be sale happening. You walk up and the biggest thing you know that you're going to run into is the moment you pull up somebody is going to be there as you open the car door and just hounding you. They're going to be hounding you, that sucks. I hate that. Anyway, I love to be sold but I do not like to be bullied. That makes me feel bullied. I feel like I'm being backed into a corner like, "So do you want it? You gonna get it? Okay, we could buy this." People who will jump out and immediately show you how your objections are worth nothing rather than actually valuing the objection and dealing with it. The reason I do that is because I read ... Anyway, the free thing ... A lot of you guys get hung up on the free thing. "Well, I got to have a free thing in the front." Not always but it really helps to have something free on the front end to start building your list. I haven't been doing this podcast that long, I've barely spent any kind of advertising dollars behind it but because I do that I gained like 2,000 people on my list in the last little bit. It gets shared. The reason I do it is because it gets shared and it's something that I should be charging for. When you guys are starting to come up with the free thing, the bait to pull people into funnels or pull people into your world or whatever it is, the thing that you're doing do it for free for somebody else. Also do, maybe if you can, depends on the industry, depends on to make sense what you're doing but man, I would take something that should be paid for, especially for branding yourself. Especially if this is a coaching, author, speaker, consultant, whatever it is. Myself, man take something that's free or something that people should pay a lot of money for, help them feel that they should be paying for it, which is the reason I reference the fact I spent 200 hours on it. I'll charge 20 grand for funnels now, however I don't usually take any kind of funnel ... build products anymore. Got my own stuff going on which is awesome... Anyway, take something that should be paid for, something that's crazy so that when people like, "Oh my gosh, this is crazy. I get it for free? Oh my gosh." That reaction right there, that's what I'm trying to cause inside of them, inside of their psyche because they'll go share it. If they go share it, it means I won. How do I grow a business almost completely organically while working on the side for one of the most intense entrepreneurs that is even out there? Like that, that's how I do it. What happens is I know that if there's ever a product in the future I have delivered so much freakin' value. Personally I just know. I have delivered so much value. My goal is to deliver so much value. If I can deliver so, so much value and turn around and say, "Hey, you know what? For months I have helped answer questions, I have helped give things away that you should have paid a lot of money for. The next that I do come out with a product ..." I say, "You know what? This product, I actually can stand behind it. It took me a long time to make it but it's going to help you do this. Here you go." There's going to be a lot of people who are fine paying me money for that. It's completely the law of reciprocity. The book "Launch" by Jeff Walker, I really like that book. There's a section or chapter in there that talks about the nine ... There's nine principles of persuasion or something like that. Nine principles ... Gosh, I can't remember the name of it. Anyways, it's any of those categories. One of them is reciprocity. If I give you something for free or ... This happens all the time. Oh, here's a good example. This happens all the time during Christmas or holidays or whenever. If you're in a spot where there's all these neighbors and you walk up to someone ... Someone rings your doorbell, let's say in the middle of dinner time. You're like, "Who's at the door?" You walk up to the door and there's a neighbor there and they've got a plate of cookies for you and a card. They walk in they're like, "Hey, Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays or whatever." What's your immediate gut reaction? "Oh my gosh, thank you so much. I wish I had something for you. I wish there was something I could give you back. Stay right there, stay right there." How many guys would turn around, run back into the kitchen and you grab a can of beans or something to give them to try and show appreciation back. You feel the need to reciprocate, that's literally the reason why I do it. I want to pump value in the marketplace and it also sets me apart like crazy. I get tagged all over the internet for being a resource for people to go get things they need to in order to be successful with funnels. "Well shoot, if you just want to get started right off the bat I got a really great funnel for you and it's free. It took me a long time to build it. Well there you go, you can have it, it's yours. It's a template, I took it out of my content, you can go grab it." Anyway, that's why I do it. That's why I'm a little bit bossy about it. I have an exit pop. If you go to salesfunnelbroker.com it's at the bottom but there's also an exit pop. Some people feel like exit pops are a little bit aggressive but I know that what I'm asking for in the exit pop is such ridiculous value for the funnel and what it gives you that I don't feel bad. I feel like it's totally fine. I don't feel like it taints my image at all by being annoying one more time before somebody leaves the site. Anyway, that's the answer to that one, that's why I do it. I thought about it a lot, there's a lot of strategy behind that and there's a lot more that I'm about to put into that as well. Great question man. Right now what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to break this into a second podcast because there are so many questions. I don't want this to go, it's going to go like 40 or 50 minutes if I keep going here. Let me break this into another episode here. I want to thank you guys. Go ahead and tune into the next one, I'll make a part two on this. Anyways, if you guys got a question though please go ahead and ask me. If you go to salesfunnelradio.com, scroll down to the bottom, green button on the right, you can go and ask one. Just make sure the question is something that can be advantageous for the entire group and no so specific to your business that I can't answer it in a broad way. You want to be detailed as possible but also ... I've had 8,000 downloads in the last ... This podcast has taken off guys and I really want to thank you all for being avid listeners and for being supportive with it. That being said, I've got to make it still applicable for everybody and funnels in general. All right guys, thanks so much and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.

None of that oven-banging trombone crap! When Russell leaves, the rest of us GET SERIOUS. Featuring Dwayne Diesel, George Clooney v Will Arnett, and more!

Understanding the power and importance of the teach-ability index. On this episode Russell talks about what he learned from a known con man, Kevin Trudeau. He also gives you an idea of what his new book, Expert Secrets is about. Here are some cool things to listen for in this episode: What Russell has learned from Kevin Trudeau. When Russell learned to “What if…” instead of “No.” and what that has taught him. And What Russell’s new book, Expert Secrets will teach you. So listen below to hear what difference saying “What if…” has made in Russell’s life. ---Transcript--- Hey, everyone, good morning! This is Russell Brunson and welcome to another episode of Marketing In Your Car. Hey, everyone. I can’t help but laugh every time I do that. But anyway, there you go. I have no other way to do an intro, so that’s all I … I need to go to intro school and learn some other cool stuff, but for now that’s what I got. I’m driving past my house and there’s this huge alfalfa field next door to us, and usually every morning … Today there’s not, but there’s like 500 geese in there and then deer, big deer with antlers and everything. We count about 7 deer that, every morning, come through our yard and then at night they go back the other way. It was pretty cool. All right, so I got something cool for you guys today. Some of you may know I’ve been writing my second book. I swore I’d never do it again but here we are. I felt like there was one more message I needed to share with the world and the book is called Expert Secrets, and I really feel like … In fact the intro of the book I talk about is this the prequel to DotComSecrets or the sequel? Where does this fit in the queue? It kind of depends. If you’ve got an existing business, I think DotComSecrets is the first book. If you don’t then Expert Secrets is the first book. If you have an existing business though, I think Expert Secrets is the second book. It gives you a very systematic, step by step timeline of what to do and what order to do it in. I’m excited. I feel like, it’s kind of like when a weight loss author writes a diet book. I was thinking about Dave Asprey wrote The Bulletproof Diet. Here’s the guide. Here’s everything that he knows about losing weight. That’s kind of what DotComSecrets was like. Here’s everything. Then the next book they usually come out with is the cookbook, like, “Hey, here’s the Bulletproof Cookbook. Here’s all the recipes you should use.” That’s kind of how this is. This book feels like it’s my recipe book, like, “Okay, so all the stuff we talked about in DotComSecrets, you want to implement it… What order? What comes first? Why?” Thinking about things like attractive character. You start here and you transition to here, and which funnel do you use first, second, third and why do you use them in that order? All those kind of fun things. I’m excited. It’s turned out really really good. We’re I think about a third of the way done with it and I was really nervous to write this, because there’s been a lot of people that have written things on how to become an expert and stuff like that and I didn’t want it to be another one of those books. I wanted it to be something special, and so it took me forever to figure out how I wanted to do it and structure it. I feel like we’re there and it’s turning out cool, so I’m proud of it. With that said, there’s a lot of cool things I’ve been thinking about while I’m doing that. I’m going to talk about one of them today. It’s a concept I might have talked about on the podcast in the past. I don’t know. I’ve done so many episodes I can’t remember everything that I say so if this is a rerun for the hardcore ones, this is something to just keep thinking about. But a long time ago I bought a product by … I’m going to blank out his name now. He’s the dude that … Kevin Trudeau. Kevin Trudeau, who’s in jail right now, but one of the best infomercial pitchmen in the history of time, and someone who I do not agree with his ethics. He’s done a lot of bad things to a lot of people I care about, but from a skill standpoint, dude’s amazing. He came out with a product a few years ago called Your Wish is Your Command. In the product he acted like he was in Switzerland and there’s all these kings and stuff he was teaching to. It was all BS. He recorded it in a studio in Chicago, and so it’s kind of like the whole product is based on a lie, but the content actually was really good. Take that for what it’s worth. But one of the things that Kevin talked about in the product was a thing I’d never heard about, but he called it the teachability index, and I talk about this in the Expert Secrets book a little bit. But he talked about, if you think about in your life when you grow up, right? When you’re a little kid you’re like a sponge. My Norah, today she took 3 steps. She’s just learning how to walk, our little 10 month old, and she’s like a sponge. Everything she’s doing … She took a step and we’re going crazy and she’s doing little things. Kids are so teachable. Look at my kids right now. Anything they touch they just figure it out, like video games or math problems. Anything we give them, boom, they figure it out so fast, so much faster than us adults ever do. You look at that’s how life is. We’re growing, we’re evolving, we’re learning. All these amazing things are happening, and we do it through elementary school and then junior high, then high school, then college, and then some horrible thing happens at the end of college. It’s the worst thing that can happen to any of us. We get a degree, and that degree means, “Congratulations. You have learned everything you need to learn and you’re smart.” Guess what happens to almost all the population at that point? We all stop. We’re like, “Sweet. I know what I need to know. Let’s go into the workforce now and implement what I learned in school.” The thing that sucks about that first off is that the school system’s horrible, so you didn’t learn half of what you need to know, but second-off, our teachability index drops to almost nothing. I got in that slump just like everybody else where I thought I knew everything, and that’s why I think I fell in love with this whole business, because I started learning and it opened up my eyes. But, the same thing happened, I opened up and I started learning all this stuff and doing it and started making money, and then what happened? I started teaching it and then boom. It was like I had graduated. I know what I need to know and I kind of shut down for a couple of years, which was horrible because I stopped evolving, stopped growing. It was kind of like this stagnant point for me, and the real turning point for me was when I went to a Tony Robbins event. I remember sitting there at the event, and people are jumping around, going crazy, and singing and dancing and he’s sharing all these things. For the first 5 or 6 hours, I’m sitting there with my arms folded like, “No. I’m not dancing. I’m not jumping. All that stuff he’s saying is BS. I don’t believe it.” I really kind of shut things off, but Tony’s got a way, and he’s pretty good at what he does. After about 5 or 6 hours, I remember I had … For me, I don’t think at the time I thought it was a breakthrough, but I was kind of like, “You know what? Screw this. I’m going to jump around and be happy because everybody else in here is except for me.” I started jumping around and being happy and then I started thinking, “Instead of me saying no, Tony’s wrong, what if I just say what if? Let me just change the thought in my head from no to what if.” I did, and he started saying something. Instead of me immediately shutting it down like all of us do, because we’re educated and because our teachability index is zero, instead of doing that, I said, “What if?” What happened has been life changing for me. It’s opened up this whole new world of possibilities and ideas, and things and people, and experiences that I never thought were possible before. For me now, I’m very careful to not say no when new ideas come to me. It’s not that I can’t say no after I’ve investigated them and prayed about them, and learned about them and implemented them and tried them and tested them, but I try not to say no initially. I try to say “what if” and then put it to the test and see. The things that are good come back and can be really, really good. A good example of that, when I started learning about all this, the high fat diets, and at first my brain’s like, “No. Eating a stick of butter is not a good idea. No. My whole life I learned butter’s bad.” Okay, this morning … I ate more butter this morning than I ate probably in the first 25 years of my life and guess what? I’m in the best shape of my life. Not the best shape of my life, when I was wrestling I was in way better shape. I’m not going to lie, but the best shape of my adult life. I’m losing weight like crazy. I’ve lost a pound a day every day for the last 5 days. It’s interesting and it all came off of a “what if”. What if this whole thing that we’ve been thinking was true this whole time wasn’t true? What if butter actually is amazing and wheat is bad? No, it can’t be … heart healthy wheat. Anyway, I started changing that and again, it’s transformed my world. I look at my business and it’s no longer stagnated. It’s dramatically growing every single month. I looked at my relationships, I looked at all these other aspects of my life, and as I shifted my responses from “no” to “what if”, it changed everything. What I’ve done is I’ve basically increased my teachability index. I’ve opened myself up to learning again, and most people don’t. In the book what I’m talking about, and this is kind of my message for you guys today, is as we get into whatever our business is and where we consider ourselves an expert. We’re either an expert doing what you’re doing or teaching it. Some of you guys are teachers as well, but a lot of us, our teachability is zero and we’re kind of teaching what we’ve gained so far in our life, and I think that’s wrong. When I was hanging out with Howard Berg, the world’s fastest reader, one the of the first times I was hanging out with him, I asked him his opinion on God because I want to … He’s read over 30,000 books. The dude’s a genius, right? I was like, “What’s your opinion on God?” He’s like, “Well, you know, a lot of people will read one book on a topic and that becomes their truth.” He said, “For me, I look at that as one author’s opinion, so I like to read 10 or 20 or 30 books on a topic and then I get a whole bunch of people’s opinion and I have the ability to see the whole picture and then from there make my choices.” He would go on like, “This is what these guys believe and this is what these guys believe, and this is what this …” He started sharing … It was insane. If you ever meet Howard Berg ask him for an hour of his time and ask him his thoughts on God, because it was fascinating. It was the coolest thing in the world. Any topic you ask him and he can go into that like, “Oh, well most people read one book. I read 40 on the topic. This is what I think.” He’s just like, “You get a holistic picture as opposed to just a fragment.” I think for us as educators, as experts, as whatever you want to call yourself, it’s time to open back up your teachability index and become a student again. Become obsessed with it. In fact, the very first thing I talk about in the Expert Secrets book, I call it the Expert Maker Funnel, and it’s doing a telesummit or some type of a summit, because in that summit, you transition from whatever you are to … Your attractive character profile becomes the interviewer. In that interviewer role, you have a chance to interview tons of other people. It’s just like reading 50 books. Interview all these other people and suddenly what’s going to happen is your picture of your reality is going to change. It’s going to grow. It’s going to become way better. I think that it’s time for all of us, if we really want to serve our people at the highest level, it’s time to transition away from being the leader all the time, and become a student, and really open your teachability. Because you’re going to learn and gain so many things you can help your people with that you couldn’t just by sticking with all that you’re doing right now. That’s my message for today. You’re going to love the book. It goes so much deeper than that. There’s so much more which I could share, but we’re at the office, and I got to get to work and help try to serve some more people, get this message out because I think it’s important and it’s worth sharing. That’s what I got for you guys today. Have an amazing day and I’ll talk to you guys all again soon.

When Russell and Jelly can’t agree on whether podcasts under 30 minutes are definitively better, they bring in an expert to help them solve the mystery with science. While they’re at it, they learn what it’s like to make a science podcast for a major broadcaster.